Any chest (or crystal thingy) in Tanaan can drop 1-3 fel crystals, so keep a sharp eye out for them at all times. Of course, they are much, much easier to spot with flight…
Flying completely changes the expansion, btw. Levelling up alts becomes quick and fun. I got 4 to 100 pretty quickly.
Yep removing/delaying flying is why I will no longer play WoW. I love the freedom to explore.
Yep. And heaven forbid WoW be either quick or fun.
I disagree. I think it’s a good compromise. Having played in vanilla and in early BC where flying was “delayed” because it was so expensive to get epic flight speed, I think they have hit on a nice compromise of something that keeps the initial zone exploration experience dangerous and maintains more of an element of mystery, while allowing people to use their flying mounts and experience the zones in a new way later in the expansion.
I expect it will be better in Legion as they are committing to that model, and as a result the flying requirements will be more clearly communicated from the start.
It’s better than their initial stance of “flying is too hard to design around and thus makes the game worse, so we’re not going to do it anymore”, certainly. But it still betrays a fundamental lack of understanding of what’s fun about the game. And although it’s not -quite- as “do everything in the entire expansion before you can fly in it” as it originally felt like it was going to be, it doesn’t leave all that much on the table to do after said acquisition, either, except on alts. And there’s still too much that’s not account-wide to make me want to play alts at all.
As someone who did whatever that crazy "What a Long Strange Trip… " achievement was on multiple alts before it was shared account-wide, be very very glad that you have the sense enough to not go all gotta-do-em-all-style and repeat content like an obsessed madman.
Can you expand on why you think that’s the case? There are a wide variety of players all who define “fun” differently.
Sure. Flying is the single best thing in WoW and something almost no other MMO offers. It makes literally every aspect of PvE where it exists a much smoother and more enjoyable experience by reducing annoyances, but it’s also a joy unto itself and gives an incredible sense of freedom and power. It makes for gorgeous views. And, while it’s not incredibly important, the flying mounts have a much wider design space and are more generally visually interesting and attractive than the ground mounts.
My enjoyment of WoW something like tripled when they added flying, and while I’ve sort of acclimated over the many months of Draenor to having it taken away again, it was like constantly climbing through barbed wire for quite some time.
On the flip side, it greatly trivializes a lot of content.
I fully understand why Blizzard feels this is one of the worst things they’ve done to the game, because it is the perfect example of a dual-edged sword.
Their attitude towards flying was enough to turn me off the game forever. I feel very strongly about it.
I don’t see that as a flipside at all. Most of what people talk about as “content” that’s “trivialized” is what I would call “annoying obstacles between me and the thing I’m actually there to do”. I’m more than happy to bypass that stuff, and there’s not much in the way of meaningful encounters that flying directly impacts, since you can’t fight while mounted. About the only thing that it does actually obviate is jumping puzzles, and if they want to make those, they need to make jumping work a fuck of a lot better.
Flying in WoW made it less fun for me as well, made getting anywhere too easy. It also further but a nail in the already dying world PvP. WoW is also far from the only MMO that has flying of some sort in it fwiw.
Your comment about there not being much in the way of meaningful encounters is true though, but has nothing to do with flight. Getting around zones was one of the few challenges in the game way back. Between dungeon finder and flying mounts they basically removed the entire game to a bunch of menus and cooldowns.
Personally I think Flying makes a great reward for “completing” an expansion. You’ve worked your way through the zone, got to see all the nooks and crannies they’ve designed and by the end you can soar up and see everything in an entirely new light. And then with your alts, which you generally want to move along quicker, you get to do just that. I was a little put off by it when they first did it, but now I think its a fantastic idea.
That’s how it always worked, yes. You leveled on the ground, and were allowed to fly when you hit maximum level.
The new model is that you can fly when you finish an achievement that includes exploring every subarea of every zone, finishing every quest, doing 100 of the new world quests, hitting revered with every reputation, and finishing your order hall campaign. Oh, and they actually won’t let you fly then-- that’s just step 1. Flying itself will be available “sometime later in the expansion”.
Yup, I didn’t mind it in Draenor and the idea sounds fine for legion too. All of those are things I’ll be doing in the natural progression of the expansion anyway.
This is a silly reason. I remember how much fun exploring was in Vanilla WoW, and Draenor was no different with ground mounts, finding treasures, hopping around, that was some cool stuff.
But I am done with that now.
They could have locked it up just a little bit less, I think. I like that the expansions lock up flying until level cap, but… this grind in WoD is fucking nonsense.
My initial response to that was “eat a dick”. But I try to be a nice guy, so I’ll just say that everybody plays games for different reasons and enjoys different things.
This is a silly response.
For those of you arguing that flight lets you bypass “content” - I don’t really consider trash mobs “content,” and in any case you can do the same with a rogue, albeit slower.
I can understand where you are coming from on that as I know many players feel the world content is just a series of hoops to jump through to get to max level.
I think I felt that way around Cataclysm, but in Mists and WoD I’ve had a great time leveling in the world. The former mostly because I enjoyed the writing a lot better, the proto-Asian world styling, and the brewing theme. The latter due to treasures, bosses, the way rewards were tied into your Garrison and progression, as well as all around higher quality quest content (even though the writing was worse).
Some of the specific ways that not having flying changed my experience in WoD:
I wasn’t aware of the whole sub-zone between Frostfire Ridge and Gorgrond until I was leveling with my third character. It was cool to discover a whole large area that I wasn’t aware existed, and that would be impossible with flying.
Exploring the irregular terrain of many zones was challenging, as you often couldn’t go in a direct line from point A to point B. The craggy Nagrand deserves a special mention as finding things in an area riddled with gorges and caves made me pay close attention to the quest instructions and the world, rather than just blindly follow my quest log markers. Sometimes this would be slightly annoying in the moment, but I think it was the delicious frustration of good game design. YMMV of course.
The level 100 areas of many zones (even the starting zones) that one clearly wanted to steer clear of during the initial leveling added a sense of mystery for me, and made me look forward to heading back to explore once I was at max level. And even finding a way in sometimes could be interesting, and give you a “oh wow I totally didn’t see this path up the mountain when I leveled here initially”. All of this would be impossible if you could just fly around.