Why flying being gated behind rep grind makes no sense

[Relapses]

I love it when pro-ground players go straight to hyperbole.

The argument and criticism of the No-Flying philosophy in WoD started as early as Beta when the concept was first introduced. Criticism and complaints about it continued to rise, but then started to die down due to a rising perception that flight would be unlocked in 6.1. Once Blizzard announced that flight would NOT be returning in 6.1, that's when the shit started to hit the fan. Most notably was the irritation by players who had bought the collectors edition to get the flying mount, compounded by Grinning Reaver and Iron Skyreaver sales.

The debate and pushback from the community against no-flying was an ongoing thing that only got worse due to Blizzard's poor and misleading communication. Considering how Blizzard plans and works on WoW content months, if not years in advance, I find it VERY difficult to believe that they had planned to go with Pathfinder at any time later in the game. This is especially reinforced, considering the infamous quote from Ion in the Polygon Interview(in which he also confirmed would be the same plan for future expansions):

"At this point, we feel that outdoor gameplay in World of Warcraft is ultimately better without flying. We're not going to be reintroducing the ability to fly in Draenor, and that's kind of where we're at going forward."

You want to claim people in favor of flying are wearing rose-tinted goggles, but your own view seems pretty damn skewed to me. They never planned to do any sort of flying compromise or unlock. The only reason they changed direction was due to community backlash, probably involving a lot of unsubs and store mount refund requests.

Way to completely and totally misrepresent my argument. I'm not "pro-ground." I'm anti-embellishment and pro-developers having the right to make unpopular decisions in pursuit of their vision. Flying is simply not as important as you think it is. Pathfinding isn't evidence of some massive community uprising. That's it. You can disagree and say that it must be "because money," but that is such a weak argument that can used to justify anything that it doesn't really resonate with me.

[Didly]

Flying is simply not as important as you think it is.

Argus begs to differ.

The world PVP in that zone was top notch due to the lack of flying, its smaller size, and the fact that traversing the zone put people in contact with each other- not just meeting up at WQ markers. Coupled with PVE mobs that actually would pursue you (and could kill you) Blizzard successfully created a zone that feels dangerous.

I can only hope they revisit this idea in the future.

Flying complete negates all of these mechanics, making the entire zone trivial. Thankfully we at least have the net-o-matic to make it more interesting.

[SirCowdog]

Argus begs to differ.

The world PVP in that zone was top notch due to the lack of flying, its smaller size, and the fact that traversing the zone put people in contact with each other- not just meeting up at WQ markers. Coupled with PVE mobs that actually would pursue you (and could kill you) Blizzard successfully created a zone that feels dangerous.

I can only hope they revisit this idea in the future.

Flying complete negates all of these mechanics, making the entire zone trivial. Thankfully we at least have the net-o-matic to make it more interesting.

I would argue that it was not the fact that Argus didn't have flight, but that it had interesting and relevant things to do which caused players to stay around long enough for pvp to happen.

As I've said multiple times now, the raw speed of flying is one of the biggest problems with it. It needs to be brought down to something reasonable and on par with ground mounts, with ground mounts being given some other ability to compete with 3d movement.

But again: Restrict flight while war mode is on also solves this neatly. The complete removal of flying everywhere for all content is a poor solution because it caters to only one type of player. Imagine if Blizzard took such a stance anywhere else in the game.

"Sorry guys, we've decided that we really just want to create a more dangerous world. From now on there will be no more PVE server. PVP flag will be on at all times, everywhere. PVE mode will be available 10 months into the expansion after you complete a list of achievements. "

"Sorry guys, we've decided that we really just want to create a more dangerous and engaging world. From now on there will only be Mythic level raiding. LFR, Normal, and heroic will only be available after you complete the "Deepfinder" achievement parts 1 and 2"

How do you think that would go down?




