On 3.3.5/WotLK I took a gryphon from Darkshire to somewhere near Ironforge, and it took me to Stormwind first, made a money sound, and flew off automatically again.
I’m thinking the flying to SW and the additional fee are automated to smooth out how flying “works” long-distance, but was this always streamlined?
Like I can’t fly from Darkshire directly to Ironforge without having to fly to other flight paths; but was there ever a time where the game didn’t have that automatic-chaining of paths, and something like manually having to fly to a short-distance path, dismount, start a new short-distance path, dismount; repeat until across the continent, all-manual?