Last night was the first night of raiding in Legion.  Not only was Blizzard suffering yet another DDOS attack (every other day it seems), but Stormrage decided that it had enough and it went back to the 2 hour queues. After a week of no queues.  Odd.

Old Flying

None of my characters have the ability to fly in Draenor.  I quit long before it was even an option.  There were many a time that I wanted flying to be available, but with 2 heartstones, it wasn’t too bad.  Well… except for Nagrand.  That place can take a hike.

And aside from Cataclysm (hex be that name), no expansion has ever launched with flight available at the start.  Sure, once your first character hit max you could buy it, but it forced you to play the game at least once.  I don’t think I could have done LK or MoP without flying on alts, the mountains and cliffs and just overall poor placement of flight paths made it cumbersome.

New Flying

Draenor gave folks an achievement to acquire in order to fly, and that came with a lot of hoopla.  It wasn’t hard, just time consuming.  By the time it became available, the only big part left was a faction grind.

Legion, we’re not sure yet.  There’s at least 1 achievement that’s required but we can’t complete it yet due to some quests that are not unlocked.  The biggest pain here is time again, faction grinding.  We’re months away, so I’m not too stressed about that fact.  It’ll come naturally I’m sure.

The Ground is Fine

That said, I have no real issues with the current model of movement.  As a Monk, I even get a free teleport to my home base, connected to Dalaran.  The Flight Master’s Whistle is an amazing tool.  I’m just fine using the ground.

And thinking about it, it has more to do with the way the world works in Legion.  World Quests focus you around the map so there aren’t that many “dead spots”.  Enemies scale, so you never really feel like you’re running in empty fields.  The world just feels, I dunno, relevant.

Plus, I’m making a killing off selling herbs.  Near 6k for a 20 stack.  Without even trying, I’ve made 100k in 2 weeks.  Mat prices will drastically drop when flying comes in.  Come to think of it… flying actually helps bots out.  Where a real player would navigate so as to avoid combat, bots just work in straight lines.

All told, I’m not itching for flying now.  It would only provide a marginal benefit (though providing re-useable gliders would be nice) today.  Legion really seems to have taken a smart look at why people fly, and compensated in all sorts of ways.