if we were talking about about DAOC then i would agree. but i've been playing war since closed beta and the game has environments that do feel expansive, and still have plenty of fluff and stuff to do. i remember playing DAOC and so many of the levels being filled with boring grinding. the game itself is still a grind, all mmo's are, but the quests make that grind not seem like one. there are quests everywhere, unlike DAOC where you only had quests every few levels and impossible to do solo epics. the quests are very much like they were in WoW: they get you into a new area, introduce you to gameplay mechanics and the location, and also usher you to the next zone. i really hope that mythic holds off on using the nerf bat this time around. because when they used it at the beginning of DAOC it took many years to recover the crippling they did to many of the classes.

Hydrogen peroxide powered rocket packs fly for around 30 seconds, because they have a specific impulse of around 125, meaning that one pound of propellant can make 125 pound-seconds of thrust, meaning that it takes about two pounds of propellant for every second you are in the air. Mass ratios are low for anything strapped to a human, so the exponential nature of the rocket equation can be safely ignored.

A pretty hot (both literally and figuratively) bipropellant rocket could manage about twice the specific impulse, and you could carry somewhat heavier tanks, but two minutes of flight on a rocket pack is probably about the upper limit with conventional propellants.

However, an actual jet pack that used atmospheric oxygen could have an Isp ten times higher, allowing theoretical flights of fifteen minutes or so. Here, it really is a matter of technical development, since jet engines have thrust to weight ratios too low to make it practical. There is movement on this technical front, but it will still take a while.

John Carmack