It should be a reward, a thing that you strive to, not something that you start with as a main gameplay feature…
While flying is convinient and a nice features, it also makes it impossible to get into the zone, party with local folks or get you to care admire it (something WoW has long been known for).
What was really good about Legion, BfA and SL is that you started on ground, got into it and connected, and lastly got flying as a great reward on top of it. The only problem was the annoying rep grind (if I ever hear “another turtle made it zo the water” again I’ll loose my mind)… but if the rep grind was removed, it would’ve been an awesome experiance.
So, imo, TWW should start on ground, except for a few specifuc quests, and later you can unlock flying by meeting certain requirements:
Explore the zones.
Complete the main story.
Complete Soujourner achievements in all 4 zones.
Complete max level Campaign.
Unlock Earthen allied race.
(Maybe) Some low Reknown level and other minor reps.
(Big maybe) Complete 8 dungeon quests and the raid quest.
I really don’t get how there’s so many of you still out there, That don’t understand that “Times change”, MMORPGs no longer cater to the “slow progression” crowd.
These days there’s so many games and so many others things people can spend their time on, so companies REALLY have to fight to keep players engaged.
Back in 2005, WoW was the only good thing around and people also used WoW as simply a Social media Thus why it had such an insane popularity.
These days people have like countless different platforms to speak to other people online, so they don’t seek out MMORPGs any more.
Flying used to be obtained like this.
It took a tremendous amount of effort to collect all the gold in the first place to purchase the skill to unlock it. Especially the top speed one, we’re talking thousands of gold where you got a few gold on average per complete quests.
Then you had to grind reputation with factions to the maximum to unlock the mounts as well. Druids had it “a little bit” easier in that they unlocked their flightforms through a quest when reaching the appropriate levels and skills.
And back then this was the norm.
Do I want to go through this hassle again?
Absolutely not. The time commitment and gate-keeping was ridiculous as parts of the game weren’t even doable unless you had flying unlocked.
However,
I do feel that certain things should be done through quests.
Just not as a gate-keeping mechanism, but as slow immersion to get people familiar with everything.
I have no strong feelings one way or another.
I hated not having flying during leveling when the map was low res and you often ended up having to backtrack around a mountain since you couldn’t see where the paths are.
But I also think flying takes away some of the immersion (though dragonriding gave back some of it through interaction).
All in all if the zones are designed with no flying in mind, I don’t really care whether it’s unlocked right away or not.
If they manage to explain through the lore of the place why you can’t fly at first but later can, I don’t mind… but if it’s terribly explained like now “oh, out of the blue through some game mechanic the animals who could always fly and still can fly as long as no one sits on them now suddenly can’t fly here as your mount” then I prefer going with flying from the start.
An no, just the “need for a flying license” won’t do… because in an emergency our characters would still mount up any fly instead of dying or taking the way longer route around.
No. Pathfinder can go. Levelling to max and unlocking it was fair enough but now it is integral to the world. You work on getting customisations and mounts instead.
That. Most quests probably won’t require aerial movement and if there’s areas you need to reach that way you could always just immediately dismount and then sit still or dance for a few minutes and pretend you ran all the way there
I don’t think I agree with this notion that it is a reward or that it needs striving.
But I do agree that the world felt better when you did the initial questing and exploring on foot.
Flying comes into its own when it comes to end game chores (for want of a better word) like professions, WQs, getting to dungeons, open world events.
For me Pathfinder achievements were the right idea but the wrong implementation. They were too late in coming and too grindy.
Flying should be.
Complete the Main Campaign.
Explore the zones.
Done, Account Wide unlock.
I don’t really mind unlocking flying but i sure as hell would like to get that flying unlocked when i am at end level not having to wait 6+ months for bull crap excuses.
I played DF in the first release month just by walking. And I agree. Being forced (even voluntarily) to take your time and actually read the quest text instead of flying from A to B all the time adds a lot to the fun. People these days are just too spoiled to not being patient anymore.
Personally I would say, once you complete the story for the first time on an account, you can use flying. That sounds fair to me.
Idk I had a lot of fun reading the quest text and then flying from A to B. I really don’t get these non flying arguments, if people are engaged in the story they will read the quest text, if people aren’t they won’t. Same goes for flying if you don’t like it don’t use it.
I for example despise ground travel and feel more emersed in the world when I can see it from above.
