How do people feel about flying in previous expansions?

[Snufflupagus]

Dam toughs modern conveniences that I can play without!!! I want to have none of it and play with Thotbot open like the good o'l days!

Yeah okay buddy.

[rrayy]

Difference of opinion. What's the point of having pathfinder at all then? Just say "nah no flying till a year later".

Either their excuse is "We want you to see the content" in which case cool, make people do pathfinder and unlock flying
Or their excuse is we want you grounded just cause and remove pathfinder.

Because you will have something to do in the interim that shows you actually consumed the content on the ground first. The entire purpose of Pathfinder is exactly that.

[Burneracc]

Well... Essentially, and with qualifications... yes.



Nah.

"Anti-player approach"? Don't be ridiculous. WoW development over time has strictly increased player agency and convenience.

Flight. Heroic dungeons so you have something to do at max level if you don't have time for raiding. LFG. Multiple raid sizes and difficulties so people with no friends can still see content. Transmogrification so players can look however they want. Flight in the entire world. LFR. Flexible raiding so it's even easier to form raids and you have even more of your vaunted but misguided quote-unquote "choice". Account-wide this, account-wide that, account-wide the next thing. Choosing which expansion to quest in. Crunching the amount of XP needed to level up every ten minutes. Dual spec. Multispec. Respec from tomes so you don't have to go back to town. Gear that swaps stats with your spec so you don't have to carry multiple sets. Removal of PvP stats so you can swap game mode at will. Scaling so you don't get rekt by people who overgear you. Mythic+ so you don't have to raid at all if you don't want to. Removing scaling so you can rekt undergeared people because you kept getting rekt when there was scaling because you suck and that was awkward.

Every step of every expansion WoW development has done nothing but make the game more convenient and give players more "choice" and more agency. Complaining about some fantasy "anti-player approach" is asinine. Don't be silly.

In point of fact, WoW development was least convenient and limited choice and agency the most in Classic. It continued to do so but a little less in Burning Crusade. In (early) Wrath it was still pretty restrictive. By the end of Wrath and then by Cataclysm, restrictions were dropping pretty fast and since then they've have been going down like flies. I think there's a strong statistical argument to be made that--with a little lag time--WoW loses subscribers as it removes restrictions.



Then play Minecraft. You are not understanding, in this post, the fundamentals of what a game is. Do you whine that Monopoly "restricts your choices" too much? Or Age of Empires II because you can't recruit scouts as the Aztecs? Or Dark Souls because you can't... well, fly? What you are describing is a sandbox game. As we have discussed, all a game is, is a set of rules with graphics. What are rules? Restrictions. You are paying $14.99 a month for Blizzard's restrictions and Blizzard's graphics. Complaining about Blizzard restricting you is puerile. The whole point of World of Warcraft and every other game in the universe is that it restricts you, and you find ways to overcome the challenges it poses within the restrictions it sets.

To demonstrate, again, why your position doesn't make any sense: imagine WoW with no restrictions. Any race can be any class, as people are so happy to bandy around. Anyone can group with anyone. Anyone can attack anyone. Anyone can cast any ability from any class. Anyone can type a slash command and move at whatever multiplier of base speed they want. Anyone can slash-command as much damage as they want. Anyone can slash-command create any item with whatever stats they want. Anyone can slash-command teleport anywhere they want. How much fun would that be? You could get your chores done so fast, and clear every raid in seconds!

It wouldn't be. It would be absurd. It wouldn't be worth playing. You can't seriously think that a no longer "anti-player", restriction-free version of WoW would be the best possible incarnation of the game. Restrictions are the whole point, so arguing this ridiculous line of "well restriction are bad so let me fly becuase muh choice" doesn't make any sense. I would suggest that if you drop it, and come up with an actually worthwhile argument for flying, maybe the devs will listen and make a change to the current model!

(If you can. I suspect you can't, because I'm pretty sure flying is a terrible mechanic that adds nothing and ruins the game, but perhaps you can come up with an argument that demonstrates why flying is good and I'll change my view).



I don't think I need to engage with this point, it's been covered innumerable times.



Well, no, because that's not how logic works. "This bad thing does not completely ruin everything around it, therefore it's actually a good thing!" doesn't make sense.

I would agree that correlation does not equate to causation: flying being in an expansion that is good does not also make flying good. Flying being in an expansion that is bad does not make flying bad.

Flying being bad is not a big enough mechanic to single-handedly ruin an expansion. The effect of flying on the game is subtler than that, like the effect of other small bad features like LFG and built-in quest tracking. It has, however, ruined the game slowly and steadily over the long term.

I don't know why you keep referencing examples that are simply non applicable. Yes WoW surely has progressed from the times of classic, but that doesn't mean we should ignore them an already well-tried method of improving the game for people, which is what flying is.

And yes, flying gives player more choice, therefore it is inherently better to just give it instead of restricting it. For some reason you mention at length other games and more non applicable examples. I can do it too - you can't capture pokemons in GTA 5 but I still do not feel like my choice is restricted in any way, because this example and every example you mentioned, starting from "every race can be every class" and going as far as to mentioning no flying in Dark Souls (really?) are simply non sequitur!

