This past Saturday I finally earned the Pathfinder Part Two achievement for Battle for Azeroth which gives me the ability to fly in the latest expansion. I’d finished the painful reputation grind in Nazjatar about a week ago and had far more fun earning rep in Mechagon than I ever did in Naz.
I ran around and killed rares on Mechagon for the last bit of rep I needed for the achievement and after killing Uncle T’rogg, I immediately hopped on the hunter wolfhawk mount and flapped into the air! It was so wonderful not to be grounded anymore!
I was curious to see if I’d hate Nazjatar less with flying so I took Sri there and did some dailies. Questing is definitely easier with flying, but I still don’t like Naz and probably never will. Something about it makes me feel claustrophobic and trapped and there’s just way too many mobs everywhere.
Newly armed with flying yesterday, I took my blood elf paladin Solunai back to Naz to finish the introductory quests and unlock world quests and dailies. It was nice being able to actually kick some butt at close range and be able to heal myself, but the idea of doing Naz all over again really didn’t appeal.
Now that I have flying in BfA it will make leveling my level 110+ alts easier but I won’t be playing with as much frequency because the sense of urgency has passed. Plus, I’ve learned from previous expansions that putting effort into the Heart of Azeroth and its new essence features will be wasted when they take it all away next expansion. But I can still enjoy the game without such expansions quirks.
The grind for rep to get flying in BfA was unpleasant, but then Blizz has made getting flying in new expansions ridiculously complicated since Draenor. Really Draenor is still the worst in my opinion because of the need to find all those stupid treasures. I miss the days of just reaching a certain level and being able to buy flying in the new zone.
Blizzard may make getting flying complicated so people have to spend more time in the new areas they created, but the downside is by the time I’ve done all that, I don’t want to see those areas again for a long time.
Don’t get me wrong, I still love World of Warcraft and I’ll be playing it until it ceases to exist. But overall I really don’t enjoy the whole Alliance versus Horde nonsense that’s been beaten into undeath. I realize that’s part of the game’s origins, but I wasn’t playing during “Vanilla” and I have little interest in Classic, so that part of Warcraft really isn’t my thing.
For me, playing Warcraft should be about bringing people together because it brings so many players together online in one world. There’s enough dissonance in the world today, it really doesn’t need to also exist in a game that’s supposed to be fun.
But I guess I’ll leave dissolving faction lines for my Warcraft fanfiction because I don’t see Blizzard sticking to it anytime soon. I wouldn’t mind being wrong about that but time will tell.
Srinity 