Rearranging and Removing Portals

[Dvis-kiljaeden (Dvis)]

At least we can play
“Current Zone of Warcraft”
on
our
phones.

Except we can’t. We can only do mission tables, and all the mission tables take place on the non-current zones of Warcraft.

[Taivora-dark-iron]

I went to a university that did something similar. There is a giant area of grass in the middle of the campus. The paths through it were created based on the flow of students, how they walked across it. It was actually really cool.

[Felthol-dentarg]

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

This is ridiculous the world has vastly increased in size since vanilla. Modern wow is a different game and needs a different a philosophy on transportation. If vanilla had northernd, outland, and the emarld dream the designers wouldve had a different philosophy on transportation back then

[Qubert-proudmoore]

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.

Shouldn’t the guiding principal be to maintain the basis of a RPG? The leveling experience is trash. It’s lost the role playing experience and just become a mad rush to get done to reach the only content that gets any development. That has a sense of progress and there for a RPG experience.

As it relates to the portal issue. For one getting around the world is not just for moggers, and mount chasers. It actually gets used when leveling.

Two it seems to be a small issue compared to the leveling experience that I mentioned. Flight and the issue of Pathfinder. Bad gearing system. Abilities and skill should be in our spellbook and or talent page/tree. The list goes on. Where are the constructive conversations on those subject that blizzard is actively working on?

[Kodai-lightbringer]

Another person with a misconception that just because you gave feedback, that feedback must be acted upon. Feedback is not a vote. Your concerns were heard, and they decided to go ahead with the original plan.

Each person can vote with their wallet.

[Spanko-kiljaeden (Spanko)]

I would actually, with some quick math put the chances of these changes getting reverted to somewhere around between 0% and 0%. They will refuse to listen to us again. It’s almost like that’s been the pattern for years and we have absolutely no idea what we want and only they know how to play their own game.

[Hocksy-emerald-dream]

At least we can play
“Current Zone of Warcraft”
on
our
phones.

Except we can’t. We can only do mission tables, and all the mission tables take place on the non-current zones of Warcraft.

Oh, I didn’t mean mission tables.
I forsee a different future, once they have driven off the last of the emergent game players due to in/convenience. A longer term plan.
“You can now play all former expansions of Wow, and relive the experience you had before, as separate games playable…
on your phone.”

[Blays-bloodhoof]

At least we can play
“Current Zone of Warcraft”

See. Yet another beef with their inconsistency: What’s current? Even ION couldn’t explain this in his super long winded explanation about the Legacy Loot rules. WoD is legacy, but Legion isn’t. Now Legion is, if you’re 11 levels over it. Now it isn’t because you have to go there for the races they added. Now it is because Oh Hey, we’ve disabled all of your artifact traits and skills and literally labeled them as “LEGACY”.

It’s such a mire of unnecessary and unexplainable changes.

[Taienna-aerie-peak (Taienna)]

You don’t need portals to farm relevant herbs.

yeah…you have NO CLUE what youre talking about. Thanks for making that blindingly obvious.
PORTALS are how we get from one landmass to another, son, to do that farming.
That you dismiss portals for farming makes it crystal clear you havent got a hint of a clue about farming old mats.

I love how you made sure to say ‘relevant’.
Of course you can now come back and say "I said RELEVANT herbs’ as your joke of a deflection.

I farm OLD WORLD herbs.
Those are OLD WORLD PORTALS being removed.
So whether youre playing ignorant…or actually ignorant…it is irrelevant.
Removing those portals to the OLD WORLD will absolutely affect our time consumed to farm the EXACT SAME herbs.

[Jopsy-grizzly-hills (Jopsy)]

Blizzard isn’t doing this to artificially inflate our /played time.

We’ll play as much as we play and no more. All that changes is that many of us will be DOING LESS during the same amount of time.

