wow Pathfinder Removal for Old Expansions in Shadowlands (Speculation)

[Stan 5,182]

Within the 10-50 range, existing players can pick any expansion before heading to Shadowlands. In pre-Draenor zones, you can currently fly without the Pathfinder achievement, and we think Draenor, the Broken Isles, and BfA zones, are soon going to follow the same trend.

Below is the new leveling flow slide taken from the BlizzCon presentation, and at level 10, you will be able to talk to Chromie and pick any expansion for leveling if you're not a new player. 

Now, the question is why would you ever pick anything besides The Burning Crusade, Wrath of the Lich King, Mists of Pandaria, and Cataclysm expansions for leveling? None of these require the Pathfinder achievement to unlock flying! Of course, you may pick a post-Draenor zone for the story, but not efficiency.

On the opposite side of the spectrum, we have Draenor, Legion, and Battle for Azeroth, where you first need to complete the Pathfinder achievements (Draenor Pathfinder, Broken Isles Pathfinder, Part Two, Battle for Azeroth Pathfinder, Part Two) to unlock flying.

As outlined above, this causes an imbalance between the expansions and Blizzard will want to sort this out somehow, and the solution definitely won't be the removal of flying, but more like the opposite. Flying would not be obviously available at level 10 with the level squish in mind, but rather later at a reasonable level, say 30. 

By removing Pathfinder for old expansions, your choice will not be watered down to four expansions. What do you think?

[Aernath 173]

I truly wished they would remove Pathfinder nonsense all along. When will they really see this? Method of travel and forcing people to the ground does not create immersion, good gameplay does. That's why Cataclysm zones like Deepholm and Hyjal and all story and questlines were great and fun WITH flying.

I mean success of Mechagon at 8.2 was mostly because of the Jetpack and flight gameplay, how can they ignore that successful experiment is beyond my understanding at this point.

[Halock 156]

18 minutes ago, Aernath said:

Method of travel and forcing people to the ground does not create immersion, good gameplay does. That's why Cataclysm zones like Deepholm and Hyjal and all story and questlines were great and fun WITH flying.

I had a different experience: the removal of flying in Mists (and doubly so in WoD) hugely enhanced my experience of the zones. Instead of bunny-hopping from one place to another, never really experiencing the landscape inbetween, I travelled under arches, through caves, even just followed the twists of the roads. I love that! 

Just to, uh, start off the old one-two this argument always produces. ?

And yes, removal of pathfinder for old zones is probably overdue already. Not fully sure if they'd remove it for BFA though, since that's going to be the 'new player experience' to some extent -- that probably comes down to when flying actually becomes available at all. 

If it becomes available at 50, say -- which would be really interesting, sounds annoying but bear in mind they're reducing the time to get to 50 by 60-70% -- pathfinder wouldn't even be a problem at all. Just remove it flat out except for Shadowlands. 

[dartbodman 64]

God damnit. Started reading the title and got excited, then disappointment. I'll have all the pathfinders before 9.0, but definitely support the removal. And don't put it in Shadowlands either you @#$%. Explorer or Loremaster at most, don't require weeks/months of daily/world quests to unlock it!

[drclawixp 6]

51 minutes ago, dartbodman said:

God damnit. Started reading the title and got excited, then disappointment. I'll have all the pathfinders before 9.0, but definitely support the removal. And don't put it in Shadowlands either you @#$%. Explorer or Loremaster at most, don't require weeks/months of daily/world quests to unlock it!

They've already confirmed it will be in Shadowlands.

[Varrick 15]

Didn't even play BFA when I found out there was a Part 2 for just having to fly. Smart move on their end.

[Brutalis 165]

The issue Blizz have is that they no longer design zones with flying in mind like they did Blade's Edge and Stormpeaks way back when. Instead, now they create cool looking zones on a flat plane and because they don't want their hardwork to go to waste by allowing you to fly clean over everything they force you to walk instead.

I'd be fine if, in new expacs, you had to level without flying but needing months worth of open-world grind in order to fly and make the open-world grind easier is just stupid.

[dartbodman 64]

1 hour ago, drclawixp said:

They've already confirmed it will be in Shadowlands.

*filtered*

[Amateurpeeweeeeh 37]

Makes it easy not to preorder the expansion when I know already that after all its blizzard. So flying is gated behind 50 reputation grinds (*filtered* immersion, I work 9 hours a day and dont want to travel 30minutes between two world q.). 

