Well, with some helpful tips in my last post from Leo and Will my “ehrmagahd this grind is going to suck!” path to flying turned into “really, that’s it?”. It helped of course that I was fully done all the prereqs and had to just slog through a gated quest to get the Legionfall rep a flowing. Yay, I can Crow Form again!
Yaaaas! Longtime readers with excellent memories (no, I am not going to link all the posts from years gone by) will know how much I love flying in World of Warcraft. Tesh and I would chat about it all the time. Something about the Crow form and just flying around is a complete joy in the game. Which is always why I am upset and confused on why they take it away temporarily in their expansions. It is a core part of the game, the excuses for not being able to fly are completely lame and immersion breaking, and people who care about “seeing the world” will still do that. Some will just do it from better viewing angles, too.
So of course I am in the full “pure fly, all the time” camp. Not being able to fly is a severe detriment to my enjoyment of the game. It is kind of like how I struggle with any game that doesn’t have jump (Dauntless, The Division). Being grounded just isn’t any fun at all. Of course in the interest of keeping land masses small and huddled and lowering development costs by stretching out existing content via travel times, we end up with a lie to excuse not flying every expansion and a lengthy quest to eventually get it. It’s fake content, but it’s all we have. Clcearly with my additional slang and silliness in my writing you can tell how much happier I am and how much better WoW Legion is right now with flying.
While I am still not “done” LegionFall content (there is a new flight form to unlock, and a new bear form, at “bear” minimum. Ugh, yes, the silliness continues…) I quickly jumped to the Argus content so I can get some key upgrades. The super cool awesome new Bear Form is supposedly very difficult to get with low ilvl gear. So I figured if I run through the quest content on Argus then I can go back and sort through how to get that form. More, super guided, super easy planned obsolecence content is not my cup of tea but it is exactly what World of Warcraft is. Argus, here I come!
And back to no flying. Birds are now Deer. Or Elk. Definitely not Reindeer, because that would be super cool to fly as a Reindeer. Time to slog through non-interesting and engaging content with my feet flat on the ground. The good news about Argus and the guided quest experience is that – well it’s kind of like – you know, that thing that is sorta – oh damn. Trying to find something positive and fair. Wait, I got it. Comfortable. That is the right word for WoW leveling through a new area. Like a cup of hot cocoa on a cold winter’s day. Without the alcohol to zip it up.
What WoW DOES do well is scale. Fighting giant creatures makes you feel pretty epic. I was carefully dodging all of his telegraphed, big attacks until I missed one my accident – and realized that he hits like a wet noodle. I stopped trying to get out of the way and took the hits, mashed some buttons, and pushed the scattered narrative forward.
In comfort, not style.
If you have a class sitting at 90, try leveling them with flying available. After that, it really makes sense why flying is disabled at the start of an expansion – all the design work is made trivial. Even just flying around the Broken Shores you can clearly see what flying was a poor design decision from the start.
The whole genie is out of the bottle argument notwithstanding.
I don’t like the gating on flying, personally, but I can understand why it’s there.
I understand their reasoning why it is there too – but the truth is the content is already trivial, so getting to (and through) it more happily and conveniently isn’t taking away from the shallow experience that exists (and I don’t say that negatively. It is what it is, and is why people play WoW.) I am certain it is a linear measurement that it slows levelling by 2X+% and acts as faux content. The only times I have died doing non-raid/instance Legion content is when I fall off a cliff trying to ge to the next quest hub faster.
I will try that 90 experiment – I have a bunch. I guarantee you it may not feel any faster but I will be a lot happier while doing it.
Agreed on the difficulty. I purposefully level as a tank, just to pretend there’s a challenge and AE pull anything I can see.
I made this comment about Destiny 2 – the leveling process (acquiring levels) is pointless since it is not at all reflective of what the other 90% of the game entails. RPGs today do a really poor job of managing the power curve. Tangent – but mandatory proving grounds to do group content should be put in 🙂
I completely agree with you on flying. I can’t imagine any circumstances in any MMO I have ever played where I wouldn’t have enjoyed it more if I could have flown all the time. Flying is just better than walking (or running, or riding) and that’s all there is to it.
I don’t mind not being able to fly on Argus. It heightens the feeling of tension that comes from being on enemy turf, and the intro cinematic provides a fairly good lore explanation of why flying around Argus would be a bad idea.
Beyond that, though, I fully agree. Flying is one of the most fun and appealing aspects of WoW, and limiting it as much as they have is spectacularly asinine. It honestly may be what finally drives me away from WoW for good. I cannot express to you how desperately I do not want to do another Pathfinder grind next expansion.
Also, re: fancy bear form: The mage tower appearances are not very difficult to get with low ilevel gear. They’re very difficulty to get with *high* ilevel gear. It’s basically the sort of thing that’s intended only for mythic raiders, and everyone else need not apply. I did about 20-30 attempts on my demon hunter and never got close, and havoc’s challenge is supposed to be one of the easiest ones.
I think I am just so… naturalized to WoW. Argus feels like a soft skin of the Broken Isles which feels like a soft skin of Draenor which feels like…. the game is just so formulaic. Yes, I read all the quest text and try to get into the story but the game narrative is so jumbled and confused now that none of it makes sense if you go back through the history of the game. It is still fun to go through the motions though.
Sad to hear about the advanced forms – I really wanted to do it on my Bear as it is the main thing I don’t like about Bear. I also wanted those rapiers for my Combat Rogue. Is it really Mythic? I just came back from the game and have an 885 ilvl while the guides call for a 913-915 target. That doesn’t seem insurmountable. My skill may not be there, but that ilvl target sounds hittable. Of course, I don’t know what level that gear really is. (Before I quit I was running Mythic+ in 5 mans as a healer just fine, not sure where the gear ranges are anymore.)
I’ll see how the ilvl climbs to see if it is even possible, but that is definitely disappointing!
915 is probably the bare minimum. I did it around 925 and got my ass kicked, but it is at least as much a skill check as a gear check. Really skilled players have done it with much lower ilevels, but you definitely mythic raid level skills, if not mythic raid level gear.