Flying in WoD

[Aeladrine]

I didn't see anything on this, and I may have just missed it (please delete this thread or lock it if that's true, Wain!), but I thought people would like to know.

This probably should have been kept to the original thread, but caution to thee, wind, I say! (I say that.)

So everyone has seen various posts and comments around the World Wide Web about flying not being allowed in Draenor, why, and what that means. It’d probably be helpful to try to sum up some of those things, and potentially help build a foundation for anyone’s discussions on the topic going forward. If everyone has the same info then it just helps conversations glide along, as you can expect everyone else knows what you know! Knowledge Parity! (Knarity?)

Anyway, it’s important to first dissuade concerns that we’re looking to slow down the game (I’ve recently posted about this in another thread, but it bears repeating). We’re going to be making sure flight paths and other forms of travel are quick and efficient, with a goal of getting you to the places you want to go. The flight paths in Draenor are not going to be loop-de-loop sightseeing tours, and we’re going to be looking to our beta testers to let us know if any are less than tip-top.

Our goal is not to make travel time consuming or painful, and with players on ground mounts we know we'll have to do more to try to ensure people can get to where they want to go quickly… BUT being able to lift off and fly over content compromises many of our goals in how the game world is approached, how it's played, how it's consumed, and how the content is designed to account for those factors.

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.

Being efficient is great, being clever is great, and using your cleverness to be efficient is great, but how many of us have done the Tillers dailies up on the cliffside where the Hozen are, and waited for packs to pass by before setting down right where you’re supposed to, use whatever thingamabob you’re supposed to, and then lift off ASAP hoping-hoping-hoping nothing aggros? How many of us have become furious when we actually have to fight something!? Is that clever gameplay? Is that being good at playing the game, or is it using a mechanic to avoid having to play it? Is that what the game should be, and what our expectations should be as gamers playing it?

I hope everyone can agree, regardless of personal opinion toward flight vs. non-flight, that flying fundamentally alters how content is approached in a world where the gameplay exists wholly on the ground.

In Draenor we’re designing max-level content, portions of zones or zones in their entirety that will be dedicated to max-level gameplay—and not just the top of a cliffside, or some dailies in the Vale. There’s a harsh change in how the game plays between leveling, and when you hit max level. Hitting 100 and instantly switching everything you do to raiding or Arenas is pretty abrupt, and we want to try to keep that questing experience available at max level with something more robust than daily quests. We don’t think having all of that content inside buildings, or constantly challenged by sky cannons, or with magical no-flying smoke, or within some kind of dismount bubble is the most straightforward or best solution to the ultimate issue in that World of Warcraft is not a flight sim, and that's just not what the content of the game is about. Even at level 100 there will be no small portions of the game world intended to provide relevant content even to max-level players. These zones may even unlock over the course of the expansion, or the content in them will progress in story and scope throughout content patches. Content has to be designed with the expectation that there either is or is not flight, and approaching ground-level content from the ground offers more compelling gameplay. Raids, dungeons, and PvP continue to disallow flying for this same reason.

It's also important to think about not just what the content is, but how it's experienced. Not everyone that plays the game cares how quests and outdoor content are experienced, of course. Some may find it unnecessary; they don't feel it adds anything to their experience. Others play through it fairly quickly, enjoy it, but don’t particularly want to put much thought into why. Some may begrudgingly trudge through the content just so they can get to the part of the game they do want to play, and any other number of situations and preferences.

I’m sure some of you see the fortress example with the flying mount and see nothing wrong, if that’s how someone wants to play the game they should be allowed to. But a game is largely defined by its limitations, and the rules within which you must find or create a solution. We’re not trying to create a slow and laborious game (hopefully people actually enjoy the content!), or expect people will be yelling “YIIIPPPEEEEE!” while fighting a mob that aggroed when they tried to pick an herb, but there’s a big difference between a slow and laborious game and the expectation of instant gratification—not to mention the somewhat nebulous intention of creating and maintaining an engaging and immersive game world. World of Warcraft is a persistent online roleplaying game, and as much as we let players choose how they improve their characters within the world; leveling through dungeons, or PvP, or questing; choosing to do Arenas, or raids, or both; we’re still always wanting to create a holistic experience that supports all of these things. That doesn’t mean we think it’s a good idea to force people to read all their quest text, or stare at and appreciate the pretty new models, or anything like that, but it’s not unreasonable to see that combat and content exist on the ground, understand that, embrace that, and make decisions to support it.

