Why flying being gated behind rep grind makes no sense

[Raelbo]

Flying is a cancer that breaks the game.

No it's not. So stop quoting it like it's some fact. Thanks.

It breaks WPvP

No it doesn't. If people want to do WPvP people will do PvP. If people are using flying to try and escape WPvP, then clearly they don't want to do WPvP. Your argument here is a bit like saying that they should ban dildos because not enough sex is happening....

It breaks exploration

Introducing flying at the start of new content breaks exploration, that much is true. And that's a valid argument for withholding flying for new content. But it's not a valid argument for withholding flying indefinitely, nor does it support your assertion that "flying is a cancer".

The simple fact is that exploration breaks exploration. Once players have had enough time to explore new content, adding flying doesn't break it any further.

It breaks immersion

It changes the nature of the immersion. It breaks one type of immersion and replaces it with another.

A common fallacy that the anti-flying brigade likes to bandy about is that immersion is good. Yes, immersion can be and often is good for gameplay. But too much immersion can become a bad thing too. Why? Because at some point immersion has a tendency towards tedium. When immersion stops enhancing the gameplay experience and instead starts to detract from it, the game needs to actually find ways to break that immersion.

And travel is the perfect example of such a feature in the game. Travel is fun and engaging when you're exploring and discovering new content. But when you're travelling the same, familiar path for the 100th time, it's just a waste of time.

it does nothing good

It helps players avoid an element of the game that has a tendency to become tedious over time (travel) so that we can focus our time and effort on the elements of the game that are still engaging and fun.

speeding things up is only a valid thing when the things you do are tediously boring and not fun, which is just another problem.

What you're failing to recognise is that the WoW gameplay experience is dynamic. Travelling between points of interest in the game is an element of gameplay which starts out fun, but becomes tedious over time. It's not because it's a badly designed element of the game, it's a function of how humans operate, that repeating stuff which is fun can become tedious and boring. Honestly, at this point in the expansion, if simply slowing the game down is actually what you're trying to achieve, travelling overland is no better than just staring at a loading screen.

Flying is the cure.

People want flying because we got it before, no one asked for flying before it was introduced in the game.

That's utter nonsense. Plenty of people wanted to be able to fly in the game since their first trip with a flightmaster and I can remember it being suggested from the start of the game. Also, the number of people asking for a feature that Blizzard never thought of first is a useless indicator of the merit of the feature. Most of the features that have been added to the game over the last 15 years have been less asked for than flying.

The only real problem with flight in WoW is how it interacts with new content. The problem with your opinion is that it fails to register the significant value flying adds to the game once the content is well established.

[Polarthief]

I like using ground only for like the first month or so until I run out of content. By then, it's just a "this is much slower than just flying there" annoyance that I wish they'd do away with. At the very least, allow us to get flight in ALL zones when they come out (i.e., 8.0 should have come with a way to get flight in Zandalar and KT), rather than bulk all at once.

[Krawu]

It's so you have to play the game before being allowed to skip large parts of the experience which took years for Blizz to make.

Also, it's the best compromise between those who want no flying at all and those who want it with no requirements from the start of the expansion.
Personally, I'd be fine if players had to unlock it via a long and convoluted (read: well written and atmospheric) max level quest line on each character.
Or they could have it available, but everyone who takes to the skies gets shot down in seconds by some monstrosity or FLAK post until they killed it once in a raid as a boss or something.

[Raelbo]

Blizzard understands flying never should have existed at all.

No, Blizzard don't understand. That's the problem. They think it should never have existed, but it really should have.

They said in WoD it will NEVER be added.
Should have stuck to that plan.

Lol. If they'd done that the game wouldn't be around anymore. In 15 years of WoW I don't think there has been a bigger backlash against a Blizzard announcement than that particular one. It's on a par with how the community responded to Diablo Mobile or "You think you do but you really don't" (J Allen Brack talking about people wanting Classic).

