Dev Discussion suggestion:
Rabbit
Member, Braver of Worlds, Kickstarter, Alpha One
I'd like to see a Dev Discussion on "Power Creep", the formula for determining just how much more powerful a top-level player is compared to a lowbie.
In a pure PvE game, it makes absolutely no difference other than who can tackle a specific dungeon, etc. But in a game with PvP, it's the difference between who sticks with the game and who doesn't. I'm currently playing Archeage Unchained (only because I have friends there) and the formula works on an Equipment Points system:. the more Equipment Points you have, the more powerful you are. (While you also have a Character Level, like most MMOs, the equipment, itself, basically has Levels, too.) Thus, what we see is people working towards being able to attend events because they've reached a high Character Level, but then being one-shot because other characters have more Equipment Points.
While I'm sure it's fun for that high Equipment Point character to hit the battle field and start dropping people left and right with a single arrow shot, that's one person having fun compared to the 10, 20, or more people who traveled all the way to the fight just to drop dead as soon as they showed up.
The point being, while a player should always feel like they're getting better and growing stronger, there comes a point when having players that much more powerful than everyone else completely ruins the game for those other people. What's the point of showing up to a fight when you don't even get to chance to actually fight?
Thus: How would you design the system to keep a high-level player from basically becoming a "god" compared to lower-level players, while also ensuring that players continue to feel like they're growing stronger?
In a pure PvE game, it makes absolutely no difference other than who can tackle a specific dungeon, etc. But in a game with PvP, it's the difference between who sticks with the game and who doesn't. I'm currently playing Archeage Unchained (only because I have friends there) and the formula works on an Equipment Points system:. the more Equipment Points you have, the more powerful you are. (While you also have a Character Level, like most MMOs, the equipment, itself, basically has Levels, too.) Thus, what we see is people working towards being able to attend events because they've reached a high Character Level, but then being one-shot because other characters have more Equipment Points.
While I'm sure it's fun for that high Equipment Point character to hit the battle field and start dropping people left and right with a single arrow shot, that's one person having fun compared to the 10, 20, or more people who traveled all the way to the fight just to drop dead as soon as they showed up.
The point being, while a player should always feel like they're getting better and growing stronger, there comes a point when having players that much more powerful than everyone else completely ruins the game for those other people. What's the point of showing up to a fight when you don't even get to chance to actually fight?
Thus: How would you design the system to keep a high-level player from basically becoming a "god" compared to lower-level players, while also ensuring that players continue to feel like they're growing stronger?
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In Archeage if you invest the majority of your time, effort, energy, and resources into your weapon, you are absolutely more power than someone who has diversified their TEER across their armor and their weapons.
As a 12,500 Healer on the Legacy in AA, there are 14k Gear Score players who can't burn me down, yet there was an 8.8K 2-hander Darkrunner who depending on the RNG of his trips could burn me down in 3 seconds.
I absolutely 100% agree with you that power creep and scaling needs to be discussed, but everyone is going to bring their own game history with them, and that's not necessarily going to be the best for discussions.
No, I get that, the problem is that Power doesn't always directly correlate to a Gear Score or an Equipment Score. In a lot of games the "equipment score" is there so gamers can stroke their E-peen while having either no correlation or a very poor correlation to the actual power of a character.
Personally I hate Equipment Scores/Gear Scores. Its just an artificial method people use to set a bar for acceptance, when often times the developers have done a bad job of making 1=1
This shows what happens when I try to write replies after literally just waking up because I kinda skimmed over your OP and missed some things. Now, I'm not very familiar with the gearing system in Archeage but are you sure that you are actually talking about power creep? To me, power creep happens when newer content is put into the game that makes the previous content/gear obsolete or less powerful by comparison. WoW is the classic example of this where the gear you get in each major update or expansion is much stronger than the previous gear, to the point where you can solo older raids or other group content.
What you are talking about is more of just the standard progression you see in every RPG. As you pointed out there needs to be some form of character progression as this is one of the core elements of the RPG genre. And given that there will always be a vast difference in strength between a level 1 character and a level 50 character. Is that a bad thing? I would say not but you might think differently.
Going to end-game content, unless Ashes follows the GW2 example there will again probably be a difference in power between a newly capped character and one that has been capped for a long time. Again, is this a bad thing?
The term to correctly refer to the difference in power between a character that is newly at the level cap vs one that has been at the level cap for a while is as follows; Progression.
