I also don’t understand this flying killed the world mantra because I see plenty of people out in the world.
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I wish they would make this using AI for the game, it would make it more interesting. Sadly the addon creator wasn’t able to release it.
https://youtu.be/LN-TdgGeGXw?t=49
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OK. 50% of people had max level characters.
The others remember fondly waiting for 30 minutes infront of a dungeon so people could get there. And that created a lot of drama.
They made summoning stones. They made portals… none of that helped…
And then, 50% of actual daily players with a max level character is a very good playerbase. Better than 50% of sporadic characters that did not manage to get to max level in 2 years of wow classic.
And im assuming that all those started the game on November 2004 launch day. Which is not the case.
Many people began their journey when TBC was at the verge of launch. Hence, squewed statistics.
So yeah… flying mounts WERE a demand. Of many, many, many players. The ones that actually played the game. Not new people and/or casuals. So blizz listened. 
I know. I was there.
Yea, IMHO Dragonflight killed a lot of exploration side of wow by allowing people to dragonride from the start. I trusted the Devs and jumped on my dragon as soon as I was given one, but after playing Dragonflight I know that in TWW I’ll be sticking to ground mount at least until I finish doing all campaign/sidequests, just like You proposed in the latter part of the post.
Back in the day quests were also written differently. There was no ingame quest helaper, no indicators*, and You could just read questbox to know what You are supposed to do and where. Today textbox is written with map indicators in mid, so most quests don’t even have any directions. You just need to rely on the quest tracking and big yellow arrow on the minimap, because many times there are simply no other directions. Also, most quest objectives are conviniently next to the questgiver, which IMHO takes away from adventuring and exploration.
*This was really rough back then. There were no exclamation marks on the minimap. If the questgiver was in the basement of the house, there was no way of knowing it other than actually going there and finding him there. The question marks only appeared on the minimap when You got close to them. There was no indiction which mobs drop quest items. Items on the ground had no highlight. I know questing addons sprung up rather quickly, but the base game reqired way more attention than it does now.
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That is the reason why we used QuestHelper addon, when I first started playing wow in 2006 or so.
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Or maybe you just don’t find it as exciting as you did 20 years ago when it was new.
Most people can only do the same thing so many times before it becomes just more of the same. It could be the case that the people no longer enjoy that aspect of the game because it changed, or it could be the case that the game changed because people no longer enjoyed that aspect.
I sincerely with all my heart hope that “most people” are not that easily entertained. I’d be willing to bet that has a lot more to do with nostalgia than it being superior content.
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That is so much BS. Back then we had addons, or good old alt-tab wowhead.
And even if you somehow found out where it was, you needed to traverse vast expanses of NOTHING or annoying mobs to get there…
Also… ALL quests were the same. Kill XXX of this mob. Collect YYY sacs of this stuff… And for daily quests it was so much worse. Because you had to do them daily and they cycled. So you ended up doing the same quest over… and over… and over again…
Hence people begged for flying mounts.
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Was there too much text for You to read?
And You missed my point entirely too. I didn’t mean there was no way to automate the questing. What I meant whats that if someone wanted an immersive exploration experience he could get it because the game supported it. Now You can’t just untrack quests, because the textbox doesn’t even give You directions. You have to rely on map indicators, otherwise You won’t have slightest clue where quest objectives are.
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Its still true today to be honest. Dragon flight can be done on foot if you want, with the exception of maybe some quests here and there that require dragon riding. But 99% dont.
The first time was cool. I wont deny it.
But classic quests were too much walking around. Going back and fourth.
It was REALLY annoying when they send you to the other side of the map. On FOOT… to pick up 1 amulet. You turn in the quest and they send you there AGAIN to kill 20 mobs. You turn it in… and OMG… ONCE AGAIN to kill the lieutenant…
So yeah… it got annoying really fast.
And the quests… they got stale really fast. It was the same 4: Kill things. Pick up things. Loot things. Kill a lieutenant. And the worst: Travel to some place REALLY far away to talk to some dude. AND COME BACK.
So first 30 levels were OK. The next 30… annoying.
Also… classic quests were notoriously cryptic. You did not have “bread crumb” quests that explained WHY you were there. You just walked around aimlessly and there is some village in the middle of nowhere. For no reason apparently.
And the dude asks you to deal with some overpopulation of wolfs or something. Like why?
