I worry that having every mob be "hard" will make Heavensward tedious. Like the Sylphlands.

I am not opposed to difficulty but there has to be some downtime too. I think if, instead of every mob being hard, zones had a few wandering hard-hitting monsters that would be better. You would be able to travel but you'd have to keep your wits about you and remember the world is a dangerous place.

On a different note...I hope SE has learned from watching Blizzard and will not regret flying mounts.

Ion Hazzikostas had this to say regarding the implementation of flying mounts in WoW:

"Having looked at how flying has played out in the old world in the last couple of expansions, we realized that while we were doing it out of this ingrained habit after we introduced flying in The Burning Crusade, it actually detracted from gameplay in a whole lot of ways. While there was certainly convenience in being able to completely explore the world in three dimensions, that also came at the expense of gameplay like targeted exploration, like trying to figure out what's in that cave on top of a hill and how do I get up there."


Hazzikostas gives an example: "Before flying was introduced to World of Warcraft, if you got a quest to rescue a prisoner from an enemy encampment, it would play out a certain way. Players would need to fight their way through the camp. After flying, players could just fly into the center of camp, land on top of the hut where the prisoner is, free him and fly out. It made the world feel in many ways much smaller."

Originally, Blizzard took out flying in Warlords of Draenor as an experiment, and Hazzikostas says he would have bet "slightly better than even money at the time" that they were going to bring it back eventually. But as they played the expansion and watched others play it, they discovered that they liked the game better without flying.

"The world feels larger, feels more dangerous. There's more room for exploration, for secrets, for discovery and overall immersion in the world. At this point, we feel that outdoor gameplay in World of Warcraft is ultimately better without flying. We're not going to be reintroducing the ability to fly in Draenor, and that's kind of where we're at going forward."

I don't intend to make this a WoW comparison thread now just... I reallllyyy hope SE has found an elegant way of bringing flight into the game and won't regret it in future expansions.