Blizz: No world chests in Outlands
This was definitely one of those things I never noticed until I was explicitly told it ... but there are no world chests in Outlands. Tseric gave several reasons for this change: developers decided to use more rare spawns instead, teleport and speed hackers were getting gold from chests, and they wanted to make getting loot more of an interactive experience (killing rare spawns rather than just finding chests.) The teleport/speed hackers are probably the biggest issue, since in the above thread, a lot of people report seeing some REALLY fast dwarves in Burning Steppes.
While I understand Blizz's desire to keep economic inflation under control, I'll kind of miss finding a random chest in the middle of nowhere and fighting through mobs to get it. Sure, it usually contained nothing more than a couple of pieces of food, some pots and maybe a green "of the whale" item, but it was always fun to have a surprise. And occasionally you'd get really nice things -- two blues from chests helped me finance my first-ever mount. Rare spawns are nice but often take group to kill, making it hard for the solo adventurer to enjoy them as much as chests.
Have you missed finding chests in Outlands? What about rare spawns -- do they fill the void? And have you seen a lot of dwarven hackers in your parts?