Blizzard were basically misled by a highly vocal minority on the forums, to believe that most players would prefer to return to playing without flying. Boy were they shocked. Sadly though, they still stubbornly cling to the belief that even though the vast majority of players strongly want flying that it's bad for the game.

Most things in this game these days feel like a complete waste of time with catch up mechanics.

Objectively false. Your feelings are subjective. Not everyone shares those feelings.

Guess what I did in 8.2 once I unlocked flying? I quit, again.

And somehow this is the fault of being able to fly?

[Dugna]

they could just make the flying like FF14, you play the story of the zone and then get to you fly in said zone, wether you take your time or not you get flying done and done.

[MiiiMiii]

Objectively false. Your feelings are subjective. Not everyone shares those feelings.

Gear is a complete waste of time. 9.0 will make all your hard earned Heart of Azeroth levels, your gear you farmed all this time, your essenses and your current PvP rating... AAAAALLL completely irrelevant and reset.

It's even happening 4 times each expansions now, with "seasons".

It also is a lot less incentive to get good gear.
World PvP is almost dead. Especially with the introduction of warmode and flying mount. In Classic WoW one of the main reasons to get gear, is to dominate world pvp and duels. Hmm.
You don't need gear to beat all the raids. You can just wait for catch up mechanics and do them in LFR.
You don't need to push current content. You can just wait for catch up mechanics, and go back to them 2 expansions later if you want the transmogs.
Gear you get don't have a visual impact. 99% of the time you get new gear, you will jump on your little yak mount and transmog it right back to your current set.

OBJECTIVELY true.

[Daffan]

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.

It does make sense.

If you give casuals everything instantly. They quit.

Just look at LFR. It's time-gated to protect casuals like a play pen, or else they get out too fast.

Gear is a complete waste of time. 9.0 will make all your hard earned Heart of Azeroth levels, your gear you farmed all this time, your essenses and your current PvP rating... AAAAALLL completely irrelevant and reset.

It's even happening 4 times each expansions now, with "seasons".

It also is a lot less incentive to get good gear.
World PvP is almost dead. Especially with the introduction of warmode and flying mount. In Classic WoW one of the main reasons to get gear, is to dominate world pvp and duels. Hmm.
You don't need gear to beat all the raids. You can just wait for catch up mechanics and do them in LFR.
You don't need to push current content. You can just wait for catch up mechanics, and go back to them 2 expansions later if you want the transmogs.
Gear you get don't have a visual impact. 99% of the time you get new gear, you will jump on your little yak mount and transmog it right back to your current set.

OBJECTIVELY true.

Yes there is a lot of welfare and devaluation, to extreme levels that it makes the game a complete joke for many, hence the horrible player retention rate. (Game plays itself = quit, no feeling of effort/reward = quit)

But PvP rating and gladiator armor ain't a waste. It's the best looking stuff. Just like cmode armor and weapons was/is.

[SirCowdog]

Oh, I agree but I believe it is a stage up from just throwing coins at an NPC.

Debateable. I'd say the ridiculous time gating counteracts whatever value earning it creates.

- - - Updated - - -

They should just fucking remove it. It was introduced as an act of spite against the playerbase. It's time the devs got over themselves.

Or integrate it in a way that's actually reasonable. Include the reason for not being able to fly in the lore of the expansion. Include the process of unlocking and regaining flight with the progress of the character through the expansion.

Or better yet, actually design zones that recognizes players can fly, and design quest objectives and encounters accordingly. That way you don't have to play stupid timegate games with the players.

[Raelbo]

Gear is a complete waste of time. 9.0 will make all your hard earned Heart of Azeroth levels, your gear you farmed all this time, your essenses and your current PvP rating... AAAAALLL completely irrelevant and reset.

The point of gear is to participate in current content. The gear that you will get in 9.0 is not going to help you clear Azshara's Eternal Palace today.

Yes, gear is a consumable. That is what it has always been. How you feel about that is entirely SUBJECTIVE.

