Loading Screens: A huge BfA issue no one talks about

Community General Discussion
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Something I would like to be addressed in the future of WoW is how many loading screens one must encounter within the first 10 minutes of logging into World of Warcraft. (This whole discussion is discounting hearthstone usage)

Here are the current hubs in 8.3: Boralus/Dazar’alor, Chamber, Vale/Uldum. These are the most visited places of 8.3’s content, including the horrific visions, and traveling between these places involves far more loading screens than I remember ever having to encounter by just playing WoW.

Let’s say I log into the game into Boralus. That is one initially long load screen, then after loading in a lot of the assets have yet to load anyway. If I want to go do a horrific vision, I have to take the portal to Silithus, then the portal into the chamber. That was two loading screens just to get from one hub to another, but three if I want to do a vision. Once I’m done the vision, I have to loading screen into silithus, then loading screen back into Boralus. Then if I want to do a run of Vale dailies, I have to loading screen to the Vale as well. That’s three more loading screens to get from one hub to another. This is almost unheard of in my experience of playing wow since Cata (Cata I think, was the last time loading screens were an issue thanks to divided zones), this was also a little bit of a problem in Legion depending on what your class hall was (Edit: Ashran!)

This was also a problem in 8.2 with Naz, but it was an even bigger problem on launch if you wished to participate in daily quests between continents, and had to take the ship/port between Zandalar and Kul’Tiras. This whole expansion has been plagued with loading screens.

But why is this a problem? Well, it’s actually a little frustrating to be playing an open world game but have to sit through so many loading screens just to participate in the content. RPGs exist on suspension of disbelief/immersion, and if I keep getting throw into a 30 second loading screen time after time, that means that I alt-tab to do something while load, or I just pick up my phone. To me, this is the biggest difference between a loading screen and a flight path: a flight path is at least part of the world and I can read dungeon journals, look at collections, or view the world on a flight path. In a loading screen, you just sit there and stare at the bar with no idea how long it’ll take (and with BfA and Legion, loading screens have also been getting longer).

Loading screens push you out of the world, and when you have to be pushed out of the world three times between the main hubs of content, then that’s not good for bringing someone into the belief that they’re a part of Azeroth. In Mists, there were virtually no loading screens to travel between daily hubs, and even the timeless isle could just be flow to. That is still an interaction with the world. In WoD, for all of its crap we put up with, I never had to interact with a loading screen to get into anything other than a dungeon or whatever the name of that PvP zone was.

This is honestly why I find myself leveling or playing classic more than playing at end game. I can just log into a level 30 character and never have to look at a single loading screen until I have to switch leveling continents or run into a dungeon. I can’t bring myself to do anything at max level not only because of how alt-unfriendly the game is, but because of all the damn loading screens.

I just think this is a big issue with BfA that I rarely see anyone talk about. Loading screens are detrimental to immersion and gameplay tempo and can really hurt the way a player experiences the world (just look at Fallout New Vegas for example with the Strip being separated by two loading screens. Though the game is widely praised now, at the time people were appalled that someone thought it was acceptable to separate such a main hub of the fame into three separate zones in need of loading screens).

Just something I want Blizzard to think about while designing Shadowlands: loading screens are bad for the game and should be avoided unless absolutely needed (instanced content, traversing continent, etc.)

4 Likes
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Upgrade your PC. Get a Solid-State Drive… not old IDE or SATA drive.

It would make your PC load faster. Booting your PC from Off only takes less than a minute with Solid State Drives.

You may also need Big RAMs.

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Gone are the days when the devs bragged of ‘seamlessness’ , that is a world that felt like one place. Now all we have are loading screens.

Just another feature gone from the game for the sake of them making more money.

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I don’t feel negatively impacted by an increase in loading screens when the loading screens take like 1-2 seconds. Much different story in FFXIV where every loading screen is much longer.

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It was much better when the world was a big chunk you had to traverse.

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Agreed. It’s not the time it takes for a loading screen. Certainly it’s faster than travelling to a location. However it just takes away from the feeling that the world is a place and a part of the game.

Now it feels like a disjointed set of video game “levels” you go into. The world is no longer a part of it.

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They’re trying to eliminate the concept of a “world” we can actually travel and do things in. The switch from old leveling to level scaling now to “You will do all your leveling in one zone and you will like it!”

It used to be considered an issue that people didn’t want to travel. Now it’s considered a character flaw to want to move around and do different things.

“Oh boy, I can now lock myself into any expansion to level, all of which I have done many times before. What an improvement!”

People who supported level scaling as a huge improvement mostly hadn’t leveled any characters in years.

Wow is turning into an on rails game with no options. Removing the concept of a world means you won’t be able to choose to do whatever rather than the rental grind du jour. Can’t have that.

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There is an argument to be made here regarding immersion, but not load times.

You can get an SSD for less than $20. Your 30 seconds will become 3 seconds or less.

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Mine are about the same in both games. You could make the argument that there are more of them in FF, though.

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I’d agree.

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ya geez people will complain about ANYTHING hey?
get an SSD, problem solved
omg lol

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I can’t say that’s been my experience with FFXIV.

Loading screens in WoW are actually longer (though I do log off in FFXIV in low-traffic areas like my house, while in WoW it’s generally a hub like the Great Seal), and even then the game is unplayable for 2-3 minutes after that initial loading screen is supposedly “done”… including the ability to move the camera along with my character.

I suppose it could be an old hardware issue, but there’s one critical detail:
WoW and FFXIV are loading off the same hard drive.

Not at the same time, obviously… but has definitely been an annoyance throughout BfA.

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People complained how they hated having to travel around the world. First they gave you flying mounts, so you could traverse through the sky, and seemingly ignore any threats/pvp. People still complained about having to travel through this world. So they gave you a huge portal hub and shortened hearthstones down from 1hr to now 15 minutes. Now you can take a portal any where around this whole world.

I don’t believe blizzard will revert these changes. They never have before. When they do people cry. Retails “open world” is no more than a 3D main menu. It’s completely lost the essence of an MMORPG. It’s mediocre, and quite frankly sad to see such a great game be brought to this. It’s like Anakin all sliced up in lava, and I don’t think WoW will be getting the comeback he got.

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The amount of content in Retail is staggering at this point and it was fairly unavoidable. Don’t see how they can fix this moving forward.

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My PC boots in 2.5 seconds, my loading screens are similarly only a few seconds.

They are cheap enough now and such a significant upgrade, anyone that enjoys playing WoW should get a SSD.

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It was awful in Legion, but it’s no where near as bad in BFA. First load of the day into BFA area is around 20 seconds for me, but I’m not on an SSD. Most continents are also around 15 seconds, first load. Again, not on an SSD. However Legion first load is still like 25-30 seconds :rofl:

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Have you tried not using 857827 different addons?

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I agree it’s a pain, it varies depending on the level of your computer, but they are necessary. From a technical standpoint WoW isn’t a seamless world and it can’t be either between continents. BfA just happened to involve the rest of the world and not just Kul Tiras and Zandalar.

For Shadowlands I think they mentioned something about a new travel system. They’re trying to find a way to get around between the different zones without everything being a loading screen. So we’ll have to see how that ends up working out.

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In all fairness, this wouldn’t be as much of a problem if y’know…

We manually traveled to locations instead of using portals. The game simply cannot handle instantly warping to a faraway location without a loading screen. Personally I love portaling back to older areas of the world to do new content, but if you don’t it’s not just Blizzard’s choice here.

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I got an ssd. It burned out in 6 months.

We don’t know what technical issues are involved.

Making something more awkward to access is a design choice that will directly result in fewer players doing it.