In summary: It’s important to us that we integrate max-level questing into the expansion more thoroughly than designated daily locations on mountain tops, or only have the option of releasing new max level content in magically appearing islands where flight has different rules because reasons. We also know that being able to approach content that’s on the ground from up in the air compromises much of what creates the game world, how it's played, and how it's consumed. The game experience is fundamentally altered when you can lift off and set down wherever you want. And lastly, that we’re not intending to slow anyone down, and we’re going to make sure that players can get where they want to go efficiently through more direct flight points, and potentially alternate travel methods.

None of this is new philosophy; it's something we've maintained since Burning Crusade when flight was introduced, but it has evolved over the years, and I expect it to continue to be—like everything we do—an iterative process. And hopefully this has been at least marginally informative. Source.

Bolding is mine.(:

[Lisaara]

I remember reading this. :3

I get where they're coming from. They don't wanna get rid of flying mounts but they do wanna encourage us to use the ground mounts.

[Aeladrine]

Yeah! I'm hoping they'll be able to evoke the same sort of sensation Eversong gives me; I don't mind not having a flying mount at all there, though I sometimes wish I could see how beautiful it would be from above, and even though I know my way around impossibly well (as well as I can know any zone, that is) and have leveled in there more times than I can remember since it was first created, I always discover something new when I go through it again. The same is not true for any other zone, and I certainly don't like walking around without a mount anywhere else.

Of course, this isn't true for everyone; being an RP oriented person (who, for some reason, only just started to RP), I know what I like in the game differs vastly from the majority.

The only thing I really dislike about this is how much more annoying gathering herbs will be. But, on the other hand, it'll make it that much harder for gold farmers to do their business. I'm willing to sacrifice easy gathering for better prices (as in, my herbs/ores sell better, as people can't flood the market as easily).

[Lisaara]

I agree. Gathering anything is gonna be such a PITA. XD But we'll manage as we did for 60 levels before, no?

[Malackai]

Personally I don't think no flying in draenor is not going to fix what they are trying to fix a more alive world.
unlike Rift/Gw2 WOW has absolutely no incentive to keep going out after max lv unless you need gathering mats. There are no secret caves or things you can collect that are really well hidden or through little puzzles.

If they had a system like gw2 puzzles(daily for a yummy chest reward) and vistas(basically little puzzles that incorporated climbing/jumping to great heights for an achievement) or the rift artifact system then yes I would have absolutely no problem with being ground bound in Draenor. However I would rather have seen a solution to working both ground and flight exploration. (eg. Having caves you ran in to during leveling but you notices perches or a hole high up and you want to come back there when you are max lv with flight to check it out) Think of the Jadefang spawn icm with that bomb quest in deepholm.

This is the post I made on MMO Champ (its quite a read XD).

I hate the timeless isle concept as it is now. I stayed on it for 5-6 weeks till I finished that epoch quest line and never turned back. Just the mere thought Draenor has a chance ending up being a whole continent wide timeless isle is seriously making me reconsider a refund of the digital preorder.

Personally I have nothing against no flight till max level I have always been fine with it. But after max or perhaps even delay it one patch (their original idea) flying should be back being enabled lets be honest at max level your not going to have other questing experience.
The majority of the people only go out to either farm or lv an alt, pet battles, archeology etc. After people do the initial dynamic events maybe once or twice most people will simply neglect them anyway (unless they have some good form of incentive).

Perm no flying is not going to solve the problem that people don't want to go out and explore. Because after max level there is not really anything to explore either it be on foot or the air this is something I always found lacking in WoW.

There are rarely any caves, grotto's that are not tied to quests and the caves that are not tied are extremely small and pretty much always empty.

Want people out to explore? Either it be on foot or flight? revise at least the cave system as it is now.
Actually make caves that are hard to find and make them consist of multiple floors. Most important actually put something in it! Same for secret grotto's under water.

When I think of the spires in Draenor I think of sky high mountains/spires of which some might be inaccessible by flight (think mysterious gales that make flying impossible) so you have to climb your way up there ( GW2 puzzle style or even rift style) and/or tie them to events Gw2 does that.

Other spires on the other hand are only be accessible by flight (aka max level content) some are accessible till a certain height or others that are fully accessible with flight till the top. In those spires you can find caves some are small and perhaps some are more maze like and even go down several floors or perhaps go down so far you can even end up in a cave under ground (They can have rare spawns, chests/mats, rare pets? hell they can even be archeology dig sites or whatever) you can even restrict flight in these caves and the exit can be somewhere else completely or you even end up under water.