I see no reason this needs to be addressed, as it is working as intended in Archeage.
The problem is when players think that level is all that matters - your progression has not stopped because you have hit the level cap (and this is more true in Archeage than in most MMORPG's - though is true in all of them).
It's not that GW2's system is better; I think power treadmills are probably more fun long-term in themepark, raid-centric MMOs. But in this game where open-world PvP will be a big part, it doesn't make sense to say "New players will get one-shot until they catch up to the people who have been playing for years. So have fun grinding for months before you can actually participate in the core conceit of them game." So Intrepid can't really afford to let the gear ceiling get very high, or at least not without introducing major catch-up mechanics.
It means players have to continue to farm just to maintain their current level of gear, and if they opt to then spend a whole lot of time PvP'ing, that gear won't last long.
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The funny thing about this as a discussion is that literally every expansion any MMO has released that increased the power cap also provided players entering that new content with gear right out of the gate. I mean, how many times have WoW raiders complained that 4 quests in to leveling in the new expansion they are getting equipment that is obsoleting their hard fought for raid loot...
The answer is - every time.
Yet how many of those expansions have players complained that the players that were top end raiding in the previous expansion have an insurmountable advantage in that new content - the same content that is obsoleting that raid gear that those players have?
The answer is, once again - every time.
This whole discussion reads to me like people that are not very good at the game trying to find anything at all to blame their not being very good - other than themselves.
They notice that people that are better at the game also tend to have better gear than they do, and so blame the gear.
They would probably do well to look at it the other way around. Rather than thinking that player is better because they have better gear, look at it as that player has better gear because they are better.
Look at it that way, learn how to get better, better gear will follow being a better player, and then go round one shotting people that have not yet made that leap.
GW2 is very much an outlier when it comes to mmorpgs as the focus in that game is exploration and open world events rather than combat, and the end-game progression heavily reflects this. Instead of having an endless gear grind where your character gets stronger and stronger, you gain abilities and items that allow you to explore more of the world and be more effective in world events. Once you reach level cap you have a bunch of mastery tracks that unlock various modes of travel (mounts, gliders, access to teleportation, etc) and other things that give you access to events that you couldn't do previously.
So there is progression in GW2, just not necessarily combat-oriented. Make no mistake though, there is still a huge difference between a newly capped character and a character that has been capped for a long time. This system only works because the core focus of GW2 is exploration. If you tried to put the same kind of progression into a game like WoW or Archeage it would be a complete disaster.
I'll take my experiences (of course) for example. I tried AAU a few days after it was released. Note that I never played it before, with the little time I spent in it, my progression was slow, but that is not the point, upon reaching endgame I started to pvp a little just to get OS or two shots by other players. The time I took to get there was the time they took to get there & get a decent stuff if not a very strong one. In the end I was just a moving piece of bread waiting to be eaten. Since I was lazy asf, and the game did not pleased me anyway for many other reasons. I did not try to improve that much, just to understand later that (in my eyes) the end game pvp was just about who could OS faster than the other.
Now I'll talk about Aion, you can truly become godlike, but thanks to a simple feature that reduces every damage dealt to a player by half it gives more chances for the new player in their fights. You'll think what is the point of this if everyone, even the new player got their damage decreased. Well by the simple fact that the way the classes are designed, the success in pvp also depends on the player's skill. You all know some ppl that spend their time increasing their gear, but never try to improve their gameplay & class mastery, this gives the player a chance, be better than them and you can win. The damage mitigation prevents OS mechanics and the player's skill gives a chance to outplay and compensate for the gear difference. But obviously that's not enough.
A system that could balance things is not possible in my eyes, but give chances for newer players yes.
These types of players will always be stronger no matter what, as a new player you'll end up crushed almost every time. I was crushed for years, and I crushed other players too. This process is normal and people complaining about it needs to man up and spent less time whining and more time practicing.
What you need to ensure is that you can't OS, what is the point of pvp if you press 3 keys to kill someone. Then you need to make sure that the classes mechanics can compensate for gear differences. In the best possible outcome, skill can match the power that gears gives and balance everything. There are a lot of tools to do such a system which I did not think of. But the main one is how the pvp is designed. This is a rough idea, but it is definitely a good way to make things working out.
If both mobs and player characters follow the same system for how stats are applied, then this is not necessary. If Aion did this, then you could have the same PvP in that game, but without the need for players to have their damage halved.
