XP reward from quest not being converted to gold at level 85?

[Tonuss]

It feels as if quest lines are shorter and reward more gold and sellable items. Most quest lines take the form of:

Phase one: two or three quests. Kill X. Collect item X off ground. Collect drop X from mobs.
Phase two: two or three quests, more of the same.
Phase three: kill named NPC.
Phase four: visit the next NPC and repeat phases one through four.

The quests reward anywhere from around 8 gold to as much as... 36? And about half of them reward a piece of gear that will sell for 3-30 gold or replace a piece of gear that sells for that much. And like you mentioned, the sellable drops generate a bunch of gold too.

When my hunter was three or four bubbles from 85, she had around 3,600 gold and I figured that she'd hit 85 with about 4,000 gold. One bubble later she had 4,400 gold from quests in Deepholm. When she dinged 85 she had 5,100 gold. All from questing. No dailies, no dungeon runs, no AH sales. Just quests. I'm not complaining, mind you. But it's pretty crazy.

Edit to add: I do think that one reason for it is that it will provide the gold that players need in order to afford the 310% flight speed. Not an issue for me, but for lots of players it's a matter of convenience or keep-up-with-the-jonses type mentality. It did make it easy to spend around 300 gold to get over a bad hump in leveling LW, since I know that the character in question will be rolling in gold when she's done with the leveling grind...