A Compromise on Flight Coming for 6.2

It's always a little tough to figure out which side actually represents the majority, or at least the larger of two sides, in a vast internet debate. There are vocal opponents of flight in WoW, but there are also many people who are big fans of flight.

Being one of the latter, I think it's important to note that different people are fans of flight for different reasons. Some really do just want the convenience of popping in, slaying the monster, and popping out, or being able to travel across the world without danger.

I, however, have always thought that flight in WoW contributes to, rather than detracting from immersion. Flight opens the world up to a true three-dimensional space. And the world of Warcraft has had flying machines and such dating back before World of Warcraft. The thought that we intrepid adventurers wouldn't want to take advantage of that existing technology or fauna is a bit much.

I know I've made this point before, but I think one needs to remember that you couldn't do a zone like Storm Peaks or Icecrown without flying. You couldn't have the Tempest Keep dungeons floating up in the sky - with no bridge or stairway to lead to them - like that without flight. Flight has allowed the designers of the game to do really cool things.

There are a lot of inbetween solutions one could come up with to keep people from abusing flight to make quests trivial (though let's be honest, leveling quests haven't really been a challenge in the game since maybe BC.) You could simply put flying mounts on a one-minute cooldown, so you'd have to hang out on the ground while your gryphon circled back to pick you up or something. Or you could give a lot of quest areas some sort of air defense that you'd only shut down after completing the quests there.

The solution they're going with in Draenor seems relatively reasonable. This is certainly subject to change, but right now it looks like you'll need a few achievements to contribute to a meta: One is to find 100 Treasures of Draenor (which won't be too hard what with exploration missions rewarding treasure maps that can also be bought for crated artifacts.) You'll also need Loremaster of Draenor (which again, isn't so bad. The leveling quests in Draenor are the expansion's best feature.) You'll also need "Securing Draenor," which requires that you do all of the Daily Assault areas (though I think you only need to do the solo ones - could be wrong there.) Finally, you'll need to have the three Tanaan Jungle reputations to Revered.

All in all, that doesn't seem to bad, as long as the reps in Tanaan aren't totally obnoxious to level up. Let's think more Council of Exarchs than Shatari Defense.

The achievement (which I believe is called Pathfinder of Draenor) will be account-wide, so you'll only have to do these things on your main. I suppose the question is whether the flight will kick in for level 90 players or if it will still require the level cap (and for that, I think I'd go with level cap - not that I think there's no place for flight in the leveling game, but the quests of Draenor were clearly not designed for that.)

I know this debate will continue, and a lot of people will see this as caving (while others will think of it as "seeing reason.") But this is the first expansion since BC that hasn't had airships in it, and that's a damn shame.