Instead of playing hardball with gamers as it originally intended with regards to the flying problem in the massively multiplayer online role-playing game “World of Warcraft,” developer Blizzard Entertainment has come up with a compromise solution.
Gamers will be allowed to use their flying mounts in Draenor on a dragon, a robot, a different dragon, or a different robot, and even on monsters. However, the condition is that gamers will have to earn the privilege of flying by initially exploring Draenor on foot, details Kotaku.
Blizzard initially intended to keep players from flying in Draenor permanently as it felt that flying mounts discourage gamers from exploring and enjoying the game’s excellently crafted war worlds. The developer felt that the gamers are missing the essence of the game with their flying mounts.
However, since Blizzard also knows how gamers adore their flying mounts and flying per se in the “World of Warcraft,” it backtracked on its plan to remove flying but instead set a condition to gamers to go on exploring first before they can earn their license to fly to the danger zone by exploring Draenor.
Striking the right balance
In an official statement released recently, Blizzard said that it will be introducing a new meta-achievement in “World of Warcraft” called Draenor Pathfinder that will come with the Public Test Realm build of the game.
The developer explained that gamers will be able to earn the achievement in Patch 6.2 by mastering the outdoor environment of Draenor, exploring Draenor’s zones, collecting 100 treasures in Draenor, completing the Draenor Loremaster and securing Draenor achievements, and raising th three new Tanaan Jungle regulations to Revered.
Once a player gets the achievement, he will be rewarded with a rylak mount, the Soaring Skyterror, one of the native beasts that roam Draenor’s skies. It added that players will remain ground-bound on Draenor until a small follow-up patch (6.2.x) will arrive and grant all players who have earned Draenor Pathfinder on at least one character the ability to fly in Draenor on all their level 90-plus characters.
Blizzard said their move is meant to strike the balance between ensuring ground-based content lives up to its full potential while providing players who have already fully experienced Draenor’s outdoor world extra freedom to break the rule through flying.
In summary, Blizzard said that players will have to explore new and undiscovered lands from the ground and once they have fully mastered and became familiar with those environments, they can eventually take to the skies and experience the world from a new vantage point.
The developer added that the compromise solution also provides a general blueprint for the upcoming content of the game
Halting the subscription drop
Blizzard also seeks to arrest the surprisingly significant drop in the number of subscriptions to the “World of Warcraft” with a new patch that would further give players a wide range of new gameplay options.
well garrisons killed off immersion in the game flying was the insult to injury blizzard truly are an obnoxious bunch but what do you expect in a corporate psychopathic world
I don’t really know why people are/were bent out of shape about flying in Draenor…it’s not like there is any content to fly too. Which, oddly enough, seems to be Blizzards current problem…creativity…or, the lack thereof. The reason Blizzard is losing sub’s is not the “no-flying” part of draenor, it’s the other part that Blizzard can’t seem to wrap their creativity around, “Content.” FF14 understands creativity with content, Blizzard just doesn’t seem to get it anymore.
What they are offering is BS…not everyone want to grind for weeks just to get a flying mount (I have 10 flying mounts). They just lost a 1/3 of their income… I would think they would like to try keep the rest of us…
They killed their own numbers they had a ban wave and kicked off a couple million botters last month, that’s where the numbers dropped from
garrison was the dumbest thing from blizzard but there was so many other mistakes they have done in the past. instead of trying to leech of our money with expansions that increase levels (from 60 to 100 now, what a joke), the game should have always been capped at level 60 and they should have work things out within these limits of a capped level 60.
They didn’t compromise. They caved. Like they always do.