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Wrath of the Lich King: why flying mounts are restricted in Northrend

Posted Aug 25, 2007 at 06:38PM by Rio S. Listed in: News, Wrath of the Lich King Tags: Blizzard, Jeff Kaplan, Bornakk

It's become quite common to have a couple of questions and discussions about the World of Warcraft's upcoming expansion, Wrath of the Lich King. And it's good to know that the community managers over at the WoW Forums never seen to tire of answering the questions.

Today's discussion is regarding flying mounts in Northrend. The opening post (OP) cited an interview with Jeff Kaplan, aka Tigole, where he discussed the Wrath of the Lich King things the Blizzard dev team had to consider and change. They decided to open the Death Knight class to lower levels to prevent players powerleveling to get level cap. The OP then ventured to ask why the devs can't the change the rules regarding flying mounts to Northrend.

According to reports, players will have to venture forth by foot until they reach level 78, at which time, flying mounts will be usable. Blizzard poster Bornakk came by and answered the OP:

From a design standpoint, we don’t want people to just fly over continent and skip things when they are leveling up. Instead we want people to explore and experience the environment around them when they first reach the shores of Northrend. You will walk (or ride) from one quest to another as the zones unfold before you instead of just flying over it without batting an eye.

At some point though you will definitely be able to fly in Northrend. We are currently thinking around level 78, but haven’t made a final call on this yet.

It looks like they want you to actually experience the expansion and it's not a bad thing. Without the lore and other stuff, the World of Warcraft might become just a grind.

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by ThisOl'Druid (Unregistered) - 2007-08-27

» No-Fly Zone Northrend...

This business of not wanting players to just fly by content is crap plain and simple. I'm willing to be that similar to BC they'll release Lich with elements that are unfinished and things meant just for those at lvl 80.

In BC they had an advantage there because players wouldn't take to air (except for druids at 68) until lvl 70. Come to think of it I wonder if this means my flight form will be down for Northrend too. Anyway, now that everyone who has capped 70 can fly it means that the Lich expansion had no means to keep people from free flying zone to zone. Quickly opening up all areas of their map, getting all flightmaster points etc.

Blizzard CM's saying they want to make you experience everything is crap because in order to experience everything and do all the quests ...you WILL have to put to ground and push forth. They just don't want people zipping across the map and seeing everything in one shot first, that's all it is.

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