[bloodykiller86]

Hello mr "lmfao xD poggers twitch-emote-person"

In previous expansions we could buy flying for a small amount of gold, which was very easy and appreciated as opposed to this grind we have today.

that was terrible and hasnt been like that in many years

[Sosuke Aizen]

I do. To be honest, I thought that Nazjatar and Mechagon is going to be pain in the as to earn it and then one day, I realized that one of them quests gives tons of reputation so I was fine with one week of grind. On top of that, I figured out to get one mount, and then at the end of quest line, it is another mount so it felt worthwhile. Now, it depends with what you are fine with.

They did a decent job with the time it takes for flying but I still don’t see a reason to gate it other than slowing down the content. Why do the rust bolt and hord/alliance faction rep from Nazjatar needing to be revered makes no sense. Northrend made sense, my mount needed to learn to weather those lands. In this expansion there’s nothing that I didn’t know other than grinding rep for no reason.

[Raelbo]

They did a decent job with the time it takes for flying but I still don’t see a reason to gate it other than slowing down the content. Why do the rust bolt and hord/alliance faction rep from Nazjatar needing to be revered makes no sense. Northrend made sense, my mount needed to learn to weather those lands. In this expansion there’s nothing that I didn’t know other than grinding rep for no reason.

My take on what they were thinking is this:

One of the ideas behind pathfinder is to make sure that we experience the content first without flying. This makes enough sense. Do a zone to the point where you've achieved revered with the faction and one could say you've "earned" flying for the zone. Another way of looking at it is that you've experienced the content in the zone from the ground to the extent that staying ground bound is no longer adding to the immersive enjoyment of the zone.

And I'd agree, it does make sense that for the new zones you don't want people flying there until they've at least done enough there that we've fully lived the groundbound experience.

Here's the problem though: They were locking Zuldazar and Kul Tiras flying behind Nazjatar and Mechagon content. This was bad because it encouraged people to grind Nazjatar and Mechagon like crazy in order to unlock flying for the other zones. That is counter productive. It encourages unhealthy gameplay for all the wrong reasons, and doesn't fit in with the pathfinder philosophy.

What they should have done was opened up Zuldazar and Kul Tiras flying earlier. I mean we'd all pretty much earned it months back. Then Nazjatar and Mechagon flying should have been gated separately behind doing the content in those zones independently. That way there is no reason to rush those zones. We could just take them at our own pace without feeling like we're being penalised for doing so by not being able to fly in Kul Tiras and Zuldazar.

Also, both zones presented ideal stories for such a mechanism. In Nazjatar they could have tied it into the way the rays fly, and simply had a quest that unlocked at revered that allowed us to attune our mounts (I think there is a quest that lets us do this with our swimming mounts). For Mechagon, they could have had a quest that allowed us to take out that mega flying sentry thing at revered, thus unlocking flying.

[this is caranthir]

Why spend time designing an interesting world if players are just going to fly over everything and ignore all of it?

Think before posting, OP.

Yeah, why do that if you can blast through the zones at 100% speed ignoring all the mobs?

[CrawlFromThePit]

No it's not. So stop quoting it like it's some fact. Thanks.

Double standard. If I can't claim it's a cancer you can't claim that it's not either. Rephrase your sentence as "I don't think it's a cancer" and maybe I'll consider changing mine. If I can't make a statement like this, you most definitely cannot do the same.

No it doesn't. If people want to do WPvP people will do PvP. If people are using flying to try and escape WPvP, then clearly they don't want to do WPvP. Your argument here is a bit like saying that they should ban dildos because not enough sex is happening....

Most ridiculous comparison in the history of this website.
The whole point of WPvP is to fight, anything that helps preventing this from happening is effectively breaking it. Thinking otherwise is proving your ignorance. There's already a feature that allows people to surrender, click that button if you don't want to WPvP.

Introducing flying at the start of new content breaks exploration, that much is true. And that's a valid argument for withholding flying for new content. But it's not a valid argument for withholding flying indefinitely, nor does it support your assertion that "flying is a cancer".

