No flight path to Valdrakken ***FROM*** Emerald Dream

Community General Discussion
21

No, of course not, just like nobody else does either way.

Remember the teleporters in DF? Those beacons that we had to hunt down that are, honestly, utterly worthless as an actual, functional, alternative transport system? You think they didn’t do that consciously? 30m cooldown, they didn’t (i.e. CHOSE NOT TO) put one in Valdrakken.

Removal of portals from older capital cities, Hearthstone cooldowns, Mages can’t “port back”. Only class that has a two way teleport is DK, with the deathgate.

It’s called “World of Warcraft”. The World has always been very important. Portals remove the World part. Same reason they don’t want folks just running the same dungeon over and over and over again. They struggle to keep the world relevant to keep the players in it, and not in instanced content.

They want a vibrant world.

It’s one reason we have Sharding. “Oh no, I can’t farm zone XYZ alone for Material alone, they keep shoving people together!” Yes, of course they do. That’s what make the WORLD a vibrant place, and not just using the capital city (singular!) as a chat room.

It’s as key aspect of why we have the dungeon finder, so that you CAN go “out in the world” instead of being trapped in a city spamming for groups.

They spend a lot of time, money, and energy making the world. It’s not just there to rush through for 10 levels and be done with it. They did a really good job in DF with the zone events (the soup, the centaur hunts, etc.) Notice, there’s no portal to those locations either (though there was a one way teleport to the Centaur camp).

Get folks out in the world. Get folks out flying their dragons!

Ever look up in the sky in Valdrakken? Its filled with dragons! NPCs flying around, swooping and diving, like Bats outside of Barstow. They love that to be players. Players vanish out of line of sight so fast, unfortunately (no doubt a tech issue of somekind). But it’s a thrill to be with a group of players, all mounting up, all flying away in every which direction, converging on some point, sky filled with people.

That’s what they want, a vibrant living world of folks doing Stuff. Any stuff. Fighting, gathering, questing. Just out. In the WORLD of Warcraft.

Portals don’t facilitate that. But they know that 15m taxi rides aren’t the solution either. So, its gotta give somewhere.

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22

Druid has this for Legion Class hall, casting it while there will send you back where you were.

23

Last time I tried it was broken at least if you went through the portal to the actual order hall.

Monk one still works, at least.

24

Welcome!

The Emerald Dream, to simplify the explanation, exists in a different dimension so to speak, so flying to and from it in a physical, non-magic manner just isn’t possible.

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25

Back during Vanilla we only had two rectangularly shaped continents with many quests making you run up and down them. This meant that the average time, throughout the entire lifespan of vanilla, you spent roughly 80% of your time travelling.

Mages have always had portals as far as I am aware, but they used to be quite pricy as they required reagents and back then gold was annoying to make a lot of. And we were quite bad players so folks died and would have to spend their gold on repairs a lot of the time. Meaning that portals were a luxury, not that expensive of a luxury but still a luxury. Not even the dungeon stones that you can use to summon party members used to exist and I can’t remember but I don’t even think warlocks had the closet to summon.

The reason why this is important is … look at EVERY other continents (except Cataclysm) that has been released since Vanilla. All of them are circular and you are expected to be able to traverse the areas in a direct line. This means that even without flying of any kind, the amount of time people spent travelling dropped from 80% to far lower. I haven’t seen any number but the best expansion to have tested this would’ve been Warlords of Draenor prior to when flying was reintroduced into the game.

On some level, you need to cut down the amount of time people use to travelling the world. Simply because it is boring a lot of the times. And it can be done in multiple ways including the change in how continents are shaped, to how we traverse things (better flightpaths, dragonriding, racials, toys, etc.), activities to do during travel (go to Eastern Plaguelands and do Fiona’s questline as an example of how travelling with activities can be done), and so on.

But to cut out travel altogether isn’t good. It makes the world smaller and really difficult to engage with (again, see why flying was a problem for so long and largely to entirely irrelevant once they changed up how continents are shaped). So this is why portals are a necessity at times … but not always, and in fact they can act as an incentive once you have proven yourself to engage with the content available.
See M+ portals to dungeons as an example of this.

