[Column] World of Warcraft: To Fly or Not to Fly? That is the Question

SBFord · June 2015

Flying in the Warlords of Draenor expansion to World of Warcraft has generated a lot of discussion and controversy over the past several weeks. In this week’s column, we take a look at the controversy and how Blizzard has addressed the concerns of the WoW community.

Read more of Suzie Ford's and Catherine Daro's World of Warcraft - To Fly or Not to Fly? That is the Question.

meonthissite · June 2015

Not to fly in the beginning of the expansion is always the best policy. They handled it beautifully in WotLK and using that model would have saved them alot of grief from the community had they followed it again.

nomadie · June 2015

I gave up on this game long ago. I did get an email and saw some posts that they said they would not ever bring flying to Draenor.... Two weeks later they said they're? Looks like Blizzard being Blizzard and giving in to the ones who complain about how hard the game is without flying.

hallucigenocide · June 2015

i like wpvp so i've never really been a fan of flying.

anyway this will probably keep players happy for a short while.. at least til they realize flying improves nothing and has no more impact on gameplay than toys or cosmetics.

Righteous_Rock · June 2015

I said keep free roaming out, let people use there mounts between hubs only, at this point who cares though, while wow goes strong, more power to it, but the game is just the same old same anymore and it's been that way for a while.

Radoo · June 2015

Come on folks, let this game die already.

It's time to move on. We need innovative titles that revolutionize the market. WoW has lived long enough and has imprinted many mmos out there. We'll still be playing the same sauce other wise, for decades to come.

azmundai · June 2015

who cares? theres nothing to do besides lobby based content anyway .. i mean i guess it will shave 64 seconds off the time it takes me to get to mythic raids .. but .. yea .. who cares?

observer · June 2015

Removing flying was a bad idea, and they let it continue for 3 expansions after BC. It wouldn't have been much of a problem if they removed it after BC, but they let it fester. Their argument for removing it is very weak too. It's laughable even. It's basically because they didn't want to trivialize their treasure finding. What's next? They going to remove mount travel? After all, it's trivializing exploration.

MadFrenchie · June 2015

Originally posted by observer
Their argument for removing it is very weak too. It's laughable even. It's basically because they didn't want to trivialize their treasure finding. What's next? They going to remove mount travel? After all, it's trivializing exploration.

Gaining faster travel on the ground, thereby still being required to pass by points of interest and mobs, does not equate to simply flying over all that (meaning unless the player went through the trouble to constantly point their camera downward during travel, they literally see nothing but the sky).

Once you get above the content and you're staring at the sky tracking yourself on the map, it literally might as well be fast travel in the traditional RPG sense. I completely understand why Blizzard didn't want to enable this for folks coming into WoD. Especially with all the complaints about lack of new content from Blizzard; folks would just fly over the majority of the new content created by the expansion and complain that it wasn't there (though it is their own fault for missing it).

Herase · June 2015

I love flying, but hate when it's just dropped in without any thought. Blizz made a decision and had alright argument for doing what they did, 10x better than those who didn't like it.

To me was whole heap of drama over nothing, Flying lost all meaning from Cata onwards, turned from something cool and interesting to just a convenience tool.

tordurbar · June 2015

Don't like the compromise. It means that I have to grind, grind and grind ad nauseum. Being a casual player I will never be able to fly in Draenor. I could live with it but now the new crafting material is only available in the Taanan Jungle. So this means that I will be ponying up to a resource and someone is going to fly in and take it.

I have a lot of fun with WOD and garrisons but I think this compromise is going to be a gamebreaker for me.

Bladestrom · June 2015

Yup that's why flying is crap, it devalues the world, it becomes flight hops node to node, the content is an irrelevance, those who want to enjoy the content on the ground face getting hazy noes on every node thru come across in their travels.

Distopia · June 2015

Originally posted by Bladestrom
Yup that's why flying is crap, it devalues the world, it becomes flight hops node to node, the content is an irrelevance, those who want to enjoy the content on the ground face getting hazy noes on every node thru come across in their travels.

I can't really see it like that, regardless of the game in question. What's the real difference between it and fast travel for starters, on top of that I find a constant need to fight every 5m to have a far more detrimental impact on the world. It's simply unrealistic. It also completely removes the importance of combat, which should be an engaging visceral experience, it just becomes a boring chore. I think this is where MMO's fall behind the curve the most.

Bladestrom · June 2015

And yet it works in other games just fine. The impact is not on the person who is flying, it's on the player who does not. All the other arguements are well known.

Bladestrom · June 2015

Put it this way, the arguements for flying in wow (you don't see it in other MMO) is convenience. Is convenience great gameplay?

Kothoses · June 2015

The whole argument for flying that people put forward is feeling "Punished", let them have their fliers as ground mounts, then that part is taken care of.. oh wait.

No the truth of it is people had gotten used to the mechanic of being able to bypass mobs, terrain hazards and puzzles and basically anything that required effort.

