Why flying being gated behind rep grind makes no sense

[Grimbold21]

For the hundredth time: you want to keep Pathfinder in?

Go right ahead, BUT don't design zones as you do right now, closeted, constricting annoying mazes.

[MasterOfNone]

different people - different opinions

My point (and to surmise what many others have posted in this thread) is that blizzard did the same thing you are doing here. They single handily blamed flying for tons of different items. All these items have been reviewed with their new system in place and it still fails with limited to no flying. They are of an opinion that the game needs to be “x” regardless of what players want. To a certain degree it’s their property and they can do what they want. With that comes the understanding that the fans don’t have to agree. If Ion wants to ride his bullshit wave into 12 subscribers total, that’s his prerogative also. Not business smart but hey, stupid people do stupid shit all the time.

[SirCowdog]

And WoW's design doesn't use flying, it's literally just a luxury to have it easier, it brings nothing to the gameplay and only takes away from stuff that are made to be done without flying. That makes flying bad for the game.

Just because that's how flying is used now doesn't mean it couldn't be used in other ways. The way that Blizzard is using it right now, as you described, IS bad. But the whole point of the discussion is that it could be used in better ways, and the open world could be designed to facilitate that.

If you're not willing to be open minded about the possible uses of flying, then there's no real basis for this discussion to be had.

Also, sales numbers don't really mean that much, it only represents if people still enjoy the game enough to keep playing it, players are not judges of quality, if anything they have bad taste just like the music they listen to. Enjoying something doesn't make it good. I enjoy flying in WoW, but at the same time I'm aware of all the terrible things it does, and did, to the game. But it's just so tedious to go through that shit content in a slower version that I end up liking it. That's the difference between subjectivity and objectivity..

The problem with this stance is that Classic is a clear example of players expressing what they like, with developers disagreeing and being wrong. The reason I bring up the popularity of TBC and WotLK is because it's the same type of situation. A lot of players have expressed wanted Blizzard to do more with flying, and do something else with Pathfinder. This is stacked along with two out of the three expansions using pathfinder have gotten poor reviews.

All of this goes to the overarching point that I don't believe it's flying that is bad, but rather the way in which it is used, and how the world is designed. As I mentioned before, throwing flight into a world that isn't designed for it IS going to be bad. On that point you're right.

But you should carefully consider what I'm actually arguing for: A world that IS designed to use flying. TBC and WotLK are basic examples of this. But if I'm being honest, they're also examples of only what was possible ten years ago. I think what is possible now could so much better if Blizzard took the time and effort to stop being lazy and formulaic.

- - - Updated - - -

The loud vocal minority are those crying about not having flying. You should stop lying.

You should stop and consider that what you said is largely only true because Blizzard has spent the last five or so years driving away the players who wanted flying. Then consider how many players returned for Classic, and the potential for bringing players back to the game by not consistently and repeatedly removing the parts of the game they enjoy.

[Arakakao]

Pretty much this.

Blizzard decided that flying was bad, so they tried to get rid of it. However, it was clear they couldn't just get rid of it, so they decided to make it very hard to get so you'll stay subbed and that you had to "prove" you played the expansion in order to earn the privilege of flying.

Which ends up burning people of the expansion's bad design and, instead, you leave the game.

[Trend]

The hardcore no-lifed it in a record time anyway, so gating didn't stop them from zooming through it. The losers are the casuals who support this game, yet they get treated with repetitive boring chores every day leaving them no time to really enjoy the game. It makes absolutely no sense.

I quit several times and even when I reactivated, I played once, or twice max per week, no longer than 1 hour a day and couldn't stand looking at the same zone anymore.

Who thought of this anyway? What's wrong with simply just not giving flying to anyone until a certain time has passed rather than make people hate your own game. This is beyond ridiculous.

Flying and pathfinder and all that is its own topic. The bigger issue here is that this clearly just isn't the right kind of game for you. That's no slam .... different strokes yada yada, but you are very clearly not the target audience for an MMO. If you keep trying to like a game that just isn't made for you, you will continue to be frustrated by all sorts of things.

