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The Good, the Bad & the Ugly About No Flying in Warlords of Draenor

by - 10 years ago

On Friday, Bashiok wrote quite a long post hidden in the midst of a ‘QQ no flying’ thread explaining why Blizzard decided to make Warlords of Draenor a fly-free zone. It’s quite a good read, and it does get you thinking about the pros and cons of having flying in WoD, and their thoughts about whether or not we will see it at all when we see the “new” Outlands.

So, let’s start of with the good…

Being Ganked While Leveling

This was a favorite pastime for PVPers who had finished leveling on PVP servers – simply fly around until they spotted someone leveling, then swoop in for a quick honor kill.  Not everyone plays on a PVP server because they like world PVP, and once that first wave of players hits 90, ganking becomes an issue and it makes a miserable leveling experience for those who get farmed by max level toons.

Show off those ground mounts

banksteps

Remember when everyone used to hang out on the bank steps in Dalaran and it was all about how cool your ground mounts were?  Alliance toons were farming for the Winterspring Frostsaber, which was one of the coolest non-TCG mounts at the time, since it meant you really had to do a painful grind to get it. If you were really a glutton for punishment, you’d try to farm for Rivendare’s Deathcharger in Stratholme.

Now, people can really only show off their mounts on Timeless Isle or maybe while running to Iron Juggernaut in Siege of Orgrimmar.  But by the end of Warlords of Draenor, if we don’t see flying at all, we will look back on the glory days of flying above Shrine on the latest cool mount.

Some flying mounts are also ground mounts. If you are unsure, simply hit Timeless Isle and see if your favorite flying mount can be used on the ground. Do note that some of them will make you look absolutely ridiculous when you run around using a flying mount as a ground mount, so keep that in mind!

Enjoying the scenery

losthatch

I am sure there are people’s mains who still have parts of Pandaria they have never visited, and have never discovered, so there is actually a lot to be said for Blizzard wanting to get players to explore more.  There are some pretty cool things that were added in Pandaria that people never see, simply because they don’t really get out to explore unless they are doing something like Loremaster or Explore Pandaria.

Blizzard puts a ton of easter eggs and cool things that you would never see rushing through a zone to quest, flying from mob to mob.  On the ground, there is a lot of time to go “hmmm, I wonder what’s in there…”  Did you know you could find a hatch like the one in Lost in Sholazar Basin, complete with almost-matching numbers?  Or that there is a drummer, Grohl Grohl, named after Dave Grohl in Kun-Lai?  Or there is a Plants vs. Zombies mini-game in Hillsbrad Foothills – or that they made it into a daily?  There’s a ton of cool stuff to see if you take the time to look.

Alternative means of transport

He does mention that they are exploring other ways of getting around.  It would be great if you could get a trinket of some sort after you clear a raid instance on heroic for example, it allows you to port to the raid entrance.  Or even something to purchase, ala the Dalaran ring.  With the change to 20 person mythic raiding, there could easily be raiding guilds that don’t have a Warlock to summon, and the likelihood that PVP players will be hanging out at the entrance on PVP servers is pretty high.

Another idea is possibly using garrisons for having a lockable portals to help players get around to specific heavily visited places such as a raid instance or quest hub that players return to.

Saving gold!

You won’t have to pay for max level flying once again when you hit level 100.  Of course, Blizzard could always add a new flying level that speeds up your ground mount speed from 100% to 120% or something – and you know you all would buy it.

The bad….

Farming mats

Whenever an expansion starts, mats are incredibly expensive. Without flying, materials such as herbs and ore will be even more expensive then we saw in the first few months of Pandaria and Cataclysm, since toons that gather will have to ride on a ground mount to every single node, fight the mobs around the nodes, all while hoping another herbalist or miner doesn’t come and ninja the node while in combat.

Those who are trying to level their non-gathering professions will feel the pain of this, as well as raiding guilds who want flasks for their raiders. Those Darkmoon cards also just got exponentially more expensive.  Here is hoping you can mass produce these mats with your garrison in quantities higher than you could on Sunsong Ranch.

Ganking levelers

Maybe you are one of those players who loves farming people who are leveling, so yes, this could be considered the bad side of no flying for you!

All those cool flying mounts

dreadraven

It’s not lost on many people that the Deluxe edition comes with the Dread Raven mount, a flying mount. Fortunately, it doesn’t look too ridiculous as a ground mount.  The same can’t be said for the most recent Blizzard Store mount, the Iron Skyreaver.  And before you suggest Blizzard makes all flying mounts ground mounts, check out the Iron Skyreaver first, as it looks like it has a case of the derps when it tries to run around on the ground!

Archaeology

I am one of those hoping archaeology in Warlords gets some of the cool epics that we saw in Cataclysm (I am sure healers will remember farming for Tyrande’s Favorite Doll when we needed every drop of mana possible).  Archaeology is bad enough while flying, imagine doing it while having to hoof it or flight point from one dig site to the next. If it mimics archaeology in Pandaria, it will really only be useful for alts.

