I think Ian already said in the interview that the new zones are designed for flying.
So, if you don’t like flying, you could maybe, not use flying yourself? I know, crazy idea!
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I do not hope they make more sea zones… I haven’t seen a single game, which did that right… it is relatively hard to fight in those… you know, you are fighting a melee naga in Vash’ir, you kill it, but can’t loot it, because you are too far away… how does that make any sense… however, I try to get near it, but I still can’t loot it… I have to be “inside” the naga to loot it, that is the problem
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And you think I didn’t complete those without flying?
“Edit”: Added more text as I had to leave in a hurry last night;
Quite frankly I enjoyed those quite a lot, so I would do them without flying in many cases. When I got a bit bored of them(but wanted the emissary), or was in a hurry I would fly through.
Either way, how does my choices affect your gameplay? If I am able to complete these without the temptation of jumping on to my flying mount/travel form, so should you.
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Why are so many of you guys so ‘simple’ ?
“Flying makes the world feel bigger”
That doesn’t just mean it physically looks bigger…
I hate ground travel, it’s not ‘fun’ it’s tedious, you can’t use any mount because you have to use a ugly strider to water walk, you get caught on poorly designed terrain, boring wq’s take longer to do, and quite frankly after completing the story line i have no reason to go back into the open world because it’s just to painfully boring and dull.
Flying makes the ‘world feel bigger’ because it actually gives me a reason to do more world content again because it’s no longer ‘as’ painful.
Therefore i’m seeing more, doing more, and travelling more all because of flying. that’s how it makes the world bigger.
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Caves have the inherent trait of disabling flying meaning that no, you can’t have these puzzles with flying at the same time. This was one of the arguments that was brought up in the other thread and it’s simply not enough to disprove the broader point I’m trying to get across: the developers can do things they might not otherwise be able to do if flying is disabled. The opposite is true as well; they can design content that requires flying, like they did in TBC. You can’t get up to a flying rock in the sky without a flying mount, unless there was a beanstalk leading to it. If you have a beanstalk leading there, then the challenge of ascending that beanstalk is made void by flying.
Just like you can put jumping puzzles in a cave you can build a bridge to the Netherdrake questing area. Can we agree on this or do you want to visit other possibilities? Shall we explore why you can’t put a jumping puzzle in the ocean?
They could do that, definitely. This was also brought up in that other thread, and it still doesn’t disprove the argument I was making either. Rather, you’re subverting the topic completely. What you can or cannot do in regards to flying puzzles has nothing to do with the argument I was making. Exploring the possibilities of flying mounts is an interesting topic in and of itself, but it had nothing to do with the bit of text you quoted.
well, you said, the devs have more freedom without flying… I am saying they have more freedom with flying, because you can put juming puzzles into caves, which disable flying, and you can make big 3d puzzles in the open world with flying
You can have the best of both worlds in one…
Also “Yes” you can have both at the same “Time”… you just can’t have both at the same “Place”
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The quest in MoP where you had to race through hoops and follow a path and do different goals some of the best fun i have had , missed an item and you would slow down making quest harder 
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If anything they have different freedoms. You can make aerial puzzles, but I sincerely believe that they are more limited than ground puzzles. Consider all the puzzle games that exist and how many of them that utilize gravity.
I would not be opposed to them adding flying puzzles to the game. An aerial obstacle course could be neat. I’m all for them making mounts more engaging in general, flying and ground mounts alike. Making the content more engaging. Because as it is right now, the world activities are the worst part of the game, but I digress. 
like I said, you can have both, if you are a little bit creative…
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Last longer then turtles dailies and the one mob quests we have now .
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Make sure to boycott against rockets being sent to space like hippies used to do.
“Only the lord should touch the sky!”
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You talk about jump puzzles, as one of major anti-flying arguments, but do we really need them? Blizzard themselves admitted, that Kirin-Tor dailies weren’t that successful or were even “broken”, that’s why they haven’t brought them to BFA. Biggest question is - do they even fit into RPG genre or they’re just mini-games, that therefore shouldn’t be mandatory, as not many players like them?
Are you all serious? After 8 months you still consider the “skipping content” a thing? I could paint the scheme of the ashvane foundry with autocad!!!
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Yeah, that strange misconception about skipping content. If I don’t do BGs, do I skip content? If I don’t do arenas, do I skip content? If I don’t do Mythic raids, do I skip content? If I don’t do pet battles, do I skip content? If I don’t do “squirrel kissing” achievements, do I skip content?
