15 bucks a month... but Blizzard is lazy?

Unfortunately our designers and developers are not a limitless sea of people; there are decisions that have to be made as to where we should appropriately direct the development efforts. It's our feeling that providing new content, new places to explore and progress your character, new races and professions, all equal a very worthwhile expenditure of our resources. We're definitely committed to ensuring parts of the game already developed continue to be refined, but in this case delaying an expansion for a potentially "very long time" just wouldn't make sense, and wouldn't be very fair to our fans and players who would rather keep progressing their character than flying through places they've already been.

Let's say that we did allow flying mounts in Azeroth and chose to redesign it at some point, it would be no small task. We would need to correct all of the terrain outside of the 'walkable' areas, including building out zones that currently don't exist but through lore are known to exist in those areas. We would also have to rework most outdoor areas as content not intended to be bypassed could be, as well as any possible terrain exploitation potential (ie lots of time testing and refining). We would need to think about what happens when the edge of the map is reached. Since Outland is flat, a bounding wall makes sense, but for a planet that starts to break down. Do players zone in to the other continent while flying or do we make it seamless? If it's seamless we have to rebuild our server architecture, not to mention any further technical issues, etc. etc. While summed up in a sentence or two each of these things would require teams of people working together for a long time to pull off well.

It really all comes down to making the game fun to play for everyone, and allocating resources and time to do that as efficiently as possible. Right now spending time reworking Azeroth so that flying mounts can simply exist, for some ease of travel and sight seeing, doesn't seem like an appropriate use of our time or efforts. In the future though, who knows?

Q u o t e:
Thanks for the in-depth reply. I understand now how much work it would be. That does seem like way too much just for flying mounts.

P.S. - Oh ... yea erm.. forgot to mention the lazy thing was a joke. Sorry.

You're more than welcome, and I apologize if I was overly dismissive. It's definitely cool to think about flying around in Azeroth, but I think once you get in to the expansion you'll have more than enough to keep you entertained.

Q u o t e:
Well I adding the walls like I said would be nothing more then fixes either. Just a more wide spread thing. Its not as much work as the blue poster says it is.

one thing I am tired of seeing is Blizzard misinform its customers about something or flat out lie about it.

But hey! billions of dollars, they can do whatever.

You're right, we could completely half ass the entire thing and put invisible walls everywhere breaking immersion, making flight in Azeroth counter-intuitive, and even less useful than if we hadn't even spent the time in the first place.

If you want to pretend you know how to design a game, or more importantly, you know the design of this game including the personnel, tools, and logistics involved, you can go right ahead, but I would appreciate it if you didn't call me a liar when my statements don't match up with your armchair musings. Thank you.