Warcraft Flight Grind
This post is (12/31) of the Blaugust 2019 event! You can find out more about Blaugust over at Belghast’s blog. I (Chestnut) created a Twitter list of all participants. UltrViolet created an OPML file of all the bloggers to import into your feed reader.
I am one of very few left playing Warcraft right now that has yet to obtain flight. I’ve been ruminating on how to write about my feelings in regards to the current flight grind, but I really couldn’t come up with more than, “heck this bull” (except with much more colorful words).
The flight grind, right now, is ruining the game for me. The need to spend an hour per zone each day to grind out world quests and zone quests is time I don’t have. I was already feeling indifferent about the game (pepped up a bit by downing Azshara and seeing some more lore), but this feels like an anchor that I can’t untangle from.
Luckily, it seems I’m not the only one that feels this way.
“Earning flying almost seems not worth it, and disappointingly punitive with the two new factions you have to advance…”
I agree that it feels largely punitive. Even more so when one cannot dedicate even a half hour of time per day to just doing the world quests in one of the zones. Then add on the fact that others begin to question, “You really don’t have flight yet?”
“No matter how well designed these zones are, how engaging the core quest and PvE content, they will be lost for many players in a haze of empty, unfulfilling grinding. My core issue this time around, a similar one to Legion actually, is that the flying grind involves a lot of time spent not playing the core game of WoW. It has the skin of it – you do world quests in Nazjatar and the one daily world quest in Mechagon, and it has the same reputation increases that accompany a lot of WoW’s gameplay. However, many of these quests don’t focus on actually playing your character, and instead focus on minigames and other things – some of which are amusing, but many of which are not, and none of which are as fulfilling as playing your character in fresh world content.”
Her post in general is a pretty good summation of my feelings.
Even though Pathfinder is not a pointless endeavor (flying is super helpful), it very much feels like it. And it’s dragging what little enjoyment I had remaining for Warcraft into the toilet.