Why Argus Isn't Flyable

When Argus was announced as a playable zone, I imagined that it would be a world so torn apart that the likelihood of it being flyable would be very low. Not only did it not seem to make a lot of thematic sense, but I was expecting Blizzard to try to emulate the success of Timeless Isle once again, possibly by eliminating flight from the equation entirely. When patch 7.3 came, however, there was a fair amount of pushback against the idea of making the zones entirely flightless. This is understandable, especially for those who may have recently finished their Legion Pathfinder achievements and wanted to try their flying out. From a personal perspective, I thought there was an excessive amount of outrage for a number of reasons such as the fact all of Argus wasn't available to explore at the time of the discussion.

After making a forum post on the ongoing discussion with some broad thoughts on Blizzard's design philosophy regarding flight, I considered writing an article reviewing the three Argus zones then explaining why it was reasonable that they are unflyable. I ultimately ended up pushing it back repeatedly up until now in favor of other topics. Therefore, while the outrage itself seems to have died down now that players have either gotten accustomed to the new zones (perhaps grudgingly so) or stopped playing the game, I did want to analyze the three zones and provide some thoughts from the perspective of a player who has experienced many of the flightless zones the game has offered throughout its history among other details relevant to the topic.

Brief Thoughts on Krokuun

The introductory Argus zone, due to its largely flat level design, emphasizes the lack of a need for flight aside from the massive speed increase. While enemy density starts pretty high to accommodate quest objectives, it opens up and provides many safe paths to allow players to traverse the zone. There's also a very early introduction to the fast travel system around Argus which is instantaneous and encourages heavy usage to further make flightless travel more convenient. 

The zone is far from great for ground travel though and the fact the second week's quest chain takes the player through a more dangerous area with numerous cliffs and relatively distant objectives does little to provide any desire to go to the northern areas of the zone. There's also a fair amount of obstacles throughout the zone that can divert movement, though thankfully there's not a lot in the way of twists and turns. Personally, I tend to frequent the Shattered Fields exclusively because of how close World Quests there tend to be in addition to the reasons above, though I think there are many objectives throughout the zone that are reasonable to reach by foot. Ultimately, I think the zone is alright for an unflyable zone since in general, being able to fly here would only offer a typical amount of speed advantage and safety.

Brief Thoughts on Antoran Wastes

I think the second zone of Argus is where a lot of frustrating flightless experiences come from. The zone is filled with dangerous fel lava that deals a percentage of the player's maximum health as damage. It's also filled with mobs that enjoy dazing players off their mounts, leaving only a few safe throughways mostly along the eastern part of the zone. The zone's level design has many floors in some areas, adding verticality that can be frustrating to reach on foot especially since the map doesn't help a lot with finding routes. Finally, there are only two fast travel points and one changes location each day, potentially making some World Quest objectives a bit more time-consuming to reach.

Personally, I really disliked this zone for some time since my initial experience with it was poor. I didn't particularly mind getting lost but finding World Quest objectives could be a little frustrating to the point I appreciated having markers show underground and elevated objectives a bit more. However, I grew accustomed to the zone over time due to my farming of Felfang Basilisks in addition to doing Greater Invasions and World Quests. I also discovered how small the zone really was since some areas were basically off-limits and lacks objectives to do. Therefore, while I would appreciate flight a bit more in this zone compared to Krokuun, I think it functions fine without it and does fit well into being a highly dangerous zone that can be skillfully navigated and otherwise bested. It's certainly not as bad as the Timeless Isle was in any case since almost half of that zone was set on high cliffs full of frustrating to kill mobs.

Brief Thoughts on Mac'Aree

After two fel-corrupted zones, it was refreshing to see one that wasn't touched by Legion influence quite as much. Aside from showcasing what parts of Argus were like prior to such corruption, the grassy environment seems to have a refreshing effect on the mind. The level design of the zone may have helped matters too since while there were a couple spots where flight would've been really nice to have to move upward or downward, most of the zone is flat and generally lacks obstructions. This along with the spacing out of aggressive mobs especially on roads helps to make ground travel even faster than on Krokuun. Furthermore, there are many fast travel locations in the zone since it seems to be a bit larger, meaning there is more potential for nearby World Quests to do.

