Overall, we’re happy with how ground travel in Draenor has played out thus far, and we’ve heard a lot of feedback to that effect as well, though we of course recognize that there are players who feel differently. We’ll have more to announce about our 6.1 patch plans in the very near future, but as the focus of our endgame outdoor content remains in the main Draenor zones, our reasons for disallowing flight in 6.0 continue to apply in 6.1. Whether you’re navigating your way to Orumo the Observer in Shattrath Rise, trying to reach a treasure cache atop a column in Spires, or working your way around the ledges encircling The Pit, you’re engaging in gameplay that simply would not exist in a world with unfettered flight. It was never our intent to make large-scale navigation of the world inconvenient, and in 6.1 we’re going to be improving our flight path system to always take the most direct route between two points, even if you have not discovered some of the intermediate nodes. Please keep the feedback coming – if you’re unhappy with the design, some of the most helpful feedback would be specific examples of situations or systems that feel frustrating without being able to fly in Draenor.What's the deal currently with your stance on flying, any new developments, or insights?
Caught this from a poster on the MMO Champion forums.. He made some good points.
You asked for feedback about frustrating situations caused by the lack of flight, so here goes:
Uncrossable, too steep cliffs, hills, and whatnot, making it sometimes bloody frustratingly difficult to find my way to wherever I want to get.
Example: I needed to find a medium tree in Gorgrond to cut down (had to be Gorgrond, quest). Took me minimum half an hour of enormously frustrating bashing my head against the scenery to find a way to the part with medium trees, and then find one. Then as I was eating before cutting it down (as it was going to spawn a hostile mob), another player came by and nabbed it. (to be fair, that's another issue, shared quest credit not being known widely enough - if I'd attack the mob, I'd get kill credit and quest item too, but I didn't know it at the time - there could be an informational message about it on the loading screens, if there isn't yet)
For similiar reasons I'm really, extremely unwilling to touch archeology on Draenor (other than those few fragments I get from garrison mine). Hostile mobs? Sure, whatever, I can handle that. Artificial, frustrating, "prolonging gameplay", by putting all those overly steep hills and slopes and whatnot in the way? That's really frustrating and disheartening from exploration and stuff. (especially in cases like the Gorgrond one described above, when I was just bashing my had against a scenery, unable to find a way across)
Proposed solutions other than flying? Less steep hills and mountains would probably need the remake of the zones, so out of the question, I guess. Ropes like those on some hill in (I think) desert part of Gorgrond (they are there to help reach a rare on top of it), or ladders, etc. More items like the "glider" for non-engineers, the one from that Inn quest require'ing the player to run a heroic, Aviana's feather or so (not everyone might want, or be able to do that for whatever reason), coming from other activities, pvp, archeology, Large garrison building with engineering gadgets (if it doesn't provide one already, I haven't built it), treasures in the world, etc. (or maybe something allowing to jump higher and/or longer distance on short cooldown, that'd help with all those too steep and overly abundant hills and cliffs - by short cooldown, since we're not talking about gliding here, I mean something like 30 seconds, a minute tops)