Not that I'm saying that is a bad thing. I'm just saying that if your combat system is designed around both PvP and PvE initially, at the same time and by the same group of developers, it isn't needed. On the other hand, if you have these systems designed by different people or at different times, making an adjustment like this may be the best idea (as was the case in Aion).
I think the thing that will stop people from being one shot most of the time is the fact that if you kill a player faster than they can react, then you are guaranteed to get corruption for that kill.
Players about to attack someone would likely want to at least give that other player a chance to fight back - even if there is a chance for a one shot kill.
This obviously changes up a bit when PvP is ongoing - but if you are in an area where PvP is happening, and you are flagged as a combatant, you can't blame anyone but yourself for what happens next.
Regarding AOC, I really hope there will be no ways of OS someone corruption or not, just for the fact that I want to enjoy a good pvp system. In my eyes corruption is not a priority compared to having a good fight.
There are games out there where you have a lot of abilities, but gears makes you kill someone with 3 skills, what's the point of having these, better play a mobile game... This makes the concept of pvping useless.
It's like having a piano and using the first 10 keys on the left.
Regarding the corruption, I am unable to guess how it will impact the pvp even more in the case of power creep. I am simply clueless, even with the information I found on the subject. Too much possibilities, I'll wait and see ^^'
The little I can think is, if you get to the point of OS someone, why bothering about corruption, if no one can defeat you. Of course in the case of group fight, everything can happen, but you see my point, if the player's strength is so high it takes him above the system.
Thanks for having this discussions. All you get with some companies is a brick wall.
Yep! I read that. I created this post because I was curious about player-vs-player, specifically. I've been working up ways to "even the playing field" with a system, and was curious how others felt about it. Some folks seem to like becoming so powerful they can insta-kill another player, others want a longer/meaningful fight. This discussion, I think, could help gauge where that percentage sits: 50% for/against, etc.
But first, a small story.
I started playing Archeage about a month after release. I missed the initial land rush, I missed the Auroria land rush, but that was all good.
I eventually found a plot of land in Auroria, but no where nearby to build packs and no land left in the zone to put up a workbench (and none that I could find set to public). In order to actually build the farmhouse that I put down (this was before gazebos were released, the farmhouse was the only 24*24 with any room to farm), I used my clipper to ferry packs one at a time from Nuia.
Once I built my farmhouse, I started farming. I eventually got enough money to buy a few plots of land next to mine, and then a few more next to those. Before long I had ownership of about 30% of the land in that zone (and was smart enough to buy a lot of full stacks tax certs when they were under 20 silver each).
All this happened even before braziers were in the game - and when they were introduced I started farming 80 - 120 of them a day (and a few archeum trees as well). I made absolute bank, and then used that to craft my own gear to become one of the top 20 best geared characters on the server (A real feat in a pay to win game, if you are not paying for more than a few subscriptions).
After that effort, I then became the person that was able to one shot you.
This one sentence spells out enough about you to tell me what kind of gamer you are - and the answer is; not a very good one.
If you are at an event and are being one shot, it is because you are not with the rest of your faction.
If you are away from them, even by 10 meters or so, then yeah, expect to be one shot. But don't blame your equipment, don't blame the progression of the player that attacked you, blame the fact you were standing in a stupid spot.
This is what frustrates me about game forums today. People read up on others demonizing specific aspects of games, and then when a bad thing happens to them, they scroll through all the demonized topics they have read about until one comes up that they think they can use to soak up some of the blame. Then they post about it, and others read about it, spreading the demonizing of that specific thing even more.
Pro tip, if you are one shot in a game, the only thing to blame is you. Clearly, if you are being one shot, you are doing something wrong. Don't try and say the game developer is doing something wrong, because if another player is able to get good enough to one shot you in that game, then that game will provide you with means to get good enough to not be one shot.
Find that path, take it, and shut up.
"even the playing field" is always a matter of huge contention, especially in a game like Ashes that focuses heavily on world pvp. In instanced (arena-based) pvp it's fairly easy to give everyone access to the same gear and even boost low level players up to max level whilst in the instance, making the gameplay entirely skill oriented.
In world pvp you can't easily do this so there will always an imbalance of power. You can't get rid of this imbalance without taking away the character progression that is integral to the rpg genre. What most games do instead is put in penalties to stop high level players from constantly killing low level players.
That's partly why the corruption system exists in Ashes.
