Possibly no flying throughout entire xpac.

[quras]

SNIP... Not once do I recall people whining about wanting flying in Vanilla, they just accepted that it wasn't a game feature.

Then you did not play vanilla. Flying was the single most requested feature this game has ever had excapt for maybe dual spec.

You are wrong.

Flying was never introduced as a "man, this game sucks without flying, it's hindering gameplay" like instance queues were. That's what I mean by quality of life change.

Flying was introduced cause gamers wanted it. Travel sucked ass on a great man levels and was a needless time waster. Gamers wanted to get to the "fun" rides on the theme park, not wait in line for longer and longer periods of time wishing they were on the ride.

Flying was one of the biggest quality of life additions to the game. If you had played at all back in vanilla you would know that.

And your stance against its removal isn't? I'll be the first to admit that it might work, it might not. There's no way of knowing until at least beta is available. So why are people on this crusade without even seeing how things play out?

If you played TI you know what wod will consist of. You don't need to waste $50 for a guess or a "wait and see"

There is a way for you to know and not wait till beta. Get in game, head to TI or one of the other areas like it and have at it. No make a decision on if you want to pay for an entire expansion like that.

I sure as hell would not.

[-Superman-]

I personally hate LFD/LFR more than I hate flying. I'd even be content with keeping flying in the game so long as the sky was either more dangerous than the ground or the speed was slower than that of the ground mount in order to create an actual choice for travel.

Agreed. I said in other posts:

Lower the sky box
Add danger
slow it to 100% with no speed bonus
Tie it to the Loremaster achievement for each expansion
etc

Lots of ways to Balance/Fix it without removing it.

[Perkunas]

Agreed. I said in other posts:

Lower the sky box
Add danger
slow it to 100% with no speed bonus
Tie it to the Loremaster achievement for each expansion
etc

Lots of ways to Balance/Fix it without removing it.

Things like that I can get on board with, but Blizzard is lazy.

[MoanaLisa]

And your stance against its removal isn't? I'll be the first to admit that it might work, it might not. There's no way of knowing until at least beta is available. So why are people on this crusade without even seeing how things play out?

I'm a bit skeptical that response in beta will have anything to do with it. Beta is all about testing quests, dungeons, raids and new systems like garrisons and the rest; things which in any case don't require flight. So I have yet to see anyone make a convincing case that beta will really have much to do with it. If flight were to happen in 6.1 then that's not really a subject for beta testing and we've seen it before where one can't fly until getting to level cap.

So not really buying into that. It's still--for me anyway--more about the manner in which Blizzard is going about this than the actual thing itself. I won't go so far as to call Bashiok a liar or anything because this is clearly something that the devs are doing and the CM's are clearly getting sent mixed messages as Blizzard changes its collective mind about it. If you could get 100% honest anonymous answers out of the team at Blizzard HQ, I imagine that it would be somewhat divided as well. Whatever they do, it's a fine example of the dangers of floating trial balloons without having a good answer ready. For anyone that has followed this closely, it's not really arguable that they are following a carefully planned strategy in this. This whole deal has been about as fucked up as anyone could make it.

Really the only honest thing to do at this point is for them to make a decision. Which they apparently won't do. And so, the players divide up and get honestly angry about yet another thing, Blizzard refuses to lance the boil (solve the problem), and it festers for months eating away at what's left of people's good will. No one that cares about the topic pro or con gets to move on. It's a mess and it's totally on Blizzard to clean it up. It's complete and utter BS that Blizzard now publicly says the equivalent of "We have no idea how this is going to play out" while they are selling flying mounts in their store and promoting the expansion with flying mount perks.

[ozzie347]

If you played TI you know what wod will consist of. You don't need to waste $50 for a guess or a "wait and see"

There is a way for you to know and not wait till beta. Get in game, head to TI or one of the other areas like it and have at it. No make a decision on if you want to pay for an entire expansion like that.

I sure as hell would not.

The only annoying things about TI for me are the fact that I'm on a PvP server and the zone is too small, I can't avoid Alliance when the ratio is 7:3 against me =/ Having only come back to WoW a couple months ago after almost 2 years off, I thought it was a pretty decent catch-up mechanic.

And you don't need to pre-order anything to guess or wait and see. Hold on to your money for now, wait for beta to be out and NDA to left, read up about it, and THEN make a decision if you like it/want to pre-order it. You can pre-order right up until release, so there's no NEED to do it now, unless you know you'll be playing regardless of certain decisions like this.

