What I'm Riding

And by I, of course, I mean they, my 12 13 characters that are 90+.  I've got a lot of mounts, so I try not to use the same one on two different characters.  I'll do these in the order I opened their garrisons (or plan to).

Duskhawk: Swift Shorestrider - It was a birthday present, and I still love it.

Priest: I use different mounts for different specs on the priest.  For Disc, I'm using the Imperial Quilen.  For Shadow I'm using the Spectral Wind Rider - because it's practically invisible in shadow form, and I find that amusing.

There's a wind rider there, I promise.

Death Knight: My death knight was the first toon I started using the Sky Golem on, since I was leveling her with herbalism.  I didn't realize just how much I would love its flight animation, or how much I miss it.

Warrior:  I'm still using the Sapphire Panther on my warrior; when I first made all the gem cats, I was like, dammit, they're expensive, I'm using them.  She got the blue one.  (Also I was a huge Voltron fan when I was like, 8.)

Hunter 2:  Expensive cats?  This is the jewelcrafter, so she got the black one.

Shaman:  My shaman had the yellow cat for a long time, but I switched her back to a wolf for Warlords.  I tend to prefer unarmored mounts when I have the option, so I went with the Old Cliff Jumper model, the Dire Wolf.

Warlock:  My warlock is still using the yellow cat.  I might switch her up if I find something else I like her on, but the cat turns more golden when she's got full embers, so...

Hunter 3:  This is what happens when I can't decide what mount to use: a boring old Swift Green Wind Rider.

Rogue:  I've been using the Sandstone Drake on her, because 21 canopic jars, but I'm not sure I want to keep using big giant dragon on the ground. 

Druid:  This is where I sigh about flight form and stuff.  At least the updated Astral form makes the Forest Strider look even cooler.

Mage:  This is another character using a drake mount, this time the Azure Drake from Malygos; it seemed appropriate for a mage.  I may just go back to her Burgundy Wolf due to huge drakeness on the ground.  (It matches her hair.  Ahem.)

Paladin:  My pally used to be my bank toon, so I gave her Tyrael's Charger for running back and forth between the auction house and the mailbox.  It was paladin-y, and it wasn't a huge kodo that I couldn't find the mailbox under.  It's also one of the mounts that goes seamlessly between flight and no-flight, which is a plus as you level.

Mabs:  When I first made a character, part of the reason she ended up like she did was because her hair could be green.  So she's got the green cat (after years of default nightsaber that matched her Kitty).

Argh Profession Gating

I'm a profession junky.  I had all of them maxed at the end of Mists, and four alchemists at 600 (because you can never have enough transmutes).  So garrisons have been both awesome and frustrating in that regard - awesome because it's a new system tied in, but frustrating because you run into gating based on level or resources.

If you don't use ore, your gathering bonus options are limited until later than the mine at 92; you can't unlock the herb garden until 94.  Want more leather?  The barn requires more work for leather than the mine or the herb garden do for their materials.  I haven't started my leatherworker yet, so I'm not sure this is actually going to be a big deal, and now that I know how trapping works, it's not that bad to deal with.  I'm still accidentally killing some things when I try to trap them, and I'm still running into mobs that inexplicably won't set off the trap, but I can go grab seven or eight boars or talbuk or clefthoofs and be good for the day's work orders in fifteen minutes in the right area.  It does seem a bit unfair that you have to tie up a medium building for it, though.

I'm more frustrated by the gating of the intermediary crafting materials than anything else, though.  We've had recipe acquisition gated behind dailies since Wrath, and I hated it for jewelcrafting then, but these are innocuous dailies more along the lines of alchemical and inscription discoveries, so they're not really that bad - you even get to pick which recipe you learn.  But I'm sitting on so much ore on my engineer, and I can't do anything with it.  I've got Blingtron 5k and scopes and pets in my recipe list, but I can't do anything to make them yet.  Delayed gratification sucks, but it also means that there's not going to be any jumping in on the market of selling those pets and scopes any time soon, because I'm saving up to make myself that gun and some goggles.

