I completely disagree TC. Heavensward maps are gorgeous, they are genuinely beautiful. If you could fly from the beginning, trust me you wouldn't value as much the ability to fly in those maps, it's very reasonable that they expect you to at least explore them before you can get to fly around them...and no, once you can fly around them it's not useless because there's no possible living way you can gather/hunt in those maps relatively easy just by walking from one place to another. I'm in complete love with HW so far. My only "concern" is the lack of accuracy in healing gear xD, but meh.