Personally, WoD info brought me back to the game. Boosted 90 was a perk as well, but starts on xpacs are always the best times for raiding, everyone is on an equal foot and the economies are booming. I know I'll be raiding the new content, flying or not.

[MoanaLisa]

If you played TI you know what wod will consist of. You don't need to waste $50 for a guess or a "wait and see"

Implying that the leveling zones will all be exactly like TI and that Blizzard has learned nothing from their experience with that is simplistic and misleading. Things will change, they can't help but change given the questing overlay on the zones. Whether or not this will be something generally liked is another matter. But however it plays out, it's a guarantee that the expansion will not be TI all the time.

[ozzie347]

I'm a bit skeptical that response in beta will have anything to do with it. Beta is all about testing quests, dungeons, raids and new systems like garrisons and the rest; things which in any case don't require flight. So I have yet to see anyone make a convincing case that beta will really have much to do with it. If flight were to happen in 6.1 then that's not really a subject for beta testing and we've seen it before where one can't fly until getting to level cap.

So not really buying into that. It's still--for me anyway--more about the manner in which Blizzard is going about this than the actual thing itself. I won't go so far as to call Bashiok a liar or anything because this is clearly something that the devs are doing and the CM's are clearly getting sent mixed messages as Blizzard changes its collective mind about it. If you could get 100% honest anonymous answers out of the team at Blizzard HQ, I imagine that it would be somewhat divided as well. Whatever they do, it's a fine example of the dangers of floating trial balloons without having a good answer ready. For anyone that has followed this closely, it's not really arguable that they are following a carefully planned strategy in this. This whole deal has been about as fucked up as anyone could make it.

Really the only honest thing to do at this point is for them to make a decision. Which they apparently won't do. And so, the players divide up and get honestly angry about yet another thing, Blizzard refuses to lance the boil (solve the problem), and it festers for months eating away at what's left of people's good will. No one that cares about the topic pro or con gets to move on. It's a mess and it's totally on Blizzard to clean it up. It's complete and utter BS that Blizzard now publicly says the equivalent of "We have no idea how this is going to play out" while they are selling flying mounts in their store and promoting the expansion with flying mount perks.

Yes, it would be nice to hear some honest answers out of Blizz, but I feel that those would mostly be "we just don't know yet". The game is obviously in development, so features are shifting in scope as they work on the game. I for one would love to have all the info available with what's upcoming, but if that were the case, we would prob be in beta/release already.

As for the store mounts, you're still able to use them as ground mounts and in other areas. Let's be honest, once people hit the level caps, they spend most of their time in Org/SW. Aside from farming/questing/heading to a raid, there is no reason to be in Pandaria, there's no AH there even. Chances are people will be spending just as much time flying in front of the AH as they do now.

[Skizzit]

Then you did not play vanilla. Flying was the single most requested feature this game has ever had excapt for maybe dual spec.

You are wrong.

Flying was introduced cause gamers wanted it. Travel sucked ass on a great man levels and was a needless time waster. Gamers wanted to get to the "fun" rides on the theme park, not wait in line for longer and longer periods of time wishing they were on the ride.

Flying was one of the biggest quality of life additions to the game. If you had played at all back in vanilla you would know that.

I played vanilla and I do not ever remember people complaining about not being able to fly or requesting it as a QoL change. People would say things like "Being able to fly around on our own and not on a flight path would be cool" sure, but that's not a quality of life thing. Most MMO's didn't have flying mounts or anything like that at the time. It was just accepted that traveling on the ground plus things like flight paths and summons were just the way things worked. I am sure there were some people who did complain about travel, but saying that everyone in vanilla was asking for flying mounts because getting from point A to point B took too long is simply not true.

Hell, even when it was adding in BC, the average player did not have epic flying so their flying mounts were slower then their ground mounts. Flying mounts were added as a "this would be a cool thing to do" kind of feature, not a quality of life thing.

[quras]

I'm a bit skeptical that response in beta will have anything to do with it. Beta is all about testing quests, dungeons, raids and new systems like garrisons and the rest; things which in any case don't require flight. So I have yet to see anyone make a convincing case that beta will really have much to do with it. If flight were to happen in 6.1 then that's not really a subject for beta testing and we've seen it before where one can't fly until getting to level cap.

So not really buying into that. It's still--for me anyway--more about the manner in which Blizzard is going about this than the actual thing itself. I won't go so far as to call Bashiok a liar or anything because this is clearly something that the devs are doing and the CM's are clearly getting sent mixed messages as Blizzard changes its collective mind about it. If you could get 100% honest anonymous answers out of the team at Blizzard HQ, I imagine that it would be somewhat divided as well. Whatever they do, it's a fine example of the dangers of floating trial balloons without having a good answer ready. For anyone that has followed this closely, it's not really arguable that they are following a carefully planned strategy in this. This whole deal has been about as fucked up as anyone could make it.

