Flight in WoW

Burning Crusade seriously introduced much of what makes WoW what it is today. Before BC, there were no heroic dungeons, raids were 40-person monstrosities, PvP gear was just slightly-different in its itemization and nowhere near as good as the late-tier PvE stuff, and there were no flying mounts.

The flying mount is a source of much contention within the WoW community. It's a prime flashpoint for the "immersion" vs. "convenience" debate. To summarize:

Flying mounts make traveling through the world far easier. One does not have to navigate around terrain, nor does one typically have to worry about getting attacked by enemies in the zone. Detractors of the existence of flying mounts argue that this breaks the immersion of actually being in the world. One can set a bearing, hit your autorun button, and go make a sandwich while you cross over a whole continent. A journey to a distant area, by this logic, loses a lot of the epic sense of adventure.

One thing everyone agrees on (almost everyone) is that flying mounts are not going anywhere. Especially when you consider the fact that Blizzard has sold flying mounts for real money, one cannot imagine taking them out of the game, but beyond that, they've now been part of WoW for the vast majority of the game's lifespan.

So admittedly, arguing about this is really just for the sake of argument, but hey, that's what I do.

I think it would be easy to feel comfortable in one's position that flying mounts break immersion if one assumes that the only argument for them is convenience. However, I instead believe that flying mounts are, in fact, a potential contributor to greater immersion.

Examples:

In BC, getting up to Tempest Keep (this was before dungeon finder, so you always had to physically go to the dungeon in question) required a flying mount. The dungeons there were all tuned for level 70, but this requirement reinforced that fact (except for druids, who got their flight form at 68 for some reason.) At the time, flight required level 70, the level cap at the time, and also cost about 900 gold, which was a fairly significant chunk of change back then. The fact that you could only reach the place by flying there reinforced the notion that it was a dangerous, isolated place. Your back was to a cliff, and the only option you had was to push forward.

In the lead-up to Wrath, there was a lot of talk about Icecrown as a zone. Sure, we'd assaulted places like the Black Temple and other fortresses before, but Icecrown was the heart of the Scourge, and nowhere, before or after, has there been a more intimidatingly hostile territory in WoW. During Wrath, one had to hit level 77 before getting the ability to fly in Northrend, and flight was necessary to traverse the expansion's last two zones. Storm Peaks contained pinnacles of such great height that a flying mount was absolutely necessary to navigate the place, but Icecrown used the flight requirement to reinforce that stakes of fighting the Lich King.

The idea was that you were flying there because there simply wasn't a safe place to land.

There weren't any Alliance or Horde bases, and the only group that had even gotten a foothold, which mostly existed in a part of the zone that could be considered to be part of Crystalsong Forest, was the Argent Crusade. So while the two player factions hovered above on their gunships and the Argent Crusade fought a painful battle to gain inches against the Scourge, the Knights of the Ebon Blade pulled off a kind of special-forces op, taking the Shadow Vault and establishing the only friendly base within Icecrown proper (one that is perpetually under attack by Scourge forces.)

What I'm getting at here is that flying in WoW can actually feel very epic and exciting, and totally in-world, rather than simply feeling like a cheat to get out of fighting your way to your location.

Mists is the first expansion to go back to the BC model of flight - making it something that you only got  after you'd done your leveling. While I think that's a valid way to present content, (the lack of flight on the Isle of Thunder clearly continuing this feel) I also think that there's room to design zones with flight in mind, much the way that Icecrown and Storm Peaks were. (The Cataclysm zones are a little mixed here. I actually think having some kind of arduous journey through the deserts of Uldum would have been cool, but Twilight Highlands I think worked best with flight, even if I don't think that there could have been more done with flight there.)

Flight is not strictly a bad thing. You can do a lot of fun stuff with it. Should there be limitations? Absolutely. Indoor spaces are a great way to accomplish that in zones where flight is allowed, but the flight or no flight toggle is another way that they can do it. I just hope they don't get rid of one or the other entirely.