OK, WoW Anonymous admission time.
My name is Tesh, and I actually kinda sorta like World of Warcraft. Sometimes, it even makes me happy.
Piggie!
(If you don’t understand the piggie, check out the link to Larisa’s place. She and BBB have been pontificating on the state of WoW of late, so this is, in large part, for them and anyone else who wants to maybe find a little magic again. I’m definitely out of touch with the WoW mainstream… and I love it that way.) And as any good Peter Pan fan knows, happiness can lead to flight. But I get ahead of myself.
Oh, don’t get me wrong, I stand by my assertions that the subscription model* is a Terrible, No Good, Very Bad Idea for several reasons, I wish WoW were more “world-like” and less “game-like”, and I still see several problems with the game design of WoW. The one that bugs me the most at the moment is that crafting tradeskills suffer from atrocious pacing, high cost (in time or in gold via buying ingredients at auction) and irrelevance to gameplay and the economy 98% of the time. Sometimes, other people still stink (though my experience with other players is 80% pleasant, 15% awesome and only very rarely bad). I can even see a LOT of little art things to nitpick, since I deal with 3D game art all day. The game still has an unfortunate gravitational effect on the MMO industry on the whole that I think is stifling innovation.
…but y’know what? I’m a latecomer to the party. While I’ve studied the game off and on since it came out years ago, as a player, the world of Azeroth (and Outland) is still largely new and even joyous to me, even though most of the mechanics are long since rote and bland (though really, the same could be said of most of my beloved JRPGs, even the incredible Chrono Trigger, so that’s nothing new). There is still stuff to see, places to go, quests to read, ways to explore. I got my first level 60 character just a couple of weeks ago. My Tauren Druid, Tishtoshtesh, dinged 60 and immediately set out to get the Druid Flight Form. And hoo boy, bob howdy…
I LOVE FLYING
If I could have a supermutant power, I’d want to fly. OK, well, if I could have only one supermutant power, I’d want invulnerability, but flight almost as much. (Since really, flight without invulnerability of some sort is asking for trouble anyway. RIP, Banshee. But I’m not bitter. Nope, not at all.)
So yeah, I’m loving just flying around the Old World of Azeroth, taking plenty of pictures of things that interest me. I’ve been given license to explore like I’ve never done before in the game, and I’m taking advantage of it. Let those ground-pounding grinders race to the endgame treadmill (sort of like accelerating into a red light), I have sights to see. I’m sure they think I’m wasting my time, but hey, it’s mine to waste.
Sights like these make me happy. (And yes, if I could fly in Minecraft, you can bet your favorite great aunt that I’d spend a lot of time doing so. It’s not as pretty as WoW, but seeing the sights from the air is still great fun, like that greenhouse my daughter and I built the other day, or the water-encased diving tower from world’s top to world’s bottom…)
Silithus
Zangarmarsh
Darkshore
More, but better; stitched “panorama” shots
Lordaeron Throne Room
Dalaran
Volcanic Lava Flow
Darkshore Sinkhole
It’s a mix of the mundane (shots I took to study how they do texturing and modeling) and the marvelous (the remodeled Darkshore looks especially great from the air), but hopefully there’s something in there that shows some of what the game has to offer those who go off the rails, taking to wing to see the sights. There’s a world out there to see, and I’ve been having fun exploring it.
*Disclosure: I’m taking advantage of the WoW VISA card to get some playtime. I keep it around just for big purchases and emergencies. We replaced our 35-year-old house’s windows, so I put that bill on the WoW VISA, and bam, four months of playtime in the form of four one-month time codes, just for going through a little extra paperwork. (We paid off the VISA bill almost immediately from savings; we had the money to pay the bill effectively on-hand, but we may as well push it through the system for a little bonus, hm?) I maintain that subs stink, but hey, there’s enough fun to be had in WoW to play, at least for a little while. I’ll man up and burn out like a bitter veteran later. Maybe. If I feel like it.
…though I maintain that it’s possible to like the good parts of the game and dislike the bad parts without conflating the two and condemning the game or praising it to the exclusion of the other. Weird, I know. That just isn’t done on the internet.
