With one expansion headed our way, RIFT players are beginning to question the future of the game, and wonder about possible future creatures, landscapes, features, souls, dynamic content, and oh, yeah– mounts. More than a couple MMOs have flying mounts now, and it seems like most people are either strongly for flying mounts, or strongly against them. Sure, travel becomes easier with a flying mount, and it’s often fun to just soar around the sky, but the game world seems to shrink beneath the wings of flying mounts, and along with the size of the world, so does a large portion of its liveliness.
So, how about flying mounts in RIFT? Here is the on-going thread on the community forums where this question was raised. We know Storm Legion probably won’t see the addition of flying mounts, but what about a couple expansions down the road? RIFT’s world may be way too small for flying mounts right now, but in the future, this may not be the case. Is RIFT a good MMO for taming our own dragons in?
Here is what some players think, taken directly from the thread:
“Why on earth do we need flying? This game is far too beautiful graphically to fly over everything. They already did the equivalent of putting a “Gryphon Master” in starting zones…I’d say travel is just fine.”
“On the pro side, flying gives players a sense of control over how and when they take part in the goings-on of the world. It expands the sense of epic adventure by giving players access to the most iconic fantasy shared universally by pretty much all of humanity: the ability to shed the restrictions of gravity.
It also introduces the ability to have a much more “3D world.”
“There are no pros for flying.
There are pros for faster travel, and I like the ember isle approach of lots of portal locations. Could even go more GW2 with unrestricted fast travel.
But flying makes in zone travel meaningless as you can just mount, fly, land kill, mount, fly, land turn in, mount, fly……..and so on. It ruins the scale of the world and any interactions with it and other players.
Fast travel yes, flying no.”
Some great points here. I’m personally of the opinion that I’d rather not see flying mounts again. Part of the allure of Telara is supposed to be the danger hidden behind every corner, and even in the sky, rifts loom. I think it should stay that way. Dragons are awesome, but we don’t need to be riding them. I do like the idea of some type of gliding mount, though. What are your thoughts?
