Dragon riding vs afk-riding

Community General Discussion
1

Yes I’m biased.

Dragonflying pros.
-It’s faster.
-It can be slower (you can actually choose your speed, there’s even a break skill).
-It’s immersive.
-It’s fun (ofc, unless it isn’t for you, and that means YOU are no fun).
-Can’t linger over a specific point.

Dragonflying cons.
-Need to park if something unexpected happens and need to go afk.
-Could cause motion sickness.
-It’s reduced to only a few mounts.

Normal flying pros.
-You can use farming bots and (not) get banned.
-You can enjoy the game by not playing the game (autopilot).
-You can camp spots.
-You can die of fatigue because you forgot you are even playing WoW.

Normal flying cons.
-It isolates each individual from the community.
-It isn’t fun (and there’s no way it coud be except for a couple niche quests in BC and Pandaria)
-It’s clunky.

I was a bit concerned about dragonflying at the beginning, and even if there are stuff I would change (I’d make it so that we have to touch the ground more frequently), I think it’s great.
I admit that I was never happy with normal flying because it tore appart the community (with the big help of cross-realms and lfg), but I find dragonriding as the perfect breed that can bring together farmers, content-bingers and roleplayers, and it’s a great opportunity to start welcoming all those players who left Retail and came back for Classic (and now you know that we not only think we like vanilla, and we do like it).

Since I know enough of the community and the developpers to expect normal flying to be implemented into DF, at least I’d like dragonflying to be implemented in the rest of the content.
I’ll use the same argument my “competitors” use: give us choices.

Edit. since more ideas were shared along the thread, I’ll gather some here so that they won’t get lost.

Stuff said (just a list, not related to each other and I’m still biased because it’s fun):

  • Both systems can coexist.
  • Could make an hybrid system (mostly to avoid botting).
  • People think if they remove old flying, there will be a mass suicide and WoW will die.
  • Maps might be too small for dragon riding.
  • Landing is hard (lol).
  • It’d be nice if we could choose to slow down dragon flying. Slow flapping, stuff like that.
  • Mount types with differences (how vigor is spent, speed, feel free to think about more stuff).
  • Animations for old mounts to match the system (such as more fire at full speed in a rocket, trot/gallop for horses…) dreaming is free.
  • It’s not bad to adress accessibility.
3 Likes
2

My prediction is that Blizzard will merge dragonriding with old riding:

  • Giving dragonriding to all flying mounts
  • Keeping the ability of floating and flying with mininum speed (310%) to all flying mounts

So:

  • All flying mounts can float in air as we always do.
  • When we have vigor/energy, we can use dragonriding abilities and reach max speed (930%)
  • When we have no vigor/energy, we can fly at old normal speed (310% artisan riding)

If Blizzard will keep Dragonriding after DF, this will 100% be the case.

2 Likes
3

Understand that the essence of dragonriding is having to constantly move and be aware of the topography of your environment (especially when you try to raise your altitude).
If they add floating/constant flight at low speed without vigor then it’s basically just old flying with an occasional speed boost.

1 Like
4

I still have to fly my char myself when i fly normal. So the title is already trolling by calling it AFK. Not worth more comments.

5 Likes
5

Yes, but will Blizzard do with flying after DF?

  • Removing Dragonriding? People will enrage
  • Removing floating ability that we had nearly 20 years? More people will enrage

Blizzard put itself into a dilemma. And it has no choice, but merging them.

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6

You know that you can float AFK and autorun in flying, right?

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7

Except there’s a button to auto-move forward.
I do it all the time. Because the game allows me.

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8

They can simply enable old flying in new zones so people stop complaining and leave dragonriding intact for those who enjoy interactive, engaging gameplay.
Merging them requires compromise from both sides and frankly there’s not much to gain.

5 Likes
9

I guess merging is a good option, but the thing that harms most the game is the ability to float.
I’d accept your suggestion if we use vigor to float still, even if it’s very slow, like the opposite of vigor gain when we stand on the ground.
The other thing I don’t like is the minimum speed. One of the things I like, which makes sense, is that you go forward no matter what (or slowly float down to the ground when out of inertia).