@noaani I disagree with you on this, a lot. I can think of many situations where you can get 1-shot in an mmorpg due to no fault of your own. One of the reasons why I swapped from a PvP realm to a PvE realm in WoW was because I would be questing in a low level area on a low level alt when suddenly a max level player would appear out of nowhere and 1-shot me. There was no counterplay available (if I tried to run they would mount up and run me down), I would just die. Grouping up with people can sometime help but if the power difference is big enough then the high level player can kill my entire group no problem at all.
That said I assume you and the OP are talking about max level characters fighting, with one character having much better gear than the other to the point where 1-shots can occur. You could argue that all you had to do was get better at the game to obtain the better gear and even the playing field, however that all depends on how the better gear is acquired. If acquiring the better gear is either based on time or RNG regardless of skill then I would say there is a problem with the game design.
Unfortunately a lot of mmorpgs these days allow less skilled players to acquire the best gear if they play for long enough or are lucky enough.
If you play a game that is as badly designed as WoW (the definition of a polished turd - many players can't look past how polished it is to realize that it is actually just a turd) then you should expect all sorts of things like this to happen.
And I would also argue that starting late (or leveling slow) on an open PvP server is also your fault. Regardless of the game, if the server is full open PvP (as opposed to Ashes where it is constrained open PvP), then you really need to expect to be ganked if you are not at the leading edge of player progress. I've never seen a game where gear is allocated based on time. And I'd agree that such a game would be a stupid design.
RNG though, that is the basis of acquiring gear in Archeage. My way of getting through the RNG barrier early on in Archeage was simply brute force. In my initial gearing up I had some rotten bad luck at times, but if you brute force your way through it, then you eventually get through it.
It isn't fun, I'm not going to argue that point. But if you're playing a game where that is how you get gear, then that is what you do. The player that one shot you went through it...
I know it's difficult to manage. Thus, why I'm curious if folks have ideas on how to do it.
Because I felt like most of the answers in dev 14 didn't fit the overall idea of the world of Verra.
Tanks for your job.
You calling me a troll is more of a personal attack than anything I have said in this thread.
If I was being hateful, I'd have simply laughed at you and not told you any of the obvious things you did wrong. The word you were perhaps looking for was "helpful", not "hateful", as I am the only poster here attempting to help you with the core issue you had.
The fact that you are turning down advice from someone with clearly worlds more experience on the topic at hand than you says that perhaps you are the hateful one here, not me.
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Now, the moment you said... ... literally everyone that has played Archeage was laughing to themselves.
Everyone knew straight away both of the things you did wrong. Only difference is - I'm the one that is letting you know.
It's like how sometimes you have some mayo or something on your face, and you don't notice. No one tells you all day, until some random in the elevator says something. Sometimes you get a bit pissed off at the guy that tells you, I mean, it's not like you asked him if you have anything on your face. But then you go back to being a reasonable person, and realize he was actually just helping.
So yeah, you're welcome
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The first thing you did wrong was standing out in the open while you were under equipped. If you were in a pack, you wouldn't be able to be one shot (and wouldn't be worth it to an enemy to attack). The only time you should be one shot in an event in Archeage is if your faction is wiping, in which case a quick death is a convenience.
The second thing you did wrong was assume that just because you were at level 55, you could stand toe to toe with all other level 55s. It's as if you simply assumed that all progression had stopped now - which would be a very odd thing to have happen in an MMO where progress is literally the point of logging in to the game.
It's not like you can't see what other players EP are in AA, so you should always know if how far behind the curve you are. If you're running out with 4.5k EP when the bulk of your opposition have 8.5k, then yeah, expect to be slaughtered.
You have no one to blame but yourself for that, and it amuses me no end that 1, you would try and 2, you would complain when someone logically and correctly points out that it is in fact you that is the issue, not the game.
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You may not like the way I pointed that out to you, but to be honest, there is no nice way to point this out to another gamer (and believe me, I've tried).
The best, most effective way to get this message across to others is to start off by letting them know why you may know what you are talking about (see the top half of my 4th post in this thread). Once you have let them know that you may know what you are talking about, the most effective thing to do is be brutally blunt (see the rest of that post).
Once you have done that, it is then up to that player whether to listen to you or not, and most reasonable people will be pissed off at first, and then before long realize that you may well be right.
Err...that sounds a lot like victim-blaming to me. Starting late or "slow levelling" is my fault? Cmon now.
