Alhena

You see, Arthas has a kind of magic called "Stinger Missiles".

 

Nezralix

I think you overstate the annoyance factor of the mobs in many of these zones. In virtually every zone you can avoid mobs by just staying on the road (although you might have to keep an eye out for Stitches!). Sure, staying on the road is hard work compared to auto-piloting yourself into an obstacle on a flying mount, but I think that minimal amount of effort makes the difference between feeling that the world is something you're part of versus something that provides structural support for your landing pads. I certainly see why some players enjoy flying mounts, and as I've stated, I enjoy some aspects of them (i.e. they let me pick herbs faster). But I think players should be beholden to the world to the extent that trying to crash through it (instead of sticking to the roads) should be an annoyance.

It's certainly got some nerdy role-playing aspects associated with the whole deal, I can't deny that. I just don't feel the sort of attachment that I felt to a lot of the Azeroth instances. To me, Stratholme and Dire Maul felt like extensions of the zones they were situated in, and I genuinely feel that has something to do with how I had to expend a minimal amount of effort navigating the scenery.

Maybe it would be somewhat alleviated if there were distinct no-fly zones that prevented me from dive-bombing anything in sight, but I have a feeling that would cause more problems than it's worth.

EDIT: Also note that world dragons were more than likely placed where they were in the world to remind max-level players that those zones existed. They certainly could've crammed all of them into Silithis if they had some interest in making them more convenient to access, but they had those nooks and crannies carved out in lowish areas quite intentionally. Not only do they bring max-level players back into the fold a little bit, but they provide "gee whiz!" moments to the lower-level players who get wander too close to the ?? monsters.

 

Lupison

You know the only MMO I know of that did, at the least, a partial underwater dungeon system was DAoC with ToA. I'd love to see a fully underwater instance system.

It would make you rethink everything you know about strategies in designing it. Instead of high ground being king, low ground would be king. You'd have to think in the 3D as well when fighting.

 

Nezralix

I remember at one point they commented that they were going to avoid underwater content as much as possible until they could make it substantially less sucky.

I think to a certain extent it exacerbates existing issues with the WoW combat system, where NPC's jerk left right and backward instantly; it's not quite as bad when it's essentially two-dimensional, but the flaws in the model must show up that much worse when taken to three dimensions. Even the shark in Azshara looks pretty ridiculous, for example.

 

Constie

If I'm not mistaken, aerial combat would have the same problems in WoW as underwater combat would, and is probably about as likely to be implemented very soon (not at all).

Come on, die young.

 

• Illian

Addressing the mounted combat idea, Blizzard could make it so that when you mount up you get a new bar with separate combat options (such as Bite, Claw, Charge, etc.), related to the mount you are on rather than your class. While there wouldn't be a huge range of options, I would think it would make the balancing act a trifle simpler.

 

Nezralix

Have you actually tried to picture the act of two players moving at 400% speed through the air trying to "claw" each other?

 

Chucifer

Doesn't the Gravity Lapse phase of Kael somewhat resemble 3d combat? (Underwater movement)

If that were the test bed for 3d movement/combat, I'd imagine that it would be used again in a more widespread manner in later expansions.

 

Dinadass

I would despise an underwater instance. Too many bad memories of trying to tank Plane of Water on my warrior in EQ I suppose.

 

Jebraltar

That was true for a while, then they added mobs that patrol the roads to most of the zones with instances. Nax/Strat put you directly in the path of the Crimson Courier, mobs in the area often patted close enough to the road to aggro, there were some mobs in front of Strat that were nearly guaranteed to aggro (multiple casters simultaneously, no less), and you had to leave the road to get to Nax anyways. In Silithus, the difference between traveling on the road and traveling anywhere else was minimal, you put yourself directly in the path of the Twilight Marauders (and the Prophet, at times), and it was all-around annoying. BRM was at least usually not too bad, but that was mostly due to the low aggro radii of level 52 mobs - had it been a level 60 zone, it would have been at least as bad if not worse than the rest.

That's stuff that was designed before flying mounts. Roads are supposed to make things a little safer, but they don't do all that much - the biggest reason I followed the road pre-BC was because I tended to get lost otherwise. Without flying mounts, Coilfang Reservoir would have needed to have been placed somewhere else. (That was by far my least favourite instance group to run until 70 because of how hideously boring swimming was. Randomly spawning fish did not help.) Gruul's Lair would have been a nightmare had they kept the Ogre army there. (Honestly, that ogre army did a better job than any other raid instance of convincing me that yes, there really was a reason we had to be there. Those ogres were getting ready to crush everybody - perhaps taking Gruul down so they didn't unite would be a good idea.) Which would be better - running through a massive ogre army, fighting a constant stream of elites (until they got nerfed down to non-elites due to whining) every week when you wanted to go to Gruul or just being able to fly in? Flying in, for me, explains how we're getting into these boss' zones.

Seriously, though, yes, it is less immersive when you auto-fly AFK. If you don't want to sacrifice this immersion, then don't. The fact is, for an enormous number of people, immersion is not the name of the game after the first few times. I've run through the ogre camps at BEM. I've sludged around in trenches, I fought my way up to the guys in SMV who were behind enemy lines. Once you've done it once, you're fighting the same meh mobs for meh rewards so you can get to the guys who actually aren't a waste of your time.

