Flying, or the Lack Thereof

One of the most controversial moves that Blizzard made in introducing Warlords of Draenor was the stipulation that there would be no flying - even at the level cap - in the early patches of the expansion, and possibly for the duration.

Some were up in arms about it, some were cheering for the change. Now we've had a chance to experience it - the first time that we've been unable to fly at all in a new expansion's continent since, well, vanilla, which was not an expansion, technically speaking.

So how has it worked out?

Well, there are a couple things I've noticed. The first is that the world feels a lot larger. When I'm on a flight path, I'll look down at Gorgrond and realized that the Crimson Fen is really right next to Highpass, and that the Everbloom Wilds are just north of there. On foot, these all feel like very distinct locations that require some real travel.

And that leads me into the second point: navigation is more tricky. Getting from one part of a zone to another requires you to figure out where the avenues are to do so. The design of the zones has helped in this regard - typically there's a clear path that you can take - but sometimes the zones are designed to make things a bit confusing - making your way through Souther Gorgrond, for instance, requires a bit of exploration.

The lack of flight provides some interesting opportunities. For example, Spires of Arak is full of jumping puzzles and hidden secrets that require careful navigation of the eponymous spires and their jagged ridges. These would be utterly trivial if one could simply fly to these locations.

Sometimes, travel is simply difficult. Getting an Alliance character to Frostfire Ridge, for example, is quite difficult if you haven't played the Horde side of things and thus have no idea where Deadgrin is.

I don't know if this was meant to compensate for the lack of flight, or if it's simply a consequence of the garrison structure, but there's not a lot of continuity between zones. The Horde transition from Frostfire Ridge to Gorgrond is the only one I believe people make on foot. Every other zone has you first go back to your garrison and then get a flight to the next zone. This unfortunately makes the various parts of the world feel disconnected.

Draenor has plenty of "set pieces" - huge events that happen in interesting locations. Still, the map has been squashed down to become somewhat two-dimensional. For the first time since Burning Crusade, we don't see any cool Horde or Alliance airships hovering over the world. The air is pretty much empty except in Spires of Arak.

So what are my overall thoughts on the lack of flight?

I think it's working. Draenor was designed to be experienced from the ground, and it's a fantastic experience in that regard. Still, I think that there's design space to be explored that includes flight. For now, I'm fine with being bound by gravity, but I hope that Blizzard doesn't decide that the success of a flightless Draenor means a total grounding of our adventures from here on out.