[klogaroth]

Honestly I don't know anyone who likes how pathfinder works... Like legitimately not one person I know thinks it's good. We've just more or less accepted it...

I think pathfinder part 1 works ok, but I think it should stop there for flying in the expansion launch zones. Once you've done pathfinder 1, you've seen those areas. I'm fine with needing a new pathfinder to fly in maps added in patches, like getting pathfinder 2 to fly in mecha and nazjatar. Waiting months and needing the new pathfinder to fly in the old areas, not a fan. Sometimes being on the ground does allow for better pacing, and the creation of an adventure out of a simple objective. That's why I'm ok with doing the story for the first time on the ground. Doing world quests for a few months though? They look like they were designed specifically to pair well with flying.

[therealbowser]

I've been burned out more grinding out the awful pathfinder achievement this expansion than any other (Suramar came close).

The problem with pathfinder is that the new zones literally punish you for not having flying. Nazjatar is the worst designed zone in the game for ground mounts that I've ever seen. I've fallen to my death so many times trying to find a quest that I couldn't figure out which of the 4-5 layers it was on, I've spent 10 minute detours even trying to figure out some of these things. Were it not for the fact I use anti-dazing items, I wouldn't have been able to tolerate it, because I would be dismounted everywhere, by everything, nonstop. I may as well not mount at all because the damn zone is crammed with tiny passages, multiple layers, and huge drops that kill even rogues and pandaren effortlessly. Not to mention all the huge walls, or the tiny hills that you just barely can't get over to get you your NPC or save you a massive detour. It's just shitty.

Then I got flying, and the zone became a breeze. I just don't get it. Why punish players for not having flying, if you want to make players appreciate the ground?

[SirCowdog]

Why punish players for not having flying, if you want to make players appreciate the ground?

Because it's never actually been about making better gameplay. Despite what Blizzard claims, it's always been about milking and stretching as much time out of as weak of an open world formula as possible.

Actions speak louder than words.

[Gref]

by the time flying was unlocked, if you are still not revered with those factions, that simply means you were not playing like at all.
full time job, wife can hardly play 1-2 hours each day (that is if possible) I was already exalted with everything. still managed to get my aotc on every tier and got high end ilvl each patch. You people simply do not play the game, why not just quit instead of whining.

[ohwell]

Just because that's how flying is used now doesn't mean it couldn't be used in other ways. The way that Blizzard is using it right now, as you described, IS bad. But the whole point of the discussion is that it could be used in better ways, and the open world could be designed to facilitate that.

If you're not willing to be open minded about the possible uses of flying, then there's no real basis for this discussion to be had.




The problem with this stance is that Classic is a clear example of players expressing what they like, with developers disagreeing and being wrong. The reason I bring up the popularity of TBC and WotLK is because it's the same type of situation. A lot of players have expressed wanted Blizzard to do more with flying, and do something else with Pathfinder. This is stacked along with two out of the three expansions using pathfinder have gotten poor reviews.

All of this goes to the overarching point that I don't believe it's flying that is bad, but rather the way in which it is used, and how the world is designed. As I mentioned before, throwing flight into a world that isn't designed for it IS going to be bad. On that point you're right.

But you should carefully consider what I'm actually arguing for: A world that IS designed to use flying. TBC and WotLK are basic examples of this. But if I'm being honest, they're also examples of only what was possible ten years ago. I think what is possible now could so much better if Blizzard took the time and effort to stop being lazy and formulaic.

- - - Updated - - -



You should stop and consider that what you said is largely only true because Blizzard has spent the last five or so years driving away the players who wanted flying. Then consider how many players returned for Classic, and the potential for bringing players back to the game by not consistently and repeatedly removing the parts of the game they enjoy.

Not in the least bit correct. Very few have quit over flying.

[SirCowdog]

Not in the least bit correct. Very few have quit over flying.

Sigh...

It's not that players are specifically quitting due to the lack of flying. It's that players are getting sick or bored of the open world formula that no-flying is a part of.

