Rearranging and Removing Portals

[Nezali-turalyon]

What a completely incredibly bad decision. Are you activity trying to get more people to quit playing?

[Jose-blackwater-raiders (Jose)]

Re: this ridiculous “okay what if they gave us an item to compensate” discussion going on:

Blizz: We’re removing portals, the reasons don’t matter let’s be honest we’re the dev team we do what we want
Players: No!
Blizz: But there’s a compromise!
Players: uh…
Blizz: Now you get to go out and do xyz to earn back the portals you already had, but it’s in an item we created and it has arbitrary cooldowns etc because reasons
Players: …
Blizz: You can thank us for compromise and listening to your feedback any time now

What’s even more ridiculous is said “compromise” has happened more times than I have fingers to count on in recent years.

[Macällän-bronzebeard (Macällän)]

It is a countdown party till this hits the live servers and then more players rush to the forums.

I’ll have plenty of ready.

[Sabine-dawnbringer (Sabine)]

Personally the mop portals not being in the shrine feels laced with venom. Most of pandarias world bosses and raids are located west of the wall or near the vale, This feels arbitrarly put in the farthest eastern corner to make the travel time take longer

Don’t jump me if you are Horde I am just point something out. But their portal is much closer to Sha and Isle of Giants than the Alliance one. Which would make more sense to just make the portal go to the shrine or even close to it. let it be more centralized.

[Mossclaw-wyrmrest-accord (Mossclaw)]

Yes, when it offers such utility as our proposed portal trinket would. I just don’t see the point in making people run/perform content they don’t like for a QoL item.

[Sharaesdel-staghelm (Sharaesdel)]

Whelp, a few things from me about this -

One, if I continue to play (this is in doubt as of the moment) I won’t be playing my mage. Even now, I waste a lot of time porting people. If they’re right next to me I don’t care, but if I have to go to them, or if I have to wait for them, its my time that’s being wasted. And it might sound greedy, but 3/4 of the time the person needing the port is from another server so I don’t even get a tip for my troubles. Nope, she’s going to be mothballed.

Two, I mostly play the game for transmog, crafting, pets, mounts, etc. I can’t do dungeons or raids for physical reasons and nothing is going to change that. By making it more difficult for me to do the things I want, they’re taking away my incentive to play the game. Hence the in doubt comment up above.

I really wanted to like BfA. I loved Legion, not as much as I loved Mists, but that’s just my opinion there. But every time I turn around, Blizz is making it more difficult to play the game I want to play. I’m invested in this game. I’ve played final fantasy, even have the game on my computer and I updated it today. Because it seems like Blizz is forcing me to play the game they want me to play, not the game that I like to play. I guess there’s no more room for me here in WoW.

I dunno. Its just getting harder to justify playing this game, and things like this aren’t making it easier.

[Sinelus-moonrunner (Sinelus)]

They want to increase /playtime, that’s really it. More flying time means you extend playtime = profit. This will backfire on them worse then WOD and the removal of flying debacle.

[Felthol-dentarg]

Just put both in the vale blizz pls

[Nillah-uldaman (Nillah)]

Spoiler alert, it’s Metrohaha, come to educate us plebs on What An MMORPG Should Be and What Is Healthy For The Game ™.

It’s pretty safe to disregard it then, i think every single person on the forums does already lol

[anon23092290]

People will be mad on live day. The QQ will be insane.

[Ohgodmyeyez-hyjal]

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.

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.

This is not a change I can support, and this reasoning seems flimsy to me. If the Cleft of Shadows was too dotted with portals, what would have stopped the implementation of an NPC who would teleport you to various locations, saving space taken up by numerous portals?

When the world feels connected in many ways, that’s part of why it feels alive. Additionally, because many of those portals are linked to expansions we’ve played through and enjoyed, having continued access to them feels like a consequence of our participation in those expansions.

Having them removed erodes my sense of agency in the game world, and while in many cases some reasonably close options exist, they don’t feel as personal or meaningful as expansion hubs do.

When I go to Legion Dalaran to access the portals there, I remember how great I thought Legion was. If those portals are removed, so too is my reason to visit and reminisce.

This isn’t something that’s worth quitting the game over, at least for me, but I don’t agree with the decision and feel that if an orderly hub is the intended outcome, there are better and more user-friendly ways to accomplish it.

[Macällän-bronzebeard (Macällän)]

People will be mad on live day. The QQ will be insane.

Great idea and !

[Jose-blackwater-raiders (Jose)]

Some men just want to watch the world burn, I suppose

[Tàrgon-area-52 (Tàrgon)]

I see no reason behind this change. Cleaning up portals? Cool, awesome, that’s what we wanted, especially as Horde because it’s true that the Cleft of Shadows is a mess.

But removing a bunch of them with the goal of “making the world feel bigger”? Most of the world is 7+ years old, it hardly needs to be bigger. We’ve been there, we’ve done that. Jade Forest was great the first ten times around, now I just want to get to my destination. I won’t be suddenly impressed because I see something for the 101th time instead of the 100th.

[Fenril-stormrage (Fenril)]

This is the same kind of bad decision to remove portals as these other bad decisions over the years.

CRZ, Leveling Changes (took you over a year to fix), remove Flying for the first year of an Xpac, WoD class pruning that went WAY TO FAR… I know there are more, but I can’t think right now. If anyone remembers, please add on to this post.

[Legolos-hyjal]

OK. I understand you got “guiding principles”, but a change that caused more than 5000 feedback from players against it, don’t you think you should pay more attention on thoes feedback than your “guiding principles”? When your “guiding principles” frustrate players to communicate with you, and players will be disappointed, leave, and the sub will drop, til no one will be interested. Your “guiding principles” doesn’t guide anything then.

The BFA is boring already. And now you want to slow down ppl to discover the old content which brings more fun. Don’t teach players to play the game. Let players to play in diversity.

[Tarc-fenris (Tarc)]

In the megathread you SHOULD have replied to, ONE of the many expressed concerns is that many of us hearth in old locations not for the portals solely, but to AVOID ALL THOSE PLAYERS ON OUR LOWER END MACHINES. Please do not FORCE us to go somewhere WE CAN’T MOVE BECAUSE LAG.

Oh for a “Like” to give. Here, have some thumbs up:

Seriously? People are demanding Blizzard take your core2potato into consideration when making design decisions?

[Spanko-kiljaeden (Spanko)]

Lol they didn’t listen to 5k posts. Why would they listen to 3k more?

[anon23092290]

I think this horse has been beaten to the ground we all posted our 2 cents. It is up to them now.

[Jose-blackwater-raiders (Jose)]

I understand you got “guiding principles”

It’s “lodestar” now man. We gotta make “lodestar” a thing.

Lodestar: It’s the new GRAND SCHEME! ™