Indeed, the current compromise seems to be the only one that gives both parties a period where the game works how they enjoy it.
indeed. they just need to rework pathfinder to not be such a pain in the behind and make it actually fun.
to be frank, i havent read the whole thread but why dont we have pathfinder + those hiking thingies (and similar stuff) we had in stormheim?
this way when pathfinder is done and everyone flies, those who want to use ground mounts can still get around using certain tools. 
its like two flies with one stone. the world is designed for flying, yet you need to give people something for that one year they cant fly to get around. so they have to implement it anyways, why not build up on it?
The grapple hook thing?
Part 1: get the “exploration” and “loremaster” achievement for each zone. Part 2: pay a flying trainer. Everyone’s “had fun” doing the content and seeing the zones and the flat-earthers non-fliers can keep having fun by not doing part 2.
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yeah! sorry couldnt think of the word. 
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Honestly, I’d rather grind rep for a month than pay gold (unless it’s a really low amount of course). 
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Ideally we’d be able to do either one. Multiple paths to the same goal; either buy the flying, TBC/WotLK/MoP style, or “earn” it somehow.
This is such a good post, but it just gets ignored because there is no good answer against the reasoning in it, because it’s absolutely true.
The counters all boil down to just “Just don’t mount up, respect my wishes”. This argument is also known as “**** you and your understanding of human psychology. I want this so I deserve to have it.”
It is impossible to reason when this position is put forward. The only thing that can be said is “Why should I? You don’t respect mine.”
And then everybody just starts fighting. And then comes that ridiculous compromise where we can’t fly while the content is what entices us (so travelling is annoying) but can fly while the emergent gameplay is all that’s left, leaving nobody happy.
I suppose you could shard them out, but that’s going to cause some particularly ridiculous shard-hopping. We already have 1 layer of shard-hopping, and that’s annoying enough. Can we please not add more?
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Actually I’d even prefer Blizzard unlocking flying at some point mid-leveling like they did with Wrath. It gave Blizz much more freedom to be creative with their zone design. Icecrown and even more so Storm Peaks was specifically designed with flying as a feature in mind and not as the creative burden they are treating it as ever since.
Just imagine the zones they could create with flying as a feature. But instead of Vertical zones with impressively tall buildings or hovering islands we get the usual with blizzard already dreading the moment we get to fly and aren’t forced to ride around in the woods anymore. Sure ever since we can fly Voldun, Stormsong Valley etc have lost some of their beauty and impressiveness but that’s because they were designed to ride around in and not to fly through.
Shadowlands gives Blizzard an opportunity to redifine what their zones can be like. It’s another plane of existence populated by, among others, Angels and other winged beings. And yet it’s going to be the same “impressive to ride through” world design that becomes boring the second we can fly simply because flying is an obstacle blizz is trying to hold back instead of a feature they work with.
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Here’s an idea I’ve just been playing around with, let me know what you all think. also, I wondered if I should make a new topic with this idea because I think it has merit.
People have complained about professions being a bit of waste of time. what if flying ability was a consumable/buff that is created by professions?
The amount of this consumable/buff could be unlimited but dependant on the resources that you farm via your professions.
Also, it would be a one time use, where you use it to activate flying but once you land, you lose the effect. This would add some strategy.
of course this comes with the caveat that blizz don’t add in annoying dailies that make people sick to death of the world.
It’s just a concept that I thought up that I imagined would make flight a strategic decision and also make professions more relevant.
It’s not a perfect idea and would need a lot of tinkering to iron out any issues people might have, but what do you think of the concept?
Honestly, that would only lead to that specific comsumable being fully mandatory and nothing else. It would also delegate professions to a “I have to grind useless stuff in order to fly” system.
Not a terrible idea in theory but it just wouldn’t work out as a strategic descision in reality but in a burden on the players who would end up having to farm constantly just in order to move through the world normally.
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How about no just stop ruining the game for the players who like flying and have to wait a year + already stick to your shard idea and stop trying to tell others how to enjoy the game .
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Im not going to row with you im past that but please stop thinking people dont know there own minds its insulting and you are better than that .
The shard idea is ok but why do others insist on annoying other players by removing things constanty.
Let the game be fun for people in different ways.
1000s are dying every day and the world is on the brink of economic collapse and you lot are focused on whining over pixels in a fantasy game meant for fun and relaxation for all.
Stop telling me how to play and what i want .
