All the hysterics on this are amusing.

I fell in love with WoW before there was flying. I don't see any problem with seeing how WoD goes without flying.

Its funny, I think about the old content and how inconvenient it was. The long instances , everyone had to hoof it to the front door, no LFG, problematic spawns between you and your resource node, etc etc. And yet that was the phase of the game where I forged most of the relationships that made this the only video game that I've ever played for longer than about a year. The teamwork required to overcome demanding content, and sometimes just the dead spaces where you chat and get to know people because you're waiting for the healer to fly to you, that contributed to the sense of community. Five hour LBRS runs just to advance one person along the Onyxia quest chain. It's paradoxical, but that both sucked and is one of my fondest memories of the game.

Maybe the playerbase has changed, maybe I've changed, maybe it's fruitless and nostalgic, all this is possible. Maybe they'll add flying later, either mid expac or maybe next expac. Maybe it'll go well, maybe it won't. But it seems silly to suggest that the only reason people have continued to play this game is because of flying mounts, when it is a game that became the King of the MMORPG Hill back before you could fly.

It seems like a reasonable thing to try, I'm all for it. No doubt it'll lose them some subs, but the gamble is that it will encourage the kinds of relationships that made the game so strong to begin with. I'm curious to see how it turns out, and psyched to see the new content.