The simple fact is that exploration breaks exploration. Once players have had enough time to explore new content, adding flying doesn't break it any further.

That's mostly because the world is bland and we're trained to follow a point on the map instead of actually exploring. WQs should be event that don't follow a set timer and shouldn't be seen on the world map. But WoW is a mobile game on a PC now so I guess your point holds true in this regard.

It changes the nature of the immersion. It breaks one type of immersion and replaces it with another.

A common fallacy that the anti-flying brigade likes to bandy about is that immersion is good. Yes, immersion can be and often is good for gameplay. But too much immersion can become a bad thing too. Why? Because at some point immersion has a tendency towards tedium. When immersion stops enhancing the gameplay experience and instead starts to detract from it, the game needs to actually find ways to break that immersion.

And travel is the perfect example of such a feature in the game. Travel is fun and engaging when you're exploring and discovering new content. But when you're travelling the same, familiar path for the 100th time, it's just a waste of time.

Doesn't this just raise a flag about a much bigger issue?

It helps players avoid an element of the game that has a tendency to become tedious over time (travel) so that we can focus our time and effort on the elements of the game that are still engaging and fun.

Then they should stop forcing players to do these repetitive things. People have more than enough of that crap.

What you're failing to recognise is that the WoW gameplay experience is dynamic. Travelling between points of interest in the game is an element of gameplay which starts out fun, but becomes tedious over time. It's not because it's a badly designed element of the game, it's a function of how humans operate, that repeating stuff which is fun can become tedious and boring. Honestly, at this point in the expansion, if simply slowing the game down is actually what you're trying to achieve, travelling overland is no better than just staring at a loading screen.

I don't think the point I'm trying to make is that the game needs to slow down. It's that all we do is wish we could teleport from point A to point B without interacting with the world. That's mostly because we know the world has nothing new to offer. There's a bunch of things they could do to fix this, I only see flying as a mechanic that enforces the decline of good immersive gameplay instead of helping it in any way. It makes people think it's fine to ignore the world and just do mundane tasks already marked on the map for no reason other than creating a more mobile game style of gameplay loop. Negative point over negative point, it's a spreading cancer.

Flying is the cure.

For people tired of good games I guess.

That's utter nonsense. Plenty of people wanted to be able to fly in the game since their first trip with a flightmaster and I can remember it being suggested from the start of the game. Also, the number of people asking for a feature that Blizzard never thought of first is a useless indicator of the merit of the feature. Most of the features that have been added to the game over the last 15 years have been less asked for than flying.

The only real problem with flight in WoW is how it interacts with new content. The problem with your opinion is that it fails to register the significant value flying adds to the game once the content is well established.

The problem with your opinion is that it fails to realize the negative impact implementing something that makes the whole game faster and easier does on the long term. Flying essentially turned out to be a bandaid on an open wound and all I did was hold the infection in place. Blizzard did 2 things wrong following the implementation of flying. The first one was to not adapt the game to this new mechanic, it was just something on top of the rest, they never added flying only content, never tweaked the other mechanics to work with this game changing aspect of the game. The second thing is reading people's love for flying as a hint that everything else in the game should be ultra quick and easy. Before flying there was nothing in the game that headed towards that direction in gameplay, flying was the first step going forward into dumbing down several aspects of the game that never needed to be made easier in any way.

Flying only adds value if in the first place you value the kind of gameplay WoW should never have.

[toffmcsoft]

Because the Blizzard Devs have got this notion into their heads that flying is a cancer to the game and that really, even if think we want flying, we'll enjoy the game more if we don't get flying. Sadly a loud vocal minority agreed with them which simply validated their delusion.

I guess we should be thankful we even get flying at all.

Flying is cancer to the game and completely ruined player interaction.
Same thing goes for instant queues, group finder & summoning stones.

New patch should stripe flying from the game.