For people not familiar look up Jumping puzzles from GW2 some are pretty long and creative (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=plMouSREnuc not the best example but when still playing gw2 I found this one brilliant)
For an example of the maze like system you can check Tera : Tenebrous Mine good example of a maze like cave system also tied in with quest hubs.

But bottom line they really need to give incentive to go out and explore after max level and flying can actually help with that because it opens previous inaccessible areas you found during leveling aka mountains and plateaus and such or perhaps even secret little islands with little grotto's or those vermin like hole systems.

How many of you remember the dragon cave in twilight highlands near obsidian forest? I just found out some days ago on my druid alt that cave also had a flight entrance from the coast side. First I thought I found a new cave but then I noticed it was the cave I did one of the quests in, however I never knew there where perches up there with eggs on them and a little waterfall. First thing I did was checking the perches to see if there was a Easter egg hidden or perhaps even an other little cave system unfortunately it wasn't so but it would have been awesome.

Perfect example of combining restriction of flight during leveling but opening up more after you gain back flight (and your able to put events in it or chests,mats that are good incentive for max level players.)

Other example could be the artifact system Rift has they are hidden everywhere! Some on hard to reach places other with puzzles.

Personally I could deal with perm no fly in a worse case scenario but then blizzard really need to shape up with adding incentive to get out and go explore. Make mountains or hard to reach places still accessible either by secret pathways or by jumping around aka Gw2 or Rift style. And fix the flight path drama even in Mop its still horrible.

Atm it feels like I am repeating myself I remember posting back in the start of MoP with the whole daily gating and lack of content and the lack of getting people out in the world. I proposed droppable rep commendations, rares, putting rare treasures hidden in Pandaria etc. oddly around ToT the warbringers/scouts where introduced that had a chance of dropping commendations and a good incentive a mount!
In timeless isle we got hidden treasure chests >_> and semi easy puzzles but its way to bland and one time only stuff. If they are going to indeed base draenor on the timeless island method they still have a lot to polish.

[Aeladrine]

I forgot to mention one thing, however: Further down in the thread, it was clarified that they had no idea yet if this restriction was going to be permanent; they don't want to decide until much later, when beta testing gives them feedback they currently have no access to.

This post was primarily a more thorough explanation of Blizzard's stance, along with some nice reassurances of how we'll be getting around without flying, which is why I gave it a thread over here.

EDIT: We should also keep in mind that, within this post, they've said they wish to implement quest lines for max level and have that content be more similar to leveling content, instead of having that strange jump from questing to raiding that causes many people to simply make an alt because the game is so different between the two. We won't be doing the sort of end game we're used to if this happens, so comparing current end game to its WoD equivalent doesn't give us an accurate representation of what things will be like.

[Lisaara]

I'm glad they're reserving judgement. I'm that type of person that likes to give stuff a chance and get feedback before making a big decision.

And yay more questing!

[Aeladrine]

I've changed the bolding to help everyone quickly access the most relevant parts of the post; please do still read it all, but the things that are bold are the most important to know!

[Lisaara]

I actually hated the caves in GW2 and loved Timeless isle so I'm glad it's gonna be like Timeless Isle. GW2 was fun at first and I do like the Vistas. BUT, I did not like their event system after awhile cause it was the same ones over and over and over again. I got bored real fast.

[Vephriel]

I'm not sure yet how I feel about No Flying being permanent on Draenor if they decide to go that way (especially since Outland has it), but it's not altogether negative. I definitely have no problem with flying being delayed to max level, which makes perfect sense to me. I actually prefer it that way, I like questing for the first time through on land.

Flying's been part of the game for so long now I don't think it would be easy to phase it out completely, though they've obviously been trying with specific hubs here and there. I can appreciate the reasoning behind wanting to limit it, and I even understand the laments that flying diminished an aspect of the game. However, we've become so accustomed to it that I think at this point it would be too hard to remove it completely.

[Danielfboone]

If they remove flying entirely from WoD I may remove myself as well. Flying is one of the iconic parts of WoW and the main thing that sets it apart from the other games in it's genre. They seem increasingly intent on driving people away. I just don't get it.

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.

I have never done this and never seen anyone else do it either.

[Sukurachi]

If they remove flying entirely from WoD I may remove myself as well. Flying is one of the iconic parts of WoW and the main thing that sets it apart from the other games in it's genre. They seem increasingly intent on driving people away. I just don't get it.

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.

I have never done this and never seen anyone else do it either.

I have, both seen it and done it (though I don't do it often, there HAVE been quest mobs that were annoying to get to).

