It will be there yes, but at a later phase imo.
I’m not sure if socialness is the primary argument against flying. Part of it, maybe. It is preferable to see other players in the world than unknowingly having them whiz through the air above your head. But flight has had a negative impact on many other aspects of the game as well. I’d argue one important aspect that was severely harmed by flight was exploration. Exploring via flight can be fun and TBC had a modicum of success in this regard, seeing as the very continent lent itself to the idea. However World of Warcraft makes for a very poor flight sim – the mechanic used for flying seem to have been copied from swimming. It’s that basic. At least swimming has a breath meter, if only we had something similar for flight.
Another aspect, although it’s a pretty moot point as far as Classic is concerned, but flight really damaged world pvp. My memories of world pvp in TBC came from Isle of Quel’danas, a zone without flying. And in Cataclysm I had a period where I primarily played for the World PvP – on Tol Barad and later the Firelands zone. All because you could not fly there.
So flying sucks. That’s my opinion. But it’s in the game so what can you do … really, what can you do? Blizzard tried to remove it in Warlords of Draenor but they saw a pretty massive backlash and as they often do when they try to go back on something they absolutely folded. Because the majority are right. The majority are also playing on one-sided mega-servers.
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RDF too? Its in the game too, at least in WOTLK (be it ICC phase)
I was being facetious, just trying to make a point about RDF removal. Personally I don’t play alts so I don’t care all that much, but anything that makes alt play easier for others is a good thing. The tome, like any other Wrath convenience feature not directy related to raid progress should be in from the start.
I love monofaction megaservers. Unironically. It’s literally having my cake and eating it too. The population to fill your guilds and raids with competent players without the griefing in to open world. The fact it makes the open world griefers seethe is a cherry on top.
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A fun QoL feature detected! Time to remove it regards blizzard.
What is it with classic players and the optimal “classic gaming experience” they thrive for? Why does everything need to be as slow and tedious and annoying as possible? It is not an accomplishment to get a second character to 80 and I don’t see why the leveling process couldn’t be a bit faster on your alts with the introduction of early flying.
For some reason many classic fans want the game to be as slow and things to be as hard as possible (RDF being one example as well). Why is this? Are you all masochists or why do you enjoy slower leveling or slower grouping or harder this and that? People even whining about the 50% EXP increase buff, I just don’t get it. And at the same time 90% of the player base leveled their characters by sitting in dungeon boosts before it got nerfed.
So you want things to be time consuming and annoying, even though in the end you still try to minmax the crap out of everything to make it as fast and easy as possible. Isn’t this all kind of contradictory?
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Blizz’s dumb logic for removing RFD could perfectly apply to cold weather flying tome as well. They are so incompetent and random with what they change and not change.
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Because the “classic gaming experience” cannot be found in retail nor in any other MMO. I’ve tried almost all of them and they all fail where classic succeeds. It’s been a difficult thing to describe because people come up with impossible arguments akin to “what you experienced did not happen.”
So let me just reiterate: the classic experience cannot be found elsewhere. If you want a convenient MMORPG because of [insert whatever reason you can come up with] then retail has got you covered. I cannot find my classic experience in retail.
I do get it. If you don’t then that may be because you see the levelling only as a chore that stands in the way for you and the end game. Someone else might see the levelling as the content that they want to do and couldn’t care less about the end game. Levelling faster means that you won’t have as much time to enjoy new items because they’ll soon be replaced, and it means you won’t get to explore as much because you’ll quickly outlevel the content. And fighting grey mobs isn’t very engaging gameplay.
The reason why I’m against convenience (like flying and RDF) is because it lessens the immersion and the sensastion that you are “in a world”. The main appeal of MMORPGs, in my view, is the ability to enter a fictional world as an inhabitant of said world. Older MMOs did this well, newer MMOs don’t. And whenever you introduce something that diminishes the world you also diminish that sense of immersion.
Perhaps its a reflection of today’s society – the constant desire for instant gratification – but I want my MMORPGs to be slower, and the activities I do in them to be more deliberate.
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I don’t see the problem, there’s next to no group quests in Northrend (especially not before lvl 77), and instances have summoning stones anyway.
Also, very skewed conjecture. Who is more likely to demand min-maxing, do you think? The person who wants less convenience or the person who wants more?
