Why can't Blizzard make flight WORK in World of Warcraft? Feedback and suggestions.

It was many, many moons ago, during the days of the Burning Crusade expansion.
I was a different person back then.
I was a warlock.
I was broke.
But I had scraped up enough gold from selling cloth and Primal Life to earn my spot in the
skies.
I learned to fly.
Blizzard introduced flight early in WoW’s lifetime, giving players the opportunity to
see the world from above, and open up new areas to explore.
Since then though, the mechanics of flight have been like a game designer’s ball and
chain for Blizzard.
To paraphrase Blizzard’s concerns, flight risks compromising the efforts of world building
in WoW.
And in an MMO where such free forms of flight exist, it’s easy to see where Blizzard’s
fears became a reality.
That’s how we came to the current compromise we have today in the form of the Pathfinder
achievement.
But this piece is about more than that.
This is about Blizzard writing a self-fulfilling prophecy that flying is a problem that they
themselves create by not making efforts to make this mechanic mean something more to
players.
Hey it’s Soul, and this is the Word of Warcraft.
Today I’m going to talk about flight, and Blizzard.
Specifically with Blizzard’s team we’ll talk about the handling or mishandling of
flight over the years and how flight will continue to be what they call a problem until
they stop kicking the can down the road so to speak, and actually do something meaningful
for the ability to fly.
Let’s start with a quick rundown of how flight was handled in each expansion since
the Burning Crusade.
In Wrath of the Lich King, flight was made available at level 78.
Certain areas of Storm Peaks and Icecrown required flight to get around.
The only place that I recall being flight restricted was Dalaran.
In Cataclysm, flight was available day one of the expansion.
The Deepholm zone in fact required flight to get around, but at least there were optional
zones to level in case for whatever reason players couldn’t acquire flight.
Flight was restricted during the Firelands tier, specifically in the Molten Front mini-zone,
a daily questing area.
In Mists of Pandaria, flight was available at max level.
Flight was needed to get to a few areas, notably certain areas in the Valley of the Four Winds.
Flight was restricted during the Throne of Thunder tier in Thunder Isle, as well as the
Timeless isle later in that expansion.
In Warlords of Draenor, flight was unlocked through an achievement made available later
in the expansion.
Flight wasn’t required to access any important areas before then, but rares were scattered
around in specific places afterwards.
Finally in Legion, flight was also unlocked through an achievement made available later
in the expansion, and currently, there isn’t any flight exclusive content to participate
in.
Since Legion isn’t finished yet, we don’t know whether or not future zones will restrict
flight in any way.
So flight has been handled a bit differently each and every time.
And with each different iteration, the very world that each expansion is built around
is influenced by the existence or the delay of flight.
The debate around flight itself is incredibly hot but we’re not here to whether flight
is good or bad.
But I’d like to mention that the debate has largely been about how and when to implement
the ability to fly, but not the mechanics of flight itself.
In fact, flight has gone mostly unchanged since it was first introduced.
Fundamentally, when you’re out of combat and not moving, you press a button and after
a short cast, you can immediately lift off.
You can fly indefinitely in all directions and can hover in place.
This hasn’t changed for ten years.
All the compromises made to flight have been with the “when” of flight, not the “what”
of flight.
This, in my opinion has been Blizzard’s failure with flight ever since its existence
was up for debate.
Flight creates a design problem for Blizzard, that much is certain.
But Blizzard’s solutions and reasonings have been about the design philosophy, not
the design itself.
In other words, Blizzard needs to redesign just what it means to fly in the World of
Warcraft, and design their world around that.
You can be sure that internally, designers have already come to that conclusion at some
point, but somewhere down the line are technical hurdles that for whatever reason, cannot be
overcome.
We can also be sure that there are design ideas that have been tried internally but
weren’t received well by their teams.
We don’t quite know what all these ideas were, and it’d probably be a positive service
to players to show some transparency and reveal to us what they’ve tried that hasn’t worked.
After having almost zero changes to flight mechanics after this many years, I think it’s
worth looking at what they’ve tried, assuming they have at all.
So for now, let’s come up with some of our own, and I’ll share a few radical design
ideas that I’ll say now are full of holes and reasons to not implement them.
The point of these ideas isn’t that they’re awesome but that Blizzard hasn’t done a
thing with flying, and if they want to strike a balance between player wants and design
limitations, there should be more meaningful compromises, again regarding the “what,”
not the “when.”
And actual execution.
Here’s my design paradigm to redoing the implementation of flight:
One.
Flight needs a full mechanical revamp that prevents players from trivializing content,
but at the same time still help players feel more powerful than they would be if stuck
to the ground.
Then and now, flight has been an all or nothing sort of mechanic.
“AFK-hovering” is basically like pressing the pause button with numerous advantages
and few to no weaknesses.
More often than not, players completing objectives from the ground have to compete with other
players hovering above them who can swoop in and steal objectives, depending on what
they are.
Two.
Flight is not restricted without a meaningful and immersive reason.
Flight in early-Warlords and Legion is restricted “just because,” when it didn’t really
have to.
There’s no narrative to explain why our characters can’t fly while flight taxis
still function.
There’s no quest to unlock flight; as soon as we complete whatever final achievement
in the Pathfinder meta, we can immediately take off.
Three.
