One thing no-one has touched on yet is Druid flight-form. If they disable mounts from 70-78 (or whatever) then they obviously have to disable flight-form too. I don't mind this at all myself but I can see a lot of WoW Forum bitching from Druids when one of the trained skills you get is suddenly disabled. Losing your mount is one thing, losing one of the few new skills you got in TBC is another thing entirely.
This is something I've wondered about as well. It is a character development problem to make a previously trained form unavailable. In a similar vein, it would be like if Blizzard suddenly made it so you couldn't use Travel Form for 10 levels.
Now, Wrath is a long ways off and things may change. But assuming that they keep the plans they currently have for flying in Northrend, it would seem at first that one solution would be to bump Flight Form to a level 78 trained ability and give Druids a different ability at level 68. But that would require some reworking of the Epic Flight Form quest line, so I'm not sure that that is a viable solution.
I am sure, however that Blizzard is aware of the potential situation, particularly since they just introduced the Epic Flight Form quest line. And Druids certainly aren't alone when it comes to flying mounts in Northrend, although it does effect us a little more. Hopefully we'll get more information about things like this soonish, since it could effect mount purchasing decisions for players in some way.
They just need to impliment some quest at level 75 which allows you to fly again in northrend, one for everyone in general and one for druids flight form.
The most simple way to do it, they just need to work out how to stop people crashing when they try to jump :P
The easiest solution would have been to simply have northrend emit an aura that reduces the speed of flight by a factor of 10 when you are in the area. 38% speed on an epic mount, 16% on a normal should be slow enough to incentive paying 10k or whatever for your griffin legwarmers or whatever.
This still doesn't eliminate the problem of bypassing content - at whatever speed you choose.
They should just make aerial combat available, and have flying mobs guarding the skys of higher level zones. Granted that would be non-trivial to implement, but it beats making flying mounts/forms suddenly unavailable.
An easy and rather intuitive method that doesn't involve actually disabling flying mounts/flightform would be to have a number of mobs patrolling the skies, tied to a rep, that dismount you in a manner similar to the dragons in blade's edge. Make it impractical to stay flying for more than a few seconds. Once at a sufficient level, one could either grind rep, or buy rep to become friendly with these mobs.
This solves the problem of outright disabling flightform and such, while making the process of regaining the ability to fly more intuitive, rather than some silly dragon-wing-warmers or something.
They idea of the cold temperature in northrend doesn't really fit. They stated more than once, that Northrend isn't all icy. The point is that it seems they implement the mechanics first and then tell Metzen to explain it. Like Hyial or the Dranei oder Blood Elf Paladins...
So perhabs Metzen is reading this thread and hopes for a good idea..
Hildegard Sprigglespruxx - Wissenschaftlerin am Institut für Pfuschkunde
An easy and rather intuitive method that doesn't involve actually disabling flying mounts/flightform would be to have a number of mobs patrolling the skies, tied to a rep, that dismount you in a manner similar to the dragons in blade's edge. Make it impractical to stay flying for more than a few seconds. Once at a sufficient level, one could either grind rep, or buy rep to become friendly with these mobs.
This solves the problem of outright disabling flightform and such, while making the process of regaining the ability to fly more intuitive, rather than some silly dragon-wing-warmers or something.
The thing is, you could still use flying mounts to bunny-hop across intervening terrain, bypass mob chokepoints and skim low and fast with impunity. I'm not saying that this can't work but if you allow flying mounts and then try to make them hard to use, you open up a lot of potential 'exploits' as opposed to just blanket disabling them.
You could also design with that in mind, such that if you're forced to have an open air area with a ground wall maze, you can cover it with more aa guns and wire zeppelins than london during the blitz.
They idea of the cold temperature in northrend doesn't really fit. They stated more than once, that Northrend isn't all icy. The point is that it seems they implement the mechanics first and then tell Metzen to explain it. Like Hyial or the Dranei oder Blood Elf Paladins...
So perhabs Metzen is reading this thread and hopes for a good idea..
It also doesn't make sense that the thousand pound flying creature that you store in your pocket can't fly at all in Azeroth. Sound game design trumps plausibility every time. And I don't think you'd want Metzen as lead game designer.
It also doesn't make sense that the thousand pound flying creature that you store in your pocket can't fly at all in Azeroth. Sound game design trumps plausibility every time. And I don't think you'd want Metzen as lead game designer.
On of the first things you learn as a designer is to develop content and form together or to put it more precisely to develop the form out of the content. Certainly not an easy thing to do, but that was the point.
Hildegard Sprigglespruxx - Wissenschaftlerin am Institut für Pfuschkunde
It also doesn't make sense that the thousand pound flying creature that you store in your pocket can't fly at all in Azeroth. Sound game design trumps plausibility every time. And I don't think you'd want Metzen as lead game designer.
Fucking around with flying mounts is not fun nor sound game design, though. People have them, like them, have fun with them. Changing them now is a bad move. If they are too fast for the internet speeds to handle and glitch, that can't be avoided, and they should be scaled back 50% or something, but thats not the same thing.
