To Fly or Not to Fly

Mists of Pandaria is going to deal with flying mounts the way that Burning Crusade did, making you hit the level cap before you can fly.

Flight in World of Warcraft has actually been around for the vast majority of the game's life-time. WoW Classic was the only time when you were bound to the ground regardless of whether you liked it or not - with the exception of Zeppelins and Flight Masters (or a Mage hitting Slow Fall and diving into Un'goro Crater.)

Outland was the first area to be designed with flying mounts in mind. While much of the continent/planet is accessible from the ground, there were a number of areas designed specifically for level 70 players that required the ability to fly in order to get there (for some reason, druids could get their slow flight form at 68.) It was actually quite cool, having leveled up all the way to 70 and then being able to take wing, flying up to Tempest Keep, for instance (back then you actually had to go to the dungeons you wanted to run. Go figure.)

Wrath and Cataclysm had their own variations on the rules about flying, and each has its advantages and disadvantages. As you'll probably notice, I tend to cite Wrath of the Lich King as the right way to do things, but I'll go into detail first.

Cataclysm is the opposite extreme of the BC model. All five of the high-level zones in Cataclysm allowed flight. They had just remade the entire world to make it flight-capable, and especially since they specifically wanted those zones (Deepholm notwithstanding) to exist within the original continents, it wouldn't make sense to limit your flight capabilities. Oddly, places like Hyjal and Deepholm do actually have roads and ramps that could theoretically get you where you needed to go (except the Alliance gunship in Deepholm,) but I can't imagine anyone took the time to go there on foot (or hoof/wheel/mechanical bird leg.)

Having a flying mount really does make you feel like you've made it to a point of pretty impressive power. You're the elite force, able to strike from above. I remember shortly after I got my first level 70 toon (Darsino, the rogue) his flight ability, I flew over to Kil'sorrow Fortress in Nagrand and landed on the balcony of the tower on the western side. It may not sound all that exciting, but having never been able to fly before, it was very cool and very flavorful for a rogue to land silently in an enemy fortress, slaughtering his way through surprised guards.

The problem, of course, is that when you can fly, especially now with the Quest Objectives on the map (and in fact, a lot of quests seem written with the assumption that you've got that on - the directions are left totally vague,) many quests feel sort of like "fly in, kill this dude, fly out." Unless someone's in a cave or a fort, it's rare that you'll actually bother fighting your way (or sneaking your way) into a hostile area unless you also need to kill eight nameless minions - though even then, you'll probably just land, kill the main guy, and then kill the eight nearest ones and fly out.

So how do you retain the awesomeness of being a winged warrior while still making the quests compelling and less like errands?

Before Cataclysm, you still had to get to level 70 to fly at all, and you had to hit 77 in order to fly in Northrend. Your assault against the Lich King was mostly ground-based, but once you hit 77, it was time for the real assault. In the Blizzcons talking about Northrend, they mentioned that Icecrown is absolutely crawling with undead. You can't land there without a ghoul or zombie jumping up and trying to bite you. It makes sense - the Scourge does nothing better than acquiring new members, Icecrown is not only their headquarters but also a vast, impenetrable fortress. That was why we had the Skybreaker and Orgrim's Hammer flying overhead - there were no Horde or Alliance bases because there just wasn't a safe place to set down long enough to actually build one. In fact, one of the major quest chains in the zone involves you defending the Argent Crusade's tiny incursion and establishing a new foothold just barely inside of Icecrown proper (In 3.0, the Argent Tournament grounds were just a flat, snowy space, which then grew into the current grounds over the course of the expansion.) Another major quest chain involves helping the Knights of the Ebon Blade take over one of the Scourge's many fortresses deep within Icecrown.

The point is that Icecrown was a zone that was designed specially for flying mounts - there was a story reason for it, and the mechanics were designed to match that need. Similarly, Storm Peaks, which were the same level range (the Netherstorm to Icecrown's Shadowmoon Valley, as it were) had their own story reason for being accessible only from the air. The Storm Peaks are so inaccessible because it's one of the areas the Titans set aside to both monitor the world (and you wouldn't want people interfering with that) as well as housing the prison for Yogg-Saron (and you definitely wouldn't want people wandering into that.)

Flight is a valuable tool for making the world a more exciting place, but it's best when it's used in limited ways. By all means, once a character hits the level cap and tends to be more concerned with endgame, it makes sense that the world should open up to them.

On one hand, a place like Uldum isn't made all that much more impressive by letting you fly around. In fact, the vastness of the desert might have had more of an impact if you were grounded. If there had been a facility of the complexity and scale of Ulduar inside, or perhaps if we had spent more time in Skywall (how sad is it that such a gorgeous location is limited to a single 5-man and a raid very few people bothered with?) flying mounts would have, of course, been fantastic, but as it stands, much of Cataclysm had the "drop in, fly out" problem.

In the future, I hope that Blizzard can really think about their design for zones in "flying" or "non-flying" way. Especially with epic group quests becoming epic solo quests or scenarios, it would be a shame to remove flight as a means for more epic questing.