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Way to completely and totally misrepresent my argument. I'm not "pro-ground." I'm anti-embellishment and pro-developers having the right to make unpopular decisions in pursuit of their vision. Flying is simply not as important as you think it is. Pathfinding isn't evidence of some massive community uprising. That's it. You can disagree and say that it must be "because money," but that is such a weak argument that can used to justify anything that it doesn't really resonate with me.

I don't really care what resonates with you. You want to be pro developer, but seem to be ignoring the reality of what a major AAA videogame corporation is actually like, especially Activision Blizzard in regards to their flagship cashcow title.

I actually agree with you that devs should have more freedom to explore their creativity. But they're dealing with both the corporate side of things, AND with a game that has established gameplay and history.

If these theoretical devs so badly want to make a game without flying, then it should be a new MMO. Trying to do that in WoW when players have years of enjoyment out of flight, as well as emotional and financial investment in it....is fucked. And telling those players they're wrong to want that returned to them because "muh devs" is also fucked.

The biggest difference is that most pro-flight people dont want to take the grounded gameplay away from those that enjoy it. And those who are anti flight do. That's why you got lumped in with them. You may say you're just pro-dev, but what you're supporting is effectively the same result.

[Ragedaug]

It's possible for developers to change their minds without the bottom line being affected. This possibility seems to completely alien to many people participating in this discussion. That's what's frustrating.

Sure it's possible the Devs were like, "oh wait, that's not what we wanted to do" and had nothing to do with money (or the lack thereof). Lots of things are possibly. Is it likely? Precedence says no. Simplest answer is most likely to be the actual answer (obviously not definitively the answer, just the most likely)

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This isn’t hard to understand. We see social media campaigns and negative reactions force companies to adjust their policies all the time. People can get angry and flame threads with F-word laden posts all they want, but logic is logic, and I don’t think anybody taking an objective look at this would understand Blizzard’s u-turn any other way.

Completely agree, easy to understand. Which is why I believe all the folks who said that they were done with wow actually unsubbed, like I did. Lots of massive QQ for lots of changes in wows history. I can't remember any other change getting a knee jerk reversal like undoing no flight.

[Senshenzu]

Heres for the silly gooses that dont want flying. Your arguments that it makes the world feel dead are false. Heres a point. I haven't bought WOW or played because flying not being able to fly from the start. This creates a dead world because guess what "buds" im not in it. Thats one less player in the game. Thousands and if not millions are like me and have not played or continue playing because there is no flying right away. This creates an even more deadly game. I don't care if you have to earn it but gating it for months is pathetic. Secondly, the foolish argument that what about world PVP? Hardly anyone does that. PVP servers are literally the lowest servers in the game. Likewise, who are they going to attack when thousands or millions of "US" are not in the game. Literally cuts it to the minimal amount of people that play now. Your arguments are pathetically ignorant. If you want that simple fix put a style of no flying into a shard similar to war mode. See how many are actually there!

Point of the matter is. You silly geese need to learn that you trying to control someone's fun, is cancerous.

P.S. I said previous post during Blizzcon about having a talk with Brack with all core investors. We investors are not happy. That's why the stock is tanking. At least PR has been talking to us. We're having a meeting here in two weeks. Next expansion hopefully will not be a letdown. All new games I will look into and talk about on your behalf. Nonetheless, I am personally going to ask about the development team. If our group doesn't seem the expected sales from Shadowlands and subscription rates, Ill guarantee you that Ion will be "moving on".

[SirCowdog]

@otaXephon You might find this interesting reading, about the topic of how blizzard devs don't operate in a vacuum. In particular was this quote talking about how things have changed over the years:

"I think the biggest thing is we didn't talk about shareholder value," Erich Schaefer said. "We didn't talk about Chinese government and what they might want. The only thing we ever talked about was what we wanted to do and what the fans would like. It's obviously not the case anymore, for better or worse. I don't blame them. They're a giant corporation.

