Fly

Merinna on her first Griffon

Last week, WoW lead designer Ion Hazzikostas gave an interview in which he noted that there would be no flying in Patch 6.2, in fact, he didn't think there would be any flying in Draenor at all.  And you know what? He suspected they may never allow flying again in any future expansion pack either because the developers liked that idea so much.

The reasons stated are that "flying makes the world feel smaller and less dangerous." Which, truth be told, is entirely an accurate statement. The developers have chafed at a character's ability to simply jump on a flying mount, go kill something that needs killing, and jump on that flying mount to escape the multitudinous ground forces that might get in your way. I presume flying above it all is a way to avoid PvP entanglements on an open PvP server.

So, with those caveats in the previous paragraph clearly written out and agreed to by me, let me state unequivocally that to remove flying as an ongoing feature in the World of Warcraft would be a disgraceful, terrible idea. Removing flying from the game gives way to lazy design by the developers and is disrespectful to the players who have spent years building characters around the flight ability.

Lazy Design

Hazzikostas says that it is difficult to design around the convenience of flying. He completely ignores how successfully Blizzard has done this in the past.

Wrath of the Lich King was brilliantly designed for the use of aerial transportation. Many of the zones of that expansion had an impressive verticality that took the ability to fly as a key feature of its exploration. Do you remember the first time you flew into the Storm Peaks, all full of straight inclines and monumentally-sized Titan features? How about Icecrown Citadel, where the ground was so full of enemy Scourge that you had to fly above it to get where you needed to be?  How about the Howling Fjord, which, although a starting-level zone for Lich King, gained so much more beauty when you reached max level and could sail through the air jetties of the deep chasms and foothills.

Warcraft vs. The Industrial Revolution

Again with the Orcs and their crappy places to live

Several weeks ago, I ran an article in which I wondered aloud about what effect advancing technology would have on Azeroth and our World of Warcraft.  There was much consideration given for the steampunk aesthetic, but my feelings were that the developers have been letting in-game technology creep closer and closer to the present day to where it was threatening the concept of a "fantasy" world.

That was all before I ever got a look at Blackrock Foundry. So now I gotta just vent a little.

I hate Blackrock Foundry. I've never hated a raid as much as this. I hate the setting. I hate most of the bosses. I hate the color dialogue and I hate the incidental themes about technology that it shows us.

There are some interesting raid mechanics here that are ruined by stupid boss dialogue and the trappings of a fully mechanized and mostly automatic industrial factory. 

I like suspension of disbelief and all, but any army that could possibly build all this mechanization in such a short time, including the train depot and underground shipping port is one our medieval butts would be incapable of beating. Conservatively, this kind of mechanization took decades of active development and construction in the real world. I'm still a little hazy on how much time has passed since Garrish was deposed at Orgrimmar, but a year or two is the tops. All this should not have been built in that amount of time.

Jumping around among conveyor belts and dodging dozens of locomotives while some orc shouts 19th Century railroad jargon at us is not my idea of "savage." The parody of Hans and Franz, one of my least favorite Saturday Night Live regulars from 25 years ago, was stupid. I'm just surprised they didn't call one of their abilities "Pump You Up!"

Pant, pant, pant.

Yeah, I'll be glad to be done with this place so I never have to hear  "Bat the stack off her!" ever again.

Blizzard Got It Wrong: It's not a "Timeline"

What kind of portal is it?

Well. It's been two years since I posted. What can I say? It's been a rough two years, personally. Too much Real World business to do, diminishing returns on fun in game. I took a break from Azeroth and buckled down to mastering my universe.

But all things come in some variety of cycles and time has opened up somewhat and I'm back, at least for now.

It is the eve of the Warlords of Draenor. It's about three months out. The beta is allegedly going swimmingly. Garrisons are being considered, half my favorite abilities are being culled in The Great Ability Culling of 2014, and those are topics for another time.

Even when I wasn't playing, I was reading the blogs and caught all the Warlords reveal at the last Blizzcon and I've experienced the befuddlement of the greater WoW community in trying to figure out exactly what is going on with the premise of this expansion. At best, it seems very timey-wimey (if I may borrow an expression from The Doctor). At other points, it makes no sense whatsoever.

The big problem here is that this time travel business is the farthest edge of science fiction fantasy. There are some who have invested some serious thought into the business of this thing, but the facts are that we really don't even have a real-world working hypothesis for how time travel should play itself out, much less a theory or ... god help us... some laws of nature on the issue.  The point is that each universe pretty well makes things up as they go along. But, I'd argue, that some sort of crowdsourced understanding of temporal mechanics has risen to the top of the public conscious and should be observed.

The point is: Azeroth is not dealing with an alternate timeline in Warlords of Draenor. Azeroth is being invaded by a parallel universe.