In the SF-MMO WildStar, players move on ground mounts. Yet the dream of flying is so close, as the game was designed with flying mounts in mind. Carbine’s president also promises flying mounts like players know from World of Warcraft (WoW). But only with restrictions.
In an interview with gamezone.com, Executive Producer Jeremy Gaffney gives the impression that flying will definitely make it to Nexus. After all, the planet was designed with flying mounts in mind. “We will probably do something like that in one of the content updates, but it will most likely not be free flying,” Gaffney continues. Instead, there could be lifts that players move between – or maybe gas stations where players must land repeatedly to refuel.
Anyone introducing something like flying must consider many factors. If done naively, for example, it would ruin open PvP. The world would stretch out significantly if there were not just two dimensions, but three. The world would become a cube. Players would be on different levels and could avoid each other.
Moreover, the possibility of free flying would simplify a large portion of PvE content to the point of irrelevance. There simply has to be a better solution, and a more interesting one, Gaffney adds.
Mein MMO believes: It is interesting that World of Warcraft is the only “major” MMO to have ever introduced free flying. Designers there are now struggling to eliminate it from the game. At least in the leveling phase, it will not work with Warlords of Draenor. And WildStar identifies exactly the problems that arise in WoW. It is difficult to give players a sense of danger when they can soar into safe skies at any moment. And how can one represent a hostile environment in which it takes incredible effort to reach a rugged cliff when this is accomplished in an instant by a pocket flying mount? Even if some players would enjoy the comfort and supposed freedom of movement and would like to explore the world from the back of a flying mount, game designers seem to increasingly see the challenges behind the concept. Ultimately, the fun in a game also comes from the obstacles that must be overcome and the limitations that players must deal with.
As a little anecdote: In Star Trek, “beaming” was introduced just to save the studio the costs of an elaborate landing on planets. But with beaming, every tension threatened to evaporate: At any time, Captain Kirk, Spock, and McCoy could be beamed to safety by Scotty – so every time something exciting was about to happen, the transporter had to fail, there had to be interference, shields, or special “solar storms”. All to make sure the miracle cure no longer worked. Game designers today face the same problems that the Star Trek creators did back then when they let players fly. As cool as it would be…
