Do other MMOs have the Ability to Fly

problem with pvp and flying mounts in WoW that people who can fly? do. so its only low levels left. and big Kahunas on their big dragons go and gunk stalk people 30+ levels bellow them.

Halaa was fun. so was taking over Hellfire peninsula and that dead circle in Terrokar (can't remember its name right now, sorry). But it was designed specifically with open pvp and flying mounts in mind, at the time, you only had 10-12 levels difference between starting characters and max level ones and you HAD to dismount (or at least be within attack range) to accomplish objectives.

its not quite the same nowadays. and I'm saying this as someone who came back to WoW for 2 months recently and stopped playing again before second month was finished.

flying mounts again becomes a question of convenience and speeding up your experience (why are people playing if they can't wait to be done and want to shorten experience as much as possible? I just don't get it) vs everything else.

I personally don't think its worth it. others may think differently. but like someone else mentioned, even Blizzard regrets making flying so much of a part of WoW, to the point where they are introducing more and more no-flying zones. they already limited how soon you could get flight in Pandaria (have to be max level).

one of the things that makes flying somewhat work in WoW is that zones are at least connected. in SWTOR - you cannot just fly from planet to planet continuously, you have to hop on a ship, travel, hop back down. and unlike Wow's hearth - quick travel is not limited to specific set point. one of the reasons why I'm keeping my subscription even when I go through week or more of being distracted by other games - is because I like to abuse my quick travel.

so honestly for me, if they just introduce a legacy perk that shortens the cooldown to, say 15 minutes, and make it possible to send out a shuttle or something for people trying to get to a heroic mission area ? and who needs flying mounts anyways

If you check the History of linked page (it is a Wiki after all, so quite easy) you can see that it was present at least since June 2010, which seems really early date by that wiki standards, as the Main page oldest recored is from 2011

It can and has been added years down the line in other MMOS (WoW and SWG just before it shut down). So fingers crossed for one day.

Interesting to see the varied viewpoints on flying in MMOs. While I see some of the arguments, others I don't for instance, having it be a high level character perk doesn't allow people to skip the whole game.

Also, as for people who say it ruins mob placement, does anyone actually enjoy fighting mindless mobs? Mobs are my least favorite part of any MMO I have ever played. They seriously make combat a chore rather than fun. That's why I preferred the way that KOTOR didn't have respawning foes, except in a few instances, and that was only once in certain areas. I see most people go out of their way to skip mobs, and most know the perfect paths to fight the fewest in FP and OPS.

The PVP aspect I understand more, but even that could be handled if incorporated well, I loved City of Heroes PVP after all.

As for resources, it would take a lot of resources, hence the reason I said I would like to see it years down the line. And lets face it, some of the planets definitely have room for interesting expansion. I honestly don't see the engine being a problem flight-wise either, Taxis are proof that it can be done. The lack of swimming is just due to the fact that they didn't view it as worthwhile to add, but who knows, maybe we'll see that years down the line as well.

All in all, I agree that the game can't support as it is now, but it is only a year old, who's to say where things could be several years down the line. I would love to one day fly a Thranta threw the mountains of Alderaan.

Yeah, it's funny watching your toon "board" a vehicle that is smaller in every dimension than the character itself. It also has the somewhat annoying mechanic that you have to "wear" the vehicle by equipping it into a gear slot in order to use it. Good times.

He quit SWTOR, I think he was just playing the forums for most of 2012 anyway.

Yeah I'm not sure it really killed OPvP in WoW, it didn't really exist outside very specific areas anyway. It made it a lot harder for gankers to kill AFK people though.......... which is maybe what people mean.