[ornichi]

My point (and to surmise what many others have posted in this thread) is that blizzard did the same thing you are doing here. They single handily blamed flying for tons of different items. All these items have been reviewed with their new system in place and it still fails with limited to no flying. They are of an opinion that the game needs to be “x” regardless of what players want. To a certain degree it’s their property and they can do what they want. With that comes the understanding that the fans don’t have to agree. If Ion wants to ride his bullshit wave into 12 subscribers total, that’s his prerogative also. Not business smart but hey, stupid people do stupid shit all the time.

For starters I never blamed flying (on contrary - I think pathfinder system has a lot of room for improvement). I was just saying that warmode is a decent system that caters to players who want to pvp as well as to those, who wanna stay out of it.
I play for the Alliance, I play for the Horde. There was not a single time in these 1.5 years when I didn’t have fun with WM.
> I wanted to PvP - I turned it on.
> I didn’t want to - I turned it off.
Simple as that.

However through my observation of different games and different communities I noticed one tendency: blizzard community is toxic and demanding mass without a single bit of appreciation.
Even now warmode has shitloads of pros compared to cons (fixed the issue of being on a losing side, segmented pve and pvp, solved the problem of server transfer) but people decide to shit on it. Factions are balanced population-wise but you are talking about balance like it’s Blizz’s fault that Alliance doesn’t want to participate as much as Horde.

With all that you have to understand one thing blizzard can’t fix - people’s attitude.
Players will always find smth they don’t like, create 10 shortcuts and abuses to skip it and open 100 whine-threads. And whatever decision Hazzikostas makes, a certain part of playerbase will bitch on him.

[Raelbo]

The loud vocal minority are those crying about not having flying. You should stop lying.

Any backing for this statement? Because frankly you're talking rubbish.

During WoD there was a lot of discussion on the forums about the issue of flying. Those discussions were the basis for Blizzard's decision to announce that they would not be implementing flying at all in WoD. Because up until when Blizzard made that announcement, the perception of how the discussions on the topic were going indicated that the community was generally ok with not having flying and that support for "no flying" was strong.

What happened next proved just how wrong Blizzard were and just how much of a distorted view of what the playerbase in general thought had been presented on the forums. The backlash was huge. The "silent majority" made their voices heard because being silent and assuming that good sense would prevail was clearly not going to work.

The fact that Blizzard did an about turn on an issue that they were 100% certain of in a matter of days proves beyond any reasonable doubt just how much of the majority are in favour of flying. It's a stern lesson on how one should be cautious of using internet forums to guage general feelings on a topic.

- - - Updated - - -

I explained why it's bad for the game,

Your explanation remains dissatisfactory because it rests entirely on unproven assertions:

• Flying ruins WPvP
• The existence of flying makes the designers lazy and then they make shit content

you didn't explain why it's good for the game and didn't prove my points wrong.

Re: Flying being "good" for the game:

I never needed to prove that it was. My argument is simply that it isn't the "cancer" you claimed it to be based on the reasons you gave.

Re: Proving your points wrong: I rebutted every single one.

The short versions (the more elaborate versions are there for anyone to see):

• Flying ruins WPvP: I pointed out the obvious logical fallacy in your argument that you can't blame flying for players inherently not wanting to engage in PvP. When you tried to provide a "mathematical" argument about how flying reduces the chance of randomly encountering another player, I pointed out that you don't need "random" luck to encounter other players if you're looking for WPvP. I don't disagree with your assertion that flying helps players to avoid WPvP. I am saying that what ruins WPvP is the fact that they want to avoid WPvP in the first place. I don't really know how to explain such a basic concept any more clearly than that.
• Flying causes the devs to be lazy: I pointed out that you were guilty of correlation vs causation fallacy. I challenged you to provide warrants and backing for this assertion, which you never did.

So I have no reason to stop believing reality.

You're welcome to believe whatever "reality" you want to believe. I am simply telling you why your arguments are lacking according to a known and objective method (Toulmin).