However, just to specify why they used the word “cope” … because this is GD (General Discussion) and overwhelmingly people have a really negative attitude towards WoW and everything Blizzard related.

A fair chunk is fair criticism but a lot of it is also folks just being edgy and negative for no real reason other than to be just that, negative. Folks usually just prefer to mention a meme and pretend that’s a full argument or explanation and then just seethe in their own angst against a game/developer for no real reason. Not always, there’s plenty of dumb stuff Blizzard has put into the game or has to do with the game’s development, but things like “Blizzard coping” is in 999/1000 cases just someone being a social media edgelord.

Either way though…

Welcome to the game!
Hope you enjoy your stay and have plenty of fun!

I may recommend being cautious about these forums though, as a lot of stuff on here is… not good information.

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26

That’s when you break out the…
Legion Dalaran Hearth
Main city guild cloak port
Boralus ring port
Old Dla ring port

Then take the main city port to Val.

27

There is a portal back from emerald dream. It’s on the island to the right on the map where you first started the emerald dream

28

But of a tangent really but having one of those teleport cloaks in your bags can be useful in a pinch.

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29

Yes, you’re quite correct.

It’s also an extra benefit because they have a Legion portal room there as well.

30

With the exception of Shadowlands, they rarely put a portal from an end game zone back to the capital city.

Getting a portal there is plenty convenient. You have multiple different ways to get back via hearthstone, dalaran hearthstone, cloaks and garrison hearth stone.

Sometimes taking 2 minutes to travel somewhere in game isn’t the end of the world.

31

isnt one and there should have been.
So late in the expansion now I dont see them adding one at this point.
Best thing to do is set your hearthstone to valdrakken so you get there easy from ED and just use the Vald. portal TO ED.
About the easiest way to do it.

32

Engineering is a bit of a help too…with the Wyrmhole.

Also, you can buy the Northrend Dalaran portal ring from the NPC in the jeweler shop for under 10k gold.
That has a 30 min CD and will get you back to Northrend Dalaran and just hop over to the port to your faction city, then port back to valdrakken, which only takes maybe 15 seconds or so total.
The Legion portal ring is 250k if memory serves, so not as viable of you play a lot of alts, obviously.

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33

Weird how the “new player” has achievements from dungeons from multiple expansions all on the same day, yet, only a singular one from the expansion new players actually start in.

Not sure why people bother with the new player gimmick lol.

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34

I don’t think that there is either except for the reluctance to add flying while we were playing WoD. There was a loud outcry from the players and so we got the pathfinding thing (as I recall). And, I can defend the designers because we should see the world and notice the little caves and enjoy the artwork that goes into the game.

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35

Locks could summon but the TV was not there.

You needed two assistants and the entire raid would bicker over who had to make the huge run to go help the warlock summon.

Oh and it took a soul shard… per person. My bags ONLY carried soulshards. I required mage assistance for food and water because I didn’t have room in my bags for them. Had to go shard farming an hour before raid so I could summon all those lazy people and then make lock candy, one at a time…

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36

Safe to say … there do be a reason why travel was a big deal in Classic.

Having two people make the run to various zones for dungeons, raids, and quests were… well, an experience. One that I wouldn’t wish to experience again.

37

I don’t think that there is either except for the reluctance to add flying while we were playing WoD. There was a loud outcry from the players and so we got the pathfinding thing (as I recall). And, I can defend the designers because we should see the world and notice the little caves and enjoy the artwork that goes into the game.

I think this fails is the idea that I looked at the world when I was on the ground. If I’m forced to walk/run on the ground to get somewhere I’ll just have the map up and not notice anything.

Whereas in flight, due to being above and going a straight line, I can pan around and look at everything.

Even in cata classic, I have more understanding of where everything is due to being able to see it from above.

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38

It really showed how lazy people were though. Holy cow.

Just gonna sit in Orgimmar and expect a summon to blackrock spire for <insert raid/dungeon here> and refusing to come help.

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39

Well truthfully, they’ve openly admitted that before. They’ve said previously they feel portals took away too much from the world and actively removed a good chunk of them post Legion.

40

How many are too many? What makes the current amount “way too many”?