You can't be that big and be as free-wheeling as we were, and one of the reasons we left was to be more self-deterministic and not be beholden to some monstrous organization," Max Schaefer said. "Nothing ever stays the same. We would not have survived [Blizzard's] growth in any form by staying there. It would have just driven us crazy because it's just all we want to do is have a team and make the games we want to make. That's possible in the small group like Blizzard used to be and it's not possible in a media conglomerate empire thing that they have right now."

Also...a little later down in the interview about the HK/Blitzchung situation. But it's powerfully relevant given the point I was trying to make. Lest you think it was just me speculating, this is one of the former big names of Blizzard and his brother, with an inside view of the situation that we, as players, just don't have.

"Because of the structure of Blizzard now they think with their wallets first," Max Schaefer speculated. "I think that kind of led the decision making more than anything, and they'd maybe underestimated what people's perception of that would be."

[Relapses]

Sure it's possible the Devs were like, "oh wait, that's not what we wanted to do" and had nothing to do with money (or the lack thereof). Lots of things are possibly. Is it likely? Precedence says no. Simplest answer is most likely to be the actual answer (obviously not definitively the answer, just the most likely).

Let me put it like this: If, numerically, Blizzard's position on flying pre-Pathfinding was 49/51 in favor of no flying, then the outrage post-6.2 helped move their position back to 51/49 in favor of flying. I agree that outcry had an effect but I disagree that outcry was the singular reason they changed their minds.

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@otaXephon You might find this interesting reading, about the topic of how blizzard devs don't operate in a vacuum. In particular was this quote talking about how things have changed over the years:





Also...a little later down in the interview about the HK/Blitzchung situation. But it's powerfully relevant given the point I was trying to make. Lest you think it was just me speculating, this is one of the former big names of Blizzard and his brother, with an inside view of the situation that we, as players, just don't have.

Exactly what does an interview with three ex-Diablo devs who left the company before WoW was even released have to do with flying?

[SirCowdog]

Exactly what does an interview with three ex-Diablo devs who left the company before WoW was even released have to do with
flying?

Do you even actually read posts before replying? I clearly said it's about devs not working in a vacuum, which goes towards countering your claim that Blizzard devs are just doing what they want with the game.

The rest of the interview talks about the influences of money and corporate policy are a major factor in design decisions. Which is what I've been trying to tell you about the decision making process surrounding flight.

[Borgmore]

Flying isnt hard to get, just a bit boring. If you want to fly do the grind...if you dont want to fly then....dont.

[Relapses]

Do you even actually read posts before replying? I clearly said it's about devs not working in a vacuum, which goes towards countering your claim that Blizzard devs are just doing what they want with the game.

The rest of the interview talks about the influences of money and corporate policy are a major factor in design decisions. Which is what I've been trying to tell you about the decision making process surrounding flight.

I really think it's you who needs to brush up on your reading skills. I have never said that money doesn't influence Blizzard's decision making process. I have only given you my opinion that Pathfinding does not strike me as the type of compromise that was introduced solely to stem some imaginary monetary crisis players have invented to justify the importance of flying.

[Veelaru]

Those, who say that unlocking flying is easy, forget that some people did not play since the start of BfA. Good for you that you had months to casually farm rep until 8.2.0. Many players had not, and, for example, navigation in Nazjatar can be painful AF without grinding reputation to be able to fly. Not to mention how annoying it can be to switch to the ground mounts every time you want to do some stuff in WoD or Legion locations.

These systems are great but they target those players who play continuously throughout all the expansion, punishing new players hardly.

[Witchblade77]

Just started playing classic again and this is something that jumped out at me. I could still run between mobs. There was distance between things. Clear paths.

