Rearranging and Removing Portals

[Tarc-fenris (Tarc)]

So everybody who dislikes this is a screamer?

Yea, you’re right, not every pro-portaler is bad. But the eggs in question are some of the runniest eggs one has seen in these parts since the Pathfinder debates.

[Taienna-aerie-peak (Taienna)]

Seriously. Stop removing things from this game. You pruned way too hard coming into bfa and ruined the amount of fun of alot of classes. Now youre removing these portals that alot of us use EVERY SINGLE DAY.

oh yeah they did. Utterly RUINED farming in BfA within weeks.
I was having a bomb of a time farming blood stained bone.
They nuked it so hard that what I was gathering hour by hour dropped like 80% or more in ONE blasted update.
Not worth my time at that rate.
So again, kudos to Blizzard for absolutely murdering my desire to play in BfA in the way I like to play this game…farming.

[Amandiel-nesingwary (Amandiel)]

That would be a regrettable backtrack that I think would only embolden the screamers,

Ok, then what’s the point of Blizzard (or any company) asking for feedback if they never act upon it? Is it just PR?

[Taienna-aerie-peak (Taienna)]

So everybody who dislikes this is a screamer?

Yea, you’re right, not every pro-portaler is bad. But the eggs in question are some of the runniest eggs one has seen in these parts since the Pathfinder debates.

Master loot.

[Spanko-kiljaeden (Spanko)]

Oh boy, I can’t wait for his answer. This should be comedy gold.

[Luonah-moon-guard (Luonah)]

This blue’s post translation in a few words.

"We just feel like it, and we don’t care about most player’s opinion. "

I also heard about a change in raid lockouts. Someone shed some light on me, please

[Quanadin-malganis]

maybe this is what they want. They want to try and force us to play this crappy xpac… Gonna get alot more ppl to quit. fdjksaafsdjkfsdjkfsdjk. So frustrated. Stop punishing us for playing this game.

[Miadra-arygos (Miadra)]

It definitely seems to be at Blizzard anyway. Most companies really mean it when they say they want feedback. Blizzard just asks for it so they can pretend they give a care what we think, and to hopefully get everyone to just shut up and suck up more of their awful decisions.

[Laielle-kelthuzad]

This feels like another dev who said we should feel a sense of “pride and accomplishment” for grinding away for unlocks.

I came back after a long, long break, rerolled and went ham. If you wanted me to spend more time exploring the world, why did you give me a free level boost?

As an adult with a job, community engagements, and a little time for playing games I would really rather enjoy my time PLAYING the game instead of spending 10 minutes flying between locations. I used the old Dalaran portals for Dalaran crater every day during love is in the air which saved me quite a bit of time from flying - allowing me to participate in CURRENT content I enjoy like island expeditions. It sucks when so much of your time is spent traveling. I’d love to see a change in portals where I can easily hang out in Exodar or Darnassus (plot line be darned, it’s my favorite capital) rather than traveling all day.

I’ve also tried to buy mage teleports but even with 500-1000g tips I never get any bites.

[Rankin-shandris (Rankin)]

Stop punishing us for playing this game.

It’s much easier for them to micromanage how we travel than it is for them to come up with actual incentives to explore the old world.

[Jose-blackwater-raiders (Jose)]

Yea, you’re right, not every pro-portaler is bad. But the eggs in question are some of the runniest eggs one has seen in these parts since the Pathfinder debates.

1. There’s been plenty of other stuff in-between (scaling comes to mind)
2. Pathfinder was probably one of the most controversial moves in the history of the game. To my recollection the last thing people were so upset over was back in TBC when arena’s introduction kept breaking classes in PVE for the sake of pvp “balance” etc…but I might have forgotten something in-between.

Pathfinder touches on every aspect of the game–even the most casual (pet battles). Of course it was going to have “runny eggs.” And not to be BOTH SIDES BTW about it…but the eggs were totally runny on both sides, lol.

People are passionate about this stuff. What’s changed is, over the years, more and more controversial stuff keeps getting piled on top. They went after flying. They went after character progression (scaling). They went after rewards (master looter, titanforging, etc). They’re now going after convenience factors that, taken alone, would be relatively minor. But every annoyance, every “setback,” adds up. The systems they added in WoD and Legion (artifacts, class halls, etc) were all removed going forward, with the exception of M+ which, if you haven’t looked recently, isn’t exactly a happy community either.

This should surprise absolutely no one.

[Sly-emerald-dream (Sly)]

at least you all get to fly in those zones, isn’t that what you all want? to fly around? now you get to fly around!! and explore also with flying!! woohoo!!