I remember perfectly well questing in the swamp of sorrows. Like… why are there ogres there? Who are these ogres? Why are they horde, and there are no ogres in Orgrimar?
And then, you quest arround and see some alliance keep. Why are they there? Whats the beef with the alliance there?
And then… 20 levels later, on some totally unrelated quests it sends you back to the Temple of Atal Hakkar. WHY? Who are those trolls? Why were they not in the Stonard quests? Who is Atal Hakkar?
NOTHING of that is explained. All you get are quests about some tyrant ogre overlord that treats people bad. And killing some stuff here and there.
You call that immersive? Thats just total BS. Makes no sense.
Ah… And then…
DO IT WITH ALTS. FOR THE 50th TIME… So annoying…
And before you judge me. I did ALL the horde and alliance quests of classic. And Cata. And when I mean ALL… im not kidding. Its ALL. Even the ones that came from some annoying rare drop or something.
And I read ALL the texts. And I mean ALL.
I had more time back then for this stuff.
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During end of Wrath and through Cata, Blizzard wanted to attract a different audience of players who were not MMO fans per say. They changed Wow into a more streamlined game through doing this into the modern game (retail) we have up to today. Thats why a 20 year old game (classic) is still super popular. Its a essentially a completely different game.
The most bonkers thing about modern wow though is how many of the old systems of the game - the RPG systems - such as money, the bank, meaningful loot, adventure, professions, trading, social elements etc etc have basically been made obsolete over time, with a whole different set of systems written over the top of them. That’s why the game feels so meaningless and endgame and gear is all that matters. They have literally made every other system in the game not matter, so why would you read quests, want to adventure, care at all… when thats no longer the point of the game?
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I don’t agree with you at all, OP. I still love the open world, exploring, reading the quests and I love flying as well. Mind, I ignore the endgame of dungeons & raids etc.
They were never relevant to begin with…
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Money : 99% of people use tokens for money. Back then it was gold buying from chinese companies.
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Bank : Hasent changed at all in 20 years. If its obsolete now, it was obsolete 20 years ago.
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Meaningful look : The loot system hasent changed in 20 years. Well, except now with the crests. I would argue that its more relevant now than it was 20 years ago.
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Adventure : See my post above. You call that adventure? It wasent 20 years ago. Instanced content feels more “epic” than spending 10 minutes killing a wolf with white hits.
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Professions : When were they ever relevant before DF? Am I missing something here?
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Trading : Other than enchants and gems, when was it relevant ?
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Social Elements : The “toxic” people the forum complains about in instanced content used to be in /trade . And guild structure hasent changed in 20 years. If anything, by including alliance the “social aspect” has improved greatly.
It never was. Dont forget that in classic you had 1-60 and then end-game. And you spent maybe 3 months leveling, and then 2 years in end-game. Because it used to be so alt-unfriendly that rerolls and alts were not a thing back then.
- flying should only be permitted in 50% of the zones, there should be a " no fly Zone" area
- Gold sellers ruined MMO’s in general
- elite quests are not hard enough, you can solo them,
- they made everything way too easy, and the penalty for dying is nothing
- PvP needs to be more threatening , ie maybe you lose gold upon player death
if blizzard want to make it more rewarding… make the rewards hard to get.
No, it didn’t. Repetition did. Flying was prohibited for the greater part of expansions since Warlords cause, I guess, people like you who run their mouths without filtering the worlds through their brains. I mean it’s beyond me how you can claim that’s the culprit at this point. We had to go through most of the content before we could unlock flying. Then we had to go through most of the expansion to unlock flying for some masochistic reason.
Have you actually considered that people skip this because they’ve done it one, two, three, ten times? On the same character if it’s some daily or on several characters if it’s a basic quest?
Maybe the sense of wanderlust wore off after you run over the same area with the same landmarks for 500 times?
So at which point running over the same zone, killing the same mobs for YEARS caused any other reaction but boredom? Because repetition leads to that.
But hey, let’s cancel the brain and blame flying.