Feeling like if I so much as look the wrong way while fighting ANY mob in nazjatar is just irritating.

yes yes yes and so much yes. while i still very much love the sensation of flight, the reason why not having it is irritating me so much is that back in the olden days, i could stop on a road or find an out of the way nook that was safe, if i needed to walk away and come back to my character being right where I left them, alive. and i could easily do that just about anywhere. even zones that had patrolling road mobs (like stitches or fel reaver, etc) its damn near impossible to do in most recent expansions, unless you have flight. its too much. right now, I'm going through pathfinder achievement and i deliberately chose to do it on a druid, becasue I can go into stealth. becasue its the only way to avoid shit (and is still faster then trying to outrun it, only to get dismounted and bogged down in pointless trash again and again)

random aside. whoever designed wide world of quests to 1. not count invasion quests and 2. only apparently count unique quests (cause my count is NOT going up even after doing like 3 different world quests in a row) - is an asshole. and is there an addon that tells me which world quests haven't counted towards the achievement yet and which ones i can safely skip? cause nothing like spending 40 minutes to an hour, hoofing it from world quest to world quests (and they are rarely particularly entertaining) only to realize that your quest count didn't go up and you just spent 40 minutes doing mind numbing, boring grind that didn't even matter, UGH.

[SirCowdog]

I have never said that money doesn't influence Blizzard's decision making process. I have only given you my opinion that Pathfinding does not strike me as the type of compromise that was introduced solely to stem some imaginary monetary crisis players have invented to justify the importance of flying.

No, you've only said that you're in favor of devs' ability to make unpopular decisions in pursuit of their vision. No flying is one such decisions, as is Pathfinder.

You've also said: "You can disagree and say that it must be "because money," but that is such a weak argument..." implying that you don't believe money influences such decisions. And you also don't believe community pushback effected it either.

So if it's not money, and it's not community pushback, then what is it?

I and others have given you several reasonable explanations, based on decently researched information, for why Blizzard changed their stance on No-Flying, but you persist in claiming that it's just something they decided to do 'because reasons'. At this point you look like someone who just doesn't want to change their opinion when faced with new information.

[Relapses]

No, you've only said that you're in favor of devs' ability to make unpopular decisions in pursuit of their vision. No flying is one such decisions, as is Pathfinder.

You've also said: "You can disagree and say that it must be "because money," but that is such a weak argument..." implying that you don't believe money influences such decisions. And you also don't believe community pushback effected it either.

At this point I'm not really sure how much more clear I can make myself: I don't believe money affected Blizzard decision to introduce Pathfinder. I do not personally believe the number of people who actually unsubbed was significant enough to warrant swift action from Blizzard. I do believe that players who are strongly in favor of flying improperly use Blizzard's change in direction as support for their position that flying is more important than it is in reality.

So if it's not money, and it's not community pushback, then what is it?

I and others have given you several reasonable explanations, based on decently researched information, for why Blizzard changed their stance on No-Flying, but you persist in claiming that it's just something they decided to do 'because reasons'. At this point you look like someone who just doesn't want to change their opinion when faced with new information.

I'm sorry that "because they changed their mind," is not sufficient enough for you. I'm sorry that you have to live in a world where every decision ever made by a developer has to have an over arching reason which nicely fits into whatever narrative you're trying to push. You can accuse me of "ignoring evidence" if it makes you feel better but I personally do not believe there's enough information to support your suggestion.

[exochaft]

yes yes yes and so much yes. while i still very much love the sensation of flight, the reason why not having it is irritating me so much is that back in the olden days, i could stop on a road or find an out of the way nook that was safe, if i needed to walk away and come back to my character being right where I left them, alive. and i could easily do that just about anywhere. even zones that had patrolling road mobs (like stitches or fel reaver, etc) its damn near impossible to do in most recent expansions, unless you have flight. its too much. right now, I'm going through pathfinder achievement and i deliberately chose to do it on a druid, becasue I can go into stealth. becasue its the only way to avoid shit (and is still faster then trying to outrun it, only to get dismounted and bogged down in pointless trash again and again)

I think part of the reason for excessive mob density is increased player density in specific areas of zones and a side effect of flying. In Classic, even one extra player in a questing area can be enough to completely slow down your questing experience. The response to this issue over the years has been things such as non-party shared tapping of mobs, phasing/layering, and (specific to this point) increased mob density and respawn rates. Now how does flying affect this aspect of the game?

