Blizzard calls them taxis. Most of us in the WoW community call them Flight Paths (FP for short.) And they make travel a breeze throughout Azeroth. Without them you would be running yourself or your mount to death. Envision a world where you spent most of your time running – not very fun. So we can definitely thank the good folks at Blizzard for putting those wonderful birds and bats into the game for us.
But we know this has happened to you: You get on the taxi and then you’re fiddling around with your bags or quests killing time and then you suddenly remember “I am about to fly right past a quest turn-in!” But you’re stuck on the bird until you land. Unfortunately Blizzard will not allow us to dismount a taxi or land at a destination we didn’t fly to directly. Sometimes I would rather be able to jump off the bird at like 500 yards in the air and take the corpse run.
This only leaves you with two very unsavory choices. You can either take the bird right back to your missed location, or hope that you remember to do it on the return trip. Since you’ve probably already forgotten it once (and usually more if you’re like me) the chances are that you may eventually just abandon the quest or item if it goes to gray.
Well, we’re not going to blow you away with some uber technique on this one, but there is a simple way to avoid ever making this mistake again. It’s just common sense, but unless you do it a few times and make it a habit you will inevitably take the wrong taxi at least once every level and end up wasting gobs of time just flying around in circles.
What we like to do is fly from one taxi node to the very next one, allow ourselves to dismount and then get back on the taxi to the next destination in the series. Since the cost is the same between the locations regardless of whether you fly over each base or land there, it will not cost you a single copper more. Even on long flights, it will add very little time to the entire flight. All taxi routes take the bird through a landing pattern much like a real airport, instead of flying right over the node, so it doesn’t waste more than about 2 seconds to go ahead and land. Furthermore, it only takes about 4 seconds to toggle the flight master screen and select the next location, so on a route through 5 FP spots we’re talking about adding 15-25 seconds to the trip.
If you do this you can eliminate several headaches. If you’ve flown in the entirely wrong direction, it’s much easier to just turn around and take the right trip. If you’ve forgotten something, you can be sure that you land in the right spot to buy that limited quantity recipe or turn in that quest in your log that’s been there for like 6 levels.
So if you have a forgetful streak, and want to be truly efficient with your time; give this little trick a shot. We guarantee you’ll be glad you did many times before you hit level 70.