I think disabling flying is a perfectly fine answer. If they do like Cata, and put a flightpath at every single quest hub, then there will not be any reason to fly.

My personal opinion - I don't get why people are acting like this is a new, unexpected thing? It was the same at the beginning of Wrath, you couldn't fly until you got Cold Weather Flying...

@Aravan: I know full well the solution isn't new. I am still remiss that they haven't gone through this line of thinking in response to trying to alleviate the problem of getting players "out into the world" rather than "flying over all of it". If you want players in the world, give them a compelling reason to do so and look around. ie: Make ground mounts faster to give them a reason to use them, and thus a reason to look around to avoid getting stuck all the time. If they don't want to be stuck, they can suffer a slower speed in the air or time a flight path. The "Cold Weather Flying" solution works, it does, but it just feels like they're going about trying to fix the problem in the wrong way, is how I see it.

@razion. Making flying slower than riding: This was the TBC model. Players hated flying so slow and they changed it. Putting mobs in the air to slow flying: You spend most of your time at max level and relatively little time leveling. Mobs in the air would slow travel once you are level 90. I don't think you want that.

During TBC, ground mounts went faster than the first level of flying. It felt really weird, but it did encourage those (most) of us who couldn't afford the higher flight speed to use ground mounts even when we could fly.

Do I want to go back to that? Not at all. I also don't mind waiting until 90 to fly in Pandaria... at least, not for my first or second play-thru.

Well, the nice thing is they have created reasons for this. In Wrath, your dainty flying mount couldn't fly in the cold air of Northrend until you had time and money to train them. In Cata, they couldn't get around it and let everyone fly. In MoP, your mount may be able to handle cold, but it can't handle high winds (this is how I imagine the references to the four winds). In Wrath, and hopefully in MoP, you could get a Tome to pass down the training instructions to your other toons.

I do wish there was more incentive to ride. My default flying mount is a drake and to realize that it's just as useful to mount and fly 6 feet to the next thing as it is to get on my guild mount or hog or whatever seems like overkill. Maybe if they made a NOS for mechanical mounts. Or made flying into a plainstriding thing where your first several flaps are quite slow but then you get to high speeds. I mean, flying is significantly faster than anything else. Even 280 to 310 is noticeable, but flying is 100 (ground) to 160 to 280 to 310 depending on training. It's noticeable just hitting the jump button to get slightly airborne when you train from 160 to 280.

Riding -> Level 40, 100g, 60% speed.
Epic riding -> Level 60, 800g, 100% speed.

Flying -> Level 70, 900g, 60% speed.
Epic flying -> Level 70, 5000g, 280% speed.

That's how it was done at the start of Burning Crusade, and when dailies DIDN'T exist (and high-gold reward quests didn't, either.)

It's been done. People hated how slow the basic flying mount was compared to Epic ground mounts. Blizzard's reasoning was "flying mounts go in a straight line, so they will be faster than ground mounts which have to go around hills and obstacles." And their reasoning was correct. It still didn't help that the basic flying mount felt slow.

I'm actually interpreting it as the actual spirits of the Four Winds have not given your character permission to fly there. They don't know you, they don't trust you, and they don't want you in their airspace.

This is a fantasy world. Sometimes "it's magic" is actually the answer.

@slythewolf

I like your imagining better.

Blizzard stated some time way back sometime around early Wrath (last time flying was disabled) that they don't want to increase ground speed any more. They don't like people moving that quickly on the ground. Too many technical and aesthetic problems. Of course, as with anything that may change.

"If you want players in the world, give them a compelling reason to do so and look around."

The flying restriction isn't focused on getting people out in the world, it's more about managing the questing experience. With flying mounts, no matter how fast, you can hop on the mount and fly to the exact quest location and ignore everything in between. Ground mounts encourage you to experience the terrain and allow Blizzard to create quests knowing what you will see by keeping you on the ground.

I like it! Flying is fun, but being grounded is better for the questing experience. In my opinion. :) And it won't last forever, just until level 90.