Well, you can go back to Classic to understand how this evolved, as well. In Classic, the world is very big in comparison to your ability to navigate said world, which leads to players being spread out quite a big... and even then, as mentioned before, you could have even one player adversely affecting your gameplay. Now, add flying to Classic areas, and what happens? The world instantly shrinks quite a bit from a travel time perspective, and you suddenly have a potentially larger and more frequent fellow player intrusion into your experience.

In comparison, let's use Nazjatar as the counter-example, as it's a relatively small landmass that is one of two centerpieces for most outdoor activity for a patch cycle. The area is so tiny that it barely takes any time to traverse even with ground mounts, so how do you counter or rather slow down constant player intrusion? You make the world more dangerous to force players to slow down, and this is done through scaling up mobs, creating difficult-to-traverse terrain, and increasing mob density... and this difficulty jump is also a side-effect of player/gear scaling when the content is new, which is a whole other topic. Once you add flying to the area, you've just made the player intrusion probably even worse again as you've shrunk an already small area even more and negated the terrain as a method of slowing down players. This requires one to likely tune mob density/difficulty even higher due to increase traffic rates.

So what's the big take-away? Well, the biggest one is that the world is tuned and designed to have flying nowadays, so when you don't have flying it's going to potentially feel longer and more arduous when you don't have flying. However, that's an experience in itself, and any sane person would likely appreciate flying more after experiencing the content w/o it versus having it day one. Player feelings aside, flying itself allows players to easily bypass almost all difficulty in the game in terms of the outdoor dangers, as well as circumventing triggers and content/experiences that can only be had when confined to the ground. While there are some solutions to allow flying at the start, the experience it creates for the players doesn't even come close to what can be had w/o flying, and generally the solutions are cumbersome at best. One of the main reasons why Blizz regrets adding flying is because it's very hard to design content and an interactive world if the players can just skip it all, because players will tend to take the path of least resistance.

The best way one can view what flying actually is in WoW is a perk for "playing through the game once." What does this mean? With how flying is achieved, all you have to do to get flying is play through the campaign and explore a bit, and you'll naturally gain the achievement for flying. Once you get flying, it's akin to the dialogue option that says "I've seen this before... <skip>", as it lets you bypass and/or speed up traveling that was part of your initial experience. Why is it tied to an achievement? Because achievements and their progress are easily tracked by a player, and it's an easy vehicle to make "playing through the game once" give you an account-wide perk.

[SirCowdog]

At this point I'm not really sure how much more clear I can make myself: I don't believe money affected Blizzard decision to introduce Pathfinder. I do not personally believe the number of people who actually unsubbed was significant enough to warrant swift action from Blizzard. I do believe that players who are strongly in favor of flying improperly use Blizzard's change in direction as support for their position that flying is more important than it is in reality.



I'm sorry that "because they changed their mind," is not sufficient enough for you. I'm sorry that you have to live in a world where every decision ever made by a developer has to have an over arching reason which nicely fits into whatever narrative you're trying to push. You can accuse me of "ignoring evidence" if it makes you feel better but I personally do not believe there's enough information to support your suggestion.

You're of course entitled to your opinion. But your opinion doesn't appear to be grounded in any kind of evidence or reasoning based on observed information.

Even if all players in favor of flight have is an assumption based on correlation, that's still more than you have.

So I'll ask in plain words: Do you have ANYTHING to back up your views on the subject?

[Witchblade77]

I think part of the reason for excessive mob density is increased player density in specific areas of zones and a side effect of flying. In Classic, even one extra player in a questing area can be enough to completely slow down your questing experience. The response to this issue over the years has been things such as non-party shared tapping of mobs, phasing/layering, and (specific to this point) increased mob density and respawn rates. Now how does flying affect this aspect of the game?

