Flying patch delay - Blue Tracker

#1 - July 2, 2015, 2:39 a.m.

1) Flying in Draenor is a simple permission toggle.

No new content involved, no new features to be developed. You can already fly with the feather, so all the visible and invisible geometry is in place.

Remember when Blizzard put in a localized no-fly zone around Khadgar in a hotfix? Or made copies of him to reduce the load on the original? That was more complicated than toggling flying and it was coded, tested and deployed (on very, very busy servers) in a matter of days.

Let's be honest here and admit that Blizzard absolutely could have had flying immediately upon flying achievement completion in the 6.2 patch.

2) Just doing dailies I will get the flying achievement before the next Tuesday.

I haven't had a single one of those 1000 Draenor rep tokens drop.

Any delay from the moment by which people get the flying achievement doing dailies is effectively Blizzard going back on their word to the ones who demanded flying back in the game.

3) The uproar was about flying in current content.

I expected to hear about the flying patch being tested on the PTR by now, to be deployed shortly after people doing dailies get their achievement done. I'm sure a lot of people have noticed that this hasn't happened.

If we hear that flying will happen when the pre-patch for the next expansion is deployed there will be hell to pay.

Zarhym

Community Manager

#11 - July 2, 2015, 3:14 a.m.

07/01/2015 08:03 PMPosted by Stinkus
I agree with OP flying is just flipping a switch. all the BS about this and that is just them stretching out the fact they don't want people flying around tannan and just blowing thru the content in 24 hours.

It's a compelling narrative for the cynical among us, but it's simply not true. We gain nothing by trying to be intentionally deceptive in the way we design and release content. I wish more people could understand that, even when they disagree with some of our design decisions.

This was the most recent comment made on the subject of adding flying to Draenor: https://youtu.be/WHtglUq5_0g?t=46m22s

Zarhym

Community Manager

#18 - July 2, 2015, 3:26 a.m.

07/01/2015 08:12 PMPosted by Stinkus
think of it like the Belf and goat zones. you can fly in BC but sot these areas because the building don't have finished tops. in WoD all the building are finished and the feather shoots you up max height before starting the fall. its not exactly flying but it shows that everything is finished. also its not like the land is coded in a different way from the rest of the game that would make flying difficult.

That doesn't mean every inch of the terrain is bug free and there are no invisible walls in certain locations. People who have gotten really creative with the feather and glider can attest to this. While Draenor wasn't built with 2D backdrops and such for buildings, the way some areas in vanilla WoW were built, that doesn't mean a simple toggle will allow everyone to fly anywhere they want without running into any issues.

We weren't sure at the outset of designing Draenor whether or not flying would be enabled at some point, but that doesn't mean every art and design team ensured from day one that every bit of the world was designed with flying in mind. WoW is a very big game with a lot of programming under the hood. Changes need to be made and testing needs to be done before characters are able to explore everywhere from the skies.

Any small bug or environment quirk could lead to any number of issues that we want to make sure are addressed before we flip "the toggle." In other words, there is no toggle. :)

Zarhym

Community Manager

#19 - July 2, 2015, 3:27 a.m.

07/01/2015 08:21 PMPosted by Hebit
Source?

As far as I know, they said it would be implemented in patch 6.2.X, which could be 6.2.1 or it could be 6.2.9
They said "the next patch" as you can see in the youtube link in the post above yours. the reason for the "x" is they did not know what the next patch would be called because they have internal builds before the PTR.

That's correct.

Zarhym

Community Manager

#21 - July 2, 2015, 3:29 a.m.

07/01/2015 08:21 PMPosted by Maoxx
I imagine its not so much unlocking flight for that character as much as it is coding it to unlock for all of your 90+ characters on your account and making sure that aspect works correctly that's cause them to delay it to a patch after 6.2 rather than in it.

This is also correct. It's not just about the environment, but also the systems in place to make sure flying is appropriately rewarded to each character based on the criteria.

Zarhym

Community Manager

#435 - July 18, 2015, 12:49 a.m.

