How big is WoW? Kalimdor is about the size of Manhattan. But I don't mean 'physical' size. I mean your perception of it. This is important for creating the perception of being in a world.
Time
We can measure size by time. How long does it take to get from here to there? When you can only run, the Barrens are huge. When you have regular riding, it's still pretty big. With epic riding it's still big. Maybe picking the biggest vanilla zone was a bad example. Let's run from Crossroads to Camp Taurajo instead. On foot it's a decently long run. Riding, not so bad. Flying they're right next to each other, no distance at all.
Speed makes the world smaller. When you bring places closer together (at least in our minds) and you lose more and more of the space between you also lose some of the world.
Effort
If it's hard to move between places, they seem further apart. Think of running through STV. Look at the area next to Lake Nazferiti. Here's a map. You could take the path curving around or you could take the straight path from one bridge to the next; we're going from the bottom of the lake to Nesingwary's camp. The path is longer, right? By perception, maybe not. Cutting across in your 30s or 40s will lead to a lot of mobs attacking you. Even if they don't daze you, you might find it taking longer as you try to dodge around them. If you are dazed, then you have to fight them.
While it's true that effort is indirectly increasing time, I feel it's worth dividing between your possible movement speed (running vs. mount) and your average speed (mounted vs. fighting). At an extreme example imagine a pack that you could not simply run through, it would automatically dismount you. Or even an area that needed a group to fight through it. Think of an instance; they're actually quite short, even the ones we consider long, it's the fighting which makes them seem long.
Sight
There is some mix of blocked and free sight which gives the greatest perception of distance. Too much blocked sight and you have zero context. Too much free sight and then "oh that's not so far away, it's right there." A mix would give an idea that things are some distance away, but nothing is right here within sight.
Grizzly Hills
The terrain there is excellent. The hills and trees and all that break your line of sight, reducing the problem in so many other zones of complete enemies right next to each other(see SMV for some of the worst examples). Sure, the zone could just be bigger, but that means more space to fill in (unless you're a fan of flat, featureless terrain) and more time spent riding around.
The hills and the wolves in them encourage the player to stick to the paths if they want to be safe, but if you're willing to dodge trees and wolves and who knows what else lurking, you can cut across and maybe save some time. Finding a path without a marked path can be tricky sometimes, but you won't find yourself stuck like in Ashenvale where attempting a short cut means a ten minute mob-filled run parallel to the road, trying to find where the random ridges end.
Flying
Flying kills size and terrain. You can see everywhere and nothing is far away. Mobs don't phase you. Hills are nothing but sights, not something which actually affects how you move. You pick and choose where to go with nothing in between. Flying effectively removes you from the world, it makes you a disconnected observer rather than someone interacting with the world.
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I like my flying mount as well as anyone, but I personally don't think that Blizzard should have permitted player-controlled flying mounts. It's a mistake they can't have back now - you can't just void something that players had to grind out thousands of gold to pay for - but I believe that the flying concept has hurt the game more than it has helped. One wonders whether we would have gotten some of the daily quests that say "fly across the continent, loot an item, and come back" if the flight time wasn't balanced around epic flying mounts.
I made an error in my first comment, let me try this again.
I'm a new L80 and don't have an epic flyer yet, but I like the flying mount I do have; I think I can already appreciate how flying mounts have taken the player from the immersion in a world they now pass over with ease.
I've seen the Grand Canyon by air and land and I can say that as beautiful as it is by air, nothing compares to putting your legs on ground just feet away from a mile-long death plunge. Flyers have some advantages, but in terms of world immersion those advantages mean very little.
I actually think that flying can have another sort of immersion and quality. Like my first flight in SMW when I just had gotten the mount.It was magic. One of my top 10 moments in wow...
It all depends on what mental glasses you're wearing while playing. Sadly enough I often feel like I'm in a hurry, trying to always minimize travelling time, not paying too much attention to the surrounding landscape. Not because there's any reason for it, it's just a bad habit and mindless following of the behaviour of others.
@Green Armadillo: Now that you mention the dailies and flying, we might see smaller dailies, ie: not covering such a wide variety of zones.
@Che: Flying has the advantage of making WoW a more fun game, letting us skip all that stuff we don't like.
@Larisa: Like Che said with the grand canyon, there is more to see in the air. Flying shows us the big picture, though at the loss of details.
If you're trying to not hurry so much, make an alt and never change your hearthstone. You might find that there's something to be gained from 'wasted' time. My rogue is closing in on 68 and I'm very glad I chose this strange way of leveling, though I'd probably not repeat it. Or take more flight paths, you'll have nothing to do except see the beautiful world which the devs have painted for us.
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