Flying in Shadowlands is already an important topic among WoW players. An important detail should bring joy.
In the first months of an expansion, players of World of Warcraft are forced to explore the new areas on foot or with a ground mount. Clearly, the developers want players to “experience” and explore the world properly once. However, later the heroes can unlock flying to soar through the skies and travel faster from point A to point B. This flight unlocking has previously been quite cumbersome – in the next expansion Shadowlands, that should change.
This is how unlocking flying has been so far: Those wanting to fly in Battle for Azeroth, Legion, or Warlords of Draenor had to complete a significant amount of tasks. Typically, this involved a long “Pathfinder” achievement that often stretched over several weeks. It was necessary to gain reputation with a variety of factions, complete over a hundred world quests, and usually uncover all areas.
Especially the reputation grinding made it difficult for latecomers. While regular players tended to complete this requirement “on the side” in the first weeks, latecomers had to focus heavily on it and often had to play content that was no longer relevant.
How do you unlock flying in the Shadowlands? In an interview with the colleagues from Buffed, Executive Producer John Hight explained how the unlocking of flying in Shadowlands will work.
It will no longer be necessary to reach a specific rank with reputation factions. The lengthy farming of world and emissary quests should be a thing of the past.
Instead, flying should be unlocked through the Covenant campaign. Once a certain point is reached, flying will be unlocked for the account.
This also has the advantage that latecomers will inevitably unlock flying. After all, playing through the Covenant campaign (at least once) is clearly intended and is a core part of the endgame.
Can you fly right at launch? No, that will not be possible. As usual, flying will only be unlocked in a later patch. Since the Covenant campaigns will also be expanded in upcoming updates (such as Patch 9.1 and Patch 9.2), the unlocking will likely be included there. It will take a few months before we can return to our flying mounts in the Shadowlands.
Do you think it’s good that flying will be unlocked through a questline this time? Or did you prefer the old system with reputation?
