The people who complain about the portals as is are likely the ones who don’t read quest text not the ones who would complain about immersion. That makes no sense.
Hasn’t been removed in 2 expansions.
Wow, you sometimes have to run to another room to find the portal you want. That sounds rough. I hope you’re ok.
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Why is Dornogal, the main city of the expansion, hidden in the basement of Org?
Honestly, I agree. I remember when there was a whole big thing about creating and maintaining the portals from Shattrath to the Isle of Quel’Danas.
Now, at least in Stormwind, we have the big ol’ mess o’ portals in the Mage Tower (and always having to remember which portal is where), PLUS another cluster of portals over on the island by Stormwind Castle. AND I think there’s one or two more over by the Embassy for allied races.
But wait, there’s more! Go to Boralus for several portals, go to Oribos for more… any given trip might involve multiple portals. (Be a druid, get a teleport to a valley with MORE portals! 
) And hey, there’s also the portal to the Timeways. You guessed it! Who wants more portals?
And some of them make less sense than others. Why do we teleport to Azsuna instead of Dalaran when we want to go to Legion-era content? Why do we go to Jade Forest for Pandaria content, when what we really want is to go to our faction’s respective Shrine in the Vale of Eternal Blossoms?
And why aren’t there convenient portals to our faction’s other cities – we still gotta travel old school between Stormwind and Ironforge… but Exodar gets a portal.
I think the system needs an overhaul from top to bottom. An NPC mage who teleports you on request to all of the places traditionally covered by portals would be great. And changing some destinations to be more logical.
Or heck, at least centralize all the Stormwind portals. Move the Cataclysm ones over to the Mage Tower to join the rest.
Why doesn’t it even show up on the minimap like all the other portals? (The Stormwind version at any rate…)
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Id wonder about the rationale that even questions the idea. lol. Clearly better than what we have…especially as more portals get added.
100% agree.
that would be perfect. A drop down like the mage ports…no portal required.
sign me up. These portal rooms are getting kinda ridiculous given what EVERY mage can do, lol.
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No matter what you do with the portals, many players will continue to sit in town spamming “summons please”.
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mage ports are just a pop up list…literaly nothing complicated about it.
You’d click on the NPC…a list of locations would pop up and you click one.
Nothing complex or problematic to it…theres literally an addon that kinda does that sort of thing already.
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Realistically speaking, I wonder how much magical power it takes to maintain these portals, 24/7/365. It can’t be cheap. Especially since some of these take two mages working in unison to power them.
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lol…and the poor NPCs who have been standing there for years and years keeping the portals open.
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And you notice they’re not even leveling up as a result. Permanently stuck at level 30/35/40/45…
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I said a long time ago, they could have 1 portal and a ui below to select a zone to go to, but I do not know what programming difficulties it creates. also we would be thoroughly scrooched if the 1 portal glitched.
Technically you mean you want mages to " teleport " you to different places, or like one poster said, there would be scads of open portals in the room.
I just wish the portal rooms were better laid out. Without requiring stairs, or the long winding one and more stairs for the Alliance version.
I couple options I can think of, that would keep the immersion of the portals and mages could be (not all inclusive, and definitely not the end-all-be-all):
- Have an NPC that you interact with inside the portal room/area to denote “Hi, yes, I’d like to teleport to X please”. To which then 2 mages walk out, and generate the portal for you to where you’d like to go.
- Con: The Room would either most likely have to be instanced to that player, or the portals themselves not viewable to anyone outside the persons group/raid. preferably neither, but if a choice had to be made I would state the portals not be viewable so you can still get a sense of the amount of players traveling too, within, and from the portal room
- Potential Pro: Could have the NPC when interacted with turn around for greater immersion to speak to the generating Mages to be like “Phenomenon would like to go to Silvermoon please.” And have a greater immersion with conversing with the travel NPC and the mages themselves. Could potentially even make these a cinematic cutscene type travel, where it shows your character walking thru the portal and shows you walking out on the opposite end. Could make the going thru and arriving cutscene be the loading screen itself. Should make the cutscene cinematic an optional thing for the player, for those who would not like this constantly
- Another potential Pro: Could expand the list of places to be one-way locations. As in, you could ask them to generate a portal to a place where you know there would not be any mages to generate a return portal for you. (Example given: In this case, you could potentially ask them to generate a portal for you to go to Crossroads.) - The one way location placing would utilize the existing towns that have FPs. And this One way travel location would only be available from the Major cities of Orgrimmar and Stormwind. Where the 2 major portal rooms currently already are.
- Redesign the current portal rooms/areas. Make them a flat area, not requiring a long travel time up a flight of stairs or ramp or flying up to the beginning of that ramp. - This should happen regardless if they don’t like the travel NPC idea listed above. In that case, the portals should all be accessible from 1 level. May need to expand the current areas to make this possible.
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ESO has a very extensive transport system (especially as they don’t have player flight, so the game needs to provide decent public transport). You simply go to the nearest porting location, click on it, maps appear and you go through them to pick where you want to go.
The one part of that system I dont like is that they cost and each time you use it in a set period, it becomes more expensive. So let’s not put that idea in Blizzard’s collective brain… 
Better bet would be teleports not portals. But I disagree with OP. Between the regular Hearthstone and the Dalaran Hearthstone, I get around just fine.
I don’t mind the portal rooms but I think there’s too much awkward spacing going on. Two separate rooms, not to mention the cata portals in their own area, the flight master in another area, and the docks in yet another area.
This isn’t about player efficiency at this point, this is simply poor urban planning even within game immersion levels. All transport should be centralized or at least connected some way. There should honestly be multiple flight paths within each of the capital cities. Not to mention org needs a proper real dock and a full rebuild for that matter.
Both cities seem intended to waste players time. If you didn’t have flying moving through sw is absolutely ridiculous. Canals and bridges and elevation changes and alleys etc. No capital city would be designed like this.
If the cities were designed like proper efficient cities and not literal time sinks then these problems would sort themselves out.
Why can’t food just appear directly in my mouth!? 
I too find the mere 10 seconds to walk to a portal tiring? 
Don’t forget the cataclysm portals 