It will be kind of sucky if at level 80 you can't use flying mounts to fly across ALL of northrend. Hopefully you won't be flying for a bit, then suddenly be forced to dismount (and plummet to your death) as you zone-cross.
I think Blizz has some ideas up their sleeves though, there were a couple of mysterious "we have some ideas on new mounts and mechanics" they said during Blizzcon. As long as at level 80 I can press autorun and go from one end of the map to the other while flying, I'd be happy.
They should just make aerial combat available, and have flying mobs guarding the skys of higher level zones. Granted that would be non-trivial to implement, but it beats making flying mounts/forms suddenly unavailable.
This is the correct answer. Aerial combat wouldn't be that hard to implement... it just might function oddly with certain abilities (Blink, Charge, etc). Maybe have players automatically dismount from their combat mount at a certain % of health, instead of the daze mechanic. Mounted combat is something players have wanted for a long time, and it's not outrageously complicated.
For icing on the cake, make the 450 riding skill the combat mount, a PvP and PvE toy which would unlock the "aggro" flying content. This sort of soft-lock would also make 80 flying content still accessible without the 450 mount, just a major PITA. (Some people would complain that flying mounts no longer grant PvP immunity on PvP servers, but I say thank god.)
edit: of course, it's probably too late for this to happen in WotLK, but I'm sure it'll happen eventually.
I agree with the design decision to prevent flying mounts in Northrend until a certain level. While flying is certainly more convenient it really does take you out of the game world and trivialize many quests.
As far as people discussing the next gold sink, it probably won't be related to mounts. It was mentioned it Blizzcon that while there will be additional mounts available, there won't be another level of riding that you must train. So, basically, it just sounds like you will have ways of acquiring stuff like a Netherdrake, Nether Ray, etc. My thought is they will just have some quest you can do at level 78 or whatever to get an item that will flag you to be able to fly. They can easily work this into lore, even accounting for druid flight form by just saying the Lich King puts out some oppressive aura over the entire continent but if you have X spell cast on you or carry X trinket you will be freed from the effects of said aura.
That said, I'm sure there will be some form of new gold sink in the game.
Oh, and to the people arguing for aerial mobs and such -- I really don't think the vast majority of players would be too thrilled to see crazy Skettis attack birds Part II.
The easiest solution would have been to simply have northrend emit an aura that reduces the speed of flight by a factor of 10 when you are in the area. 38% speed on an epic mount, 16% on a normal should be slow enough to incentive paying 10k or whatever for your griffin legwarmers or whatever.
The problem shines out if anyones levelled a Druid after leveling another character. I hated leveling through Blades Edge Mountains on my mage, was nightmarish having to do the ogre quests and all that back and forth that came from it.
Then when I levelled my Druid on rested he'd hit 68 in Nagrand. Moving on to Blades Edge was such a different experience due to simply being able to fly up and down between the levels, the questing was much easier and I could bypass the guards on named npcs for example.
Thats why I don't think its viable to even have a slow speed mount like you suggest, even just simply allowing you to go up and down between canyons and mountains can have a drastic impact on levelling speed, especially if theres a large quest hub near. Even at 16% speed its worth flying over guards to eliminate named NPCs for example.
Kinda. I'd say it's clear that BEM was designed for flying-capable people. Lots of the named quest mobs are in buildings, so you can't just airdrop and gank. It's just put in the wrong place in progression - i.e. before most people have flying mounts. Would almost have made more sense to have SMV come before BEM level-wise. That would leave BEM and Netherstorm as the two "level 70" zones, where at least the basic flying mount can be more or less assumed.
Kinda. I'd say it's clear that BEM was designed for flying-capable people. Lots of the named quest mobs are in buildings, so you can't just airdrop and gank. It's just put in the wrong place in progression - i.e. before most people have flying mounts. Would almost have made more sense to have SMV come before BEM level-wise. That would leave BEM and Netherstorm as the two "level 70" zones, where at least the basic flying mount can be more or less assumed.
I don't know how it is as horde, but about 3/4ths of bem is reasonable if confusingly-laid-out on foot as alliance. The quests requiring you to traverse the wyrmskull bridge (i might have this name completely wrong -- the overpass that leads to the NW sector) are completely stupid to waste time on before 68/70. I personally found netherstorm on the whole much more accessible by foot than smv. The altar of shadows, the path of conquest, the ruins, and the two terraces of the black temple all range from inconvenient to hellish to get to or quest in without wings. Netherstorm on the other hand looks hard to traverse, but almost everything you care about is right on a road. Every now and then there's something like the quest that asks you to stand next to each mana forge pipe, or the triangulation chain that really rewards flying, but they're a severe minority.
There is of course the semi-related issue that flying or no BEM is kind of the unloved step-child of leveling content, and just isn't very rewarding or necessary if you've done any serious amount of your leveling in instances.
BEM would have been fine if the quests had been arranged like the previous 3 zones. Instead of the quest hub being relatively close to the questing area though, they decided to return to the Barrens model of organizing quests. The zone layout itself is fine, its only a problem when the NPC tells you to go to the other side of the map for a single task.