And that also sucks.  I'm trying to get into Molten Core, but I had bad luck on quest item upgrades at an ilvl that mattered, and so far my dungeon drops have been for slots that I already had 615 pieces in.  My most recent upgrades came from Mr. Pinchy Sr. (who got me into heroics) and 615 shoulders from a garrison mission.  I'll get there, and it won't be horribly slow, but there's no more, "Oh, I'll just drop 5k on mats on the auction house and make myself a piece of gear for that one slot I really need to upgrade."  Having done the silver proving grounds required for heroic dungeons at a 584 ilvl, though, it's a bit frustrating.

But I made my Elekk plushie last night, and my blacksmith has a forge in construction (actually it finished sometime last night), and this weekend I'll probably get all my alts a level 2 garrison so I can have their profession buildings made well before I actually get around to leveling them, so I can stockpile materials for when I do.  Other than herbs, I think I can keep them mostly supplied with raw materials for their cooldowns just from my main.  My death knight might get bumped up in playtime just for herb gathering.  Once I have a follower in the herb garden, that may end up unnecessary, though.

I like the tie-in of hunting down a follower of the affiliated profession and, now that they've got the mission levels fixed, leveling them up to the point they can go to work for you in the profession buildings.  I'm also liking the "cook to learn more cooking," although not so much the five meats/filets to make anything.  The talbuk have been scrawny.

All in all, it's not a bad system; it's just frustrating after several years with only the major pieces requiring delayed gratification for crafting.  Titansteel cooldowns, living steel cooldowns, sure.  Scopes being gated by cooldowns?  Not really sold on that, but it's what we've got.  I've been reluctant to put a scope on my leveling ranged weapons, because who knows when they'll be replaced, and I need those gears for a gun and goggles.


I should have just bought the yak, though.  That 120k I stockpiled before the expansion isn't going to be needed for powerleveling  professions this time around, because there is no more powerleveling professions if you're already at 600.

On the gating flipside, thank God there's a cap on timber stockpiling, because I was starting to somewhat obsessively deforest Nagrand.

6.0 - Initial Thoughts

Patch day has come and gone, and besides Battleground queues being temporarily broken...

I need a 'mog worthy of her now.

First and foremost, my warrior looks amazing. When I first saw her updated model in the beta, I nearly cried. Troll hair has been notoriously... sad, and she just looks awesome now.

My wolf dances again. I started burning party grenades after watching my tauren’s facial expressions while dancing, and I had puppy out from a foray into the new UBRS, and... I may have kind of shouted in excitement to my husband.

eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee

I only changed 7 of about 40 faces: three unfortunate human eyebrows; two unexpectedly scowling gnomes; one overly perky night elf; and one troll that has so many awesome options now that I liked better. The rest I’ve been happy enough with, although I might go change some hairstyles now that they’re less blocky.

My rogue won the most-filled-crafting-tab. She’s the one that’s kept one stack of every type of herb.

Yes, that's Blood of Heroes.

I shoved so much stuff into void storage on my main hunter... and then went and did the same on my warlock, because wow, she had a lot of banked gear.

My shaman won the most-gold-from-currency-conversion: ~1400g.

I snagged the Bottomless Bag pattern for <100g. Thanks, combined Auction House!

And soloing... Just, wow. Last time I hopped into Dragon Soul 10N (about 3 weeks ago?) Morchok killed me since my pet wouldn’t tank him. I killed him in 9 seconds last night. Everything up to Spine was a cakewalk; Spine does some weird rolling stuff that’s going to take some work to get down smoothly.

I haven't tried out healing on my priest yet - I have heard mixed reviews.  I'll see how it goes later this week.

Soon...

Well, we know for sure now that 6.0 is coming on Tuesday.  A lot of the expansion's mechanical changes will show up, even though the content won't be available until the release date.  Some of these I will miss, and some I will not.

I will not miss...

• Hit rating, and the affiliated reforging.  So frequently I'd get into the later stages of a tier and either be dripping in excess hit rating, or unable to get enough of it, usually the former.
• Kor'kron guards.  I've been irritated by them since they moved into the Undercity, and I don't even like Sylvanas.
• Faction-separated auction houses.  I've got at least two characters I had to go to the other faction for to get transmog gear.  I will be glad to cut out the middle-men in Booty Bay.
• Having to macro Revive Pet and Mend Pet to save space on my action bar.  They've been like that since Vanilla.  That change is long due.
• Garrosh Hellscream.  Oh, wait...

I will miss...

