How to Fly in Draenor

Sanity has prevailed or Blizzard has caved to pressure, depending on where you stand on the whole flying situation (I'm firmly in the "sanity" camp) and 6.2 will be introducing the ability to use our flying mounts as, you know, flying mounts in Draenor.

But unlike previous expansions, this ability to fly (I'd call it "Old Weather Flying," but that was the joke in Cataclysm. Maybe "Time Flying?") will not be as simple as plopping a few thousand gold at the feet of an NPC trainer.

Instead, flight must be earned by getting the Draenor Pathfinder achievement. This is an account-wide achievement, meaning that as long as any characters you have collectively have the various sub-achievements, you'll get the ability to fly, as well as a bonus Rylak mount, on all of your characters.

Actually, the one thing I'm not sure about is whether this is restricted to level 100 characters. I'd assume so, but I don't know that this has been explicitly stated.

So what do you need to do first?

Explore Draenor:

Yep, you're going to need to fill out your map of Draenor. Alliance players will have to probably work hardest in Frostfire Ridge, and Horde in Shadowmoon, but this mostly amounts to just riding around on your ground mount for a while.

Securing Draenor:

Hopefully you spent some time during the expansion doing those apexis dailies. This achievement requires you to do the daily in each of the daily assault areas, though I believe that this only requires the ones that are designed to be done solo - no worries about the Pit or Ashran. If you're worried about the RNG element of waiting for your assault table to have the right spots, I believe this will also count it if you purchase the quest item from your garrison quartermaster with garrison resources (who stands just outside the town hall.)

Loremaster of Draenor:

Complete the various quest-storylines in each of the leveling zones. This shouldn't be too hard - I expect most players already have this, given how compelling the Draenor questing experience was.

Master Treasure Hunter:

You'll need to get 100 treasures of Draenor. If you have the loremaster achievement, though, you'll be able to purchase treasure maps from the archaeology artifact trader in the Ashran capitals. You can also get these maps from follower missions.

Tanaan Diplomat:

This requires you to be revered with the three new factions in Tanaan Jungle: The Order of the Awakened, the Sabrestalkers, and either the Hand of the Prophet or Vol'jin's Headhunters, depending on your faction. Thankfully, these factions are designed around daily quests that reward large chunks of reputation, so while there might be some mechanics that allow you to grind mobs to gain rep more quickly, sticking to the quests should get you to revered in a couple of weeks.

So yes, flight will require you to jump through several hoops to attain it, but I'm glad we'll be able to see the world from above again, and it should make the conveniences of flight relevant to alt characters.