Just because you say you don't like my argument doesn't do anything.

This is not about whether I like your argument. It's about whether your argument meets the minimum criteria for validity.

They're still good logical points backed by technical aspects of game design and issues the game is suffering from right now, and explained why it's coming from flying being implemented.

Lol. They really are not. And like I say, it isn't just because I say so. There are established ways of assessing the validity of an argument (eg Toulmin) and your argument is severely lacking.

Putting together a logical argument doesn't just mean stating a fact followed by a conclusion. You have to be able to explain how the fact leads, logically, to the conclusion, not just that it's obvious, or that only an idiot can't see it. I even went to the effort of walking you through the process step by step and showing you how and why your logic failed. Your answer to that btw was to deflect, you didn't even try to address the flaws I pointed out.

Just because you disagree doesn't mean that's not true. It only means you see something different than reality.

The fact that you feel the need to resorting to ad hominem is telling. In my own defence I have tried to remain respectful and focus on the argument rather than childishly calling you delusional.

[khalltusk]

I like flying, you get the freedom to go where ever.

That said I am ok with being grounded at expansion start. So far the only expansion I never completed the last path finder on was WoD. To this day I am still working on it but I can't bring my self to get invested in doing it. Until a few weeks ago I found out I could buy rep tokens from the TW vendor there. Game changer that one.

[MasterOfNone]

For starters I never blamed flying (on contrary - I think pathfinder system has a lot of room for improvement). I was just saying that warmode is a decent system that caters to players who want to pvp as well as to those, who wanna stay out of it.
I play for the Alliance, I play for the Horde. There was not a single time in these 1.5 years when I didn’t have fun with WM.
> I wanted to PvP - I turned it on.
> I didn’t want to - I turned it off.
Simple as that.

However through my observation of different games and different communities I noticed one tendency: blizzard community is toxic and demanding mass without a single bit of appreciation.
Even now warmode has shitloads of pros compared to cons (fixed the issue of being on a losing side, segmented pve and pvp, solved the problem of server transfer) but people decide to shit on it. Factions are balanced population-wise but you are talking about balance like it’s Blizz’s fault that Alliance doesn’t want to participate as much as Horde.

With all that you have to understand one thing blizzard can’t fix - people’s attitude.
Players will always find smth they don’t like, create 10 shortcuts and abuses to skip it and open 100 whine-threads. And whatever decision Hazzikostas makes, a certain part of playerbase will bitch on him.

You didn’t really address anything other than basic consumer attitude on any given level of consumerism.

1. I didn’t mean to infer that you were saying flying caused problems. It is definitely, however, the rallying cry of many most anti-flyers and blizzard. The point I was making, is that not one valid reason that was given to remove flying to pathfinder or any other reason has actually validated those aspects of the game. The systems still suck and the game has not seen a large up-tick in long term participation in years. They need to fix the problems at their core and not use flying as the crux to play mad scientist with bull shit core gameplay.

2. Consumers will be consumers. You act by your post that consumers aren’t allowed to bitch about a product. This is one of my biggest pet peeves. You want people to be grateful. They are paying for a product! Grateful never enters the equation. They don’t have to play, but they don’t “owe” appreciation to anyone. All consumers are allowed to voice opinions about services rendered or products received. Especially in the sense that it is a long term product like this, and blizzard keeps making the game worse for the majority regardless of flying. You blaming the community for
Blizzards failures is ridiculous. If you bought a burger from a place every day for 5 years and suddenly they took the patty and made it vegan, you would bitch right? Or do you not have the right? Don’t be sanctimonious about defending blizzard when they are clearly giving zero shits about feedback or players satisfaction.

[SirCowdog]

With all that you have to understand one thing blizzard can’t fix - people’s attitude.
Players will always find smth they don’t like, create 10 shortcuts and abuses to skip it and open 100 whine-threads. And whatever decision Hazzikostas makes, a certain part of playerbase will bitch on him.

Just because some players are bitching doesn't mean Blizzard gets a pass to stop improving or addressing obvious flaws with the game.