No swooping to quest objectives

Bashiok described it pretty accurately…

As an example, let us consider a quest to assassinate an enemy leader. From the ground you approach a fort with guards at the gate. You charge and are able to dispatch them and sneak in a side hallway. You methodically take out packs of roaming sentries, and some of them shout at you as they run toward you. You notice they’re in the middle of practicing dark and forbidden magics, and you take a moment to disrupt their ritual. Dashing into the main courtyard you spot your target, sneaking and fighting your way to him–and with a forceful slash–the fort’s captain is vanquished, and as guards are alerted you fight your way out, glorious and triumphant in your success.

Alternatively, from a flying mount, you fly over the gate, see some guy whose name is highlighted, land on top of him, kill him, and then fly away.

That is exactly how it happens when you can fly while questing and it does provide a completely different questing experience.  What this will do is encourage group play once again, so you can get a group together to fight the guards at the gate to get to the end NPC you have to kill.

Thankfully, the dailies grind of old will be (hopefully) a thing of the past, so also gone are the days of “please don’t aggro, please don’t aggro” as you try and get away from the Hozen during the cooking dailies.

Bizarre Flight Routes

This is one area of the Blizzard says they are going to fix. We’ve all seen screenshots where someone is trying to go from Valley of the Four Winds to Dread Wastes, but the flight path takes them on the scenic tour through the Jade Forest, Kun-Lai and Townlong Steppes before finally arriving after what should have been a 20 second flight.

Blizzard says this will not be an issue, and they’re taking feedback from beta testers if any of these cases pop up, but I’m certainly they didn’t plan for those five-minute loop de loop tours of the entire continent when designing Pandaria either.

Get to the Chopper!

meifrancis

You probably want to spend some gold on a two or three person ground mount to make group questing easier.  While the Sandstone Drake has been the go-to mount for most people who haven’t earned a refer-a-friend rocket, the Sandstone Drake does not have ground mount capabilities.  If you haven’t bought a chopper, you might want to consider it.  Or go talk to Mei Francis about one of her exotic mounts, she’s pretty lonely in Dalaran, and her three person vendor mount is a bargain compared to the Pandaria vendor yak.  That said, Blizzard teased about a mount that is “better with friends”, and if it is, it will be the new best-looking 2 person mount in the game.

 The Ugly…

No matter what Blizzard decides, there will be those who threaten to quit World of Warcraft forever.  The forums have been full of QQing from those who hate the idea of no flying, the occasional person who says they love it, with the inevitable band of QQers jumping all over them.  And let’s face it, pretty much anything Blizzard has ever done has made someone threaten to quit the game, so I don’t think we will see Blizzard change their mind.

What will make them change their mind about whether we ever see flying in Warlords of Draenor?  Quality feedback about how players are able to get around, both once beta hits and when the game goes live.  Will we see it in 6.1?  Maybe not.  But maybe in later patches to coincide with the second or third raiding tier.  And if garrisons works as well as people are hoping it might, then maybe it won’t be so rough when farming mats isn’t very easy, although the herb/ore botters will have a lot to say about it, I am sure.


JR Cook

JR has been writing for fan sites since 2000 and has been involved with Blizzard Exclusive fansites since 2003. JR was also a co-host for 6 years on the Hearthstone podcast Well Met! He helped co-found BlizzPro in 2013.


5 responses to “The Good, the Bad & the Ugly About No Flying in Warlords of Draenor”

  1. Perry says:

    I’ve been thinking about this one a lot and here’s the conclusion I’ve come to.

    They keep saying this is for our good. That it’ll bring depth into end game questing. So that they don’t have to keep creating “magic no-fly zones” when they want/need to keep us on the ground.

    The only time that’s really happened, is recently with the Timeless Isle. Tol Barad was a PVP zone, so it makes sense to ground us there.

    Let’s look at the history of flying…

    Vanilla: No flying at all.
    tBC: Obtained at max level, had 4 dungeons that even required it to get there.
    WotLK: Obtained at max level. A few zones even gave you a flying mount if for some reason you didn’t have one by the time you got there.
    Cata: Flying everywhere. Simply because flying through out the world and then not over the Cata zones didn’t make sense. Questing wasn’t really hampered by this.
    MoP: Obtained at max level.

    So as we can see, flying doesn’t trivialize questing. They’ve handled that in various forms well enough since it’s creation.

    The common thing I’ve seen said from Bashiok and other CMs is that they don’t want us flying over a gate to the highlighted mob and bypassing everything that we should be fighting through.

    Well, I haven’t been able to do that at all through tBC, WotLK, or MoP, at least not until I was max level and it really didn’t matter anyway. I’m on my 10th 90 in MoP, and I’m still on the ground doing the quests the same way I have since the start.

    With the Timeless Isle, I know quite a number of people that simply don’t bother with the place because the goal of the island is to hit rares, which you can’t get to quickly and reliably enough from the opposite end of the island. There’s also very few quests on the Isle in the first place to make flying matter or not.

    So what’s on the Isle that flying would disrupt? World PVP.