[Nurvus]

Well i understand that tbh, vanilla adventurer was a success also because you spent time on the ground, but if you think about it, in today's mentality, and fantasy of dragons and flying, why can't that be a thing either? I myself engage with content better by flying, get there faster, do stuff faster, and end up knowing everything back and forth. I honestly hate to keep being on the ground and being stopped by being dazed from mobs i didn't even want to touch and the only thing that makes me do, is not engaging content but remembering to try avoid that area, and not even want to go look into "details" of the design they made. LOL I think it's a bit controversy topic, i like to be on ground for a certain time and i like flying, simple as that.


Why can't both co-exist with each other without having to wait so much? Not even talking about the grind itself on reps, i did mine slowly but the time to wait, pathfinders could just be part 1 about storylines only, and part 2 reps. So it gives more time to have rep and get it straight away after.
That way part 1 being storylines and just needing to make with at least 1 char, cause pathfinder is account bound unlock, you would be able to explore your story slowly and all, do your first quests, and then after some months of playing that you had about revered or exalted, then part 2 pathfinder would be finishing those reps and not add new ones.

I didn't mean flying as a concept is a problem.
I am neither pro-flying nor anti-flying - I just want a proper game experience.
It's just how Flying is implemented in WoW (and even Mounts in general) that is a problem - it's unrealistically efficient and convenient, to such an extreme that any other form of non-instant travel becomes irrelevant.
And even though it's a fantasy game, it needs to be believable, but it doesn't help when we have instant 180º turns, instantly 0 to 410% speed acceleration, bee-like movement while riding a massive dragon, no collision damage from hitting terrain at 410% speed and no damage from dismounting at a speed that is faster than fatal fall speed.

All forms of travel need pros and cons (even compared to running) in order to make them compatible with content and no longer require Blizzard to restrict them.
We shouldn't be unable to mount at all, no matter where.

I made a suggestion back in WoD about changes that can be introduced to mounts that make both ground and flying balanced and actually more awesome, but that kind of constructive post got buried under millions of "just give me flying back".

Blizzard has already introduced everything we need to accomplish that, scattered among various vehicle mechanics.

Also, I'd like to point out how amusing it is that lots of people complain half their mount collection is useless without flying, yet no one complains about the half that becomes useless when they can fly.

[Goldielocks]

I mean, even though what we have now is a compromise I think we need an even better one. We do need to experience the world from the ground for a time. I agree with that notion. However, the amount of time they've chosen is too long. I think The requirements should be cut in half, and we should be given flying in the X.1 patch instead of X.2 patch.

[Raelbo]

Flying is cancer to the game and completely ruined player interaction.
Same thing goes for instant queues, group finder & summoning stones.

New patch should stripe flying from the game.

No it's not, no it didn't. Also no, no and no.

Daft suggestion.

(ps, that which is stated without substance can be refuted in the same vein)

- - - Updated - - -

Double standard. If I can't claim it's a cancer you can't claim that it's not either. Rephrase your sentence as "I don't think it's a cancer" and maybe I'll consider changing mine. If I can't make a statement like this, you most definitely cannot do the same.

You made a claim without substance, followed up by more of the same. I made an argument (replete with warrants, backing and rebuttals). Trying to equate the two is not only disingenuous, it's actually grossly disrespectful.

The whole point of WPvP is to fight, anything that helps preventing this from happening is effectively breaking it. Thinking otherwise is proving your ignorance. There's already a feature that allows people to surrender, click that button if you don't want to WPvP.

Again, you're just making unsubstantiated claims, backing it up calling me ignorant.

Yes, the whole point of WPvP is to fight. No, that doesn't mean that anything that preventing this from happening is effectively breaking it. That is an illogical conclusion.

For WPvP to happen it requires two (or more) people who want to PvP. The game doesn't force you to mount up and fly off every time WPvP might happen. It's a conscious choice. And if people are making that choice, knowing that it will prevent WPvP from happening, what that really means is that those people don't want to PvP. You're trying to shift the blame and it's disingenuous and dishonest.

Doesn't this just raise a flag about a much bigger issue?