• Flying.  Hopefully it comes to Draenor at some point - the place is gorgeous, and there are some views you only get from the air.
• A spammable instant shot.  I don't really care about Arcane Shot going from a rotational point of view, but for quickly pulling half a dozen things over for my bear to tank...
• Damage on the level 90 talents as Discipline.  It means I'll need to go Shadow to solo old dungeons via Halo.  It also highlights that Discipline really is a healing tree.  (There's a comment in the patch notes about them being between a full healer and a full damage dealer, which means there's a real chance they'll just suck at both.  I'll see how some dungeons go after Tuesday.)

I guess there's not a lot I'm really going to miss.  I'm a bit nostalgic about Scatter Shot going, since I used it a lot in Vanilla PVP, and Hunter's Mark - rogues get to hide again.

I've already mentioned that I'm looking forward to some of the changes to the inventory UI - I'm really looking forward to them.  I will likely spend most of Tuesday getting all that sorted out, and then running around buying yet more toys.

And maybe beating up Garrosh again for a fancy bow.

Toybox Prep

Now that several waves of toys have been added to the toybox on the beta, and I've done some obsessive putting-away-of-toys, I've started looking at the toys I don't have.  Some I don't have because I never bought them for lack of space; some I didn't finish out the quests or reputation for.  And of course, some of them are new for Warlords.

So now that we know when the expansion is launching, I've got about three months to level alts, wrap up quests, achievements, and reputations... and go toy hunting.  Wowhead's got a good guide for toys overall, and between that, Altoholic (to weed out stuff I have somewhere), and the beta client, I've been looking at what I can do ahead of time.


Some of the items are going to be pricy (Kalytha's Haunted Locket), and some are just going to require farming (all the Timeless Isle drops I haven't gotten yet), but I've definitely got enough to keep me occupied for three months.

Or rather, the guesstimated month or so after the 6.0 patch, because, well, inventory.  I hit up a few of the easy ones - Gokk'lok's Shell, the Gin-Ji Knife Set, and similar items - and realized that if I start collecting before the patch, I'm going to have zero bag spaces free for the next few months.

So for now I'm curating my spreadsheet, accumulating some currency, and waiting for the WoW equivalent of a Black Friday shopping spree.

UI Upgrade Anticipation

The beta servers have had a couple character wipes, so I haven't done much more with it besides log over obsessively afterwards to see what's been added to the toy box.

Ahem.

Anyway, several of the upcoming features are enticing enough that I really miss them when I go back to the live servers.  Despite all the chaos and whatnot that it will bring, the 6.0 patch can't come soon enough in some ways.  These are my top three that I'm impatient for right now:

The Toy Box

So yeah, this is the first thing I've been doing after character wipes: recopying toons to see what I've got that's been added to the toy box.

It's getting there!  I'm a bit of a collector, so having a list like this is neat because it means I don't need to make a spreadsheet.  Or at least, it gives me the list for the first column of the spreadsheet.

I... may have had a zone spreadsheet for pets before it was added into the UI.

Anywho, on to...

Bag Clean Up

I was initially annoyed at how the new "Clean Up Bags" sorted things, but between the dropdowns on the bags themselves and the interface options, you can easily make stuff go where you want it to now.

 Most of my toons have one bag where I keep all their utility items - hearthstone, profession tools, the Darkmoon Faire Adventurer's Guide, and similar items.  I just have to remember to set that bag to "ignore" before sorting the first time, and it's going to be awesome.

I really miss this on my current auction toon when I've mailed myself a lot of stuff and then it intermixes with the auction mail.  It puts all the cloth together, herbs together, etc.

The Reagent Bank

The reagent bank is an amazing space saver; between having basically a whole guild bank tab and most materials stacking to two hundred, I'm actually planning to packrat a lot of legacy materials that I don't bother to right now.

Having four alchemists, I'm still going to run into who-has-what-herbs problems, but with the ability to easily stockpile so many and to craft straight from the bank, it's going to be awesome regardless.

It's a good thing we don't have to wait till November for these parts to go in, since I really want them now.

Beta Notes 10-12 (with bonus notes, Part 8)

Here's parts 10-12 of my beta notes, including some priest notes, initial Forsaken changes, and more.  Spoilers, of course.

Beta Notes: Part 9

Another night, another round of beta notes!  Spoilers, of course.  Notes in bold, comments after.

Beta Notes 5-7 (Now With Screenshots!)