And flying mounts allow you more immersion. You are in a three dimensional world - no longer confined to the ground. You can view spectacles from atop mountains, you can experience things like the Coilfang dive-bomb...There is more to see. The less control that you have, the more you feel like you're on rails. The more control you have, the more empowered you feel. Flying mounts add control. They aren't just a handy gameplay addition - they add to more than simply the convenience aspect. They're our little Black Pearls. They give us more freedom to explore, to move.

Yes, the world seems smaller because of them - but that certainly doesn't mean everything is found by those who don't look hard. Look at the Jar of Ashes in HFP, look at the Nova memorial in Netherstorm, etc. Few see those, and only one of them even requires a flying mount to access. There were tons of hidden things that you didn't need to do ridiculous jump trains to access in the old world.

I've always been sadly disappointed that there were no nooks carved into the sides of Outland for people with flying mounts to find, myself.

 

Kewangeder

Nice to see I'm not the only one. There's potential for whole zones that way.

 

• _Retribute_

I really don't see why blizzard feels the need to put a massive gold sink into the game. Why make the player do mindlessly repetitive tasks for days on days on days for a internet bird. I really am not enjoying the money grind as a healing paladin. I can't 3 shot elementals for hours and make gold. The dailies have helped but I barely break even with raid costs.

 

McTurok

I don't think getting the epic flying mount was a "massive gold sink" (sync?).

I stated this before, I never did a quest in SMW or Netherstrom and I still got my 5k for my mount. I was herb/alch too.

If gold is as easy to come by in the next xpac, I'd be ok with it. If you are having problems with dailys do them with 2 or 3 friends each day. It's faster and much more fun.

 

Lookit

It is clearly a gold sink. A gold sink is anything that takes gold out of the server economy. Anything you purchase from a vendor, including armor repairs, is a gold sink.

Everytime you kill a mob and get a few silver or complete a quest and get some gold, money is being created from nothing. If there were no sinks to remove gold from the economy, the value of gold would steadily decrease.

The epic flyer, just like the epic ground mount before it, is explicity intended to be a large gold sink, to keep max level players from accumulating massive amounts of gold too quickly.

 

• Deris

Except those with Epic mounts generate money twice as fast JUST from dailies over those without Epic mounts. I can do 5 dailies as a Paladin with no epic mount (the demon slaying one isn't worth the time/effort when I can get more money faster herbing.), but anyone with an epic flyer can do those 5 dailies, and 5 others that are of equal difficulty for a total of over 100g a day, when I am pulling in half that on top of repair costs (82g the other night total!) and I end up using all of my herbs for consumables.

The only possible way for me to break even is to obtain maximum gold on weekends via quests on my alt, farming and religiously completing dailies.

I've floated at ~200g for about 2 months now, and when I get a new piece of gear and have to gem or enchant it - it becomes a nightmare. I think its time for me to just PA 5kg and get it over and done with. I bet in the long run I save much more money/time investment.

 

◊ Kalman

Could always do what I did and ask rich friends for loans. Odds are you know someone (or some combination of two people) who are sitting on a stack of cash, and won't mind letting you borrow it for a little while.

(Sidenote: WoW Investment Banks? Loaning people money for mounts for small service fees?)

http://mmorchive.net

The WoW forums, explained:

 

Lookit

Regardless of what type of mount a player has, they can only do 10 daily quests per day.

And even if your epic flying mount led directly to you making 100g per day that you wouldn't have made otherwise, it is still going to be over 50 days before you make back the original cost of the mount.

 

Lookit

What happens when you loan someone 2k gold and they never log in again?

Bad idea.

 

Jebraltar

Trust me on this one, there are only two Netherwing quests that are comparable to the Ogri'la/Skyguard ones. (Three if you have a gathering profession, I guess.) Doing nine Netherwing quests used to take me several hours - you have to kill three or four times as many as are involved in the Banish More Demons! quest in the absolute best-case scenario.

The Ogri'la/Skyguard ones are actually ridiculous and arguably intentionally undertuned. You don't have to kill a single mob to get 40-50g a day. Netherwing dailies make you kill at least 20 mobs per quest past the ore/herbs collection, booterang, and (sometimes) the mine cart collection quests.

Now, you certainly do get twice as much quest money, but as you've pointed out with the Banish More Demons! quest - that doesn't translate into twice as much money.

The two biggest increases are that the Ogri'la/Skyguard dailies go much faster with an epic mount and that you can herb/mine faster.

 

Douglas

Remember that this starts to change in patch 2.3.

Right now, in order to access the full 10 dailies per day, you have to do the Netherwing stuff, and that requires epic flying in order to even begin the dailies.

In patch 2.3, they're starting to add profession-based dailies, starting with cooking.

Cite:
http://forums.wow-europe.com/thread....05842072&sid=1
(Read 1.6.7Q specifically.)

Eventually, there will be dozens of dailies that do not require epic flight, and most people won't have a problem finding 10 that they can do if they want to.

Epic flight will still help with resource gathering, of course. But the requirement to have it to unlock enough daily quests to hit the 10-per-day cap is going to be relaxed soon.

 

◊ Kalman

Same thing as a real bank: if you can't extract the cash from someone, it's eventually written off and covered by profits from other people. Not to mention, you simply don't loan the cash out to someone with zero traceable rep, same as people are denied real world loans.

Anyway, just a concept - in practice, while it would probably work, the time required to make it work is likely to be better invested in making money other ways.

http://mmorchive.net

The WoW forums, explained:

 

• Anarkii

Some new info coming out of GC from an interview with Tigole. Stratholme as a 5man CoT instance(Level 80) sounds really exciting. That will probably be the first time in WoW that players will directly interact with Arthas in some form.