Saying that some people will complain no matter what doesn't mean that the glaring issues with flying and Pathfinder shouldn't be addressed.

[Raelbo]

It was more of a commentary on how the current implementation of flying doesn't actually add anything to the game. It just wrecks the existing ground-based content and acts as a "skip", as someone said earlier. I don't view that as being particularly good design.

If a zone is meant to be experienced from the ground, then that's how it should always be. As you mentioned earlier with Timeless Isle. But I think the opposite is also true, with zones such as Stormpeaks. The problem we're seeing with the current implementation of Pathfinder and flying is that it takes zones that are intended to be played from the ground and ruins them, while not really giving flight a lot of value. It's the worst of both worlds.

I don't really agree that flying necessarily ruins or wrecks zones that were designed without flying in mind. It certainly changes the way in the zone is experienced, and I agree that when the zone is still new that is likely to have a deleterious effect on the experience. That being said, once players have had ample time to explore and discover the zone from the ground, the potential harm from adding flying is neutered.

Now, of course, I cannot pretend to speak for everyone in the game. I can only share my own experience, and what other people have told me directly (many of whom feel almost exactly the same way), and that is that the ability to fly, enhances my enjoyment of the game, by helping me skip the element of the game (overland travel between points of interest) that, while initially fun and engaging and interesting, tends becomes tedious over time.

You even said above that you general enjoy the experience from the ground.

I said that I enjoy the initial experience. I think I was quite clear in stating that this holds less true the more the experience is repeated, to the point where it eventually just becomes tedious. Yes, it's fun playing through the questlines in a zone like Vol'dun while being constrained to the ground. Going back to do emissaries under the same conditions is not.

But you also brought up a very good point about how everyone will use flying if it's available. Blizzard is doing their players a great disservice by not providing and preserving both styles of gameplay in the open world.

My argument is that the fact that anti-flyers will use flying even though they claim to hate it, tells me that they're not being honest with themselves about what it is that they want.

My hypothesis is that these players want to preserve and revisit good experiences in the game. They enjoyed the initial experience and feel that the repeat experience (with flying) is missing a big part of what they initially enjoyed. They're not wrong. They're just wrong about why.

The Pathfinder design philosophy has been bad from the beginning. It's till bad right now, and should be taken back to the drawing board. It's limiting both players, and in my most sincere opinion, the developers as well.

And we all know how that turned out. I made this point earlier in the thread: Blizzard needs to stop trying to tell players what they enjoy, and REALLY needs to start listening instead.

In this case it's not that Blizzard didn't listen. It's that they listened to a vocal minority because that vocal minority was feeding their confirmation bias.

They don't need reason or logic. They have papa-Blizz to tell them how to think, how to have fun, and what is good. Didn't you know?

I am going to somewhat disagree with you here. When I say that people are immune to reason and logic, I am not saying that they don't think for themselves or make up their own minds about something. Quite the opposite actually. I am saying that they are not open to changing their minds regardless of what anyone else might tell them.

Most people want to be right. But not everyone is prepared to adapt their opinions and their mode of thinking to ensure that they are.

[CrawlFromThePit]

Your explanation remains dissatisfactory because it rests entirely on unproven assertions:

• Flying ruins WPvP
• The existence of flying makes the designers lazy and then they make shit content

Re: Flying being "good" for the game:

I never needed to prove that it was. My argument is simply that it isn't the "cancer" you claimed it to be based on the reasons you gave.

Re: Proving your points wrong: I rebutted every single one.

The short versions (the more elaborate versions are there for anyone to see):

• Flying ruins WPvP: I pointed out the obvious logical fallacy in your argument that you can't blame flying for players inherently not wanting to engage in PvP. When you tried to provide a "mathematical" argument about how flying reduces the chance of randomly encountering another player, I pointed out that you don't need "random" luck to encounter other players if you're looking for WPvP. I don't disagree with your assertion that flying helps players to avoid WPvP. I am saying that what ruins WPvP is the fact that they want to avoid WPvP in the first place. I don't really know how to explain such a basic concept any more clearly than that.
• Flying causes the devs to be lazy: I pointed out that you were guilty of correlation vs causation fallacy. I challenged you to provide warrants and backing for this assertion, which you never did.

