Major cities should be flush with portals and all should have portals connecting them. SW, IF, Exo, the tree etc
Capital city like SW and org should have portals to all the medium sized cities.
The mage tower is a pseudo pocket dimension anyway, just add floors.
Medium cities could then have ports to the smaller ones in surrounding zones.
That way you could quickly hop around the world via the “portal trees” (truck=capital, branch=medium, stick=small)
You could navigate through to wherever you want to head quickly and some of the medium/smaller cities would at least see some traffic through them, even if it’s just people passing through to their destinations.
Aside from the “hub city for the current expansion -OR- in the faction capitals,” I would guess they still have a desire to place towns & cities (some with hearth binding points) to fulfill the role-play part of MMO-RPG. There’s lore and/or current story elements for some (most?) of those other not-that-useable towns & cities.
I think they’re getting to this, but clearly the devs have some pride in their landscape art, that pride, leads to hubris, that leads them to less convenient fast-travel rather than more. I remember my friends guiding me through the trip from Stormwind to Threamore for a quest; their route included a trip to the Wetlands to take a boat across from Eastern Kingdoms to Kalimdor, which was not intuitive at all. A portal straight to the other continent and near the quest objective would have been so much more convenient, but this odd route forced me to “see and appreciate” landscape art assets I would never have bothered going out of my way to see, just to get where I wanted to go.
I think that was pretty common design philosophy in earlier expansions, but that the devs seem to have given more consideration to player convenience with decent portal/fast-travel options. The notable the exception is a continued path-finder requirement for normal flying in every expansion since it was first introduced (at least dragon-riding is available right away in TWW, but seems like a slap in the face to those that get motion-sickness or just prefer normal over dragon-riding.
Stormwind and Orgrimmar are the central hubs to the Alliance and Horde respectively, the rest are just expansion capitols that’ll only be used during their expansion.
I guess they could make Bel’ameth a communal hub, if they add a portal room, Auction House, etc. and, maybe, even a Trading Post. Whether players would gather there though, I don’t know…
Ironforge felt vast. I’ll bet in a lore standpoint it feels never ending. I loved being there when it was relevant
Gadgetzan will always be the best city
In your garrison no. You have to have the trading post and get it to rank 3 and then find some parts across the continent (on on the AH) and build it. I think it took 4 parts total.
I have it on 2 characters and one of them never had engineering … Just tailoring and skinning.
On my mage, I use Exodar as my own private HQ. The portal drops you right on top of a vendor and directly between the AH and Bank, and you can immediately mount up unlike in Stormwind where the mage portal is in a tower 50km away from anything useful.
You can’t fly in Exodar but for the small distances we’re talking about it’s hardly necessary.
So much of Boralus is wasted. The only safe/useful area is about the size of the Trade District and has as many NPC’s in it as all of SW. I would not mind if something did happen to raze Stowmwind and have the Alliance (only) relocate their capital to another location.
Hill I will die on -
every character should have a Hearthstone to their Racial Home City.
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Oribos and the previous neutral capitals used to not have AH, but now they all have anyway.
I’ll die on that hill with you.
Worgen got one at the end of that Benny Hill episode they called the “Reclaiming Gilneas” questline. I think it’d be cool if every race had a special tool to go home.
Just had another great idea inspired by the commenters!
Legion Dalaran has a hearthstone.
Why not give a few major city hearths?
Val, SW, Org, Oribos
That way your personal hearth could be used for where you’re actively questing or reserved for your favorite inn?
If all the cities have implemented all the modern infrastructure then every city will be “usable” no matter which city.
I want them to have a No NPCs version outside of the main story. There’s still a ton to explore and a lot of RPable areas, but the mobs blocking the seedier part of the city wastes a lot of it. Same with Suramar, which is way worse.
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There should be a weekly maintenance that closes Orgrimmar and Stormwind and you need to be in another city for that whole week.
Like: pest control, or sewers maintenance, insect swarms, etc.
Auction House and others are closed on strike, etc.
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Probably has something to do with not wanting to see more complaints about the world being “unpopulated.” Seeing players all over one of three main cities makes people feel like it’s a healthy MMO.