Really the only honest thing to do at this point is for them to make a decision. Which they apparently won't do. And so, the players divide up and get honestly angry about yet another thing, Blizzard refuses to lance the boil (solve the problem), and it festers for months eating away at what's left of people's good will. No one that cares about the topic pro or con gets to move on. It's a mess and it's totally on Blizzard to clean it up. It's complete and utter BS that Blizzard now publicly says the equivalent of "We have no idea how this is going to play out" while they are selling flying mounts in their store and promoting the expansion with flying mount perks.

Pretty much my stance dead on.

So many things wrong on blizzards end that they have created for themselves.

Implying that the leveling zones will all be exactly like TI and that Blizzard has learned nothing from their experience with that is simplistic and misleading. Things will change, they can't help but change given the questing overlay on the zones. Whether or not this will be something generally liked is another matter. But however it plays out, it's a guarantee that the expansion will not be TI all the time.

and I think thats where you're wrong.

The entire expansion will be TI and it will have a mix of questing zone similar to all the leveling we have done in the past but it will mostly be based on TI mechanics.

You will have some offshoot quests from garrisons that will be similar to daily quest hubs but slightly personalized do to choices in garrison.

It will be a mix of leveling content with some TI mechanics and then nothing but mainly TI mechanics at max level till flying is returned (if it ever is) with a scattering of garrison repeat dailies or SIMS upkeep.

Whats a guarantee is you will have more TI mechanics crammed into this expansion to justify any reason to remove flying even if it's to the detriment of the game.

[MoanaLisa]

Yes, it would be nice to hear some honest answers out of Blizz, but I feel that those would mostly be "we just don't know yet". The game is obviously in development, so features are shifting in scope as they work on the game. I for one would love to have all the info available with what's upcoming, but if that were the case, we would prob be in beta/release already.

As for the store mounts, you're still able to use them as ground mounts and in other areas. Let's be honest, once people hit the level caps, they spend most of their time in Org/SW. Aside from farming/questing/heading to a raid, there is no reason to be in Pandaria, there's no AH there even. Chances are people will be spending just as much time flying in front of the AH as they do now.

Obviously, this is not some new feature that is susceptible to development in and of itself. This is a design preference about whether to leave it in or take it out. In that sense there's really nothing to 'test' about it.

Using a store mount such as some giant flying dragon or the smaller batwing (which doesn't even have legs to speak of) as a ground mount is beside the point. They could also turn ground mounts into flying mounts if they wished but most people would find that mildly dumb. Seeing a creature obviously made for flight running around on the ground is about as unrealistic as seeing a giant wild boar flying overhead. "If pigs could fly" notwithstanding.

I spent most of my time in MoP in the Vale. I presume that I will do something similar for the faction cities or personal garrisons for WoD.

Again to be clear, I'm less interested in the actual yes-or-no part of it. It's annoying to see Blizzard being so willfully stupid about this by not coming out and standing by their design. The fact that they haven't indicates to me that they've opened up this Pandora's Box of problems with no clear idea about how to deal with it.

[-Superman-]

Things like that I can get on board with, but Blizzard is lazy.

I have to agree. I am tweeting with Bashiok as we speak. Still trying to get a solid answer about why REMOVE it rather than balance it.

[urasim]

And your stance against its removal isn't? I'll be the first to admit that it might work, it might not. There's no way of knowing until at least beta is available. So why are people on this crusade without even seeing how things play out?

Because we like to fly? If they took away something that you thought was the most fun part of the game you would be up in arms, too.

We don't have to see how it plays out either. People need to stop saying this. We have MANY different flightless area in the game that we can use as a reference.

[-Superman-]

I won't go so far as to call Bashiok a liar or anything because this is clearly something that the devs are doing and the CM's are clearly getting sent mixed messages as Blizzard changes its collective mind about it. If you could get 100% honest anonymous answers out of the team at Blizzard HQ, I imagine that it would be somewhat divided as well. Whatever they do, it's a fine example of the dangers of floating trial balloons without having a good answer ready. For anyone that has followed this closely, it's not really arguable that they are following a carefully planned strategy in this. This whole deal has been about as fucked up as anyone could make it.