What issue? That people get tired of negotiating terrain? That's hardly the games fault.

Then they should stop forcing players to do these repetitive things. People have more than enough of that crap.

Uh yes. That's what I said. Travelling in the world is that boring, repetitive "crap". Flying is the solution.

I don't think the point I'm trying to make is that the game needs to slow down. It's that all we do is wish we could teleport from point A to point B without interacting with the world.

Another unsubstantiated assertion that makes no sense. Flying is not teleportation. Ironically one of the features they added to the game in order to try and get rid of flying was the flight master's whistle, which is teleportation. Of the two, flying is far more immersive in that you don't just cut-scene to the next location. You still move from point A to point B, still get to see the world and what is in it.

I don't know of anyone who just wants to avoid interacting with the world. It's about spending less time interacting with elements within the world that serve little purpose and provide minimal entertainment. When you're trailblazing into new, unexplored territory, it's fun and engaging to fight your way through the local inhabitants. When you're retreading the same path for the 50th time, not so much. And this notion you have that "it's immersive" is actually nonsense. How are monsters that you killed yesterday and the day before and the day before that (spanning months) magically respawning immersive? By all rights a zone like Naz'mir should, by now, be devoid of all forms of hostile wildlife, having been utterly decimated by their stupidity of trying to take on a clearly superior opponent. In the very least, any wildlife that still remains should be terrified of my character by now, and run and hide rather than try to attack.

Sorry, but this notion that flying is helping us to avoid valuable and engaging gameplay at this stage in the lifecycle of the content is nonsense. WoW is an RPG, and with any RPG the focus is always on the stuff that makes the story happen, not all the banal crap that fills the space between, of which, yes, travelling between points of interest does become.

That's mostly because we know the world has nothing new to offer. There's a bunch of things they could do to fix this,

Apart from producing new content, not really.

I only see flying as a mechanic that enforces the decline of good immersive gameplay instead of helping it in any way.

Then you're only seeing half the picture, and this stage in the discussion I am getting the feeling that this is because you only want to see half the picture.

Yes, your perspective holds totally true for new content. I have made this point repeatedly. But at this stage in the content, what "good" immersive gameplay is being lost to flying? None. You might be able to argue that it's immersive, but it's about much value as experiencing first hand the joy of diarrhoea that your character got from eat food that had sitting in the guild bank for too long.

It makes people think it's fine to ignore the world and just do mundane tasks already marked on the map for no reason other than creating a more mobile game style of gameplay loop. Negative point over negative point, it's a spreading cancer.

Your gripes with World Quests are a different topic. And even if one assumes there is a fundamental problem there, flying isn't the cause, it's a mechanism that helps to mitigate the problem.

I mean you're not wrong in that if WoW gameplay was entirely different then flying may longer be required to address those problems. But it's an asinine argument to be making. The game is what it is, and given what it is, flying is a positive feature.

The problem with your opinion is that it fails to realize the negative impact implementing something that makes the whole game faster and easier does on the long term.

The "problem" with my opinion is that I fail to agree with you. You'd rather win the argument than have accurate understanding. Maybe I am failing to see a real long term negative impact of flying on the game. But your style of argumentation, just throwing baseless assertions out there without any kind of logical structure to support those assertions, isn't giving me any reason to do so.

And the simple fact, for me, is that MMO-C has had tons of "debates" on the topic, and it's always the same, tired, useless "arguments" with people making unsubstantiated facts like "Flying kills WPvP. It's cancer".

Sorry, but at this stage the only rational conclusion is that you guys don't have a good argument to support these statements because, frankly, there is none, since the assertions are nonsense.

Blizzard did 2 things wrong following the implementation of flying. The first one was to not adapt the game to this new mechanic, it was just something on top of the rest, they never added flying only content, never tweaked the other mechanics to work with this game changing aspect of the game.

I am not going to disagree with this point. Which is not to say I agree with it either. Either way, it's not really a problem with flying.