You're welcome to believe whatever "reality" you want to believe. I am simply telling you why your arguments are lacking according to a known and objective method (Toulmin).



This is not about whether I like your argument. It's about whether your argument meets the minimum criteria for validity.




Lol. They really are not. And like I say, it isn't just because I say so. There are established ways of assessing the validity of an argument (eg Toulmin) and your argument is severely lacking.

Putting together a logical argument doesn't just mean stating a fact followed by a conclusion. You have to be able to explain how the fact leads, logically, to the conclusion, not just that it's obvious, or that only an idiot can't see it. I even went to the effort of walking you through the process step by step and showing you how and why your logic failed. Your answer to that btw was to deflect, you didn't even try to address the flaws I pointed out.



The fact that you feel the need to resorting to ad hominem is telling. In my own defence I have tried to remain respectful and focus on the argument rather than childishly calling you delusional.

Dude, your own posts are full of your opinion and nothing of value. You think your "rebuttal" of my mathematical proof is decent? Literally all you did was make assumption on players behavior. You don't even follow the Toulsin method correctly yourself, you just try to and it's really not impressive in the slightest. Not only that but you're extremely stretching because you're fucking tired of arguing this, you just wish I would shut up so you can feel like you won something. The only way you win anything out of this is if you learn. Right now you're not learning shit you still believe bad design is good for the game and your head is so far up you're ass you instantly dismiss any kind of evidence that makes this true, however obvious that evidence is.

To be completely honest, I don't want to make a giant post with a specific argumentative method just to say the red apple is red, it's fucking stupid and a giant waste of time. You don't want to see things for what they are? Fine, stay wrong, I don't give a fuck anymore, I'm not here to be convinced of lies and idiocy, I simply pointed out a fact and you made a big deal out of how I write my post. Who gives a shit, just do like everybody else and use your opinions to disagree with facts and keep on paying to fly from point A to point B without any gameplay in between, according to you that's perfect!

- - - Updated - - -

Just because that's how flying is used now doesn't mean it couldn't be used in other ways. The way that Blizzard is using it right now, as you described, IS bad. But the whole point of the discussion is that it could be used in better ways, and the open world could be designed to facilitate that.

If you're not willing to be open minded about the possible uses of flying, then there's no real basis for this discussion to be had.




The problem with this stance is that Classic is a clear example of players expressing what they like, with developers disagreeing and being wrong. The reason I bring up the popularity of TBC and WotLK is because it's the same type of situation. A lot of players have expressed wanted Blizzard to do more with flying, and do something else with Pathfinder. This is stacked along with two out of the three expansions using pathfinder have gotten poor reviews.

All of this goes to the overarching point that I don't believe it's flying that is bad, but rather the way in which it is used, and how the world is designed. As I mentioned before, throwing flight into a world that isn't designed for it IS going to be bad. On that point you're right.

But you should carefully consider what I'm actually arguing for: A world that IS designed to use flying. TBC and WotLK are basic examples of this. But if I'm being honest, they're also examples of only what was possible ten years ago. I think what is possible now could so much better if Blizzard took the time and effort to stop being lazy and formulaic.

I completely agree. I didn't exactly explain my view on this cuz I already did in previous posts here but they're giant walls of text for basically nothing, I wouldn't read them myself so I'm not blaming you, but yeah the world is not designed for flying at all and not only that, but flying hurts other features of the game because those were not even designed with flying in mind, even after like 10 years of having flying in every end-game scenario. Basically there's 2 valid options, make a ground only world like we have now and remove flying forever, or keep flying and completely change the way the world is design FROM THE START not just end-game, 100% of the world needs to be designed with flying in mind.

