14 DAY TRIAL // Blizzard has officially confirmed what many were hoping to be just an unfounded rumor, the fact that flying will be forbidden in the upcoming expansion to their multiplayer online role-playing game World of Warcraft.
Yes, you read that right, there will be no flying in Warlords of Dreanor. After careful scrutiny, the developers came to the conclusion that players were conveniently parachuting right into the action in many instances of kill quests, instead of killing everyone in a five mile radius leading to their quest target.
Such instances where players were using flying to circumvent the intended paths they should have taken and to save valuable time by not traveling using the sightseeing flight paths prompted a reaction from Blizzard, and the decision is now final. Flying mounts will have to hoof it out like their lowly pedestrian brethren.
In addition, no flying mounts means that people won't be able to just swoop down and gank unsuspecting victims, and that professional gankers will have to come face-to-face with their prospective victims instead of just hiding in the safety of trees until they're on low enough HP.
The Warlords of Draenor changes to how PvP gear is acquired and how PvP interactions function are also part of the company's efforts to present a fairer fight and give players a chance when their opponents catch them on the wrong foot.
It's safe to say that the Battle.net forums exploded with the ire of World of Warcraft players, and Community Manager Bashiok decided to step in and offer some perspective on the decision.
He began by trying to dissuade concerns that Blizzard is trying to slow down the game or force players to spend more time doing things that which could be done faster. Their goal is to make flight paths and other forms of travel quick and efficient, and not to have them highlight the surroundings, like the case was with vanilla World of Warcraft.
"How many of us have become furious when we actually have to fight something!? Is that clever gameplay? Is that being good at playing the game, or is it using a mechanic to avoid having to play it? Is that what the game should be, and what our expectations should be as gamers playing it?" he rhetorically pointed out.
Blizzard also intends to open up all game areas to max-level questing, no longer expecting players to switch directly to raiding and PvP once they hit the level cap, offering more variation in the range of both regular as well as daily quests.
"I hope everyone can agree, regardless of personal opinion toward flight vs. non-flight, that flying fundamentally alters how content is approached in a world where the gameplay exists wholly on the ground," he stated.
Pointing out to the fact that the development team has traditionally attempted to control the fact that players can simply lift off and set down wherever they wanted by placing content inside buildings or using sky-cannons and magical smoke that prevents flying, but that the final issue is that World of Warcraft is not a flying sim, and its content is designed to be enjoyed in a certain way.
As such, the most straightforward solution would be to eliminate flying, instead of finding workarounds for zones where they want to enforce trudging it out on foot instead of just floating above the commoners.