Now if I don’t want to do jump puzzles, do I want to skip content? If I don’t want to do navigation puzzles, do I want to skip content?
Simple thing. Wow isn’t game for just some single “MMO fan” kind of players. It isn’t solid - it has content for many different kinds of players. Yeah, I know, that some players don’t like such classification, but let’s say, that there are achievers, killers, explorers, socializers, etc. There is no player in this game, that incorporates all this properties. And biggest problem with outdoor content - is that all of a sudden Blizzard want to make it “solid” and force it’s “solid” design on all players, no matter if they like it or not. Only division, we have - is PVP/PVE division, that also starts to be weaker and weaker with every subsequent expansion, as Blizzard start to force PVP more and more. This is just wrong.
Also about forced PVP. Another misconception on Blizzard side here. They tend to treat PVP as any other outdoor content, while it should have special treatment. Example: let’s say we have different kinds of outdoor content, like kill mobs, collect items, kill boss, etc. And Blizzard think, that “go do some PVP stuff” is on a par with that, mentioned above. Or they treat PVP-flagging as some sort of punishment on a par with being dazed, dismounted, etc. Blizzard! It isn’t the same! On PVE severs/in PVE mode forced PVP is big NO NO. Players pick PVE servers/PVE mode for REASON.
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One thing that I enjoy the most in wow is flying .there is no other feeling that comes close to it .
I am planning on unlocking all flying from previous expansions as I just started playing on wow Europe from scratch
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Let’s summarise the arguments because as an earlier poster said there doesn’t seem be an objective, non preference based reason and to why flying should be disabled for current content. I’d like to hear possible defences of the arguments that have been raised though, and possible replies to criticism of them.
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Immersion: “Flying ruins my immersion when other folks can just up and fly in this zone I’m exploring on foot”.
Counters:
A) You, the player can be argued to be solely responsible for your own immersion. You are the only who controls your suspension of disbelief in this world, nobody else. RP servers are built on this concept. Essentially, it only ruins your immersion if you let it.
This argument is strange also because only certain things seem to ruin this immersion, but not others. For example is not having quest tracker enabled to tell you where to go a feature that ruins immersion and has you exploring less? What about questing on an alt, where you now know the story order of a zone? Seems wierd to pick and choose what ruins immersion and what doesn’t.
People might think this is a bad counter however because they may say that other players will always have a hand in our immersion. Then we can consider
B) Do I have the rights to dictate how others should make game decisions to maintain my immersion? What is the higher principle? I’d argue you can never demand others have a restriction on their playstyle to maintain your feelings on the game because their sub is equal to yours. So you have to accept the stance outlined in A).
For example I’m levelling some horde. Whenever I go into Orgrimmar my immersion is ruined because I’m visiting the capitol of the Orcs, and every second individual is a Blood Elf. My understanding is ruined because blood elves are supposed to be a race in decline, and orgrimmar is supposed to be the capitol of the Kalimdor Horde. Therefore when the population seems to be majority blood elf this ruins what Orgrimmar is meant to be for me.
However I have no right to demand other players change their races to suit my immersion. So it goes if my immersion hinges on flying. I just have to ignore those elements that ruin my immersion. -
“Flying allows players to skip content in current zones, rendering it pointless”
Counters
A) this depends on your conception of content. Most players want flying to speed up content, not skip it. Players do not skip quests or mobs for quests, so they do not skip content in this manner. What they skip is travel to reach them. So for this argument to hold you have to be defining content primarily in terms of travel. If you do that, whenever a player uses a flight master, or hearthstone to move around surely they are skipping content then? Or if you skip an entire zone arguably you have “skipped content” by dodging all the travel of another zone. The argument hinges upon such a specific definition of content and has elitist undertones about what kind of content people “should” be doing to legitimise their play. Therefore it should not be taken seriously. Its again incoherent as well (even foot players skip content unless every grounded player does every quest in every zone).
B) Flying allows people to explore a zone more freely so people may be more apt to explore a zone properly when they have the freedom to do so. At current travel takes time and playtime is ultimately a big decider in what we do in the game. If I have an hour of play and let’s say the total time to do my quests I. An area is 20 minutes, and travel to and from there is 15 minutes, I have 25 minutes of time left to decide what I do. If I fly I reduce the travel time to 3 minutes. I now have 37 minutes to decide what I want to do, and with that spare time I may decide to spend it exploring the zone.