10

Yes, ofc, I am 100% sure Blizzard will allow normal flying in DF.

I am talking about flying after DF. What will Blizzard do in the future?

  • no more fast flying in future expansions? No
  • still Dragonriding in future expansions when dragon is not the theme? No,

They will merge old flying and fast flying on all mounts.

11

Especially since people could collect above 500 different mounts just for flying with a good ammount requiring real money or huge load of work and/or luck.

It is actually not. Why should for example magical horses suddenly need wind gales to keep their altitude? Or the actual dragons as we got teached for decades that dragons could just stay all the time flying in the air. Or tales of gryphons being able to keep flying straight for several days? Sorry but Dragongliding may be many but definataly not immersive!

2 Likes
12

And it shows.
Your pros and cons are mostly VERY subjective.

We should have both options available. Choice is best.

8 Likes
13

Same thing with dragonriding. You do not even need to press auto run. It already goes by itself. So dragonriding is also AFK-flying.

14

Games have to be entertaining, not historically accurate or “realistic”. Immersion is highly subjective. For example I need a game to be engaging, interactive and trigger my spatial awareness to feel immersed.

1 Like
15

It goes by itself, yes. Dismounting in the air is also automatic but I wouldn’t call it afk-flying. The vigor system pushes you forward at the cost of vigor unless you descend. And I had already stated I’d rather make it harder to stay in the air.

I don’t see how the vigor system (maybe better talk about that instead of dragon riding since we are not only talking about dragons anymore) is incompatible with the suggestions we’ve been talking about (for example, slowly spending vigor to float still). And I’d say any kind of object would fly easier if pumped up by any air gale tbh.

I do agree that the vigor system as is (tailored for winged dragons) may look odd, specially with some mounts. But, since we are in a conversation, we can use your contribution to talk about such problems. Thanks!

Gravity, in our worlds, would always make it harder going upwards than downwards; be it a dragon, a magical horse, a copter or a rocket. Anything would need to employ a kind of energy. Respectively: physical (wings), mana (levitate), fuel… actually, with the right animations, it would make the vigor system way more immersive in your terms.

That leads me to think about the idea that mounts could have “passives”, even if they were quite generic (like hunter pets), where they’d gain more speed, more altitude or spend less vigor while resting, etc.

It’s already a bit off topic, but having mount specs and skills sounds great to me.

Also, following your example, imagine how much more impressive (and immersive) it would be to witness a REAL DRAGON (such as any Aspect) float still eternally while our mount needs to rest from time to time, even if it’s so majestic.

16

It is not harder. You just go up by pressing 2. get your dragon in the direction. And afk. done. When it is possible to make the tour afk on normal flying you can do it on a dragon too.

2 Likes
17

No Thanks.

Dragon riding is not good for me.
There is room in the game for both systems, there is no need to remove one of them.
Let those of us who struggle with Dragon Riding have our standard flying. You can laugh at us as you whizz past on your super-speed dragons, that’s fine, just let us get on with playing the game as we wish.

5 Likes
18

Afk flying aka old flying, should be removed from this game. It ruinned world immersion/player interaction right from the TBC. And now with the addition of dragonriding it serve no purpose. Its boring, its slow, its botfriendly.

With dragonriding at least you can’t just afk in the air. And it needs you to do something to stay in the air. So the world feel more alive and interactive.

And no, having both flying systems is dumb. People like to lie they have “motion sickness” just so they can keep exploit afk/old flying. They probably use bots. There’s no real reason to keep the old system in the game. Just make the old flying mounts work on dragonriding and be done with it.

Also, keep us on the ground more! everyone being in the air non stop kill the immersion/interaction.

2 Likes
19

They tried this.
Didn’t work. They lost so many players they had to give us Demon Hunters as an apology.
If they try it again they’ll need to give us High Elves, Tinkers and Necromancers by way of reparations.

2 Likes
20

That is exactly why I suggest merging. it keeps both on 1 mount.