07/15/2015 09:05 AMPosted by Neocross

We weren't sure at the outset of designing Draenor whether or not flying would be enabled at some point, but that doesn't mean every art and design team ensured from day one that every bit of the world was designed with flying in mind.

Did you seriously just say that? First off - up until after the release of Warlords you told us there will be flying. You then later decided there won't be. What you're saying right now is that all of this time promising flying in 6.1 was a straight up lie. You said there will be flying in 6.1. Even before deciding against it, you still promised us flying. Now you're saying you guys didn't even plan on there being flying, so the world isn't properly designed for it?

Flying has been around since Burning Crusade. It's a huge part of this game. Suddenly you decide to rip it from the players and pretty much lie to our faces.

That's almost entirely and exactly the opposite of what I said.

Zarhym

Community Manager

#439 - July 18, 2015, 12:59 a.m.

07/17/2015 05:52 PMPosted by Rubedo
07/17/2015 05:49 PMPosted by Zarhym
That's almost entirely and exactly the opposite of what I said.

You should have been more direct.

I don't see how I was indirect. The explanation is necessarily complicated, because the way the whole topic of flying played out internally was complicated. Not everyone was on the same page and that led to mistakes in communication on our part, and confusion and frustration on the community's part.

Really my primary point in this thread was just that we didn't intentionally lie to people. We were fairly open about acknowledging the debate over whether to add flying, and the community latched onto various pieces of messaging spread across many months, in order to try to prove we had been deceitful, as though that benefits us somehow.

Bottom line is we screwed up in how we handled this.

Zarhym

Community Manager

#441 - July 18, 2015, 1:02 a.m.

07/17/2015 05:58 PMPosted by Grugnor
Too much tap dancing with a touchy subject causes this kind of thing. You guys played games with flight, trying to stretch out an expansion thin on open world content. The players aren't stupid, they see right through the double talk and misdirects.

The way flight was handled was shady, and the way it was implemented back into the game was as well. Personally I feel like it was all planned out in advance to minimize the inevitable loss of subs from a weak expansion. You guys knew subs were gonna nose dive and you needed to hold onto a carrot to put in the game down the road to pick things back up.

Timing. With Blizzard it's all about the timing. And the money. Sad to see it come down to that from a company that used to really have the 'by gamers for gamers' feel to it.

And just to reiterate, no.

We weren't playing games, thinking this was some way of stretching out content, or using double talk to pull a fast one on players. The reason people believe some or all of that to be true, however, is because we didn't handle the situation well, at all, so people developed their own conspiracy theories about what was "really happening."

Edit: As a side note, I wouldn't work for a company that pulled the tactics you say you "feel like" were "all planned out in advance." If you feel that to be true, I guess you have no reason to believe I'm telling the truth right now, but I'm still stating it for the record.

My reputation in life matters to me a lot, whether personal or professional. I'm not going to go against my moral code for the good of a company. Fortunately for me, that's why Blizzard has been a good fit for me career-wise.

Zarhym

Community Manager

#456 - July 18, 2015, 1:27 a.m.

07/17/2015 06:11 PMPosted by Grugnor
Sorry, but I actually don't believe that it wasn't part of a timeline for this expansion. There was a lot of misinformation and misdirection. A lot of shady things (flying mounts on the CE box cover?) that helped to maximize expansion sales before dropping the bomb on players.

That is very sad. And clearly I'm not going to convince you otherwise. But it's sad. Like I said, I wouldn't be here discussing these things if your vision of Blizzard was reality.

You don't gain customer loyalty through deception or bait-and-switch tactics. You don't ever believe that making a profit and gaining loyalty are mutually exclusive. You make awesome products that you're passionate about, and that you think people will feel are worth enjoying; and you listen to their feedback about those products to see what things can be improved for a majority of customers. The folks here at Blizzard know this.

But WoW is also a huge ship of a game. If people on these forums think the ship is on the wrong course, we might agree on some level, but it takes time to correct for that.