I think a lot of that was blizzard being wary of forcing people to be good at dragonriding whilst levelling (Or expecting everyone to have all the glyphs), the zones are BIG but the only one that really has the verticality necessary to connect with dragonriding is Thaldrazsus, coincidentally the last one where it’s expected you have a bit more of a hang of things.
It’s funny because that was my least favourite of the DF launch zones. It just felt like it had so much wasted space and what was there, wasn’t very interesting to me (the school area was nice though).
But it’s possible what you say. I also think that TWW’s overal story that’s taking you through the zones is stronger than DF’s and so it had me paying attention to stuff a bit more.
Part of it could be the framing. In dragonflight you kinda just left each zone and went to the next somewhat haphazardly, in TWW each zone has an entrance and an exit so the designers can put a lot more work into creating a first impression because they know everyone’s going to arrive the same way.
That first descent into Azj Kahet (Wait HOW FAR DOWN DOES THIS GO?!) or watching the space open up as you enter Hallowfall were really big moments of immersion for me.
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I think the scale is good enough and the zones are good. Maybe I could use a 5th zone though. I remember BFA had 6 zones and relative to the flying that time they were not small.
when wow vanilia launched ,blizzard estimated sales would be 750000 , they were in reality 3 million by the end of wrath it was over 13 million accounts now we are lucky if more than 2 million still play this once great game now its but a shadow of its former self.
It also took you, what, 25 min to get to one end of the continent to the other?
Even now with fast flying it will still take you quite a long time to do on your own.
- Nobody is forcing you to dragonfly. You want to travel slow? Using a ground mount is perfectly viable in TWW.
- It’s a mater of taste. I’d much rather have 4 well designed zones than 20 zones with the same amount of content. Big open worlds are cool, but most of them either feel overwhelming with too much to do to the point where something is going on every tiny bit of the journey or they feel empty and void of life which makes them feel pointless and traveling between places becomes a pointless chore which is why most games with big worlds have fast travel.
I don’t know about you, but i’d much rather take 3 minutes to dragonride across a map than skip the entirety of the world by opening my map and holding F for 3 seconds while mousing over a location i want to travel to.
I really prefer the way the world was in vanilla to how it is now.
Having vast “empty” spaces with “nothing” in between quests gave you time to simply slow down for a moment. Time to just really see and appreciate the little details in the world you were in that you’d otherwise so easily miss when fly/teleporting between yellow exclamation marks.
Not having a progressive purpose with every corner of the map also gave space for exploration that offered you no reward other than the satisfaction of doing it.
I still remember the feelings of spending my nights traversing vast lands and trying to navigate ravines, mountains and packs of mobs for that unknown shadow I spotted on the map when trying to figure out where the quest item I needed was. Even if it turned out to be nothing more than a small body of water and a few trees, it still felt like I had accomplished something. I felt like a true adventurer and the world was endless.
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Are they though?
I couldn’t help but feel like they were quite small compared to any previous expansion to be honest. And no, I don’t think it’s because Skyriding. DF had that too and those zones still felt way bigger then these ones.
I have never been a fan of flying in WOW. If it was up to me I would stop adding it to the game in new expansions. Perhaps only have it one zone or something! I much prefer just grounds mounts but I can never see them changing it now!
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I prefer flying right away but the flying speed does make the new zones feel extremely small. I don’t like it.
??? WHAT LOL
So you’re telling me there is no flight paths? There is no verticality at all? Are you telling me buildings had no second floor?
How did you even type this and write something so stupid.
You should add that it ruins immersion for you.
For me flying in WoW is as immersive as it gets, especially as feral druid when you can roleplay as a predator pouncing it prey from above.
You can accommodate both: You can fly freely, but if you spend more than 5mins without flying then you get a buff that increases all gold drops and rewards, all currency rops and rewards, all reputation, all materials gathered from resource nodes by 100% and also get a 100% increased chance to find rare items.
That way players who decide to remain grounded will not fall behind in progress. Similar to how there is a buff to gold and supplies for running Warmode, with the reward existing to counter the potential time lost in combat and dying to the opposite faction.
and you couldn’t point out a single npc or quest from 37 of them
Classic was for 60 levels where the horde and alliance primarily quested in different zones. Modern expansions have both factions leveling in the the same zones and no doubt a couple of additional zones will be added in time.
I would prefer more smaller zones because it would allow for more new factions, biomes, stories and surprises.
But it seems the new expansion formula has been agreed upon internally and four per expansion is here to stay.
Eliminating faction differences was planned a long time ago as it means not having to design multiple narratives per zone/expansion.
Just Don’t use skyriding
Simple solution for your big problem!
This reminds me of “if you don’t like flying just use ground mount” 
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