Not all players enjoy flying in World of Warcraft. Cortyn is not a fan either – we reveal the reasons here.
I’ll be frank: I just can’t get used to flying in World of Warcraft: Legion. It’s the same discussion with every expansion, and yet I find myself getting upset about it time and again.
I can now fly again for almost a week – with all my characters. This makes traveling on the Broken Isles significantly faster and more convenient; I can fly directly to the “boss” NPC of a quest and save myself all the trash before it. Or I can loot the item at the very end of the ruins that I would otherwise have to fight through.
Scheduling was part of the game
When I couldn’t fly yet, I played World of Warcraft much more consciously and planned. I considered which emissary mission I had in Dalaran and then planned. Which world quest do I start with and where do I ride then? How do I best incorporate the 5-minute cooldown of my “Whistle of the Flightmaster” so that I have no waiting times?
This was a much more conscious, much more planned approach and thus also more interesting than it is now with the flying mount.
I am anyway faster than any flight route when I just fly manually. It was a small aspect of my daily gameplay that is now gone.
WoW with flying mount – Some world quests are now a bad joke
Aside from the loss of gameplay feeling, there are also some negative aspects that the developers clearly did not consider. Some world quests are absurdly trivialized by flying mounts. Do you remember the “How the Wind” quests, where you had to bounce through orbs and react at the right moment? Or the tasks from the Kirin’Tor, where an artifact must be found at the end of a flight course?
These world quests still exist – with one catch: They can be completed on a flying mount. The feeling of satisfaction when these missions are finally completed is gone. On average, they now take 4-5 seconds – and that’s no exaggeration.
The worst part for me is that the world has lost its beauty. This is hard to put into words, but when I looked at the Night Fortress in Suramar from the ground, it was this gigantic elven structure whose entire elegance was hard to grasp.
Sure, even during the “flight routes” you could see Suramar, the Temple of Elune, or Thunderbluff from above – but the perspective was predetermined. It didn’t take away its magic, it rather meant that these zones were perceived from a perspective that the developers deemed appropriate. No journey on my own mount compares to the great camera flight when you first fly past Thunderbluff.
No, I just can’t get used to flying in World of Warcraft: Legion.
What do I miss about flying?
But how could flying become a feature that is more than just a time-saver? More than just the complete trivialization of flight masters and the world quest whistle?
The answer is easy to find: Content that can only be accessed with the flying mount. How about a few world quests that take place high on a mountain peak or a floating island?
What’s stopping us from having a handful of hidden places that players can only discover on the back of a dragon or griffon?
Currently, flying is as interesting as it was in Warlords of Draenor: It was just thrown at you (after completing the achievement) with the motto “Here, here’s your time saver, enjoy”. But that bores me.
What do you think about flying in Legion? Has it improved your gameplay experience? Can you understand my position? Or do you see it completely differently?