Flight is a feature that is part of the game world, and adds a layer of depth that players
can look forward to.
With Warlords and Legion, flight has been more like a reward for having completed content
and an alt-catchup mechanism, which is okay but it makes flight feel empty and unrewarding,
other than to complete the same things faster.
Flight should introduce new gameplay and discovery as well as support faster completion of previously
completed activities.
Taking this paradigm, let’s see how this could have been applied to flight in WoW at
some point in its lifetime.
And keep in mind once again that these ideas are just to make an example that Blizzard
can and should evolve flight as a feature:
Maybe activating flight or even summoning any mount won’t be as instant as it is now.
Summoning a mount could be like whistling your horse to come to your side, you mount
it like any vehicle, and then you can take off.
Or the summoning animations can remain the same but there’s a debuff that lasts for
several seconds before you can take to the skies.
Flight can act like a temporary buff, as if your mount had an energy bar that when depleted,
puts you in a parachute or automatically forces you to land at a flight point.
This energy bar needs to be recharged by basically being on the ground or dismounted.
Let’s design this resource in a way that it’s got a five minute max duration but
it takes a fifth of the time for this resource to recharge.
From there, gameplay in the air revolves around maintaining this buff for as long as possible
when fulfilling objectives.
Taking damage while mounted for example can reduce the duration of the flight buff even
further.
But for the most part, hopping between nearby objectives will feel similar to how it feels
today.
Hazards of some sort can exist in the sky too, like flying enemies, anti air placements
on the ground, or some sort of RP element that causes some trouble for players in the
sky.
These things make flight involve just a bit more planning and strategy as opposed to a
quick and mostly permanent “get out of content” card.
The overall perks and conveniences of high altitude are there but there’s a bit more
mindfulness to it too.
This is debateable, but I think there’s a solid argument that an MMORPG shouldn’t
allow such an easy break from the environment.
But should flight be immediately available for players like it was in Cataclysm?
Blizzard’s take on flight after Cataclysm suggests that their answer is no, but there’ve
been many ideas to help the unlocking of flight feel much more immersive, natural and fulfilling
than a Pathfinder achievement.
Let’s use Legion as an example, specifically these Legion ships as well as the Tomb of
Sargeras for effect.
It’d be simple enough to explain to players that flight isn’t possible with our mounts
at the start of Legion due to a sort of fel fog like thing, or the ever present Legion
ships threatening to shoot you down instantly.
From there, completing the entirety of a zone’s questline or maxing out a faction’s reputation
there will unlock a quest that will clear the fog, destroy the ships, fortify our mounts,
something that will allow us players to overcome the thing that’s preventing us from taking
to the air.
The narrative can easily be whipped up and even if players railed against the principle
of flight prevention period, they can’t say that the implementation is arbitrary and
without meaning.
It makes enough, if not total sense.
But there will be a sense of fulfillment in part of the player who “earned” their
wings with a sense of story progression directly tied to it.
Blizzard missed a huge chance to give the zones of the Broken Isles multiple layers
of depth to keep the world feeling fresh.
Completing world quests day after day wears down the novelty of world travel, and it’s
very, very unfortunate that as of this recording, completing the Legion Pathfinder achievement
does not unlock another layer of world quest content that somewhat caters to flight.
In fact there is no place of significance in the Broken Isles that can’t be accessed
from the ground.
And there could have been.
Places include the cliffs of Highmountain overlooking Suramar.
Taller buildings within Suramar city.
Ledges and nooks in Shaladrassil, the corrupted world tree.
Encampments above Stormheim that couldn’t be accessed with a grappling hook.
And there’s more that could have just been made up, but the Broken Isles’ world design
was made for the ground, with no added depth that considers the expected ability to fly.
Which I find strange considering that this expansion was built knowing that flight would
be a thing.
These shortcomings come under the premise that fixing flight is “hard.”
But we haven’t seen Blizzard muster up the courage to take a risk and embrace flight
as a part of the game, and instead gave it a stigma of being anti-gameplay.
And it doesn’t have to be, not after considering their current tries with world scaling, keeping
all activities relevant and Titanforged gear.
I’m not happy with flight being unlocked so late into Legion.
But I’d be even less happy if flight was available early on but there wasn’t anything
cool I could do with it other than make the things I would do already, easier and faster.
Blizzard sees flight as a problem that a lot of players like or don’t like.
I see flight as an opportunity to make WoW a better game with clever world and quest
design.
I also see it as a flawed and outdated mechanic that could be improved to enhance the immersion
without sacrificing Blizzard’s overall values of designing their content on the ground.
Fixing it will probably require enough shifting of time and resources that planned content
could be lost.
But the tradeoff would be worth it, opening new doors and lifting barriers that prevented
Blizzard from building radical new world designs and giving more real estate to compliment
their current paradigm of releasing a steady stream of content.
And players will benefit from a meaningful narrative and rewarding gameplay to complement
their reacquired wings.
At the moment though, flight and the Pathfinder achievement is a meaningless gesture and a
poor compromise with too few benefits.
Share your thoughts, and Stay Breezy.

Why can't Blizzard make flight WORK in World of Warcraft? Feedback and suggestions.

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