C) Pathfinder requirements usually hinge on exploring an entire zone. Therefore people who can fly, have explored an entire zone. In order to maintain people are skipping content under this when flying, you need to hold the position that it doesn’t matter if they’ve done it before and seen it before, only whether they do it on their current character. Again this is a weirdly elitist position. -
“Flying causes Blizzard to not implement design elements like puzzles, mazes etc because flyers can make them null. Therefore flying makes potential content less interesting.”
Counters
A) Puzzles can still be maintained in caves and inside buildings. That a zone enables flying in the zone, it doesn’t follow it has to be everywhere. So puzzles that can’t be skipped can still be a zone feature. So essentially this argument boils down to being annoyed about lack of certain flavours of content (outdoor mazes) rather than the principle of that content type itself (because it still exists inside caves).
B) Flying can be disabled for the duration of such outdoor mazes or puzzles via mechanics that similarly stop you mounting whilst on a specific quest. So there is nothing to stop these quests even being in game at all, in their pure form, outdoors. Taking away flying entirely to preserve them is an unnecessarily extreme action that is not needed to maintain their legitimacy.
C) in addition to above, Blizzard can make additional content specifically for flying as well as said puzzles. So surely flying enables a zone to have more potential content, not less. Again to argue against this is defining content primarily in terms of ground travel and time taken to do so which is bizarre. That is arguably padding between content, not content itself. -
“Players who want to fly in current content are just lazy and impatient and will miss blizzards wonderful zone design”
Counters
A) Pathfinder requires you to do zones on foot and explore them fully. For this argument to hold you have to assume that in this time, a player has not appreciated the artwork quite enough. Additionally you’re ignoring the effort and waiting involved in unlocking pathfinder. To characterise those people who are happy to have flying after pathfinder as lazy or not wanting to enjoy blizzards zones is odd. To unlock the achi they have to go to efforts to do exactly that. So it seems to fall down to again, an elitist interpretation of what really is considered “enjoying blizzards zones” and “effort”.
Essentially. I have yet to see an argument In favour of keeping us grounded that does not have a satisfactory reply that makes the pathfinder flying model superior and better defended. In its defense it has a clear merit: it widens potential player freedom to play how they wish, and provides a reward for time spent in game, and enables greater freedom still by smoothening alting. Allowing people to play what they want more readily. It also acknowledges player prior effort by making their prior gold spent on flying and mounts collected meaningful, rather than an expense that has no relevance to the endgame.
I would say these are objectively grounded arguments as they pertain to satisfying the player base mechanically. Seeing as BFA with allied races has ab “alt” theme, encouraging alting further is simply good game sense.
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No, it’s not one of the major arguments at all. The reason I brought it up was because I had thought it was an easy way of illustrating my point. The only reason I ended up giving it so much attention and writing such a long wall of text about it is because people insist on disagreeing. It’s aggravating and it gets ridiculous.
Scenario: a player has to go from point A to point B to get a reward, where point A is on one platform and point B is on another and there’s a tightrope connecting the two. The challenge of walking on that tightrope would be void if flying was enabled. So you can’t have such a challenge and flying at the same time (or in the same place if we’re going to be nitpicky). It’s not a major argument for non-flying, but I would have thought it would be something that pro- and non-flyers could agree on.
The solution is simple. When on a quest that has such requirements:
A) you get a debuff that grounds you until quest is complete or abandoned.
B) Flying automatically fails the quest.
Disabling flying entirely to maintain the difficulty of such quests is throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Not necessary at all. There are examples of quests in game that prohibit mounting for their duration only. No reason why it can’t apply here.
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And I talked about overall popularity of such content. I know, that it sounds the same way, as “Flying doesn’t provide any addition content”, that we try to counter by “We just like it - it’s our preference”, but… Dunno. When Blizzard tried to remove flying back in WOD, they implied exactly this - no flying will allow us to provide some new kinds of content. I.e. some jump puzzles from GW2 for example, that seem to be popular there. And some people use it as argument now. But Legion’s experience shows, that this content isn’t actually so popular, so may be removing some other possibilities, flying could provide, in order to favor jump puzzles, was actually mistake. Otherwise we would still have them in BFA. No?