On a side note I don't believe WoW is a "bad" game. It does a lot of things really well, but it also has a lot of flaws that make me not want to play it. Regardless it's important to look at games like WoW to understand the potential flaws that Ashes may face. We've already seen plenty of evidence of this already, for example with flying and fast travel. Most veteran mmorpg players know that permanent access to flying is bad for a game, but we only know that because WoW made the mistake first and we all saw what happened.
Time-gated gear is actually quite common in mmorpgs, as sad as it is to say. This is usually accomplished by having daily or weekly caps on certain resources that are used to buy or make high level gear. It's another way of adding to the skinner box that makes up a lot of modern gaming.
As for RNG. I accept that it's part of the genre to a certain extent but some games take it way too far. Both Aion and BDO ladden their gear upgrading system with RNG, made all the worse by the fact that in BDO if you fail when trying to upgrade a piece of gear (which you have absolutely NO control over), your gear gets damaged.
You know I enjoy a good debate... and this is one of my favorite debates.
Flight was bad in WoW because the developers allowed players travel in the Z-axis, without adding content to that Z-axis.
Add content to the Z-axis that fits in with the zone, and all of a sudden flight in MMO's loses it's single major issue.
The other time flight could be worth adding to a game is if it is done in the way Archeage does it - you can glide down, but have very limited ability to gain or lose altitude. Since your glider is on a timer, you also need to be sure you are close enough to the ground when the timer runs out, otherwise you have a fairly long fall.
Adding flight to a game without thought (the way WoW and EQ2 added it) is stupid. It was actually the addition to WoW that made me realize that Blizzard actually have no idea - I mean, the first thing I thought of when I heard they were adding flight was "I wonder what content they are going to add in the Z-axis".
To me, the only players that have the blanket opinion that flight in an MMO is bad are the players that think Blizzard developers are infallible. Let me guess... WoW?
I've played games where some mid range gear is gated by time, but it is usually situational gear or gear that you can use to fill in gaps that you've not had drops for rather than being the gear you expect to kit yourself out in.
But top level gear being time gated? Yeah, that's bad game design, and makes me instantly think of WoW. In Archeage (when I played it, at least) gear was destroyed if you failed an upgrade.
Was not a fan, but again, brute force gets you through.
Flying in WoW was originally introduced with the TBC expansion to counter a huge problem with travel in Vanilla. If you look at the Vanilla map, you'll see 2 very long thin strips of land, and the only way to travel long distances was by using the set flightpoints. This meant travelling from one end of the world to the other took a very long time (the longest path took 17 minutes). On top of this the flight points were extremely congested and extremely buggy, so many times you would get on a flight point and just get stuck, unable to move or do anything for several minutes before even starting the journey.
In TBC things changed. First of all the infrastructure was a lot better so the flight points worked better, plus Blizzard changed the shape of the land mass. Instead of having a long thin strip, you now had more circular blobs that were a lot faster to travel through. So flying mounts were a solution to a problem that had already been solved.
When you talk about adding combat to the Z-axis what exactly do you mean?
WoW does do it for sure, but they are by no means the only ones. In GW2 there are multiple items and gear sets that are locked behind currencies that can only be obtained in limited amounts per day. In order to get the best gear in TERA you need to sink so many hours in, doing activities that require next to no skill to do. Aion uses weekly caps on dungeons, meaning you can only run the dungeons a certain number of times each week, which reduces your chances of getting gear drops. FFXIV uses a currency called Tomestones that are used to purchase the best gear and you can only gather a certain amount of them per week.
Some of the systems in these games are more impactful than others but they all point to the same basic flaw: Someone who has been playing the game for longer is likely to have better gear regardless of skill.
Do you still wonder why I look down on WoW in terms of game design?
I'd accept an argument that it was over all poor management rather than an issue with the individual game designers, but the end result is a game with some individually good design, but where the sum of the whole manages to be less than the individual parts. There are two main ways to do this.
The first is to alter ranged mobs on the ground to have a very long range dismount ability, and allow them to have awareness of the area above them. If you are not careful while flying over these mobs, they could pull you off your flying mount.
The second is even simpler - if players have access to flying mounts, then mobs should have access to flying mounts.
You can't simply fly over mobs and skip them if those mobs are able to fly themselves.
If Blizzard wanted to put in lanes where players were able to fly from specific point to point without having to worry about being attacked, that is easy enough to do (there are probably roads going here on the ground anyway. However, what Blizzard did was open up a whole load of *space* to players, and not put any content in it. Four game examples to go through...
GW2. stupid system.
Terra, acceptable system.
Aion, acceptable system.
FFXIV, stupid system.