Overall I think this is the best example in recent memory of how to do a flightless zone. Its level design and objective placement helps to mitigate a lot of the advantages of flight but there's still a fair amount of exploration to do and rewards for doing so in some cases. It is also a major setting for weeks 2 and 3 of the Argus questline, which lead the player throughout the zone and unlock content as quests are completed, meaning that players will have some familiarity with the area unlike a zone like Antoran Wastes. I could certainly see a good argument being made for making Argus unflyable based on my experience with this zone alone.

The Usefulness of Legion Pathfinder

While trying to argue whether or not the design of Argus zones merits a strong need to fly is a major point of this discussion, the usefulness of the current iteration of Legion Pathfinder's rewards is important to consider to determine how useful flight is in general for current content. I also think it's something that tends to get glossed over though I have to admit that reviewing a lot of the Legion content favorably provides me with a skewed perspective of how worthwhile some of the expansion's content is. With that said, at least a few of major activities come to mind where having Broken Isles flying is highly useful.

The first activity is Legion questing content. Whether it involves leveling through zones or working through Suramar storylines, all of the quests were designed around ground travel even if the zones were going to become flyable in the future due to the Pathfinder achievement. For example, Highmountain and Stormheim are very mountainous, making them treacherous to traverse, but being able to fly over all of it negates the danger and is an advantage earned from doing the content at least once on the ground.

World Questing is in a similar spot but has much longer lasting appeal compared to general questing since the latter is a one-and-done affair. Flying allows players to focus on World Quests that appeal most to them without having to consider travel time as much. For instance, I find myself having a broader range of World Quests to do since there's often many with quick objectives and decent rewards that I no longer have to worry about spending a fair amount of time traveling to. Flight also has the bonus of trivializing some World Quests such as Like the Wind.

Gathering is also an activity that gets a bit of a boost since it allows players to travel from node to node a lot faster. In addition, especially in the case of skinning, travel to certain areas where there are a high amount of skinnable mobs is made a lot easier with flight. For example, there are islands full of skinnable enemies that I often visit thanks to flight.

I'm sure I could think of more but my point is that these Legion zones were made with both ground and eventually air travel in mind. Furthermore, these zones still offer plenty of relevant content for players to do, meaning there's plenty of opportunities to make ample use of the ability to fly. In my opinion, the fact flight is still so useful helps to justify the addition of unflyable zones substantially much like when multiple flightless zones were added in Mists of Pandaria.

Final Statements

I was initially going to close out by summarizing previous points to provide a brief explanation of why Argus isn't and probably won't feature flyable zones in its current iteration. I would then offer some advice on how to better improve the existing experience and call it a day. Instead, I want to close with a suggestion that, while relevant now and I would love to see it happen, is more likely to see application in the future.

As I pointed out, all of the Argus zones seem to be carefully developed to create a challenging, compelling experience for ground travel while ensuring the experience doesn't cause a massive headache, which is especially apparent in the level design of the zones. It also helps that there are existing features that help to alleviate the frustration further such as Stonehide Leather Barding.

However, I think there's an opportunity here to introduce an Argus Pathfinder achievement with requirements and benefits similar to that of the first Broken Isles Pathfinder achievement, except involving Argus zones instead. The major difference is that the benefit would be far more tangible than a mere additional 20% mounted movement speed. Instead, I think a suitable reward would be something more in the realm of an additional 50% mounted movement speed, which is equal to that of flying mounts when Expert Riding is learned. This is still fairly slow, but an excellent boost to the base movement speed increase of a ground mount and a standard that I think should be utilized from now on. There's still plenty of time to put such a suggestion into effect for the current content, even if the impact of the benefits would be rather low, so it would be nice to see it implemented; I'll settle for seeing it in the Battle for Azeroth zones though.