TFW someone doesn’t understand why people want both flying and portals. Its convenience. People want convenience. Holy cow (no offense) people are so dense to why people want portals its ridiculous.

[Hocksy-emerald-dream]

And of course, some players have chosen to play as Warlocks or Mages specifically because those classes offer unique means of transport.

Im sorry but…what?

You need 3 people to make a lock portal appear and at least two to summon…so exactly what “unique modes” of travel do I have…when Im alone?

Well that would be your umm…

[Jose-blackwater-raiders (Jose)]

Portals get you across the world(s) quickly.

Flying gets you from a hub to a minor spot or another hub quickly.

They aren’t the same thing.

[Cyranu-proudmoore]

Yea i mean we cant kill ourselves with burning rush anymore so i wouldnt call that unique

[Taienna-aerie-peak (Taienna)]

maybe this is what they want. They want to try and force us to play this crappy xpac… Gonna get alot more ppl to quit. fdjksaafsdjkfsdjkfsdjk. So frustrated. Stop punishing us for playing this game.

Its seriously odd behavior by a company who is in business to make money then continues to tick off paying customers.

They removed master loot for no good reason.
They COULD have made it OPTIONAL for a guild to use ML OR PL.
Make it so they have to decide in the beginning and once its set, it cannot be changed in the future so newbies coming in know what its being used and it wont be changed. Cant be ripped off if I know the terms going in.

This removal got tons of hate threads and Im betting a lot of people dont play as much or at all over it.
A few of these portal haters here were very likely ones who were tossing fits about ML being removed. And then have the audacity to rail in here as they are.

Blizzard will ignore that ‘in combat’ bug till hades has long been frozen over, but some nothing joke portal to nowhere important just HAS to be removed because someone might just get a little mog farming done a few days earlier.

[Kirsy-wyrmrest-accord (Kirsy)]

As we read most everything posted here (and elsewhere) about next week’s content update, we can’t help but be impacted by the subject of transportation portal removal.

Impacted isn’t the word you should be feeling. Concerned is what you should be feeling. When you have a thread on this topic that’s 5k and growing, not to mention other threads and discussions in which 90% of participants have a negative view of your choice and many of those seriously considering dropping subs, you should be concerned. If they drop their subs, then you’ll be impacted, as will we all.

It’s a subject that’s approaching 5000 replies in one thread alone, and the question raised there, repeatedly, has been, “why?” Here’s the answer to that question.

There’s a lot more “don’t do this” being raised repeatedly than “why.” I question why that’s not of bigger concern to you than explaining why you feel you should stick to a choice that is this unpopular.

From the beginnings of World of Warcraft, game designers have had a number of guiding principles. Sometimes these notions change quickly, and sometimes they evolve slowly, but a few guiding principles have remained more or less the same throughout WoW’s history. One such lodestar has been “don’t overuse portals between locations in the world”. Too many eliminations of the distances between places can diminish a sense of the world having a meaningful size.

All I see here is, “We’ve always done it this way, so we’ll just keep doing it this way.” Blizz is willing to stick with an unpopular choice because they’ve always done it this way? But change with other principles either slowly or quickly is fine? That’s pretty subjective.

Taking what you say here, devs feel portals will make players feel the world is small. Yet, most of the people commenting on this forum have played this game all the way through. We all KNOW how big the world is. Having or not having portals will not change that. What we feel is that Blizz really wants to consolidate players to centralized areas to give the illusion that more people are playing. If that’s what’s going on, no one is going to buy that the game is more active. Many of us are sitting in almost dead guilds - a huge change from just a few expacs ago. For instance, I ran the largest guild on WrA at the end of LK, but my guild event last night had 6 people show up, and that’s a high turnout right now. If I’m lucky, I might see 3. Most nights, I’m the only one online. Seeing more people in SW and Org isn’t going to make me feel like the world is more alive.

Of course there’s an equal and opposite design consideration—“don’t make it too inconvenient to get from most places to most other places”. Some amount of convenience is vital. Not every visit to a wondrous landscape is your first. We know when it’s your 100th visit, you don’t want the flight over to be the bulk of your time spent. And of course, some players have chosen to play as Warlocks or Mages specifically because those classes offer unique means of transport.

So, here you’re saying you understand what we’re upset about. We don’t want to waste play time on travel time. Right?

With new expansions, we’ve made a tradition of removing some of the portals from the previous expansion’s cities. The goal with that is to encourage transportation flow through newer places where players are more likely to interact with other players. We neglected to do that initially following Legion (and we never did that following Mists of Pandaria for various reasons), but we feel that we should have. We’re correcting that now.