Plus all the *filtered* they will *filtered* up at the start (e.g. way to hard to obtain legendaries, way to hard to unlock talent trees of covenants) as always they will do stupid mistakes just for the sake of pumping up the numbers for their investors like they did in BFA.

[Lithari 194]

2 hours ago, Halock said:

I had a different experience: the removal of flying in Mists (and doubly so in WoD) hugely enhanced my experience of the zones. Instead of bunny-hopping from one place to another, never really experiencing the landscape inbetween, I travelled under arches, through caves, even just followed the twists of the roads. I love that! 

Just to, uh, start off the old one-two this argument always produces. ?

And yes, removal of pathfinder for old zones is probably overdue already. Not fully sure if they'd remove it for BFA though, since that's going to be the 'new player experience' to some extent -- that probably comes down to when flying actually becomes available at all. 

If it becomes available at 50, say -- which would be really interesting, sounds annoying but bear in mind they're reducing the time to get to 50 by 60-70% -- pathfinder wouldn't even be a problem at all. Just remove it flat out except for Shadowlands. 

While you are free to have your own opinion and experiences, i have to disagree with you, i use flying not to bypass things and miss out on quests, but i use flying to go from point A to point B, where i don't need to kill anything along the way, i just don't bother killing things when i don't have a need to, which is why i HATE the pathfinder requirements especially needing the reps as well, which is silly.

I can understand needing the loremaster and explore achievements for said zones of said expansion, but the Reputations? hell no, With the current leveling speed even without heirlooms, you level WAY too fast to even do 2 zones of say Warlords of Draenor, which is why i think if they keep it in, they should remove the reputation requirements from it entirely, exploring and doing the zone's story achievements is the point of this locking out of flying so people don't miss out on the exploring and stuff like that.

[Asgrimyr 5]

25 minutes ago, Lithari said:

I can understand needing the loremaster and explore achievements for said zones of said expansion, but the Reputations? hell no, With the current leveling speed even without heirlooms, you level WAY too fast to even do 2 zones of say Warlords of Draenor, which is why i think if they keep it in, they should remove the reputation requirements from it entirely, exploring and doing the zone's story achievements is the point of this locking out of flying so people don't miss out on the exploring and stuff like that.

I agree. I've always said this actually, faction reputation should only really be for cosmetics and mounts, not unlocking profession recipes and flying. Or if they are absolutely adamant they want you to build up reputation for flying, offer more options of building it up; Cata tabards come to mind. At least that way I can choose how I go about it.

Edited November 4, 2019 by Kurithas

[Bobbis 208]

In all honesty, I don't mind the pathfinder system *that* much, sure it's annoying and doesn't make sense lately on rep, (im the freakin god of these lands, champion of the planet, what you gunna do, shoot me down? sure...). It's things that come organically with playing the game, exploring, doing the quests, and getting rep, a month in and easily done.

That is the issue, a month in, and part one is done, then it's almost a year of the same bullshit on the ground. Yes it's pretty cool the first week or two, the art team in WoW is carrying the game at points, but it's still pretty when I'm 20 feet up in the air, ignoring the trivial mobs below me that want to die. 

tldr; keep pathfinder, but don't do it in two parts with pt 2 a 2nd patch a year down the line...

[Tupi 30]

yea, the title to this was pure click-bait. making it a statement vs. a question alludes to it being a fact that it's going to be removed vs. this being a pure speculation article with zero substance.

[Sisren 1]

I really don't understand why anyone would think this is an issue.

The 'choose your expansion' leveling path is for existing players. So basically...alts. And I highly doubt you would be able to choose an expansion with your new alt that has not yet been cleared by one of your other characters. Either that, or having this option requires a max level character on your account.

So this path is for alts. Your main is very likely already max level and has completed Pathfinder for all expansions. Pathfinder flying is an account-wide reward. The 'issue' is rendered moot.

[Calysia 229]

14 hours ago, Tupi said:

yea, the title to this was pure click-bait. making it a statement vs. a question alludes to it being a fact that it's going to be removed vs. this being a pure speculation article with zero substance.

Pathfinder Removal for Old Expansions in Shadowlands (Speculation)

You miss the "(Speculation)" at the end? Only way it could be click bait is if you didn't read it correctly.