As for Classic, meh, it's true that Blizzard were wrong, specially when they said "you think you do but you don't", they can't know what players really want. That being said, Classic only works because it existed before and people want to go back to it. If WoW never existed and Classic came out today, people would laugh at it, and I think that's where the devs came from in their first comments about Classic. Of course we live in a world where WoW exists and is 15 years old, the objective quality of Classic by 2019 standard is not a reality so that makes them wrong, but they are right that the game is a giant mess, it's just a mess that many people love because they grew up with it and had a good time back in the day. It's like listening to old shitty songs we liked as teenagers, they're still shitty songs that we enjoy but if they were new songs released today most of them would flop lol.

[SirCowdog]

I completely agree. I didn't exactly explain my view on this cuz I already did in previous posts here but they're giant walls of text for basically nothing, I wouldn't read them myself so I'm not blaming you

Trust me when I say I know exactly what you mean. I've repeated my point of view on flying, and clarified it so many times that I almost feel like I should keep a text file on my desktop so I can copy/paste it in replies.

flying hurts other features of the game because those were not even designed with flying in mind,

Such as? If you're going to bring up PVP again, I think you won't win that argument. Flying definitely adds an additional dimension to open world PVP, and definitely hurts ganking. But I don't really consider ganking as a legitimate form of WPVP, since it consists of waiting until someone lower level than you comes along, or waiting until a player is already engaged. There are FAR better things to argue for than that, and far greater things harming real WPVP than flying.

Basically there's 2 valid options:

Make a ground only world like we have now and remove flying forever,

or:

Keep flying and completely change the way the world is design FROM THE START not just end-game, 100% of the world needs to be designed with flying in mind.

I actually disagree on this point, as I don't think it's necessary to have it be a binary decision. Flying can absolutely be used in some areas of the game, but not others. We can very easily have zones like the Firelands, where you go through a portal, or ride a boat, or whatever, and enter an entire zone where flight is restricted.

But then there can also be zones in the same expansion that are 100% designed to use flying, with airships, griffons, or other flying threats patrolling an area full of floating islands, steep cliffs, cave systems, giant trees, or whatever other form of vertical terrain that better suits the type of movement flight allows.

As for Classic, meh, it's true that Blizzard were wrong, specially when they said "you think you do but you don't", they can't know what players really want.

Again, I have to disagree. They can't know what every single player wants, but they can make a pretty educated guess at what the majority wants. All I have to do is look at the steep dropoff in players after the formula of WoD(no flying forever) failed miserably to see what players think about that design. I don't necessarily need to know exactly what players want instead, but I CAN tell that the design without flying didn't work well.

On top of that, even myself, as a single person, can browse all the various forums and see that there's a general approval for the unlocking aspects of Pathfinder, but general disapproval of the 8 month delay. Is that what every single WoW player thinks? Almost certainly not. But it seems to me that there's enough of a general consensus on the topic to warrant an alteration in the approach of the Pathfinder system.

And it's not like it would even take that much of an alteration. Assuming Blizzard didn't take my suggestion and build some zones to use flying from the beginning:

Unlock flying with Pathfinder part 1 in the launch content. Any future zone releases would need to be separated via portals or fatigue walls, and have each new zone either carry its own Pathfinder unlock. Include at least a token explanation in-game for why we have to re-earn the ability to fly, possibly with a scenario or final quest to garnish the actual unlock and add a little flavor.

They could have done this in BfA with ease! Nazjatar was already set apart from the launch content, being only accessible via portal. All it would have taken for Mechagon would have been to portal that as well instead of putting it so close to Kul'Tiras. Boom. Done. They could have dispensed with the 8 month delay, made players happy, and potentially even increased the NZ/Mech grind a bit to compensate.

Why would this be so damn hard for Blizzard to do? Rhetorical question. It wouldn't. They just have someone(Probably Hazzicostas) with a stick up their ass about flying.

[Rune B]

I agree gated flying is silly, and it should be available to everyone. Especially when lagging expansions behind with no longer relevant content. This is also an issue with allied races to some degree, but not as much as flying. Not being able to fly in Nasjazaszjjazjsjajzatar especially for a while nearly gave me an aneurysm.