So, Insomnia is a damn nuisance.
It does however give me extra time to read up on things and even toss out the occasional blog post. Good with the bad I suppose.
Anyhow, The reason I brought you all here today was to talk about flight. More specifically flight in the new old world of Draenor.
Based on a few blue posts I have read today it appears that flight will be used as a gating mechanism, preventing players from trivializing the content of the leveling zones. That part I can understand. No flight until max level.
Well, it appears that there will be some progressive storyline type questing at the level cap which makes it valuable to the experience Blizzard is trying to provide to continue not having flight available. You know what, that doesn’t bother me either.
I work with machinery in my daily life, I work with interconnected systems. For some reason it just seems right to me that we don’t fly until max level. Quite honestly had they decided to not ever allow flight in Draenor I would have been OK with it.
Alright, I may have grumbled a bit, but it would simply have been how things are.
With new longer term storyline questing at max level and such I see the logic. Frankly if I have to give up flight in order to never do another daily quest I’ll take that trade.
Where it sounds like they may be making a grave error is the way I interpreted what it will take to fly again. A long and involved quest chain, the end of which won’t be available until after patch 6.1, and a “sizable” sum of gold. Both of those are meant to make you work for it, to try to re-achieve that feeling we had years ago when we hit 70 and were able (if you could afford the 500g) to fly for the first time.
Believe it or not, I don’t mind that. Make me work for something, and it gives me a goal to attain. The harder the task the more I’ll appreciate the reward.
There is something that worries me in all this however.
Alts.
I love me some alts, so do many of you. I know people right now with nearly every class at max level, both Horde and Alliance side. What about them?
Are they going to have to slog thru the same long involved quest line on a dozen characters just so everyone can fly?
Is Blizzard going to have a mechanism similar to the WotLK method where a max level character with flight unlocked could buy a tome of flight for the upcoming alts? I sincerely hope so.
I wonder, this is just a thought, if Blizzard is trying to gear the game more towards having one single Main character. One to be in charge of the garrison, one to be able to fly, one to be able to do all the things.
One Character to Rule them all.
I guess time will tell.
Filed under: World of Warcraft |
Dechion's Place 
In MoP you had to get each alt up to 90 before they could purchase flight… for a few toons, not a big deal, but once you get to double digits you get kind of tired having to dodge the same mobs for the 15th (or 25th, don’t judge me) time while running from A to B, or keep seeing that same damned herb node that you can’t quite get from the ground that you can get with a flying mount (*glares at the one right behind the BMAH*). Not big deals individually but the feeling grows with each toon you have to level on.
My preference would be a hybrid between MoP and Wrath… I have no issue with making one toon quest through the expansion on the ground. However, I think your first max-level toon should give you the option to EARN flight for alts, either via some sort of quest/rep mechanic (which would at least be somewhat agnostic) or just by making an expensive book like Wrath… expensive being the key word. Flight should be available to all alts for a normal price when they hit max but for your first toon to gift it down to them, it should be significantly more expensive. 10x… 20x.
Hell, put those tomes up on the BMAH and let the market dictate price. Those would put the early day Brawler’s Guild invitations to shame in the demand department, I suspect.
Maybe do them all… BMAH or just expensive for those with more gold than time/grinding patience, some sort of questline/rep grind (maybe the Loremaster ach for the expansion content, once you’ve done all available quests on your main or when combined with alts, you’ve “finished” the content and your alts can level through the air from that point) for those who prefer that or don’t have the gold, or just at max level for a token amount of gold once alts get there for those who don’t care and don’t mind running around while leveling.
I like the idea of making it cost extra to get it early, and having it in the BMAH would help make it more expensive in the beginning while the prices would drop over time to help players returning later.
I suppose we shall see how they implement it.