TERA is fine with me because if there is a time sink that you have already done to get a good item, and is then available to me, that means all I need to do to get that good item is the same thing you did to get the item.
That is fair and balanced. It is how things in MMO's should be - do task X, get item Y.
We could argue that the task is not up to par, but that is a different topic.
Aion is acceptable to me because putting a lock on content usually means the drop rates are tuned to be higher. This means players usually need to spend less time to get the items they want, rather than having to spend more time.
It does mean that shorter amount of time may have to be spread out over a longer period of time (sounds like an oxymoron, but I swear it isn't), but stopping players running the same zone 12 times in a row is a good way to prevent player burnout.
I personally think all MMO's should have a hard limit on how often dungeons can be run, and adjust drop rates accordingly.
The systems in GW2 and FFXIV could be ok, though I doubt they are. If the amount of each currency a player *can* get in a day is higher than what normal players *would* get in a day, it means dedicated/determined players will be able to catch up.
And that it what this is about - an avenue for players to be able to catch up.
Someone that has been playing the game for longer should have better gear - generally speaking.
If I've put 2000 hours in to an MMO over a few years, and you come along and put in 30 to get to max level, I'd expect to be somewhat better geared than you, and I'd expect you to have a long way to go to get gear to be on par with what I've got.
Even if I have no real skill in the game, simply playing for that long will see me amass some form of value that I can then turn in to quality gear.
It's worth noting here that literally the only resource in any (non p2w) MMO is time. Everything else is an expression of time spent, so if someone spends more time, they should have more stuff.
There is a case to be made about spending time better (the closest definition of player skill that I can come up with in regards to gear), but at the end of the day, 2000 hours of poorly spent time should always beat 30 hours of well spent time.
I just would like to talk about the fly. Wandering Mist talked about 'permanent access to flying'.
The glide is nor flying, neither permanent. Maybe if we look at the dictionary we will found that the glide is a kind of flying, but while I read discussion about it, the glide and the flying are always two separate things.
In the AION you also have flying option but still not permanent. You have some stamina what you can use to go upper, but after that also just a glide. Do you know any game where we have permanent flying and you find it properly implemented?
The missing z-axis content is just the minor part of the problem. The major is the flying speed and the possibility to avoid everybody. After you have the possibility to fly, you will never go ground, just at the point where you have 'work' to do. So players barely meet each other. This is independent on if you have z-axis content or not. If somebody attack you and defeat you, you can't revenge it even if you were just unlucky. After the battle your enemy can fly with 300% speed to anywhere. You need extreme luck to find him again. Even if you find him, you can't fight in the air. (There are only a few trick to 'unmount' a flying character as usually they fly out of range.) The air combat as z-axis content maybe helps, but maybe has more issue to solve.
In a theme park MMO it is not a big problem, but the high speed and the unlimited moving direction is the dream of the zerging players.
I do not say that the flying is inherently bad for an MMO, but if you would like to implement it, you have to have solution to overcome these issues.
All it needs is limitations (limited duration is a limitation, as is the inability to adjust altitude), just like everything in MMO's needs limitations. See, the two bolded parts here can't co-exist.
If there is Z-axis content, you can't simply avoid everybody, because that content is up in the air where you want to fly - and it will attack you. You may be able to fly around it, but only if there is a gap in the content - which should only be there if the developers put it there.
Also, adding Z-axis content would have required Blizzard to add in mounted combat. You can't have Z-axis content in a flying mount without mounted combat - this kind of goes without saying.
In terms of the whole PvP situation - if Blizzard added in Z-axis content, which as stated above would have necessitated mounted (and thus flying mounted) combat, one could then engage in flying mounted combat based PvP, so the issues there dissolve immediately.
If the issue with flying mounts is the fact that players can get to places too fast, or can get away from somewhere too fast, then the issue isn't with flying, the issue is with the speed of the flying mounts.
These are separate issues - there is no reason at all why WoW couldn't have had flying mounts with speeds limited to 180%.
You had to find uplifts and plan routs if you wanted to reach your goal, and it opened up the z axis for exploration, which is very good. It enables you to safely explore thing like gorges or cliffs, which i am a big fan of tbh.
The problem with wow was, that the classic world was not designed for flight (buildings in stormwind didnt have roofs for example xD), and the ability to constantly remin airborn took away the danged of travel. You didnt hve to worry about other players or mobs during flight, which opened up the whole area, shortening the time needed to traverse it.