The second thing is reading people's love for flying as a hint that everything else in the game should be ultra quick and easy. Before flying there was nothing in the game that headed towards that direction in gameplay, flying was the first step going forward into dumbing down several aspects of the game that never needed to be made easier in any way.

There are so many problems with this claim that it's difficult to know where to start (and again, no warrants or backing or attempts on your part to consider rebuttals - just another baseless assertion).

Firstly where on earth do you come up with this idea that flying has led to Blizzard believing everything in the game should be ultra quick and easy? That's like saying that the internet is responsible for AIDS because before the internet AIDS wasn't an issue.
Secondly, what is the basis for your claim that certain elements of the game becoming "quick and easy" is undesirable?

Basically, you're just assuming that the direction the game has taken is bad, with no substantiation. And then you're dumping a significant portion of the blame on flight. Again, without any substantiation.

Flying only adds value if in the first place you value the kind of gameplay WoW should never have.

Can you be any more conceited?

[SirCowdog]

What issue? That people get tired of negotiating terrain? That's hardly the games fault.

I would say that it is, in part, the game's fault. Primarily by having so much of the terrain(and what's contained within it) be so god damn uninteresting. Other than a bare handful of cave systems, the entirety of WoW's open world terrain is single-level. There might be hills, or cliffs that block movement in a certain direction, but there's basically just a series of open fields where a clump of quest objectives are located.

Say what you want about GW2, their open world at least was built to facilitate multi-level platforming combining both indoor and outdoor environments with a pretty decent amount of variety. WoW's terrain, on the other hand, is all so god damned similar that it literally does contribute to how quickly people get bored with it.

Uh yes. That's what I said. Travelling in the world is that boring, repetitive "crap". Flying is the solution.

I would say that Flying is "A" solution. Although probably the best one as long as Blizzard remains unwilling to innovate or iterate the open world to something better.

Even if Blizzard was to make more varied and interesting terrain, filled with puzzles, smarter mobs, and dynamic events(which it sounds like they're trying in 8.3), once players have done them enough for the novelty to wear off, they're going to want a faster alternative to get where they want to be. That inevitably leads back to flying or teleporting, which you discussed already.

Apart from producing new content, not really.

I REALLY wish Blizz would implement the "World Tier" system that other games use. The Division actually did this fairly well. Each time your iLVL reached a certain threshold, you were given the option to up the World Tier by 1, making every enemy have more hitpoints, do more damage, and in some cases, spawn new encounters with more elites.

I think WoW could adapt something like this to the open world. They have all the components in other areas of the game. M+ has affixes. There are invasion events that could be thrown in more often, with more difficult enemies. Islands have smarter AI NPCs. Mists of Pandaria had roaming Zandalari Warscouts which could be randomly thrown in everywhere(changed to other mob types to keep things random). And even World Quests could have their difficulty significantly increased in higher world tiers, along with more interesting rewards.

This isn't really anything that has to do with flying, directly, but it would be a good way to keep the open world interesting enough for players to not just skip everything. I guess it does technically fall under the description of "producing new content".

I mean you're not wrong in that if WoW gameplay was entirely different then flying may longer be required to address those problems. But it's an asinine argument to be making. The game is what it is, and given what it is, flying is a positive feature.

Basically, you're just assuming that the direction the game has taken is bad, with no substantiation. And then you're dumping a significant portion of the blame on flight. Again, without any substantiation.

Just to wrap this up: I know we don't agree on some details of the flying debate, but I think you've done a fine job of breaking down the original reply to @CrawlFromThePit. You're absolutely right that it's pretty typical stance for the anti-flight camp, full of misrepresentation, unsubstantiated and wild accusations, and truckloads of scapegoating.

[Grimbold21]

I mean, even though what we have now is a compromise I think we need an even better one. We do need to experience the world from the ground for a time. I agree with that notion. However, the amount of time they've chosen is too long. I think The requirements should be cut in half, and we should be given flying in the X.1 patch instead of X.2 patch.

We had that compromise.

Flying was introduced to the game with that compromise.