Here's parts 5-7 of my beta notes.  Spoilers abound!

Beta Notes, 2-4

Here's my notes parts 2 to 4.  Some of the lag-related bugs have been fixed since I made the notes.

Remember: There are spoilers!!

Beta Notes!

So Friday is the only one this summer I wasn't taking off work this summer, and while glancing through my email at the workshop I was attending, I saw a beta invite email.  I assumed it was spam.  Nope!  Got home and the beta (still labeled alpha) was in my launcher.  Apparently it's a stress test? Regardless, I'm in.

Friday it was quite disconnect-y, and it still was much of today, but today was more playable.  Here's my notes I made as I played (notes in bold, with commentary).

THIS IS PRETTY SPOILERY FOR TANAAN JUNGLE STUFF IF YOU WANT TO AVOID THEM.

Alt Leveling Plans

So I've got nine toons at 90 right now, one hovering at 88, one at 85, and a slew of lower ones.  Someone linked this (plans for no flying at all in Draenor) today on an alt guild's Facebook page, and my gut reaction to it is that my druid is going to be abandoned.

I love flight form.  Seriously, it was my impetus for rolling a druid at all.  If you've seen the most recent Captain America movie, the scenes with the Falcon pretty much epitomize why I love it for my druid.  (Sitting in the theater, going, "That! That is what I love about my druid!")

But she's 90, and, well, high level alts get leveled.  It just happens.  Some of them will be through questing, some through dungeons, some through... other means.  But not being to to use flight form in post-90 content, basically ever?  Druid's probably getting leveled through dungeons and then probably parked unless I like the new druid healing enough to do raid finder on her.  Sure, all my characters will be grounded, but travel form isn't as fast as ground mounts.  Cat stealth is weak compared to rogues'.  Since soloing content isn't what I like about her, it's not what I'm going to do on her.

This train of thought led to other alt leveling thoughts.  My main had all the pre-Wrath Loremaster pieces done before Wrath (and achievements) hit, and she got Seeker before hitting 80; it's kind of obvious she's going to be questing out all the zones.  But my alts get narrower subsets of content.

(In the order they're on my character screen):

Alliance (Original) Hunter:  Will get leveled through the Alliance quest content, to see what's different

This was taken before I know about alt+z

Rogue:  I may see what I can do with leveling her through archaeology again, probably combined with herbalism.  I used to stealth through Azshara picking herbs for hours on her in vanilla.  There's a reason she's Subtlety.  (I maxed her herbalism at 85 long before I started actually leveling her to 90.)

This is how I leveled 85-90

Warrior:  Mix of questing and probably trying dungeon tanking again.  The warrior is usually the 3rd or 4th I level.  She's a swordsmith.

Questing as Prot

(Main)

It's not like I don't have ground mount options

Priest:  More dungeons (healing), some questing, because I always like seeing how well Disc solos in the questing environment.  Plus disenchanting quest rewards helps for enchanting materials.  The priest is usually the 2nd leveled.  (Although 4th in Mists.)

I swapped her offspec back to Shadow, alas

Baby Hunter 1:  This is my jewelcrafter & scribe, and she tends to get leveled in parallel with the warrior.  Because of how well hunters solo, I frequently quest again on her.

She does have the coolest cat

Shaman:  Probably mostly dungeons as Elemental and some questing to open up phasing/zones.  Since she's a leatherworker, I'll likely open up content I need for skinning, too - I went back and did Vashj'ir on her at 85 because I needed the skinning there.

She has the best orc hair!

Warlock:  I did all of the Lorewalker discoveries on her pre-90 (which means yes, on a ground mount), then found out I couldn't get the quests from the scrolls until 90.  This is the character that got taken on the road trip to Dalaran at 43 (to be parked there to summon people there until I got around to leveling her).  She tends to get leveled around 5th or 6th, in parallel with the shaman, so I'll probably do more map discovery/herbalism/some question/some dungeons with her.  She's my transmuter.

Apparently goblins have problems with Pandaren furniture

Baby Hunter 2: This is my flask alchemist; I'll probably level her alchemy long before she's leveled.  She's 88 right now.  I'll finish getting her to 90 probably in the next couple months.

I took ALL my 85+ through Karazhan for the pets

Paladin (bank):  My bank is 76; I've hardly touched her in terms of leveling since Mists started, partly because she's not in my main guild, and partly because I haven't gotten around to learning the paladin changes.  One day!