If you mean not being able to kill people while they're flying, there have been several fun ways to get around that, though I think they've fixed most of them now. These included:

1) Moonkins could fly up and use Typhoon on a mounted person in the air and knock them to the ground

2) Rogues could dismount, Garrote and then use Killing Spree on someone in the air

3) priests could dot-up people in the air and then slow fall down

Flying mounts didn't kill world pvp in WoW, people not wanting to do world PvP in WoW killed it. All the proof you need is when the sunwell patch went live and every high level player on both factions were forced into a tiny island, all that happened on my pvp server were a handful of gank squads killing people trying to do dailys and running away from anyone actually wanting to pvp, everyone else just ignored each other. or you could look at any summoning stone location for raids, the only pvp that happened was when a full raid or more was present against 2-3 others, anything close to equal numbers just meant everyone ignored each other.

Rogues can still cause the death of people airborn. You can dismount, shadow step, <any attack> (I like gouge for the momentary stun so mages can't use their "feather fall" ability), target go splat. You will also die of course. Used for city defense. Or wickerman defense during the October event. Good times.

Wow is a fantasy world and i would say most people expect dragons in fantasy worlds. Especially considering the first multiplayer games like D&D were very prevalent in their use of dragons and those games are what evolved into games like WOW. Now dragons are flying beasts so naturally flying beasts and WOW should be in the same sentence. Now mounting them for personal flight is a leap of faith, but i consider flying mounts a plus to a game.

GW2 is dead and you have to say a part of it's death was due to no mounts at all. I mean come on, what self respecting sword slayer doesn't pine for a gallant steed to charge in on!?!?

On to SWTOR. This is a space game and flying is a core element to space. The movies are FILLED with all sorts of flying vehicles and if you try to tell me you play this game because it isnt tied to the movies your a liar. Heres my rebuttal to specific arguments i saw...

Kills pvp - Open pvp areas in wow lock out flying during the pvp sessions so if pvp is dead its because of how flying was implemented in those zones or how flying was not implemented in those zones...not the fact flying is implemented.

Datacrons - i somewhat see this but i call bs. I have not done all the datacrons but one of the most difficult ones i've done so far(nar shadaa flying billboard) is indoors and most indoor areas are already locked out of any mounts at all. Further, you would think flying mounts in WOW would make farming a non factor. Well while flying makes travel easy seeing things from the air isnt always as easy as its made out. Some of these datacrons are under trees or obscured by cliffs/machinery. Some are even buried in tunnels and instanced zones where mounts cant go (2 man quesh tunnel one). From my perspective flying mounts affect datacrons very little and the ones it does make too easy can just be relocated or hidden from the air by a tree. I mean seriously, theres already dozens of guides that point out specific coords to EVERY cron. Like flying there makes that any easier, it just speeds up the process by making the long part in finding the cron not getting to the zone.

Engine cant handle flight - This is just stupid. So googling the engine and flight and getting 0 results automatically indicates it's not capable of it?!? Like another said if it couldn't handle it then we wouldn't have things like falling. Flying is just like falling but you "fall" up. Its a 3D engine people and as such inherently has this capability. You can climb hills and fall off cliffs. You can ride elevators up and down and you can even jump up and down while doing it and even move forward and back. Frig people thats flying even if its only for milliseconds.

About the only argument i buy for anti flying mounts is the game objects not being filled out to be solid. This is why i don't expect flying mounts anytime soon. However flying mounts are an evolutionary thing. Eventually new players joining slows down and the player base starts to "age out" everyone has rerolled, done alts, seen all the story lines, obtained all the datacrons, etc and a lot of the anti arguments become moot. You really want to spend 2 months obtaining datacrons on your 3rd servers, 12th alt? It becomes a much bigger plus when you've been there and done that but now can do it in a lot less time. SWTOR has already gone that way with the legacy system. Maybe they introduce flying mounts through legacy alts and some "family love" force explosion causes a large alt family to be so force sensitive they can all of a sudden control beats to fly.

It's not a matter of if, it's a matter of when and how. For all we know the devs are reading this thread and chuckling behind closed doors because they in fact already have set the foundation for flying mounts. Like wow it could easily be done for new places like makeb and then retro pulled in to older zones.