I want to escape the real world and fly and free my mind .
Some of you need to get a grip and stop making the game mean more than it should .
I want to fly on dragons and escape the dreadful world for the limited time i can play thats my immersion into fantasy think of that before saying yours is the only and right way .
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Don’t misunderstand me, Daestra. I know they know what their minds are. What I’m saying is that they know what their minds are so well that they are impossible to talk to about it.
Nobody who’s arguing for or against flying is doing it to annoy anyone. I promise.
But everybody’s getting annoyed anyway. 
The strange thing about this is that the addition of flying as a mechanic is responsible for removing a lot of emergent gameplay, which is a shame in a game that’s fundamentally about exactly that.
I’m currently working on an application that’s being used for making trillions of dollars in grants to get the global economy going. And while I’m not one of the leading figures and just a guy sitting there doing some programming - just sometimes I need a little break. ^^
But I’m doing what I can. It’s called SimCorp Dimension, if you’re interested.
Wanting escapism and flying on dragons is fine, and I totally support all of that. The problem here is in how World of Warcraft implements flying, and the further problem is that any attempts to discuss it are met with exactly the kind of argument in my quotes.
I also want to say that game design is literally about telling others how to play. That’s what you do when you design a game. You make rules that describe how to play a game. I’m not trying to upset anyone - but to be honest I am getting quite upset myself - and so is everybody else, and that’s what I was saying with that post.
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Alright, I’ll bite. What is your genious solution to this problem that will make everyone happy?
And I want to fly on chickens. But does Blizzard care about that? Nooo. They’re only catering to the dragon crowd. This dragon bias needs to stop! Free the chicken!
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There’s a lot of moving parts.
First we have to get rid of the problems that cause people to want flying, and then we’re going to have to take advantage of no flying.
First we need to flatten the terrain a bit - or at least use verticality more smartly. A lot of the reason people want flying is because they’re sick of windy roads full of mobs dismounting them.
Second we need to provide much better flow in the objectives. Right now we’re running all over the continent looking for objectives which we somehow know are there through some incredible force of magic. If we give our quests more flow and don’t ask people to run that far and give them more variety in doing this, people won’t need to travel as far all the time.
Third we need a very good network of flight points.
And so on. We need to make travelling on the ground not be a pain in butt, basically.
We need to remove things that make it pointless anyway, such as massive phasing and instancing. We need a degree of density of players out in the world - otherwise it’s pointless. This is where WoD failed.
Then we need to take advantage.
If we don’t have flying, we reduce the amount of space that people can meet in from being 3-dimensional to being 2-dimensional. This makes it A LOT more likely you’ll run into someone.
When you run into someone, you should be able to run past them some of the time, but usually something should happen. Give them the same objectives, put in items that they can play around with.
Provide a gradient of danger vs reward. The further away something is, the more dangerous the mobs and the higher the chance of meeting a player from the opposing faction.
Use the scale and scope to wow people with huge structures. Atal’dazar is an amazing example of this, by the way. It looks a lot less intimidating from the skies, though.
Or use the scale and uniqueness of the world to give various puzzles - jumping puzzles or read a description puzzles, so players must learn navigate using the world instead of map markers. Compelling them to do that gets them to truly know the terrain.
Use progressively harder areas and enemy encampments to keep players out of areas they’re not yet ready for, thus creating a dynamic unlocking of things over time to keep a constant sense of larger-than-life exploration and delving.
That’s how I’d do it.
I’d very much welcome a discussion on those points instead of just being treated like I’m a troll just out to upset people. It’s actually really annoying. Everyone doing that plus the argument “I want it so it should be in the game” is why tempers run hot.
Most games like WoW don’t have flying, by the way. I just want to put that out there. Whether they’re single player or multiplayer, even. It’s not because people can’t implement WoW’s flying system. I could and literally have implemented that in an afternoon for an exam project in 3D graphics like 8 years ago. The camera, too. It’s because they don’t want it. Skyrim’s engine, for example, has flying. It’s a console command though, because it makes the game terrible for anything else than debugging. They understand.
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No, they run hot because of your stupid passive-aggressiveness. if you can’t take the heat, stay out of the kitchen.
Now, I’ll alnowledge that you’ve at least put effort into replying constructively, so I’ll humour you with a serious answer:
You seem to be under some strange impression that people like flying purely because of how convenient it is. Perhaps some do, but a lot of people, myself included, like it excuses of the immersion, because it gives depth to movement in space and because it gives a different perspective on the world.