Edited November 5, 2019 by Calysia

[arednie 0]

This would be great! I think it would also serve to bring people back to the game. I, personally, quite enjoyed all the Pathfinder achievement grinds, but I know people who stopped playing because of it. I am also in the odd situation of moving regions (again) and I have all the achievements on my US account but not on my EU account. I nearly didn't switch simply because I won't be able to fly and won't have the time to grind (again). Anyway, I have all my fingers, toes, hoofs, crossed for this. Please keep promoting this idea. It makes sense and I'd love to get to play with my friends again too. 

[Migol 433]

Honestly, while I don't mind pathfinder lasting some time and making us earn our way through the zones...it should not take till the last 2/3rds of the expansion to unlock.    The timing for both Legion and BFA has been awful.    Legion in particular was a sick joke as the moment we gained flying the current zones became irrelevant as the (no flying) Argus became the focus.

Pathfinder should simply be "gain revered with all the launch reputations".    By that time you've seen the zones, you've done enough quests to get revered (and then some), and flying is just a good reward for putting in that effort.     Further adding stupid time gate hurdles and putting it past the halfway point in the expansion just reeks of "inflating playtime numbers" style manipulation.

[Hypersonic 119]

Finally! I allways hated this pathfinder-system to fly. 

[Lithari 194]

1 hour ago, Migol said:

Honestly, while I don't mind pathfinder lasting some time and making us earn our way through the zones...it should not take till the last 2/3rds of the expansion to unlock.    The timing for both Legion and BFA has been awful.    Legion in particular was a sick joke as the moment we gained flying the current zones became irrelevant as the (no flying) Argus became the focus.

Pathfinder should simply be "gain revered with all the launch reputations".    By that time you've seen the zones, you've done enough quests to get revered (and then some), and flying is just a good reward for putting in that effort.     Further adding stupid time gate hurdles and putting it past the halfway point in the expansion just reeks of "inflating playtime numbers" style manipulation.

I would suggest just having the Loremaster and Exploration of said expansion zones being the requirement, the reputation part is too much, considering the fact that i go from 90 to 100 within 1-2 zones and 100 to 110 within 1-2 zones, BfA was more....balanced in the leveling, but i was still 120 before i didn't all the zones.

 

This is why i think the Loremaster and Explore Achievements should be the only thing we need to unlock flying.

[Brawny 0]

This should be changed to gold price.

Price should be:

WoD - 8k

Legion - 10k

BFA - 15k

People can easily pay for it with gold from quests or profession. You don't need to farm mats and sell thousands of potions. It will force people to get into economics and AH trading. 

[Halock 156]

On 11/4/2019 at 10:53 PM, Lithari said:

While you are free to have your own opinion and experiences, i have to disagree with you, i use flying not to bypass things and miss out on quests, but i use flying to go from point A to point B, where i don't need to kill anything along the way, i just don't bother killing things when i don't have a need to, which is why i HATE the pathfinder requirements especially needing the reps as well, which is silly.

Which is completely fair and actually my main gripe with no-flying too. I feel like they've been cramming a lot of mobs into the zones since Legion, which can make ground travel really annoying. (I have comfortable barding on all my characters...) The thing I really noticed before flying was restricted, though, was that I basically only saw the mobs I was killing. I didn't see the land that connected them; their place in the world.

And often I didn't even really understand the feeling of the world itself. For example, the colossi in the Vale of Eternal Blossoms are completely different if you fly over them compared to if you walk under them. If that makes sense? 

But to be honest you don't really have to understand the way I experience the game, or I you, or us Aernath, because we're all going to experience it differently regardless and that's fine. The thing which makes this problematic is that the solution is going to affect all of us equally -- and without pleasing one group at the expense of another, that effect is inevitably going to displease all of us equally!

Your suggestion of removing the reputation requirements is interesting. As a latecomer to BFA pathfinder (I only completed it last month!) it was definitely the most painful part because you had to go 'great, no matter what I do, this is gated beyond weeks of dailies.' But I feel like removing it would be cutting a little too harshly -- perhaps lower the requirements from Revered to Honoured? That'd be very doable, but not doable-in-a-day doable.

I also feel like the second part just came way too late. I'd have preferred to see it in 8.1.5, or even 8.1 over 8.2.