Well, you can go back to Classic to understand how this evolved, as well. In Classic, the world is very big in comparison to your ability to navigate said world, which leads to players being spread out quite a big... and even then, as mentioned before, you could have even one player adversely affecting your gameplay. Now, add flying to Classic areas, and what happens? The world instantly shrinks quite a bit from a travel time perspective, and you suddenly have a potentially larger and more frequent fellow player intrusion into your experience.

In comparison, let's use Nazjatar as the counter-example, as it's a relatively small landmass that is one of two centerpieces for most outdoor activity for a patch cycle. The area is so tiny that it barely takes any time to traverse even with ground mounts, so how do you counter or rather slow down constant player intrusion? You make the world more dangerous to force players to slow down, and this is done through scaling up mobs, creating difficult-to-traverse terrain, and increasing mob density... and this difficulty jump is also a side-effect of player/gear scaling when the content is new, which is a whole other topic. Once you add flying to the area, you've just made the player intrusion probably even worse again as you've shrunk an already small area even more and negated the terrain as a method of slowing down players. This requires one to likely tune mob density/difficulty even higher due to increase traffic rates.

So what's the big take-away? Well, the biggest one is that the world is tuned and designed to have flying nowadays, so when you don't have flying it's going to potentially feel longer and more arduous when you don't have flying. However, that's an experience in itself, and any sane person would likely appreciate flying more after experiencing the content w/o it versus having it day one. Player feelings aside, flying itself allows players to easily bypass almost all difficulty in the game in terms of the outdoor dangers, as well as circumventing triggers and content/experiences that can only be had when confined to the ground. While there are some solutions to allow flying at the start, the experience it creates for the players doesn't even come close to what can be had w/o flying, and generally the solutions are cumbersome at best. One of the main reasons why Blizz regrets adding flying is because it's very hard to design content and an interactive world if the players can just skip it all, because players will tend to take the path of least resistance.

The best way one can view what flying actually is in WoW is a perk for "playing through the game once." What does this mean? With how flying is achieved, all you have to do to get flying is play through the campaign and explore a bit, and you'll naturally gain the achievement for flying. Once you get flying, it's akin to the dialogue option that says "I've seen this before... <skip>", as it lets you bypass and/or speed up traveling that was part of your initial experience. Why is it tied to an achievement? Because achievements and their progress are easily tracked by a player, and it's an easy vehicle to make "playing through the game once" give you an account-wide perk.

I'm sorry, but... the problem with player density is NOT the flying. its cross realm zones. Bliz felt like there were too few people around, so they merged, and then merged some more servers into battlegroups. and then added more servers, until you end up playing with the very players from a server you specifically PAID to leave because they consolidated them to this degree. having shared tagging is more then enough to solve the issue of not enough quest mobs to share among people. it works in oh.. just about every other MMO that I have played.

oh and there is nothing bloody natural about doing every.. goddamn... world quest, becasue the game internally tracks unique quests but doesn't tell me what they are, and achievement requires 100 UNIQUE world quests completed.

there is also nothing particularly interesting or engaging about navigating arbitrary obstacles, slogging through random trash, or sitting passively on taxis. its not even remotely an equivalent of "skipping cutscenes" which hilariouslly and ironically - you can skip the first time around.

[Ragedaug]

Let me put it like this: If, numerically, Blizzard's position on flying pre-Pathfinding was 49/51 in favor of no flying, then the outrage post-6.2 helped move their position back to 51/49 in favor of flying. I agree that outcry had an effect but I disagree that outcry was the singular reason they changed their minds.

You already put it like that. And I already said I agree, there's lots of scenarios that fall into the realm of possibility. I'm just saying that I'm looking at precedence when trying to figure out the most likely cause. You seem upset that some people believe the most likely possibility is what happened. Why? I'm not upset that you believe an unlikely scenario is what happened. I'm not throwing out profanity and blasting you for your opinion, I just think you are wrong.