That sounds horrible, sorry. Degrading the feel and complexity of the world for the sake of forcing people to meet? What exactly will that accomplish aside from making the world feel cheaper?
I don’t see why this can’t be done with flying. Make the air dangerous in some areas and provide a series of aerial challenges that will keep the players entering those areas on their toes.
Let’s agree to disagree here. I don’t think it looks less intimidating or impressive from the skies, but this is a subjective area in which neither of us are right or wrong. It’s purely a matter of taste.
Good idea, but they can simply do that and disable flying around those puzzles by implementing some weather effects, magic or other reasons why flying mounts are unable to be used there to make it impossible to cheese them. Also, puzzles can be implemented in the air as well, to give flying even more depth.
This can still be done by restricting flying in those areas. You can’t fly on Alcaz Isle for instance, because you get shot down by rockets.
Alright, and if I wanted an MMO without flying, I’d just…play those other MMOs. I play GW2 and WoW.
What I’d suggest is that flying is given more flavour and to make flying work with the world instead of being completely disconnected from it. From areas designed to be reached by flying and obstacles which interact with flying and makes you use it wisely, to puzzles which require good flying skills, to flying races like the Jade Serpent racing, etc. Lots of potential to make flying fun and not cheapen the world.
I like flying. But I don’t like it just because it makes things easier. I like it because it is great for RP, immersion, exploration from a completely different perspective, appreciation of the world from above, etc.
There you go. I trust this is satisfying enough a reply for you?
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Ah yes, that must be my stupid passive-aggressiveness right there.
So you’re going to promise me a serious and constructive answer while accusing me of being passive-aggressive, and then you use phrases like “You seem to be under some strange impression”
Really?
Anyway, I don’t see how it gives depth to movement? Unless you mean literal depth as in 3 dimension. It actually removes you having to think about movement at all. And when Blizzard tried to make you think while flying by putting in the worm from beyond, half the community lost their minds.
I guess the other half are like you, then.
It’ll make people meet. That’s an objective in and of itself. It very strongly relates to providing a social aspect and community. If you don’t meet anyone, let alone don’t meet anyone you know, then there’s no point making the game an MMO.
It can be. It’s a bit tricky and the areas have to be way bigger, but it can be. It’s just that WoW’s ain’t it.
This sounds like a good idea on paper, but I’ve tried it. Blizzard did this with Wintergrasp in WotLK, and people were AFK’ing over it because of course they were, that’s how people use flying, and people fell to their deaths and QQ’d about it - and I get it. That is annoying.
By just putting a flight path that gets you over Wintergrasp without allowing you to swoop down and break the flow of Wintergrasp or getting over the walls of the fort, this whole problem is completely avoided.
WotLK is also host to two zones that used flying mounts extremely well, though. It’s a shame Blizzard haven’t been able to replicate that - but I think that is a big part of the point.
You can kindda get away with this if you put the zone way off to the side on some island or something, which is what Blizzard did in Cataclysm, but it really sucks.
You can get all this to work as far as gameplay is concerned, but you’re still hurting the social interaction (we can’t find one another) and you’re still giving people the ability to just navigate around the terrain instead of through it, even if not always its inhabitants, so you’re damaging the sense of world.
And even all this isn’t really what people are arguing for. They’re arguing for WoW’s flying, and WoW’s flying is godawful. I know this because I see them complaining about getting shot down all the time.
And the thing about these suggestions is that a lot of it requires a complete restructuring of how the world is built anyway, and so our little compromise with flying just ends up doing nothing good for either of us.
Not entirely, but it was a heckuvalot closer than anything I’ve gotten up to this point, so I’ll take it. Thank you.
If you’re passive aggressive toward me, why should I be any different to you?
Ok, but you dint have to remove flying in order to create a better gameplay experience that’s will make people more social. That’s another issue completely. Blame it on the fact that nothing outside of M+, rated PvP and raids requires any sort of social interactions.
If people don’t want to interact with one another, flying won’t change that. I’ve had almost zero interactions even before flying was implemented in 8.2. Why? Because I had no reason to.
And again, if you accommodate the terrain and the 3D space to support flying and not work independently of it, then this problem could be solved.
I doubt it’s that hard with their current tech and resources. It’d actually give the game some fresh new possibilities, instead of everything just being same old stuff from previous expansions but with new coat of paint over it.
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