All I am stressing is how Blizzard took a well-tried quality-of-life feature - Flying - and because of lack of creativity and/or no desire to develop locations geared towards flying (e.g. Netherstorm, Stormpeaks, etc) they are trying to shoehorn players into walking on the ground.

I really don't know why they did it, and since Blizzard is known to hide their motives behind empty catchprases like "we want you to see world we've built" (then build it in such a way that I want to see it, not twisting my arms to make me see it), I doubt anyone would ever really know. I might suspect it is because they simply figured flying allows people to burn through content faster, which is like silver stake for their zombie business tactics.

[crusadernero]

I don't know why you keep referencing examples that are simply non applicable. Yes WoW surely has progressed from the times of classic, but that doesn't mean we should ignore them an already well-tried method of improving the game for people, which is what flying is.

And yes, flying gives player more choice, therefore it is inherently better to just give it instead of restricting it. For some reason you mention at length other games and more non applicable examples. I can do it too - you can't capture pokemons in GTA 5 but I still do not feel like my choice is restricted in any way, because this example and every example you mentioned, starting from "every race can be every class" and going as far as to mentioning no flying in Dark Souls (really?) are simply non sequitur!

All I am stressing is how Blizzard took a well-tried quality-of-life feature - Flying - and because of lack of creativity and/or no desire to develop locations geared towards flying (e.g. Netherstorm, Stormpeaks, etc) they are trying to shoehorn players into walking on the ground.

I really don't know why they did it, and since Blizzard is known to hide their motives behind empty catchprases like "we want you to see world we've built" (then build it in such a way that I want to see it, not twisting my arms to make me see it), I doubt anyone would ever really know. I might suspect it is because they simply figured flying allows people to burn through content faster, which is like silver stake for their zombie business tactics.

Dont forget they are shoe horning us into staying on ground while making zones horrid to traverse in.

[Drusin]

Because you will have something to do in the interim that shows you actually consumed the content on the ground first. The entire purpose of Pathfinder is exactly that.

Ok so then remove the time gate. If I do all the requirements of pathfinder then I've consumed the content on the ground so its time for flying. No need to wait a year later too.

[exsanguinate]

the zones feel smallert

They are getting smaller every expansion

[rrayy]

Ok so then remove the time gate. If I do all the requirements of pathfinder then I've consumed the content on the ground so its time for flying. No need to wait a year later too.

They don't want people flying on day 1 and immediately skipping over content. It also allows them to add more content to the existing zones which is the one thing they have failed to do that they should be doing if they are going to be holding off on flying.

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Dont forget they are shoe horning us into staying on ground while making zones horrid to traverse in.

No zone iin anyway is horrid to travel in. God forbid you have to take extra time instead of always being allowed to go from a to b in a straight line.

- - - Updated - - -

All I am stressing is how Blizzard took a well-tried quality-of-life feature - Flying - and because of lack of creativity and/or no desire to develop locations geared towards flying (e.g. Netherstorm, Stormpeaks, etc) they are trying to shoehorn players into walking on the ground.

Both are utterly false. The reason they have people on the ground is that they want people to experience it on the ground before flying over it.

[Drusin]

They don't want people flying on day 1 and immediately skipping over content. It also allows them to add more content to the existing zones which is the one thing they have failed to do that they should be doing if they are going to be holding off on flying

Then remove pathfinder and just have it for pay a year later ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ No reason to have Pathfinder AND a time gate.

[crusadernero]

They don't want people flying on day 1 and immediately skipping over content. It also allows them to add more content to the existing zones which is the one thing they have failed to do that they should be doing if they are going to be holding off on flying.

- - - Updated - - -

No zone iin anyway is horrid to travel in. God forbid you have to take extra time instead of always being allowed to go from a to b in a straight line.

- - - Updated - - -

Both are utterly false. The reason they have people on the ground is that they want people to experience it on the ground before flying over it.

Im not talking about the option of going in a straight line from A to B. Look at the classic world zones and the zones in the last atleast 3 xpacs. Tell me, do they all have the same design layout? Especially the zones added during a xpac is littered with annoying traverses and mobs all over the place.

I enjoy traveling more in the classic world on my slow 40% mount than I do often times in retail zones. So its not just about "saving time", but the zone layouts are crammed to the brim. I have no idea why Blizzard wont create bigger zones that let us "Breathe" inbetween everything.

[schwank05]

If they are not going to allow flying then they needs to design zones like the Barrens again. They disallow flying and then design all the zones around you having flying. I think it should just be like it was through MOP and you get to max level or close to it and can buy it for 2-5K gold per character.

[Wingspan]

so even if blizzard catered to your desire, you would only sub for 6months? Maybe even less? WOW blizzard is totally considering that , gonna bump up those quaterly numbers when some random joe just subbed for 6months

I don’t know, it’s a pretty minor request for the potential money. I would probably spend 6 months per expansion in old material if they loosened it up... which is an improvement over the $15 total they made off of me in the last 7 years. I might even stay longer, but they will never get me re-hooked if I don’t re-sub.

And then there is the intangible side affect of how many people follow. When I left, so did a few family members and several friends (I believe only one of them came back for any length of time... and a few never returned at all.) Things like this tend to snowball, so there is some potential.

Will JUST that be worth it to Blizzard... nope... but that snowball could gather enough along the way to make it so. Particularly when you consider it’s all old content.