[durdyenglish 298]

You should get flying once you get the Loremaster achievement for each expansion, and classic content (Old World along with TBC, WOTLK, and Cata as they were designed around flying) is just purchased via trainer at level 30 (as it is now for 60). This makes sure that you experience the story as Blizzard intended before being allow to cruise through it on future characters. This is an easy pill to swallow for players (many of which already have these Loremaster achievements, especially from newer expansions when the story progression basically forced it) and gives Blizzard the ability to showcase their world design.

If they want to keep Pathfinder, then make it a quest chain that gets dolled out weekly for 12 weeks or so at the beginning of the expansion - imagine something like the Making the Mount quest line from Mechagon combined with the Stable from Warlords of Draenor garrisons. It would be engaging, logically time-gated, and a reliable source of expansion long quest content now and in the future. The problem with Pathfinder for me is that it simply isn't interesting to obtain - it operates more like a fill meter completion world quest for the expansion, where every arbitrary thing I do influences it. I'd rather it be something with a focused path (haha) in place that provides real RPG elements to the game.

Edited November 6, 2019 by durdyenglish

[Mulligan87 0]

This article inspires me to abandon working on pathfinder for BFA and just start leveling my 110 monk. I hope Blizzard considers this, perhaps even before 9.0. And I will certainly never go back to WOD in order to complete that pathfinder...

[Menolikeu 0]

On 11/4/2019 at 2:20 PM, Aernath said:

I truly wished they would remove Pathfinder nonsense all along. When will they really see this? Method of travel and forcing people to the ground does not create immersion, good gameplay does. That's why Cataclysm zones like Deepholm and Hyjal and all story and questlines were great and fun WITH flying.

I mean success of Mechagon at 8.2 was mostly because of the Jetpack and flight gameplay, how can they ignore that successful experiment is beyond my understanding at this point.

That is not what made Mechagon a success, one reason they added pathfinder so people would explore the zones that the artists and game developers busted their asses on to create for everyone. They add it after people have explored and have had time to know where things are in the zone, etc etc. They also added it as a timegate of sorts, it takes longer to get from point a to point b if you're on the ground, thus preventing you from finishing your emissary quests in 5 minutes. When more content gets released that is when pathfinder comes out, allowing for multiple things to be done quicker. You have to look at the whole picture, not just what benefits you.

Edited November 7, 2019 by Menolikeu

[Lithari 194]

On 11/6/2019 at 5:28 AM, Halock said:

Which is completely fair and actually my main gripe with no-flying too. I feel like they've been cramming a lot of mobs into the zones since Legion, which can make ground travel really annoying. (I have comfortable barding on all my characters...) The thing I really noticed before flying was restricted, though, was that I basically only saw the mobs I was killing. I didn't see the land that connected them; their place in the world.

And often I didn't even really understand the feeling of the world itself. For example, the colossi in the Vale of Eternal Blossoms are completely different if you fly over them compared to if you walk under them. If that makes sense? 

But to be honest you don't really have to understand the way I experience the game, or I you, or us Aernath, because we're all going to experience it differently regardless and that's fine. The thing which makes this problematic is that the solution is going to affect all of us equally -- and without pleasing one group at the expense of another, that effect is inevitably going to displease all of us equally!

Your suggestion of removing the reputation requirements is interesting. As a latecomer to BFA pathfinder (I only completed it last month!) it was definitely the most painful part because you had to go 'great, no matter what I do, this is gated beyond weeks of dailies.' But I feel like removing it would be cutting a little too harshly -- perhaps lower the requirements from Revered to Honoured? That'd be very doable, but not doable-in-a-day doable.

I also feel like the second part just came way too late. I'd have preferred to see it in 8.1.5, or even 8.1 over 8.2.

Well, the very fact that i completed Loremaster and Exploration just as i started the rep grind and it got to the point where it was too slow and tediously boring, now if they added a nice story arc to said reputation, that is tailored to that reputation, it would be awesome to do. Story seems to keep me interested, while grinding like a drone on the crap every day or week bores me to death.

So, i stick to my opinion on 'loremaster and explore achievements only, but if they added a story arc to all reputations involved in unlocking flying and unlocking allied races, they would be so much more fun to do, such as Nightborne and Honourbound as well as the Alliance counterpart of Honourbound....they had a decent story that kept me hooked.....the other factions were left at where they were when i finished the story arc of the zone....mostly honoured....grinding daily quest.....i mean world quests, no matter if legion world quests give 150 or 250rep each world quest, the very fact that they never even thought about adding a story arc that spanned the entirely reputation is shocking.

 

But hey, i tend to think about this stuff.