Stalled out bank toon? You get the BEST ride

Druid:  Like I said before: probably mostly through dungeons.  She was leveled mostly through mining, herbalism, and pet battles from the 60s on, with some dungeons thrown in.

In the Zangarmarsh

Death Knight (on a connected realm):  My death knight is 85, my second transmuter, and I've leveled her mostly through dungeons, with a smattering of herbalism and pet battles.  I really like tanking on her; I just have to get back into it for Mists content, which is a bit intimidating despite doing it on my warrior.

They took my scourgestone :(

I have a lot of baby alts (Catnome, goblin & troll hunters, orc mage) that I want to level, and have started slowly doing so, but I don't know where they're going to fit into the mix.  I also want to make an orc hunter after the new models come out.  Then I'll have one of all of them Horde-side except Pandaren, because I'm not doing the Pandaren starting zone again.

I really wish all my alts were on connected servers, because I've got about 15 others I want to level, but just am not as likely to get to without my guild.  Maybe one day.

6.0 Alpha Patch Notes!!

Rather than just repeat everything that's been said already, I'm just gonna link you the patch notes (in case you somehow haven't seen them), and then link you over to all of WoWhead's stuff (and their talent/perks calculator), because Carpnado. There's a lot of cool stuff popping up in the datamining (Glyph of Play Dead!), but since it's thus far contextless, I'm going to look mostly at the patch notes stuff right now.

Since these are alpha patch notes, all of this is subject to (and likely to in some way) change, but here's what affects Marksmanship out of that (gloriously long) patch notes post:

Removed abilities:

• Aspect of the Hawk
• Distracting Shot
• Hunter’s Mark
• Lynx Rush
• Rapid Fire
• Rapid Recuperation
• Serpent Sting and Improved Serpent Sting
• Widow Venom
• Scatter Shot
• Silencing Shot (but not Counter Shot)

Removed for Marksmanship:

• Arcane Shot

Moved to talents:

• Stampede (replaces Lynx Rush)

Changed abilities/talents:

• Thrill of the Hunt affects Aimed Shot
• Aspect of the Iron Hawk will just reduce damage (not increase attack power)
• Revive Pet and Mend Pet are one button and switch function based on whether you have a live pet (basically replacing my revive/mend macro)
• Traps won't need to arm - they can go off as soon as you drop them
• Traps won't be disarmable (they're taking Disarm Traps away from rogues, anyway)
• Scare Beast PVP duration will be 6 seconds
• The aspect bar is being removed and the remaining aspects will be toggles on the GCD:
• Aspect of the Pack
• Aspect of the Cheetah
• Glyph of Aspect of the Beast
• Glyph of Aspect of the Cheetah won't trigger cooldowns on aspects
• Aimed Shot damage is being buffed and will once again not interrupt Autoshot
• Dismiss Pet won't need line-of-site
• Pets will have a 1 second GCD
• Explosive Trap will put a DOT on anything in range when it goes off, rather than be a fire puddle

Pet abilities removed:

• Cower
• Rabid
• Specific pet abilities:
• Basilisk: Petrifying Gaze; Bat: Sonic Blast; Bear: Demoralizing Roar; Bird of Prey: Snatch; Carrion Bird: Demoralizing Screech; Core Hound: Lava Breath; Crab: Pin; Crane: Lullaby; Crocolisk: Ankle Crack; Dog: Lock Jaw; Fox: Tailspin; Goat: Trample; Gorilla: Pummel; Hyena: Cackling Howl; Monkey: Bad Manners; Moth: Serenity Dust; Nether Ray: Nether Shock; Porcupine: Paralyzing Quill; Raptor: Tear Armor; Rhino:  Horn Toss; Scorpid: Clench; Serpent: Serpent's Swiftness; Shale Spider: Web Wrap; Silithid: Venom Web Spray; Spider: Web; Sporebat: Spore Cloud; Tallstrider: Dust  Cloud; Wasp: Sting

Changed pet abilities:

• Sporebat: Energizing Spores now affects both melee and spell haste

Draenor Perks:

• Enhanced Kill Shot: Bigger Kill Shot window
• Enhanced Camouflage: Heal while camouflaged
• Enhanced Chimera Shot: Costs less focus
• Enhanced Aimed Shot: Crits generate focus
• Improved Focus: Larger focus pool
• Improved Aimed Shot: Increased damage
• Improved Steady Shot: Increased damage
• Enhanced Shots: Increased range
• Enhanced Piercing Shots: Multishot crits apply bleeds

Level 100 Talents:

• Flaming Shots: Autoshot BURNINATES
• Focusing Shot: Replace Steady Shot with one longer shot that generates focus, but can't be used on the move
• Lone Wolf: Play without a pet

Okay, so that's the consolidated bits of the infodump that directly affect Marksman specifically (rather than all of us players as a whole, like the stat squishes and whatnot).  What does all of this mean thus far?

Well, I can get rid of my Mend Pet/Revive Pet macro that I've had since... I dunno, 2005?

Toolbar changes (not shown: Hunter's Mark, Widow Venom)

I'm looking at the level 100 talents and thinking, well, I want to play with my pet.  I don't mind pet management, and I like the added flavor and variety.   There may be fights where it's worth it to swap into it, though.  Between Flaming Shots and Focusing Shot, I have a feeling I may change that one frequently for soloing and trash versus boss fights.  Stuff tends to die fast enough on trash and while soloing that a 3-second cast to regenerate focus for Aimed, Chimera, and Multi may be prohibitive.

The Draenor Perks are also a nice addition; they further define the specialization and INCREASED SHOT RANGE I'VE MISSED YOU.  Ahem.  I used to consistently specialize into it when it was in the old talent trees.  Healing while Camouflaged will give us a nice alternative to eating that may not be possible if stuck in combat or if in an area where the odds of getting attacked again are high.

Since the Aspect bar is down to three buttons, and losing one, I'm not going to miss it.  Once upon a time we got as high as what, six buttons?  Aspects are a neat idea, but one that apparently hasn't worked out for the hunter class the way they once thought they would.  This will also move the pet bar back over on top of my active bars and make it faster for me to call my pet off, since it will be less distance for the mouse to travel.

With Murder of Crows and Stampede moving into the same row of talents, they may become situational: Crows for single-target fights since they're a DOT; Stampede for multi-target fights since they can move around.  I'm likely to favor Crows, though, despite the joys of the Army of Sporebats.  I just really enjoy swarming someone with a flock of birds.

I'm expecting haste is still going to be a fairly desirable stat for Marksman, to bring down both the Aimed Shot cast time and that of whichever focus-generator you're using at the time.  Right now Focusing Shot looks like it will generate about double the focus of a pair of Steady Shots, and it might work better for an expensive-shot rotation like Aimed and Chimera.

All in all this just makes me more impatient to be able to get in and play around with all the new stuff!

Still waiting for...

There's a lot of cool stuff coming in the expansion, which I'm guessing is 6-8 months off.  Some of the things I've wanted for a while now don't seem to be included, which isn't surprising, since it's just random stuff.  This is some of it, though.

Emerald drake mounts.  You get to sample them in Oculus, but there's no option to commit.

Such a lovely green.

Built-in UI customization, a la SWotR.  I'll admit I was a bit surprised the first time I flipped that toggle over there.  Still not really playing because of the zoom distance and such, but being able to move your stuff around out of the box is nice.

Only Tol'vir sites.  Seriously, I'm still farming this stupid drake recipe.  Okay, okay, I finally got the Sandstone drake recipe, but 21 canopic jars.  That's like, five complete mummies.  Being able to focus on one kind of archaeology would be much less TINY OASIS MOSAIC frustration inducing.  If my rogue could tile the bathroom in her garrison, she's already acquired enough to do it.

You can totally tell I only leveled archaeology on Kalimdor.

Gnome hunters.  Based on the recent racial changes for Warlords of Draenor excluding focus from the list of what Expansive Mind will affect, gnomes are still not hunters.

A Burning Crusade-era transporter malfunction... as close as we get.

Flying in Azeroth & Beyond

Is flying good or bad in WoW?

The short answer, really, is both.  The lists of reasons for both sides is similarly short:

Positive aspects:

• Allows for three-dimensional zone structure (think the floating islands in Nagrand, or Vashj'ir, which was a flying zone disguised by water)
• Allows for non-linear/random patterned activities (such as travel between archaeology zones, which are not directly correlated to flight paths)
• Flying is fun, especially on a druid or with a Sky Golem

Negative aspects:

• Masks otherwise cumbersome zone design
• Makes some zone challenges (generally, the mobs) trivial

There are some places that I absolutely prefer the change in access flight has made: anything in Blackrock Mountain, for example.  Those chains!  I used to parachute into the lava rather than run the chains.

