World of Warcraft: Current Year

TJT said:

This is another poignant point of MMO design. For a game that is at is core a gear treadmill how much should you let new players skip so they get to the new content?

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Quality of life things like flying should just be available for all in my opinion when the expansion reaches the point where the devs are okay with flight. Gearing is a more nuanced issue but one of the current problems is that you have too many things to catch up on if you take any significant time off. Legion was bad enough with needing to collect legendary items but in BfA you have Essences, Corruption, legendary cloak, and the azerite pieces. I think that is just too much to have to grind for for a returning player if they want to be competitive in a reasonable amount of time. Back when it was just tier or tier and a legendary like the MoP cloak you could get the relevant pieces at a good pace if you were playing during that patch cycle. I can't ever remember not having all my tier from vanilla to wrath or in mop (I skipped cata). But I certainly didn't get every legendary for anything but my main in legion and having taken breaks in BfA I have never had optimal Azerite in all slots at any point this expansion.

edit: I may have missed the point of your question. I don't like catch up mechanics in MMOs, so I was perfectly fine with you having to progress through content to reach the next raid. That allowed for different skill levels and dedication to play at their own pace and kept all of the raids relevant throughout an expansion. You had your guilds that were progressing Sunwell while others where just puttering around in Kara and SSC. I liked that.

Dom said:

If you want to believe that, I'm not going to try to change your mind. I look at it as a show me, don't tell me situation. They said one thing and did everything to contradict what they said. I do not believe for an instant that they intended to remove flying, and just used their regret that they made it to begin with as an excuse to placate the people complaining about needing to work to unlock it, making them think they lucked out in the end because they chose not to remove it.

"We have altered the deal. Pray we do not alter it further"

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I think the chain of events speaks for itself. "We are evaluating flying" when really, nobody asked them to evaluate flying. They left it out of WoD for the entire expansion until finally, enough people had bitched and complained and even cancelled their subs that they added it in the final patch with Tanaan Jungle. And it was shoehorned in.

Your idea that they were trying to use it as an ultimatum or "my house, my rules" situation makes no sense. Why would they do that? It cost them a lot of grief from the players and a ton of subscription money, and it was the first expansion since TBC where you couldn't just flat out purchase it the second you hit max level. So what exactly did they have to gain by keeping it off the table for the majority of the expansion until the final patch? And if they were going to give it to the players all along why pretend they weren't?

And again, I think they could have gotten away with it if it was handled the way it was in Legion. Make the world easily traversable on ground and add a flight master whistle. Not being able to fly wasn't really a complaint many people had in Legion and BfA (before you could unlock it for each)

Your explanation doesn't make any sense is what I'm saying. And it certainly doesn't answer any questions.

Aaron said:

This is how I have played since the end of Cata. It's mostly been a bit at the start, getting to max level, and then a bit at the end. I can say for a fact that for me at least THIS grind causes more burnout than anything causing me to not want to play instead of just having it and have me muck around doing shit I want to do and... you know... having fun!

BTW does anyone remember what happens at the end/beginning of a new expansion, do they still have the rep grind for flying when a new expansion is out? For example, if someone skipped Legion, do they have to grind out Pathfinder to get flying or is it made simpler now that it's no longer the "top" Expansion?

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Yes you have to go back and do the same pathfinder quest that existed when the content was current. You can't just purchase it. The main difference being if you wait long enough for Timewalking to be unlocked for that previous expansion (usually 2 expansions later), you can get the rep via timewalking and timewalking rep tokens.

Dom said:

Here, let me make it a little more obvious.

Flying bad for game! Wish we hadn't done it!
Can't remove flying! Too much bitching! Need to sell flying mounts!
Remove flying but let them grind to get it back every single expansion!
But they'll bitch about that! We need some way to make them less upset!
Let's hint that we want to take it away but cave into the pressure soon after and make a compromise!
We just added hundreds of hours of grind to the grind pile by tapping into player fears of missing out and becoming weaker, while having far less outrage because they feel like they convinced us to not remove something we weren't going to remove to begin with!
More flying mounts in store
More flying mounts in store
More flying mounts in store
Yeah, we hate it, but we won't put any actual development effort into designing the game around it so we'll just keep removing it each expansion and make you earn it again like everything else
More flying mounts in store
More flying mounts in store
More flying mounts in store

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I understand what you are saying, but you don't seem to understand I am saying that for a business to actually do that... makes no sense. Your reasoning is "Let's show them who's the boss" like they are jilted parents annoyed with their children's bad behavior. So they left flying out for the entirety of the expansion until the very last patch as a "gotcha" moment. "Now you know who really runs shit, so be happy this is still even a game". I just don't get why you think that's a reasonably possible scenario.

That compromise you're talking about took years. It wasn't a "soon after" deal. Did you play WoD at all when it was current?

Then why did you quote me just to say that removing flying was a corporate hoax?

EDIT: Nevermind you didn't quote me. But yea, this really is a stupid argument. It really doesn't matter either way.

TJT said:

You can certainly bar access to places with flying which can make it useful and cool to use. Make flying mounts only 15 minutes per hour and see how people will seethe rofl.

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There's these giant flying worms in the sky in Uldum for the 8.3 stuff that if you fly slightly too high they'll zap your ass for a bunch of damage and even worse, a 5 min STACKING debuff that slows your flying speed.

People lost their fucking mind over it lmao cause they can't just auto fly while looking away from the screen.

Something like the flight whistle for flying mounts wouldn't be terrible either. 5 minute cooldown on flight while your mount has to "rest". Of course at that point they may as well just remove it.

I remember being upset when I found out they were planning on using the same pathfinder mechanic in Legion as in WoD and that I wouldn't be able to fly even after hitting max level. But honestly Legion was set up much better for ground travel and the flight whistle was the perfect addition. There was some cool stuff that was fun to do before flying as well, like the stormheim grappling gun.

Treasure hunting in WoD (before it was part of the achievement) was kind of fun without flying as well. Trying to find a way to get places with goblin glider kits or clever cliff dropping and such. That actually felt like an RPG gameplay element.

Dom said:

They have to go back and grind it out. It's easier of course because you can one shot things, but it's still just as time consuming, except for some situations where you can buy rep with badges or whatever

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I wish they just went back to giving out flying after enough time had passed. I skipped Warlords of Draenor entirely and it's just a little extra bunch of fuck to be leveling something and get smacked with that bullshit. You gave me Mists of Pandaria flying flags for free! It's going on six years now. Let that shit slide.

BoozeCube said:

Ion - "If it's higher ilvl it should always be an upgrade."

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"and her sanity got a little bit frayed"

Need a fifth line that rhymes with the first (ideally with a play on words but "blade" doesn't really allow for one) if you're going to use the Nantucket limerick rubric.