And…what you just understood us to say about travel time is discounted in the very next section All I see here is, “We’ve always done it this way, so we’ll just keep doing it this way.”

Except you’ve just admitted that you haven’t always done it this way - WoD came out in 2014, so as many people have mentioned, you haven’t really done it this way for half a decade now - or for a third of the life of WoW. In essence, you’ve contradicted your own principle and expect that players who may have started in Pandaria or later should accept that a benefit they experienced is being removed to reset your lodestar?

It wasn’t their lodestar. At this point, it’s been a constant for years.

Boralus and Dazar’alor will continue to offer portals to a full range of capital cities, as well as to Silithus. The portals to Cataclysm zones will remain intact, and many other modes of transportation, such as Dalaran Signet Rings, Karazhan’s ring, the Timeless Isle trinket, Coordination Cloaks, and boats and zeppelins between many regions, will all be retained and functional.

For now. Who knows when you’ll decide to remove the current portals. Could be the end of this expac. Could be in 2-3 expacs.

I’m also curious as to how many players in the current, active player base have signet rings, Kara rings, TI trinkets or cloaks. I personally have none of those. None of my friends use those. I think I remember one person mentioning a cloak when they first came out.

However, we’ve seen how updates to the game can leave the means of accessing different areas feeling increasingly chaotic. For example— today if you go to the Cleft of Shadows in Orgrimmar, you’ll find it dotted with portals in a way that almost looks sporadic. We’re cleaning that up, and we see this as an opportunity to consolidate a lot of travel into a consistent venue with a consistent look and feel, and room for future growth when needed.

Moving the location from Cleft of Shadows isn’t the issue here. That’s fine. No one cares whether the portals are there or somewhere else in Org. The issue is removing existing portals. This just looks like an attempt to give us an excuse (Gee Mom, I was just cleaning up this part of my homework - that’s why I didn’t do this other part.). If this was my son giving me this excuse, he’d still be grounded.

[quote]We’ve processed a lot of feedback on this, especially feedback about specific locations that feel like they’re going to become disproportionately inconvenient to reach, and we’ve followed that feedback through to the conclusion that you’re seeing on the PTR. We believe that the numerous remaining means of quick access in the game make most locations quite reachable.

If there are any specific locations that feel as though they’re about to become unreasonably inaccessible, we’re certainly open to adding additional means of travel in the future.
[/quote]

This sounds like the line of … well, you know … that a boss hands you when they have no intention of giving you a raise and they just want you out of their office. “We’re still processing your feedback and are open to possible change in the future.”

You know when you hear this that you’re never getting that raise and it’s time to look for another job. Perhaps you’ve seen that meme that says, “People don’t leave jobs, they leave bosses.” Right now, WoW is the “job” and “Blizz” is the “boss.” Players are the unempowered “employees.”

I’ve been a WoW player since Vanilla and a gamer since Pong. My sub started in 2006. At various times, I’ve had more than one sub. At one point, I spent an average of 6 hours a night on weeknights and 12 hours a day on weekends and holidays exclusively playing WoW (on 1 account). I’ve been a raider, a casual, an RPer, a PvPer and a farmer. I’ve bought in-game mounts, server transfers, faction transfers, pets and level boosts. I’ve played Diablo and HOTS because of my experience in WoW. Right now, I’m on WoW maybe 3-4 hours a week, and some days I don’t log on at all. You’re losing me and many more like me to GW2, ESO and FFXIV. And this is your response?

That’s ok, you guys keep your lodestar if it helps you sleep at night. I’ve got one RP storyline to finish here. Then I can move to ESO where I just spent money to renew my sub and more to get crowns to buy a house (it’s a nice house - I can make it look however I want and it’ll make a great guild RP base). ESO’s next expac drops in June and my group of friends is hyped to give the new class a shot. And I’ll probably pick up a side sub in FFXIV since a lot of people from my server are taking a serious look at it. I purchased that game about a month ago, based on what I’d heard about their customer service, and its player base is friendly and optimistic.

[Valestia-wyrmrest-accord (Valestia)]

@BLIZZ

THESE THREADS BETTER -ALL- STILL BE HERE WHEN YOU GET BACK FROM THE IMPENDING DOWNTIME.

…Y’all know that right…?

[Spanko-kiljaeden (Spanko)]

Lol good luck. They’re going to try and save face by deleting them and saying they didn’t exist.

[Sly-emerald-dream (Sly)]

Those portals aren’t removed yet so I fail to see your point. If anything, you should be playing even more to make up for their loss in a week.

You’ve just made everyone’s argument valid. It is a loss. You’ve been arguing in this whole thread that its not a loss but a minor inconvenience. Stop arguing just to argue.