People complain or defend pathfinder, and overall I kind of like the idea behind it, even if farming for it would make me want to gouge out my eyes. But the real problem behind it is that… with Pathfinder, zones cannot be designed for flying. Every zone needs to be designed around ground mounts, because players will be using those 90% of the time.
Due to the giant discrepancy between fly speed and ground mobility, this ends up making zones feel tiny when you unlock flying in them. The entire Zuldazar feels about as big as Durotar.
But when you think of how zones were designed in TBC and WoTLK, they were massive, expansive, with exclusive “flight only” zones, and it felt like you needed to fly, you were meant to fly in them. Flying didn’t delete the zone like it does in Legion and BFA.
This is not an anti-flight post. I like flying, but I hope Blizzard will go back to designing their zones with flying in mind. Shadowlands zones seem to be much more expansive than what we had in Legion or BFA, and I heard flying will be just an unlockable you buy with gold so maybe everything will be good in Shadowlands.
I dont think this is a problem, blizz has outright said flying was a mistake. The whole point of pathfinder was to force us to the ground and experience the zones.
But the nzoth stuff definitely feels like they assume you have flying, so its good to have the option with old expansions. While northrend zones beind designed with flying is cool imagine doing that today.
Im sorry in order to progress you must buy flying for x gold. Most would not care but people with no gold would be up in arms
Maybe just have flying be baseline and free? The only reason it used to cost money is to flush gold out of the game, but now with the WoW token, that’s really not ideal. Design the zones to be expansive, so flying doesn’t make them feel tiny. Being grounded in Classic feels good, despite the lack of flying, so giant zones can only be good - feel good grounded, feel good while flying. It’s perfect.
They did? I can’t find anything more about it than them trying to please both camps.
They reversed their stance of “no flying in Dreanor”, so if anything then they have actually admitted that removing it was a mistake (at least as well).
I honestly think they just did that to let it be a viable levelimg area in shadowlands. Why would you level in wod or legion with no flying when you could level in another expansion with flying
They said it going into bfa as there was a huge argument between players asking for flying vs blizzard saying they will probably do pathfinder again. And the reason was they wanted to keep players grounded for the main bulk of the expansion.
I am an avid supporter of flying: Northrend is one of my favorite continents because of it, but I do think that being grounded has its charms: cruising on you chopper/hog gives a feeling flying just doesn’t.
The only real issue with large open zones is having the tightrope of having enough content to justify the size of it, without it seeming cramped. In WoD onwards blizzard seem to have leaned towards the latter side.
I don’t want to be one of those “WotLK was the best expansion and anyone who disagrees can go toss themselves” guys, but I do think that new expansions could learn a bit from Northrend. It’s by no means perfect (too flat imo), but it kept that balance rather elegantly.
I prefer being grounded in WoD, Legion and BFA. But flying is just too big of an advantage to not use it. The issue is about how much the zones and their design clashes with flying at its core. I LOVED Nazjatar while grounded. I want Blizzard to do more of that. But then I unlocked flying and all of the level design they did was deleted and Nazjatar became tiny. I think WoW’s designers shouldn’t fight with the systems they have put in place, but play with them. WoW’s systems encourage more expansive and flat zones. If they want ‘no fly zones’, they can have them - put expansive caves and undergrounds, or go crazy with the dungeon designs. I personally want more dungeons like Waycrest Manor - non-linear, a bit labyrinthian… but the zones themselves should just be BIG.
Seconded. We need D&D-style dungeons. Boss kill order should not matter unless you’re pushing high keys, and most fortresses/caves/encampments would not be laid out in a line with 1 or 2 bends thrown in.
Yet WM was a pain when it came to Mythic plus. I would have preferred it had a set route for that rather than having to play the ‘lets see what door we go through this run’.
After 13 years of playing wow, I am bored to death by doing all anoying useless reputation. That´s why i don´t have pathfinder. I don´t even need to go outside of city anyway, queue is almost for everything and if not somebody can always summon you.
Pathfinder is not bad because people are getting it naturally while playing the game (terrible to catch up though), the problem is postponing pathfinder part 2 so long into the expansion.
Here’s the thing with TBC and WOTLK stuff you’re saying. Most of the zones are just big flat nothing. Not much details or anything specific in them. Bigger isn’t always better. There’s nothing wrong with more compact. Mechagon was one of the favorite zones for most players even though it’s the smallest thing in bfa.
The gameplay matters a lot more than size .
As for pathfinder, As long as it’s not the MAIN JOB for your game, it’s fine. The problem with BFA was the fact that the game was in such a bad state that pathfinder became something that turned to end goal instead of being something that happened while you pursued the end goal.
Bruh, I quit WoW during WOTLK, came back a few months before BFA launched and even I am bored of reps. I think WQs as a way of farming reps is really, really bad. It doesn’t make you feel involved with the faction you’re helping at all, you’re just running around and clearing a map of the markers on it. I think 8.3 brought a really good implementation of WQs in the assaults, those little objectives that show up when you’re near them, but not on the map… I really hope they decide to make farming rep be an activity that is unique to each faction.