So when effort was required to gather materials, complete achievements etc they cried, and blizzard pandered to them.

The next whine will be about how people feel its unfair to have to work for flying and how those with "No lives have an in game advantage"

Expect to see this achievement watered down even more, Blizz doesnt have the spine to stick to their design principles they just eventually go where ever the vocal whiners want them to.

That is why their game has devolved from a world of interest challenges to a very large and pretty lobby.

gervaise1 · June 2015

No flying because it would be better? Or more of a grind? So this will make it worse?

As the expansion was designed with flying built in were they not confident in their decision? Or did they always intend to add flying "later"?

They listened? Or lost 3M subscribers?

Two possible conclusions: they messed up or they planned to do this pre-launch. I suspect flying was always going to be reintroduced but - I suspect - not this soon.

Very difficult not to be cynical.

If they had truly listened then - imo - they would have had flying from day 1; with its own dangers built in.

Solar_Prophet · June 2015

Only Blizzard would be stupid enough to make a flying mount part of a collector's edition for an expansion which wasn't going to allow flying.

There are a hundred different ways they could have handled flying in Draenor. How about simply making some areas 'no-fly zones' like Wintergrasp? How about adding dangerous flying mobs which can grab you and carry you into a no-fly zone if you're not paying attention? How about anti-aircraft cannons set up by the Iron Horde which can hit you if you're just flying in a straight line, which not only knock you off your mount, but give you a 'shot down' debuff that lasts for an hour or so that prevents you from flying again?

But no, they go with, "Because we said so! It's our game, and our rules, play by them or GTFO!" Well, guess what? 3+ million people GOT THE F**K OUT.

Blizzard seriously needs to hire some new creative talent, as it's obvious that their current staff just doesn't care anymore. Too busy counting the money which doesn't get put back into WoW development, I suspect.

Albatroes · June 2015

Sadly, flight wont make this game any better lol. They kinda messed up too much this expansion. They should just stick releasing new classes/races.

Kaneth · June 2015

Personally, I enjoyed the lack of flight when I played WoD, but at the same time Blizzard opened the can of worms by adding flight to the game in TBC. To attempt to permanently remove a mechanic that has been part of the majority of the game's lifecycle was an extremely poor choice, and the backlash they received showed how out of touch they are with the community as a whole.

They could have kept flight out of WoD, since it was basically stated to be a non flying expansion and left it alone there. The fact that they implied that flight was going to be permanently removed was a completely stupid decision on their part.

It's pretty clear that any of their talented people are off working on other projects. Based on the goofy crap they've been doing over the last year or so, they obviously have the B-squad running WoW.

Yocraig · June 2015

It's great that they are going to give WoW players flying back. It's too bad that it requires achievements that basically mean they'll get to fly only after they've completed most of the game's content. Yes this is a compromise, but it's weighted heavily still towards no flying.

junitalia · June 2015

I think WoW has run it's course. I only wish there was another MMO that could surpass that hype. Let's hope with the dawn of the newer MMO's, one of them will take up the charge.

daltanious · June 2015

Originally posted by meonthissite
Not to fly in the beginning of the expansion is always the best policy. They handled it beautifully in WotLK and using that model would have saved them alot of grief from the community had they followed it again.

No fly before maxing out alt is - imo - always best policy. Only that. And fly mounts are trade mark od Wow .. and they have now ruined that. Anyway ... before Wod I had 22 alts all maxed out, 11 horde and 11 alliance. I must admit had great joy as usually to play expansion. Only that this time for the first time this joy lasted barely 1 month, compared to usual 6 or 7. Then I lost all wish to play and I'm not considering for now to return. I just can not believe myself, once my best ever game of all times. WOD for me is total fail. If not for other then because it is just kind of BC II. Meh. With every expansion mistakes have accumulated, Wod is just culmination. MOP was for me best expansion second slightly only to WOTLK. I had impression they finnaly got it ... obviously not. And If I'm right or not ... well time will show.

JaggaSpikes · June 2015

imo, no perma flying. it just cheapens the experience. taxi are fine, but not flying always-anywhere. maybe something like 1 minute of free flying with 10 minute cooldown

Parepin · June 2015

Originally posted by Radoo
Come on folks, let this game die already.

It's time to move on. We need innovative titles that revolutionize the market. WoW has lived long enough and has imprinted many mmos out there. We'll still be playing the same sauce other wise, for decades to come.

Isn't this what Crowfall is doing? Take a revolutionary concept that was before WoW (and forgotten about) and put it into a modern game.

Fdzzaigl · June 2015

They shouldn't ever have done flying, no matter how exciting it seemed (also to me) at first when they announced it in Burning Crusade.

Unless they could have incorporated it as a gameplay mechanic, like Aion's limited time flying or Archeage's gliding. Not as a way to basically skip large portions of the game world and its content.

It's far too late for them to change it though, their community is too accustomed to the lazy sloth it brings. Even though it might ultimately be bad for them.

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[Column] World of Warcraft: To Fly or Not to Fly? That is the Question

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