You want a game where flying is "iconic"? WoW isn't it.
You want a game where flying is integral to the game itself? Not WoW either.
So far, the only game I've come across where flying was absolutely integral and required was Aion (and lord knows I'm NOT promoting the game, it has some pretty major flaws).

[Slickrock]

If they remove flying entirely from WoD I may remove myself as well. Flying is one of the iconic parts of WoW and the main thing that sets it apart from the other games in it's genre. They seem increasingly intent on driving people away. I just don't get it.

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.

I have never done this and never seen anyone else do it either.

Oh come on, we do that all the time.

Fly over the rare horde/ally spawns in Karasang, dive-bomb in when one spawns, kill it, and fly away. Or any other Panderia rare. All rare camping is fly over, dive bomb, kill and fly away.

[Lisaara]

If they remove flying entirely from WoD I may remove myself as well. Flying is one of the iconic parts of WoW and the main thing that sets it apart from the other games in it's genre. They seem increasingly intent on driving people away. I just don't get it.

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.

I have never done this and never seen anyone else do it either.

Oh come on, we do that all the time.

Fly over the rare horde/ally spawns in Karasang, dive-bomb in when one spawns, kill it, and fly away. Or any other Panderia rare. All rare camping is fly over, dive bomb, kill and fly away.

I know I do. XD

[Slickrock]

I agree. Gathering anything is gonna be such a PITA. XD But we'll manage as we did for 60 levels before, no?

Remember, your Garrison will be producing mats for your professions. You will have a mine, stable, farm, fishing hole.

Unless you are doing mass production, you very well may not need to gather outside of your Garrison.

[Xota]

...
It’s important to us that we integrate max-level questing into the expansion more thoroughly than designated daily locations on mountain tops, or only have the option of releasing new max level content in magically appearing islands where flight has different rules because reasons.
...

I liked mountain top areas, but I can see how they'd like the option to have max-level areas on ground level. But grounding everyone permanently takes away the mountain top option, and "perma-grounded because reason" is no more satisfying than "different flight rules because reasons." It's less satisfying actually. But as far as being forced to have content on magically appearing islands, there's other options. For example, at release, some Arakkoa sorcerers might be controlling flight on Draenor, but around the first major content patch, whatever magic crystal they're using gets shattered. And those crystal shards keep showing up scattered around Draenor limiting flight in those smaller areas. We've had no-fly zones before, with Wintergrasp, so I think players will be able to handle different flight rules for adjacent areas.

You want a game where flying is integral to the game itself? Not WoW either.

Maybe how you play. It's pretty integral to how I play, doing lots of random things while out and about. It helps prevent the burnout I'd get from just taking the taxi to a single destination to grind a single task.

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.

This is a good reason to gate flying to 6.1 and restrict it in new areas. But not to perma-ground everyone even when the content is no longer current. But I do have to point out that flying isn't the only way people skip fighting mooks. From a ground mount, run through the gate with pats chasing you, get to the guy whose name is highlighted, feign death to drop the adds who already haven't leashed, kill guy, mount your ground mount, repeat to get out.
Or: Camo, walk in, kill him, camo, walk out.

All rare camping is fly over, dive bomb, kill and fly away.

Except on Timeless Isle and Isle of Thunder. It's ride up, drop adds (or aoe them), kill, and ride away. Grounding players doesn't effect rare spawning except in how much time you sink to check the spawn points. Or not: Eagle Eye,Scrying Roguestone

[cowmuflage]

I don't mind waiting for flying! I'd rather get flying at max then at the start.

[Danielfboone]

Gating it until 6.1 is fine. That's not much different than previous expansions. Eliminating it altogether would be bad.

[Danielfboone]

If they remove flying entirely from WoD I may remove myself as well. Flying is one of the iconic parts of WoW and the main thing that sets it apart from the other games in it's genre. They seem increasingly intent on driving people away. I just don't get it.

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.

I have never done this and never seen anyone else do it either.

Oh come on, we do that all the time.

Fly over the rare horde/ally spawns in Karasang, dive-bomb in when one spawns, kill it, and fly away. Or any other Panderia rare. All rare camping is fly over, dive bomb, kill and fly away.

On rares yes, he was saying it like you'd do it for a quest mob which I have never seen. Rares aren't usually inside gates.

[Slickrock]

Really, this should not be a suprise.

No fly in Barradin Hold.
No fly in Molten Front.
No fly on Isle of Giants.
No fly on Isle of Thunder.
No fly on Timeless Isle.

It's clear they don't want flying in these special content areas. This allows them to spread that content out.