Dear Wizards,
I'm currently DMing Hoard of the Dragon Queen every Wednesday at my Friendly Local Game Store. I love doing it, it's a lot of fun, and I'm lucky enough to have a good group of players. I previously DMed Scourge of the Sword Coast during the Next Playtest.
One of the things that I appreciated about SotSC was that the maps from the module were released with the PDF adventure. And, shortly after they were, the high-resolution versions of those maps were released. At one point, Mike Schley released the high-rez maps without the numerical markings, the quest markers? As a DM, I appreciated these gestures, greatly.
For HDQ, there's been no such release, which I haven't minded. I've bought most of them from Jared Blando's online store for a fair price.
I bought them with the full intention of printing some of them out at Staples on their blueprint printer, and they've turned out pretty well so far. (The size of the Greenest map is 36x48 and cost a little over $7)
The only difficulty I had in printing them out was convincing the copy & print guy that I was legally allowed to print the maps, due to the fact that each one has a WoTC copyright present. I encountered a similar difficulty at FedEx. The Staples guy relented when I screencapped a receipt that had the User License Agreement attached. But it still took some work.
The SotSC maps that were released, strangely enough, did not have any kind of copyright on them. Either from Mike Schley or WotC.
So, here is my request: I would appreciate it, greatly, if WoTC could release digital, high-resolution copies of the maps for encounters adventures without that niggling copyright.* Or, alternatively, release them with some kind of documentation that would allow DMs to have them professionally printed.
*not for the general public, obviously, but for Dungeon Masters in the Adventurers League.
This would make it much easier for Dungeon Masters to print handouts to players, like the Sword Coast or Greenest maps in HDQ. Or to print them out at a larger size, like I did. 
Sincerely,
Evan
PS - luv you guys
I am no spokesperson or insider, but I suspect that it would more likely be up to Kobold Press, the actual creators of HDQ to release some hi rez maps from that product.
But getting some edited maps out for play for Adventurers League play would be great. It might be easier to get ahold of the DDEX Expeditions modules maps since those are made in house... or simply convince fellow AL DMs to share any maps they are creating. 
Actually, I'm just about to test out this map making resource: http://pyromancers.com/dungeon-painter-online/ to map out some of the encounters from DDEX1-1 Defiance in Phlan, which I can create multi-page PDF maps that my FLGS (Friendly Local Game Store) has a printer on site to accomodate our needs. I'll post an update later to see if this really turns out to be right tool for the job and may even link the maps I created if it turns out to be appropriate to do so.
Your store should have access to the Encounters PDF.
Page 8 has the image of The Sword Coast map. Page 13 has the map of Greenest. At the bottom of each page is:
"Not for resale. Permission granted to print and photocopy this document for personal use only."
This should be sufficient documentation for a copy & print guy to print these maps for you.
Those maps in HotDQ are woefully inadaquete. There is no map or diagram of the temple or mill in Greenest, and the map of the caves is poorly annotated and labelled. All the maps have poor contrast and are just shades of brown.
Please, authors of future D&D adventures, put in detailed maps for any scenario of significance with high res versions available to download.
Uthrac wrote:
Playstyles differ, especially in 5e. Poster maps are only needed for tactical grid-combat, and my experience is that the need for that is minimal. We just showed the maps in the DM materials to the players to give them a general layout of the area, and left things open-ended from there.
My suspicion is that they wanted to distance the 5e game from the 4e table-top mini experience that players had an overall negative reaction to. If you provide everyone with a hammer, everything starts to look like a nail. Providing maps promotes a style of play with minis and tactical-style play. Maybe we'll see more of this when the DMG comes out, but I understand the reason to "steer clear of anything that looks 4e" at this stage of promotion.
Uthrac wrote:
Spykes wrote:
Uthrac wrote: