#1 - Nov. 14, 2013, 4:48 p.m.
I don't even know what Dread Wastes or Townlong Steppes looks like on the ground because by the time I got to those zones I just flew over it and passed the content completely. The game world feels so impersonal and detached from the supposed actual content (raids and arenas). You don't have to talk to anyone, or go anywhere to do anything. Everything you need is in town already anyway-- flying mounts are redundant. I have a human character on this account that's never even left Stormwind.
If you played Vanilla, you know how much of a treat it was to walk into new zones for the first time and experience everything from the ground. The world just felt more significant, more alive, and you felt immersed in the game. People get jaded with pro-vanilla arguments but at least in Vanilla, we got to know players on our server on a personal level. At least you passed people in the world doing stuff, and at least we played World of Warcraft, not world of queue for everything in town and fly to the conquest vendor once a week to pick up weekly cap items. Even the entrance to the latest raid in 5.4 is literally at the doorstep of your faction's main city in Pandaria.
Blizzard has traded convenience and ease of play for an immersing MMO. The no-flying until the first major content patch is a step in the right direction but nowhere NEAR enough to make the persistent world feel like a world again and not just a chatroom that you can use to queue into content without going anywhere.