I used to farm ore for extended periods on a ground mount, usually in Un'goro Crater, where I could go more or less in a circle and hit all the nodes up in the nooks in the cliff wall.  I went back to Un'goro recently and discovered that a lot of those nooks... are gone.  Closed up.  That seemed weird, now that we have flying and getting into them wasn't even tricky.

The problem of flying making zone travel trivial is easily negated.  You remember the forge camps in Blade's Edge?  The cannons that would shoot at you as soon as you mounted up?  Or the frostwyrms in Icecrown that made flying in front of the citadel dicey (even if there were a couple good ore nodes there).  The air can be made dangerous.  Imagine roving zeppelins of pirates that would shoot you out of the sky the same way a whale shark would just eat you.  There are options for that.  (I... kind of want roving zeppelins of pirates now, with ships that can be captured and/or defeated like world bosses.  The Dread Ship Vazuvius takes flight!)

The real downside is when flight masks otherwise cumbersome zone design.  I hadn't thought much about this until last night, when I was thinking about why losing flight would be bad.  Really, no flight in a new space isn't bad - that space will be designed with no flight in mind.  (As long as it doesn't have bridges with stunning mobs that my healer can't kill, a la the Timeless Isle, probably not a big deal.)  The problem is when zones for levels without flying are designed with flight in mind.

Here be Spoilers

So I bought the virtual ticket for Blizzcon this year, partly because it went up for sale while I still had birthday money, and I figured, hey, I'll get a pet out of it.  The opening ceremony was free to stream, but subtitles only work on the main stage stream, which you only have access to with the ticket, and... I left my authenticator at home. >.<  So I watched the stream soundless at the reference desk at work between helping the occasional Friday afternoon patron, coupled with WoW Insider's live blog so I could actually get some context.

So we learned:

• We're going back in time to Draenor because Garrosh.  Apparently Star Trek isn't the only franchise to fork time in the past to get new content; Garrosh plays the role of the Romulan who went back to destroy Vulcan, and we get to play elder Spock, or some such.  (Woo double franchise spoiler post.)
• New level cap is 100.  All well and good, lets them add another talent tier easily.  The expansion after this, they'll probably have to redistribute them again.
• When expansion purchase, you can boost a character to 90.  This is good for folks who have been out of the game a long time, or if you've got friends on the other faction or another server you want to play with more right away.
• They're adding player garrisons.  We liked the farms so much, they're giving us a whole little town to play with, and we get to pick where to put it.  Collect NPCs; they'll do some crafting stuff for you.  Sounds like this is a partial answer to all those requests to make the gathering skills baseline.
• Draenor was gorgeous before the Legion showed up.

Overall, I'm... okay, not really excited.  I geek out over different things, really, but I'm looking at this and thinking, when am I even going to have time to raid?  I'm a bit of a pet collector, sitting at 188 mounts, and given a whole garrison to flesh out?  Dude.

I've always wanted to see a lot of the places that we know were changed because of pre-WoW storyline events, and places like Netherstorm, that's getting ripped apart, and Zangarmarsh, that the naga have been draining - those were pretty high on my list.  (Please let sea horses work in the Zangar Sea.)  But really - it hadn't occurred to me that the changes in Shadowmoon Valley were so recent, really.  Auchindoun, Karabor, and such - I didn't think I'd ever get to see them pre-destruction/corruption.

So far as I've been able to tell, they've been avoiding telling us who gets Garrosh back in time, but really, who has power over time nowadays?  Bronze dragons to some extent, and certain Timewalkers.  Given the last vision that the hourglass gives us on the Timeless Isle, I have a short list of bets to make about that.

I keep wanting to say Wrathion is involved in all this somehow, but every time I look at his background, I keep saying, dude, this kid's origin is just as screwed up as Anakin Skywalker's.  I'm not going to bother.  But if Wrathion's visions of the Legion are because he's somehow from the forked time, rather than our own...  But I don't think the Black Dragonflight was there long ago enough for that to be true.

Anywho, I have a placeholder Draenei now.