In the whole World of Warcraft, you will soon be able to use dragon riding – but it will be slower. Blizzard has a reason that many do not like.
The feature of dragon riding was quite a success in World of Warcraft Dragonflight. Even though some may not be comfortable with the new way of traveling, many have found it enjoyable – it is more active and immersive. Due to its popularity, the feature will be expanded to the entire World of Warcraft in the future.
You can see the trailer for the current patch here:
What will be changed? Dragon riding will now be called “dynamic flying” and will also be expanded to other mounts. Although not all flying mounts will use this feature at the launch of patch 10.2.5, griffons, most dragons, and many others will already be capable of it.
However, dynamic flying in the old world, Outland, Draenor, Northrend (and all other areas where you can fly) will not reach full speed. Blizzard is throttling the speed here to 80% of the possible maximum.
Why is Blizzard doing this? This is due to the size of the continents – or rather the “smallness”. Almost all continents are significantly smaller than the dragon islands. Blizzard writes in the official WoW forum:
We are reducing the speed of dragon riding outside the dragon islands to prevent travel times from becoming trivially short. We believe that 80% is a good balance between the desire to provide players with an exciting and active way of traveling while still maintaining a sense of immersion. The dragon islands are quite massive compared to some of our old continents, so we need to adjust the speed accordingly.
To have a comparison of distances:
The distance from Valdrakken to the portal of the Emerald Dream is approximately the same as the distance from Stormwind to Ironforge.
What is the criticism? For many, this is a typical case of “Fun detected” – an old meme where Blizzard is perceived by some players to nerf everything that is somehow fun. They do not understand why Blizzard is introducing a reduction here at all.
However, there are also many who apparently misinterpreted the contribution. Because some believe that a reduction to 80% would mean that the character moves slower than with a normal flying mount – that is not the case. Even with a throttle to 80%, the movement speed is still nearly double that of epic flying mounts.
Aside from that, many are happy – because even 80% of dragon riding speed is still quite fast and a significant upgrade from the old, static flying.
But what do you think?
What else is included in the next patch 10.2.5, we have introduced here.