    On the topic of World PVP, flying is certainly a bad thing. However, World PVP is dead. The bulk of the combined servers are PVP servers, and they weren’t even combined with faction balance in mind. So people are leaving PVP servers because they see no gain in wPVP. So why force other players to the ground because of wPVP?

    What other thing does flying effect? The art department and cost. Flying is an increasingly expensive feature to keep adding every expansion.

    Plain and simple, the reason we didn’t have flying in until Cata was because it would have cost them too much to rework the world to allow it. The world was designed to see it from only 1 point of view; the ground. Stormwind – and many other locations – wasn’t even fully modeled, and the argument still holds true when asking for the Draenei & Blood elf zones to have flying. “There’s just no justification for the cost”.

    Keep that in mind on this next thought…

    It’s been said that they’re currently working on WoD and the next 2 expansions beyond that. They want to get them out faster as well (average of 18+ months isn’t really good).

    WoD is a reset in a lot of ways, item squish and timeline being the most evident.

    Garrisons were supposed to be able to move from zone to zone, but now they’re only in 1 zone. Certainly the ideal may change and that’s a good reason, but it also means their art department doesn’t have to account for 5 or 6 different locations. This is increasingly important to consider that if they allowed us to move Garrisons from zone to zone now, that we would expect to do so in the next expansions as well. Instead, they can anchor it in each new point, much like the farm is in MoP.

    This isn’t a bad thing in it’s own right, it’s just dishonest by saying it’s “better” for us.

    WoD is coming close to release, I predict well before November (I’m thinking September really). They’re not in a full beta yet, and Blizzard likes to take their time with things to get them just right (no complaint there). What that usually means is things start getting cut at this point.

    When asked about a number of things, they’re answer is “We haven’t decided yet”. How are professions being changed? “We’re not sure yet”. Will all the races be ready at release? “We’re hoping so, but some may come later” Will flying be allowed/in a later patch? “We’re not sure yet.” What zones can I move my garrison to? “None anymore.”

    Look at the cost of flying as a feature, it’s simply not cost effective if they want to push expansions out faster.

    • ZenStyle says:

      I actually totally understand this mentality, tbh. I’m personally choosing to go with my gut, and my gut tells me that I enjoy a game where there isn’t flying more than I enjoyed a game with flying. The politics are certainly worth examining though, and I think you’re pretty spot on.

      • Perry says:

        I don’t count on flying to enjoy the game. It’s really just a means to get from point A to point B. However, I know there are many people that love the exploring that it allows. The screen shots of the sky, or different angles.

        Does this justify the cost? Not really. I understand the reasoning for it to be cut due to costs in the name of getting content out more regularly.

        As it is, there’s few places that we go that flying is really required/beneficial. I haven’t farmed for materials in MoP as I have in the past (mostly due to the farm). The only reason to travel to a dungeon is Challenge Modes. Phasing in most places screws up flying low level friends to quest hubs, even to get flight paths.

        If they do remove flying completely, I just see it as dishonest at this point. I could live without it, but then seeing all these flying mounts grounded simply wouldn’t make sense (less than whatever mechanic they use to justify a no-fly zone). With rewards constantly being a new flying mount, that just adds to it.

        If Flight Paths are handled better, I wouldn’t care so much about flying. However, I don’t want a 10 minute flight path for a place I can get to in 3 on my own. I don’t want to have to discover new flight paths either. It really doesn’t make sense that these overgrown trained pigeons don’t know their own routes until I get there once before them.

        It’s just their method that seems dishonest.

        Look at what they did with the cost of D3:RoS and even WoD. They’ve increased it by $10. For RoS, they even said they expected a $30 price tag for the basic expansion, only to add $10 at the last minute.

        Then Diablo 3 is another case all together. Compare it to Marvel Heroes and you feel like you’re getting punished by Blizzard for playing Diablo (and it’s a single player game anymore).

        I love these games really, but it feels like the recent changes aren’t making any sense but to extract more money for less entertainment/fun.

        • Zlati says:

          exactly my point. Cutting the content and placing higher price tag especially for EU users, which seem the majority, will lead to a mass WoW disconnects. They are removing even the 1 month free subscription when you buy the expansion. So in the end Wow will cost me not 40E > 40$ , but at least 50 E + the 2 months card for 25 E. So in the end 75E for a game? Are you crazy? I can fly to Netherlands get 1 pound bag and return home for those money. Btw I bought D3 ROS on a website for at least 12 E less from the price tag of Blizzard shop.

  2. Zlati says:

    Well let me tell you something, I’m not a hardcore WoW player, and for me is very easy to quit, I’m not playing for some months already. Do you think that a game of 8 years experience, can just wipe out 70% of the content(skills, talents, dailies, raids, dungeons), add rehashed “new” content, make prices higher for EU and continue to have big revenue? Well you are in big confusion. Most of my friends also are not playing WoW anymore. This is the worst expansion – cut the sockets, cut the talents, cut the skills, cut the dungeons, cut the marks, cut the raids, place more stupid mini games, in pandaria it was farm vile, now mini city vile as garrisons, bulshit. If I wanted to play a game with 6 skills I would play GW, not Wow.