Less a step backwards and full on falling down several flights of stairs. Without flying, the devs would never designed cool flying mounts. No amount of ground speed increase on those can replace or match the feeling of soaring through the skies on a dragon.
Go to Trial of the Crudsader if you want to see Blizz’s attempt at mounted combat. No hypothetical needed, combat mounts where already tried and like warfronts and AP grinds, people hated it. It failed. WoD even tried it again as a Nagrand buff and it was largely ignored.
I feel any form of No Flight should be kept to that pathetically outdated relic of mmo’s: classic wow. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: you don’t like flight don’t buy a flying license or use flying mounts. How dare you try and take away my enjoyment of flight because of your Int debuff.