Why Azeroth is a no flying (mount) zone
by Mike Schramm 
Nov 13th 2006 at 9:49PM
Jr doesn't phrase his question very well (he's actually whining), but he does have what seems like a valid concern on the message boards: We're all paying Blizzard fifteen bucks a month, so why can't they assign two guys to make sure we can use our flying mounts outside of Outland? When I first heard that flying mounts would be restricted to Outland, I had the same issue. The CMs informed us that they'd have to rework the world to make flying mounts possible in Azeroth (because the world hadn't been planned for that), but why not just rework the world? How hard can it be?Very hard, says Drysc. First off, they'd have to fix the tops of mountains and such that can't currently be seen (which, admittedly, I realized when I first learned about flying mounts). But then they'd have to make sure all of those locations matched what was supposed to be there-- if you actually flew up to see Nef's balcony, you'd have to see Nef sitting there. And they'd also have to completely finish Mount Hyjal and all the other currently non accessible zones, including every building and town that's supposed to be there, because of the lore. By the time you get to whether players should be able to fly from one continent to another with or without a loading screen, you're talking, as Drysc says, about completely reworking the server architecture, and we all know how good Blizzard is with changing server architecture.
I don't mean to defend Blizzard-- someday I do want to swoop down low on my Nether Drake over the Barrens as lowbies run and cower in fear at my epic-ness. But I can see why that wouldn't happen for a good long while. More importantly, I can't wait to be impressed by what they have done-- all of those problems will (we hope) be solved in Outland, where everything's been built from the ground up (literally) to be explored by flying mounts aplenty.
Filed under: Patches, Items, Analysis / Opinion, Blizzard, Expansions, The Burning Crusade, Mounts
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
Arbuz Chokaro Nov 13th 2006 10:23PM
The idea of actually waiting until Azeroth is complete before implementing flying mounts there is a great idea. God knows we have enough people sneaking into unfinished areas as it is without mounts being able to drop you safely there.
Can we say Dwarven Airstrip?
jbordwelljr2 Nov 22nd 2010 12:04PM
4 years later, they rebuilt Azeroth and flying is not going to be possible.
jbordwelljr2 Nov 22nd 2010 12:07PM
*now going to be possible
Qstrike Nov 13th 2006 10:32PM
the thing about flying mounts that pisses me off the most, is that we'll need to dish out the 5000gold for one, but we'll NEED the flying mounts to get to certain areas. we pay 15 dollars already, but we don't HAVE to save up the 1000gold to get a mount to get to certain places
Kyle Nov 13th 2006 10:36PM
Qstrike, the 5000 is for the Epic flying mount. The regular ones should cost around the same as a ground epic mount, 1000 gold.
Also, it seems that you'll make a lot more gold in Outland. I've heard of people making over 100 gold in one level alone from questing and selling vendor trash.
Thingy Nov 13th 2006 10:46PM
One thing I'd like to know (and I'm sure it will be answered soon now that druids have flight form, even though the areas you buy flying mounts still aren't open) is whether there's an upper limit on where you can fly in Outlands, can you fly under the floating continent itself, how far away from land masses can you fly etc and what happens when you reach these edges?
Abe Nov 13th 2006 10:43PM
I think we should be able to use the flying mounts as regular epic mounts in Azeroth, just make it so they can't fly and instead of hovering when you jump of cliffs you should just slow fall like with noggenfogger.
Trav Nov 13th 2006 10:54PM
Thingy-
We've actually been asking Druids in-beta and on the forums about the height range and whatnot. I'm a hunter so I dont know from hands-on experience. What we know or can assume:
Height Range is currently unknown
Flying away from the continent itself puts you in The Twisting Nether and it seems to just stop you after a certain point. I need confirmation on that because it might end up being like fatigue.
Flying under the continent seems to be the next challenge. We'll see...
Qstrike Nov 14th 2006 12:01AM
@ 3
yes i know, but still. They shouldn't make us HAVE to buy a flying mount just to experience everything. Not all of us have enough time to grind up gold for our epic mounts even. Yes, I've also heard that we will be making far more gold per level, and if this is true, then all my worrying is for not and I will be a happy camper, lol.
Melf Nov 14th 2006 12:02AM
For starters, I stopped paying $15/month about 2 years ago. 6 month subscription rates are much better, and I know I'll at least be playing another 2 years from now :)
Secondly, flying mounts WILL be useable in Azeroth, just not to fly around.