This still doesn't eliminate the problem of bypassing content - at whatever speed you choose.
Rogues (and druids I suppose) have been bypassing content since Beta. And to them it doesn't matter if it's in a cave, building or on a hill. Fair comparison?
"You are better than I am," Inigo admitted. "So it seems. But if that is true, then why are you smiling?"
"Because," Inigo answered, "I know something you don't know." "And what is that?" asked the man in black. "I'm not left-handed."
Well first of all, I'm not sure I see the problem people are making out with disabling flight form as well as flying mounts. Being a skill doesn't really change the fact that it's the same function as a flying mount. You get something special as a druid, you get to be your mount, it's not like it's unfair to disable it along with flying mounts just because it's a skill. (No one here is bitching, but people have mentioned it and I don't see why it's any different than flying mounts)
I also agree with Blizzard that from the design they've been aimed at for a while, flying needs to be disabled while leveling. Quests with a flying mount are a joke compared to without it, and that's even with the 60% one I have. It'd be nice if they came up with something better than legwarmers, but if they don't, it still has to be done.
Also, Aerial combat sounds like an awful idea to me, it would give a huge bonus to ranged classes, personally 90% of the value of my flying mount is the fact that as a prot warrior I don't have to say "you know, if that mage sees me, I might as well log off, because it's going to take me half an hour just to get back to town" There's also the fact that any way that lets some people have a huge advantage in aerial combat (either through having to purchase a certain mount for it or just by the fact that someone on a 60% mount is absolutely fucked against someone on a 280% mount) is just poor design, and you can't assume everyone will have the expensive mount.
As a side note, I'm getting sick of gold sinks, I've yet to see any gold sink actually funnel money out of the people who get them. In fact comparing people with epic flying mounts now to those without them, those with the epics almost always have more money still than those without them.
It also doesn't make sense that the thousand pound flying creature that you store in your pocket can't fly at all in Azeroth. Sound game design trumps plausibility every time. And I don't think you'd want Metzen as lead game designer.
Well, I never really considered myself as carrying around a 1000-lb. gryphon, horse, or whatever in my bags. I mean, at least in the case of NE mounts, the item itself is called "Reins of the **** Frostsaber" or similar. I always considered myself to be like Gandalf who just magically "called" my mount to me, and it runs over and I get on. Same with the gryphon.
And that's exactly why I totally understand why I can't fly in Azeroth....my gryphon just isn't there! He's in Outland. I can't call him in Azeroth - he can't make the journey when I summon him.
Of course, you have to suspend disbelief with some things like a Gnome's Mechanostrider, but essentially you get the picture.
Well, if you choose to look at the game in terms of maximizing the efficiency of your loot acquisition and farming investment, then certainly flying mounts are a no-brainer. But I prefer to think that Blizzard has an interest in creating an engaging, living world that doesn't entirely cater to power-gamers and still may occasionally hold a challenge that isn't restricted to the instance portal you choose to enter with 4-24 other players. I don't think you should be able to say "yeah, outdoors content is farm status, no need to go there anymore". If Blizzard has made this seem like a reasonable prospect, then they've dropped the ball somewhere and they probably need to reevaluate their world design.
I've always felt that in Azeroth and Outland, outdoor content that I've already done shouldn't slow me down. Making the nightly trip to Menethil, getting on the boat, autoflying to Silithus, and riding through hordes of level 56 spiders that inveriably poison and daze-dismount me at least once... was never one of my favorite aspects of the game.
Outland did it right, being designed for flight: In several zones there is content that requires or nearly requires a flying mount, and that's where the high level content is. Imagine if you had to trudge across Nagrand on the ground to get to Reth'hedron, or if you had to carefully avoid his camp in the middle of some leveling area at 64? Flying mounts (and hub dungeons) allowed endgame content to be richly spread around the world, to keep every zone alive. There's not one zone in Outland where you can say "there's no reason to come here at 70" yet there are many mobs in between which any 70 would consider trivial and a boring waste of time to fight.
This is IMO why Outland is so appealing compared to Azeroth; consider the distances between the zones for 60 content and how much of it was accessible. Blackrock Mountain was awesome, because it housed 4 or 5 instances and had two nice-looking zones around it with clear paths and very few mobs that got in the way. But Azshara, or Winterspring? Nobody ever went there except to farm, get aqual quintessence (the natural extension of Barrens questing), or kill Azuregos. Hinterlands, Duskwood, Ashenvale? Pits of lowbie mobs to be tediously rode past on the way to kill green dragons. Feralas, the same, except you also get to tediously ride through a zone you probably skipped and get lost on your way to Dire Maul. EPL and Silithus? Housed the two hardest raid dungeons, and the most annoying, high-level mobs to trip you up on the way, and could not be any fucking farther apart if they tried.
Flying restrictions will be kind of annoying from 70-79~, but it would probably be more immersive and I'd be too busy enjoying content to care that I couldn't fly. But it would be unforgivable to take back this blessing for level capped players.
08/19/07, 3:17 PM
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