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...there is also nothing particularly interesting or engaging about navigating arbitrary obstacles, slogging through random trash, or sitting passively on taxis. its not even remotely an equivalent of "skipping cutscenes" which hilariouslly and ironically - you can skip the first time around.

Completely agree with you. I always find it funny that grounders argue that flying on an NPC's taxi you can't control is more engaging than flying your own mount, that you control.

I've always AFK'd when on flight paths. From Vanilla to Current (and Classic). The last time I AFK'd while on my flying mount was during Burning Crusade. I learned my lesson in the very first XPac we could fly in. When I came back to the screen, I was dead because I flew off the end of the world.

So yeah, while flying I stay on the mouse, I control my flight, and enjoy the scenery.

[bufferunderrun]

Most complaints I've seen since flight was removed involve the zones being too densely packed and players struggling to avoid hostile mobs. If you want to see zones that are massively empty you want to check out Northrend.
If this is how you feel then it could apply to the entire history of WoW - everything from RNG loot to raid lockouts to rep grinds etc. were put in to serve "their own interests" by keeping people playing.

no their interest is to keep people playing while reducing the the time spent designing content and that is easily accomplished by effectively remove flying until everything is done.

Also i don't know what kind of zone you see but actually all the recent zones made by blizzard are only explorable in a tiny part the rest is just for scenery.

Flying trivializes combat. A lot of people like to say we're trying to force world PvP, or that we just really want people to look at the pretty trees we made, but those really aren't the reasons that drive this same decision we've made every expansion. Flying allows you to escape or enter combat at-will. There's a reason why flying isn't allowed in dungeons and raids, or battlegrounds and arenas, and that's because it would trivialize the core mechanic of the game in those areas - combat. For much the same reason it trivializes how content is approached in the outdoor world based on the simple fact that you can lift off and set down wherever you like.

So that's the main reason. But sure there are a lot of other problems it can cause for content design such as zones having to get a lot bigger because flying mounts can travel so quickly (and thus making ground travel in them take much longer), it reduces the impact of elevation within zones, it completely removes the ability for us to pace or present content in any structured way, and in general removes our ability to determine how and when players approach a situation, see a vista or location, or charge into/out-of a combat situation. It just greatly reduces any gameplay we want to create by allowing infinite choice in how content is approached to best suit a player's intention to (usually) avoid that content.

quoted from bashiok first answer back in wod

[Relapses]

So I'll ask in plain words: Do you have ANYTHING to back up your views on the subject?

I was unaware I had to justify an opinion with evidence. I understand why you feel the way you do, I simply do not agree with your assertion. Neither you nor I know what happens behind closed doors at Blizzard and without unknowable information being disclosed it's impossible to correlate mass unsubbing with Blizzard's decision to reverse positions. The second, more important reason I disbelieve this notion is that if you assume it to be true then you are able to use this information to support arguments that flying is so important to the playerbase that the one time Blizzard said fuck you flying, everybody unsubbed and forced Big Bad Blizzard to reconsider. And while I agree that it was important to some people and important enough to cause Blizzard to change their mind, I simply still do not believe a majority of players care strongly enough about flying to unsubscribe should Blizzard ever decide in the future not to include it again.

In more broad terms, I feel like it presents a slippery slope argument that Pathfinder is not a good compromise and that flying needs to be included earlier in the expansion cycle. I don't really personally care for it but I understand why it exists. I doubt Blizzard will be changing the way it works in the future. I figure most people are ambivalent towards the idea as I am, and this discussion is mainly fueled by pro- and anti-flying posters who refuse to understand the massive gray area most players fall under. (Both sides often incorrectly labeling their position is the majority/minority.)

That's a lot of words to say: I don't give a shit and I think most players, generally, also don't give a shit.