Inquiry: Mounts in the old world

Q u o t e:


That's kind of a cop-out. We're not talking about some small company that is barely making ends meet. If they actually cared about making the product the best it can be they'd put a dozen designers on it for a few months to do it.

It really isn't a cop-out. We aren't of the mind that it's healthy for our games to throw enough money at something to make it work. We would absolutely love to have flying mounts in Azeroth. We have discussed this at-length with the developers in the past. Essentially it comes down to the choice between making a new expansion and moving the game forward, or taking just as much time as it would take to develop new content just to make it so players are able to fly in Azeroth. We'd prefer to continue moving forward for now.

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Ok, fine, hire 10 thousand designers and artists. You're still not even coming close to a weeks revenue.

You say this as if it's a painless and quick process to hire thousands of new developers.

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to be fair he didnt say GOOD developers.

Good is good.

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Wish we could atleast mount our flyers, even if only allowed to run on them and not fly.

This is something that is being considered for the future.

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Do both.

You have the resources.

That was actually the precise point of the post you quoted. Contrary to your assumption, we do not have the resources for both.

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be careful of that word "considered". It sounds too much like "Mabey" and most people I've met don't know the meaning of Mabey

I don't know the meaning of "mabey" either. :p

Q u o t e:


Not everyone feels this way. What do your players prefer? Have you asked all 11 million of them?

No, and with all due respect, not all of our design goals are chosen democratically by everyone who plays the game.

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Just ignore it, its a way for a blue to write off the playerbase and ignore any ideas to the contrary... think of it like the "I feel sorry for you but I cant help you." Response you get 99.999999% of the time you ask for any sort of customer service from an in-game GM.

My guess would be that very few Blizzard employees are impowered to do anything other than what 2 or 3 'creative supervisors' tell them to do... and we will never get to talk to them, they are busy swimming in their vaults Scrooge McDuck style.

You definitely seem to grasp the nature of business in a very tangible and authentic way.

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may i ask what they were?

No, but thanks for asking. :)

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Nice to see you in this thread still Zarhym, but you haven't really responded to any of the feedback...

Why cant we lower the flying height limit by 2/3rds above ground level, and put up invisible walls in the skies at 45 degree angles preventing access to 'problem spots'?

That sounds like a very shoddy implementation that would still take a great deal of development on old content.

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I don't know if you guys have noticed, but if you set your max zoom in and out to the highest possible setting, you'll notice that some parts above and behind buildings, especially in places like Stormwind, there are no terrain or textures. So I'm guessing that allowing flying mounts in Azeroth would mean having to remake the whole of Azeroth. I don't think it has anything to do with hiding unfinished content as invisible barriers can easily be implemented, but it's simply alot more work that could be used to design/build/test new areas for upcoming patches/expansions.

This is true. Many places in the old world (ex: Stormwind and Orgrimmar) were built with 2D backdrops. This is one of the many issues that makes overhauling the two biggest continents in the game an enormous feat.

Q u o t e:
How can blizzard employees have the audacity to tell us that they do not have the resources to both make a new expansion and fix old world content?

To argue that money is the only necessary resource to develop completely new content while overhauling the entire original game just to retrofit flying is an over simplification of an issue that would just as easily be cause for complaint as it would be for praise.

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I'm glad you are hanging around and discussing this issue with the community. The developers have stated numerous times that they do not want to abandon the old Azeroth and still want players to traverse and spend time there. This makes me happy, because I prefer old Azeroth anyway over any of the new expansion zones.

I would personally prefer us to make use of as-of-yet unfinished zones and instances in the old world rather than work flying into Azeroth. I know similar discussions take place amongst the developers who are always looking for the right time to revisit some of the old content.

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its late in the thread, i doubt anyone will read this, but here is a glimpse at a business process:

While I recognize that your figures are assumptive, Hurk, I really think you provided a very reasonable insight into some of the decisions (popular or otherwise) that need to be made.