I think they know what they WANT to do, they just want to find out if they can get away with it. I'm currently tweeting with Bashiok trying to find out why they would remove it, rather than balance it. Even if HE doesn't know, someone he knows will know, and my conversation will likely be a bantered humor in the lunchroom. But, at least they will understand some of us have real concerns, and real questions. All we want is to have those questions asked. I was ok with no flying til 6.1. The honest part of me would even have been ok with no flight at all in WoD zones; however, they set one expectation, and then recanted it AFTER 5 weeks of selling Boosts and Pre-Orders. That is what really set me off.

- - - Updated - - -

Because we like to fly? If they took away something that you thought was the most fun part of the game you would be up in arms, too.

We don't have to see how it plays out either. People need to stop saying this. We have MANY different flightless area in the game that we can use as a reference.

Yeah, let's pull the first RAID tier from WoD, and see how many people sub at 6.0 vs how many REsub at 6.1.

[Osmeric]

Seeing a creature obviously made for flight running around on the ground is about as unrealistic as seeing a giant wild boar flying overhead. "If pigs could fly" notwithstanding.

As an aside: one of my favorite fun activities before 5.4 was to use the "Polymorph: Pig" spell on the moths flying over the big fountain in the Vale, with the crittermorph glyph to make it last up to 24 hours.

[MoanaLisa]

Re: WoD and similarities to TI

and I think thats where you're wrong.

The entire expansion will be TI and it will have a mix of questing zone similar to all the leveling we have done in the past but it will mostly be based on TI mechanics.

You will have some offshoot quests from garrisons that will be similar to daily quest hubs but slightly personalized do to choices in garrison.

It will be a mix of leveling content with some TI mechanics and then nothing ut mainly TI mechanics at max level till flying is returned (if it ever is)

Whats a guarantee is you will have more TI mechanics crammed into this expansion to justify any reason to remove flying even if it's to the detriment of the game.

Perhaps, although I still tend to think that the inclusion of much more in the way of directed content will make the zones play differently than TI which was mostly undirected content. Maybe we can agree to disagree on this until we see what beta holds in store. I think a lot of the elements that made people like or dislike TI will be there but expect to see a lot of directed content as well so there will be choices. The zones will be considerably larger so that will have an effect on the experience as well.

[Sarkol]

- - - Updated - - -



Yeah, let's pull the first RAID tier from WoD, and see how many people sub at 6.0 vs how many REsub at 6.1.

Sorry. This is a really bad comparison. A raid tier removal would take probably the games most important and staple feature out, with no replacement, leaving all raiders with zero to do. Taking flying out has little to no impact on other game content. Flying gone doesn't render hardly any game content obsolete.

[Awbee]

Because we like to fly? If they took away something that you thought was the most fun part of the game you would be up in arms, too.

We don't have to see how it plays out either. People need to stop saying this. We have MANY different flightless area in the game that we can use as a reference.

This, a 100 times. I don't get why people can't understand this. It's as if there were no new raids in WoD, I wonder how many raiders would enjoy that? Oh, but don't cry, there's still the old raids! They're not being taken out, so you can't say that "raiding is removed"!

- - - Updated - - -

Sorry. This is a really bad comparison. A raid tier removal would take probably the games most important and staple feature out, with no replacement, leaving all raiders with zero to do. Taking flying out has little to no impact on other game content. Flying gone doesn't render hardly any game content obsolete.

For you. You have no ability to evaluate what other people enjoy and value in game. I wouldn't give a shit if pvp in total was removed, but no flying makes me not want to buy WoD. And yes, I'd rather they remove raiding than flying. I spend a lot more time flying and exploring than raiding.

[-Superman-]

Sorry. This is a really bad comparison. A raid tier removal would take probably the games most important and staple feature out, with no replacement, leaving all raiders with zero to do. Taking flying out has little to no impact on other game content. Flying gone doesn't render hardly any game content obsolete.

Raids are only important to people who love to raid, just like flying is only important to people who love flying. I fail to see how it is not relevant.

- - - Updated - - -

For you. You have no ability to evaluate what other people enjoy and value in game. I wouldn't give a shit if pvp in total was removed, but no flying makes me not want to buy WoD. And yes, I'd rather they remove raiding than flying. I spend a lot more time flying and exploring than raiding.

here here... I think we all have our personal opinions about what is great content/features and what we find to be shit.

[Florena]

It's a bad comparison because flying is not content. It's just a means of getting to the content.

[lexluthor]

Raids are only important to people who love to raid, just like flying is only important to people who love flying. I fail to see how it is not relevant.

People log into the game to raid. Who logs in to fly?