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I enjoyed the slower exploration back when I started in late TBC. Then again, back then, I had the time to appreciate discovering more areas on foot or on a land mount. I didn’t know anything about what I was getting into so it was kind of exciting doing it that way. These days, I know the game, and I definitely don’t have time to engage with it as I did back then, so I personally appreciate flying and portals.
yust comapre zone desing from classic and then tbc onwoard, epespaly wotlk.
claiss zione are all one dimansel, flat, no big topographie, and the edeges were limited by mountans or water…
then with wotlk, map got wider and more intio hights, we get more mounatis to clims and this develompenmt goes on, with more ravines, mountain ect… more natels obstacles who made the wold more appeling and uniqe and more immersiv.
this, back 1990 for example super mario was popular and revolutionary but today this concepz, of an simple jum and run like back in teh day wound enetrtain much the modern audience ebcause its simple…and for modern standars…boring.
same goes fopr kill X boars…
yeah…and we saw how popular the amw was without flying and general riding in the first phase…
yeah…great ide…wound abslutly NOT abused by high level palyers or gankers who just search out (in groups) for easy pickings just to farm then and rob them all of theri gold, with large amount of ganking raid who`s reason are just to annoy weaker players who stand alone or cant stand the fight… 
I see your point but there are some aspects you are missing. First of all, reading quest text and waiting around for RP is a choice. I do it even though I can fly. I also read quest texts and item descriptions while also flying. Sure I get there faster but I get faster to where the fun starts. Every once in a while I go by foot because I like the scenery. And speaking of exploration, I believe players have invented TomTom and All The Things which basically tell you where all the things are and how to get them. DF may not be my favorite expansion from a storytelling perspective but I can tell you for sure there was A LOT of work put into the zones and story bits. So it’s not blizzard killing WoW. It’s the current trends that have pushed them into making some decisions so they don’t lose the players to other more streamlined mmos. Also when WoW was launched it was the more “casual” and accessible of the bunch, imagine that.
Flying is least of the problem. The issue with Warcraft Retail compared to Classic is that Classic retains ‘Zonal Progression’. There is no scaling in Classic. Consequently the mobs and environment go hand in hand. A zone feels very different when the mobs you encounter are able to one shot you. Time was that adventure and exploration was dangerous and wandering off the beaten track could prove lethal.
I recall once venturing into Felwood by mistake from the top of Ashenvale and I was tagged by a wolf from what seemed a hundred yards. The thing killed me in an instant.
So the enemy is scaling. It was scaling that destroyed the game. In addition we have the bonkers levelling process now which makes a mockery of the game. For pure clarity of levelling progression you have to play Classic. The game just makes sense in Classic. Retail is a mess.
In respect of reading quests you really will only read something if it has significance to what you do. So remove the sparkly hand holding and map indicators and you would have to read the quests. These days the tool tip that hovers over the mob tells you if you need to kill the thing and how many. There just isn’t any need to read quests.
Game is way too easy now and without some kind of hierarchy of mob strengths there isn’t any danger. Additionally the original game paid respect to class types and considered mob densities and location to permit differing classes to progress. Today there is no regard to this fact and a mage is likely to have to deal with large clusters of mobs just as a hand to hand class would. It wasn’t the mechanics and game design that was implemented , the game simply gave the more vulnerable class additional skill sets to compensate, or worse, a little hand holding from an NPC. In Dragonflight we even have the pop up overpower button to call in the cavalry.
I have spent a lot of time exploring and adventuring in this game and still enjoy uncovering stuff. I gave up questing years ago but still manage to get to level cap without doing a single thing story wise. I never use a mount , any mount, nor have a weapon. There is another way around the game but you have to be a little more imaginative. Also you have to take advantage of the aternatives before the game designers plug the hole and try to force you to comply.
So get rid of scaling, zonal scaling and revert levels to their original status. And if you want the hard slog from the starter through all the expansions to the last you should be allowed to do it. What we have at the moment is justification for Classic when in truth there is absolutely no need for this at all. Its kinda bonkers that a game with so much content , good content, is crippled by scaling.
As to flying, you get that at the end of TBC but cannot fly in Azeroth. For all other expansions the pattern is the same. And if they see sense they will do the same with the new expansion. I never use a dragon so bothers me not. I have levelled a number of chars in Dragonflight and managed to avoid the dragons so not a problem. Flying is a personal choice, you are not forced to use it. But the game should give the benefit to end gamers only and then design special content where flying is essential. Like it use to be when the game had different custodians.
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Before this expansion we’ve had 4 expansions with no flying until a later patch, 3 of those required an extensive grind to unlock flying.
And no fly zones do exist. Last time I checked Argus and the Maw weren’t super popular.
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It’s not fun having no fly zones. I can cope while levelling that’s fine but I far preferred the model of get to max level buy it. Those days are long gone now tho.
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