Third, has anyone here actually played beta? The gold rate is much much higher than in the race to level 60, and it should take about the same amount of effort to get your level 70 mount as it did for the other mounts. Remember how difficult it was to get your first level 40 mount back in December 2004???
Jeff Nov 14th 2006 4:16AM
What everyone else has said has mostly been right. Here's some facts (from a beta participant, level 70).
A) You make a lot more money. 1000Gold for a non flying epic mount...you'll have it by level 70 just by vendor trash and quest rewards....easily. I made about 2.5k gold from level 60-70.
B) As far as height restrictions go, there is one in place but it is fairly high and when you reach it, you get turned back around again automatically.
C) Changing the architecture of azeroth to fit flying mounts will probably never be done. Like one of the blue's said once...Take stormwind for an example. When you walk into stormwind, you can see the large spires and such, but if you've ever actually been above stormwind without going through the gate, there's nothing there in the actual terrain but a big hole in the ground. All the cities are sort of like instances, and if you approach them from any way other than the way you're meant to, they wont look/work right. So give up on the idea of swooping over the gates of orgrimmar and landing on top of the bank cos it aint gonna happen..too much effort for Blizzard for too little gain. All they can do is just ensure that all further expansions are flyable in such as northrend (of course).
CordableTuna Nov 14th 2006 4:48AM
Also, Blizzard has to think about framerate issues. All the cities are built so that you can't see very far in any direction to keep the polygon counts low. Ironforge would be fine for flying mounts, but open air towns would have to be remade. Then again, I think Blizzard could create invisible walls to get around the problem, but it wouldn't be good for the immersion.
boneyard Nov 14th 2006 5:34AM
its always nice to see people make remarks on how simple something should be without knowing the exact issues. if it was simple then there would be no reason for blizzard to not do it. it makes perfect sense that overhauling the whole current world that was never build taking into account flying mounts is a huge task, most likely not worth the effort.
Gorath Nov 14th 2006 6:28AM
Yeah everything from 60-70 is being magnified so much it seems, so theres minimal point spending a month grinding up 1k gold for your 70 mount, or trying to deck yourself out in epics.
Blizzard appears to be making it base level for everyone again, no matter if you have just reached 60 or have been 60 for ages.
Thomas Nov 14th 2006 8:39AM
@ QStrike:
How much different is it to buy a flying mount to experience all of the Outlands content then it is to need a raiding guild/alliance in order to experience all the content Azeroth offers? If you're in a small guild you probably haven't seen Onyxia, MC, BWL, AQ, ZG, or Naxx. These are all instances that require 20 or more well-equipped adventurers to successfully enter and conquer all the content. I know of people on my server (Silver Hand) that have played for the last 2 years since Release that have yet to see the Onyxia encounter. Yet they obviously have paid out at least $300 total in monthly fees to Blizzard. It's all in what you make of this game.
The good news is that quest reward money and item value scales up appropriately in TBC. I saw a post on the Beta forums of one person who made it to 61 and had gained well over 300 gold in that one level, and that was after buying skills, profession upgrades, and new spells. I think if you were to scale that upwards, 5000 gold probably wouldn't be too difficult to achieve.
Blackhammer Nov 14th 2006 6:19PM
Can anyone address the ground speed of both the regular and epic flying mounts? When traveling on land in Azeroth will the new mounts be faster or the same as current epic mounts? I'm mainly interested as it relates to the battlegrounds. I understand making new content in Outland that requires a flying mount, but it'd be a shame to force players to spend that much gold just to remain competitive in existing battlegrounds. Being able to move faster in AB and AV is the whole reason I bought my epic in the first place.
syu Nov 14th 2006 12:17PM
its cheaper to let people whine about it than to actually write in the code for it
Swiftlydead Nov 14th 2006 12:47PM
Who cares. Jeez...
Kaziel Nov 14th 2006 4:01PM
@14: I'm uncertain about the landbased speed of a flying mount in Azeroth, but... the airborne speed of a flying mount will be 60% for a normal mount (i.e. the same as a real normal mount) and 300% for an epic flying mount, so yes, there will be a very noticable difference in flight speeds for picking up an epic flying mount (for 5000g there better be!)
Craino Nov 14th 2006 5:02PM
Gee, why not just limit the height mounts can fly in Azeroth?