I adore flying in EQ2. I dated a private pilot and aerial photographer for 13 years, and really love the perspective of looking down on the world. There are also some cool things in pretty much every outdoor zone that can only be seen from the air.
I was so stoked when we could fly. It allowed me to take my time and explore, fly to an area land and look around then on to the next, before I started any questing in the zone. It pained me greatly when they took it away. Now I race through one of the signature lines so I can fly again, I barely read the conversations from the quest givers (I used to really enjoy the story too). Just so I can finally fly again. Add to that now all my exploration is long after all the quests are done. The scenery is one of the best things of the game and I miss enjoying it at the beginning, getting the lay of the land if you will, I can't look around because I'm way too busy fighting off everything in the zone. Maybe less mobs jumping me every 10 seconds would allow me to enjoy it more. I heard somewhere that removing flight at the beginning was a way to 'slow us down', imho if you want me to go slower stop rushing me. I made a level 1 alt just to enjoy not doing the same stuff over and over (all my other alts are max level now) and it has out leveled every zone before I'm even halfway done with it.
I think guild wars 2 nailed that aspect of the game where each mount type is needed for a specific region of the game's humongous maps without it detracting from the immersion which you do if your flying mounts lets you traverse and skip everything in your path. It really saddens me that ground mounts have no place in the game anymore as it was a highlight of the game's history when creativity was front and centre during development.
This is a good call on your part, especially if you're rolling for nostalgia. Similarly, I don't use fast travel while playing EQ1 (I will use wizard/druid ports and POK books) because I like the feeling of travel. While I do use fast travel and all that in EQ2, fistbump for me because I 100% absolutely get where you're coming from. That said, when I am doing older content, I too usually actually toggle my mount off and hoof it for immersion. I also keep old gear sets so that I don't oneshot everything - though I will use key pieces of late-game gear (particularly from the 80-100 target levels) that provide self healing and warding so that I can still solo epics, but I just don't kill them in one hit.
The reason why many of us live in democracies is because they allow us freedom to choose the path most suited to us. All of us have lots of options and no one (well, maybe parents, bosses, partners, etc.) tell us what to do. And here in America, we are famous for ignoring authority because we value individualism. So when a game, takes away a perk, or right we've had, we tend to get testy. Taking away a major feature cost the game subscriptions and didn't really slow down any of the players who blast through the game.
EverQuest is not a democracy and you have no rights here. If the devs decide that they made a bad design decision in the past and decide to tweak it, or even completely reverse it, it's their discretion to do so. Personally, I wish they'd exercise that discretion more often.
Maybe they should start removing bad decisions when they make them, would save on a lot of bloat and wasted years.
I didn't say EQ2 was a democracy. I was talking about those of us who prefer to live in a democracy have certain traits in common one of them being we don't like having things we rely on taken away from us without a very good reason. The devs are free to do what they want and we are free to either go along with it or leave.
I love flight! I know it's a screen I'm looking at, but I still get a little giddy every time I launch off the ground! I've dreamed of having wings since I was a wee little girl. There is a care free feeling when you are flying that there just isn't enough of in any world I know. I bought the game because it had a griffon on the cover, back in 1994, and I assumed (being a fantasy game) we could fly around. I was bitterly disappointed that there was no actual free-roaming flight for the first few years. I'm pleased that there is a choice most of the time, but annoyed every expansion when I can't fly till I've gone through a questline. Feels like getting yanked back on a leash. Getting stuck on terrain is a bit of a pet peeve of mine. I have to be on the ground to do the quests any way, why force me to stay on the ground in-between updates? Quests, shinnies, and looking at the details in the artwork that goes into the game entice me to the ground. Why mope about how the players are too busy flying to look at it (even though land-stuck players are usualy too busy trying to rush to endgame/loot/bosses to look anyway), why not make it so cool we want to land and look? Add more interactive stuff, Easter-eggs, secret rooms, etc? Personally, I'm a huge fan of plunderable furniture. A good rule of thumb to make a game more interesting. Play with us more, try to control us less. Flight was an excellent addition. ^_^ Making the land more interactive and pleasantly surprising instead of trapping us on the ground seems like a good rout to go. *edit Oh, and FYI, my hubby STILL gives me a hard time about the time I was supposed to be healing him, but he died because I was distracted by the details in a butterfly that was near my character. XD
But do you get a jolt of excitement when you see a question mark in pale text on a billboard/buss IRL like some of us? XD
I love exploring in EQ2 and flying just adds to the enjoyment for me. I don't use it to skip content but to see more content. I have had a blast checking out old zones via the air. For me, games that have flying (and swimming) add to the immersion instead of detract. But I understand for others it does detract. I use flying as an additional thing to do/experience and not as a way to bypass or miss anything. Especially all of the amazing detail and work that went into making the zones. I can certainly understand the conundrum for the game developers.