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wotlk is already screwed with the removal of RFD and now you want more conveniences to be removed… if you dont like WotLK why dont you play season of Mastery??? WotLK WAS CONVENIENT and thats why is the best expansion so far. Stop trying to destroy it…
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And I cannot find my Classic gameplay in Retail either, so as you can see these claims are kinda mutually exclusive. They can’t make everyone happy.
If they completely removed flying for WotLK it may have been worth playing! Now all there is to do is gank people in STV on fresh servers to prevent them from ever reaching that crappy expansion 
Removing RDF (or Tome of Cold Weather Flight – I feel like the thread is nearly derailing) won’t affect the gameplay of WOTLK. Classes will still have the same abilities, bosses will still have the same mechanics. If you want to play WOTLK for the gameplay then you will be able to.
The argument that CWF tome is somehow unfair is so weak that it’s not even funny. Literally, everyone is on an even playing field with this one, get one character to max level → you can get CWF on alts early.
I really can’t comprehend why some people hate the idea of playing alts to this extent.
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Guess what, they revamped flying in new expansion, you should check it out.
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I am aware. It looks much better than the current version of flying we’ve got going. I can’t say that “flight” is one of the strong selling points for me, though. I honestly don’t care about their revamped flying as I’d rather have seen flight removed altogether.
Well I’d rather have both to be honest. My point was more that the WoW population doesn’t cleanly divide between “Retail” and “Classic” players, and the reasons why people prefer one or the other aren’t the same for everyone. I just don’t see why WotLK Classic should be catering to people who clearly prefer something OTHER THAN WotLK.
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Okay, but what does count as people who want WotLK? Is it 3.0, 3.1, 3.2, 3.3 or 3.3.5a?
For RDF we basically have 3 crowds, people who want it at start, those who want it in ICC phase and those who don’t want it at all.
As for cold weather flying I could go either way, but I’m leaning a little bit in the direction to add it in a later phase.
Most people will try to rush their profession alts to get a head start on crafting.
I’ll probably do the same too, but I can accept being slowed down a little bit at the start of the expansion.
It’s probably not the end of the world that you can’t fly instantly with your 26th alt.
Thankfully there is no scaling so bots still have to level up to start farming.
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I mean, if the discussion was about at what point to introduce RDF, exactly, I would understand. But people who don’t want RDF don’t really count as “people wanting WotLK” at all - especially not when they instead are okay with a tool that never was in WotLK to begin with. It just feels like a stupid decision on part of Blizz devs who, themselves, are more partial to Vanilla WoW to begin with.
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Here you are just wrong. Grouping up for the average “find this many of X”-quests is quicker as you 1) don’t have to compete for mobs, 2) killing mobs together is more than double the efficiency. Plus, almost always the “find this many X”-quests are bundled together with “kill this many X”-quests, encouraging grouping up.
It is not to remove to not add in a feature that was not present at Wrath launch. It would be equivalent of adding ICC and all other raids tiers from the start (which you don’t want, and think is OK to not include even though the game runs on a patch that would have included it). You know it’s dishonest argumentation when you are the only pro-RDF people on here actually have the big b***s to admit you just want convenience.
There not being flying in the first couple of zones, and there not being any automated systems to take people to the dungeons forced people to interact with the world and the other players in a way in which does not exist at all on retail. You will find dungeons super easy for at least the first, or first and a half or possibly more of this Classic expansion.
“The world is the main character”, fostering positive social norms, and all that.
That is what classic offers that retail does not. If you have 45 minutes to spare, I highly recommend the video “World of Warcraft and what we left behind” by Folding Ideas.
Yes, you are completely right that we want to be inconvenienced. This is the opposite of retail. Also, no, the zelaous min-maxing crowd isn’t the average classic player at all. Both exist for sure, but they are not at all the one and the same.
It is anything but random. Go read the blog post.
So you agree that we can leave flying out until the Ulduar patch.
I have yet to see anyone wanting RDF, but only from ICC patch and forward. People use it as an argument against RDF to say “hey, RFD you can’t take back, let’s do without from the start. I’ll put my money where my mouth is, and you’ll be able to too, since you claim that the game will be practically unplayable for alts.”
“mY wRaTh DiDn’T hAvE tHiS oR tHaT.” This is a very poor argument. You’re not giving a reason why, and you pretend to be #nochanges, while you are most evidently not. It’s dishonest argumentation at best.
A counter-example is how Blizzard from the very start as any details about TBCC was announces, was that leatherworking drums would get quite the hefty nerf. But it was a very good nerf, as you couldn’t benefit from more than one LW in any group at any time.
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