Tish Tosh Tesh 
“though I maintain that it’s possible to like the good parts of the game and dislike the bad parts without conflating the two and condemning the game or praising it to the exclusion of the other. Weird, I know. That just isn’t done on the internet.”
Amen.
Flight has been much improved of late. The first flying you get gives 150% speed instead of 85% (or whatever it was), making it a clear upgrade over the epic land mount. Separating mount speed from the mounts themselves was also a great idea imo. Now what mount you think looks cool is all you need to consider when choosing one, and Druid flight form remains viable all the way to 310% speed if you have the cash. Finally, I think being able to fly around in the old world is a heck of a lot of fun.
I also share your dislike of crafting in WoW. You set a heck of a lot of time and gold on fire for very little reward. It’s better than it used to be (e.g., the gear is at least on par with average dropped greens now), but still nothing anyone sane would mess with while leveling a “lead” (i.e., first to cap in your stable) toon on a server imo. To my tastes LoTRO and EQ II have far superior crafting systems.
With my druid I never tire of being able to jump up and invoke flight form and fly away. It is habit forming. You can do it in one smooth motion. And any time I am up high, I jump off and pull out flight form.
In fact, more than once I have swapped characters and jumped off of something while traveling only to realize that this isn’t the flight form character! I think it has only killed me once, when I jumped off a ledge in Shatt.
Sometimes I feel like a school teacher while flying. Lemme essplain…I hope on my non-fire breathing dragon and set soar over the plains, mountains and rivers. I enjoy checking on the peasants in starting areas, or the slaves of an old mining operation, and if I see a chance to help I swoop down and offer my educational services (that’s code for big axe or nifty wand).
But seriously, flying does give me the chance to see the world and get away from everyone at the auction houses or town squares. Why sit around a capital city staring at useless chat when I could be soaring over waterfalls and deserts on my flying steed?
BTW, love the pic of Winterspring. Can’t tell if it’s the sun or moon in the background, but that’s what I love about it.
Yeebo beat me to it, so I will Amen his Amen.
cheers for the piggie! I think I need to use that more on my own blog!
Ahhhh Zangarmarsh, my favourite map of all TBC!! Seems you’re as good a photographer of virtual worlds, as of the real one, Tesh! 🙂
and indeed, WoW’s maps will always be a beauty. it’s one shiny that has remained entirely untouched (okay, there was the cataclysm, but that’s not the point) through the years.
If I think what I enjoyed most towards the end of WoW (for me), it’s probably been my explorer blogposts on Gilneas and Thousand Needles. you should really go there, if you haven’t been yet.
Ah flying.
My very best memories of WoW, better even than downing 40 and 25 man raid bosses, really truly best memories..
…are of the first time I got flight form.
Totally hear you there. I still miss it.
Despite other games that have flight, none of them do it quite as well as WoW. And none of the others give you a FORM…not a mount, but a form. You. Fly.
Beautiful.
Thanks for the comments, all! Sorry I’ve been remiss in responding. It’s been a crazy couple of weeks.
Yeebo, I totally forgot about that mount change. I’m definitely going to be using my flight form instead of mounts. There are some cool mounts, yes, but being able to take wing without one is just… awesome. (Agreed with nugget, there, then. It’s just so… liberating.)
Wilhelm, I used to try BASE jumping with my Druid, but then lagspikes wound up killing me… in Shattrath, of course. Still, “jump-shift-fly” has become reflex for me, too. I love it. It even makes collection and infiltration quests much less tedious.
Gronthe, that’s a great way to put it. I love Winterspring too… and I couldn’t tell you if that’s the sun or the moon… and yes, I love it that way.
Larisa, long live the piggie!
Syl, thanks! I do love photography, and I have a bunch of other screenshots. These are just the last two months’ worth. I have a lot of Gilneas (so atmospheric, I love the place) and Thousand Needles (the old version) was one of my top three places in “vanilla” WoW. It reminds me of the state parks here in Utah, and I love that feel. Now that it’s flooded, it’s still pretty cool… but I liked it as a dry gulch more.
nugget, indeed, there’s just something deeply satisfying about taking wing and flying wherever the whim strikes. Mounts are nice, but flying without one… that’s just… good. Really good.
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