I think there’s two other things Blizzard is trying to accomplish with this arbitrary change:

1. fighting ‘gold inflation’. Longer travel times = less legacy farming for xmog/resources/vendorable-stuff. The scrapper apparently didn’t help enough (it keeps us from vendoring loot for gold by converting it into soulbound currencies instead).

2. infrastructure costs. By radically reducing the demand for legacy zones, they can retire or re-assign those servers. Either to save money or eliminate the need to increase infrastructure for 8.2’s dungeons/raids/zones. (Computationally, it’s much MUCH easier/cheaper/efficient to support 50 online players in 1 to 5 zones, than the same 50 players spread across 40 to 50 zones.)

3. (well 2b actually) The more passive or client-side-only activities we engage in, the more people they can pack into a zone before it starts to lag. More waiting in queues, more unskippable RP dialog, more long flight-paths… more “saving the accursed turtles for nola” … the more they can pack us into a single region without us “feeling” the lag so much.

[Taienna-aerie-peak (Taienna)]

Blizzard isn’t doing this to artificially inflate our /played time.

We’ll play as much as we play and no more. All that changes is that many of us will be DOING LESS during the same amount of time.

uh…its the same thing.
If I want to get, run and turn in quest A…now my time is INCREASED to do so.
In your statement here, if I have one hour to play, I just dont get the quests done now because Blizzard increased the time it will take.

So instead of FINISHING I either have to quit after an hour and leave it UNFINISHED…meaning I have to do it later…or take more time to finish it now.

Either way it DOES increase my time played to do that quest.

[Macällän-bronzebeard (Macällän)]

3677 posts without a single comment, means the chances they just decide to undo all this, are close to zero.

With the patch 3 days away I think the chances are absolutely zero.

[Blays-bloodhoof]

By radically reducing the demand for legacy zones, they can retire or re-assign those servers.

I’m still of the opinion that while what you’re saying is true on its face, there are NO MORE REALM SERVERS. Everything is a part of the WOW CLOUD and if a bunch of people in a WSG suddenly need more CPU cycles, the WOW CLOUD allocates the CPU time. I don’t believe my realm, Bloodhoof, actually exists as a server anymore. It’s a virtual server which is comprised of shards and phasing so that I usually see Bloodhoof people when I’m logged in. Like server takes phasing priority, like faction takes priority over that, like guild takes priority over that.

My toon is phased constantly, and I find it hard to believe that there are any hard and fast realms anymore. It explains so many of their design decisions, and also explains why EVERYTHING is instanced and phased and sharded now. It explains why “communities” exist as they do, and why Blizzard must have sharding in Classic.

You’re right with this, in that they probably need to lower the overhead that all of these ports were creating with regards to spinning up new shards or moving players to existing shards everytime they port.

There’s a lot of ready-time delays if you’re not careful and users will absolutely see these as “zone lag”.

[Pandance-moon-guard]

@Kaivax

we’ve made a tradition of removing some of the portals from the previous expansion’s cities.

Then stop the tradition, ta-da, easy solution.

@Kaivax

The goal with that is to encourage transportation flow through newer places where players are more likely to interact with other players.

Goal failed, and stupid from the get go. Its intentionally making ghost towns of older content then having the gall to tell us it makes the world lager. You cant even stick to your own reasoning.

@Bornakk

(but continuing to pile up various teleporting items feels strange)

@Kaivax

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.

Brain dead devs.

[Amandiel-nesingwary (Amandiel)]

3677 posts without a single comment, means the chances they just decide to undo all this, are close to zero.

The original post is their comment. It was made in response to the other thread.

[Tarc-fenris (Tarc)]

Another person with a misconception that just because you gave feedback, that feedback must be acted upon. Feedback is not a vote. Your concerns were heard, and they decided to go ahead with the original plan.

Each person can vote with their wallet.

Yes, they can, and I wish you luck on your future MMO endeavors.

[Jalanilí-moon-guard-4790 (Jalanilí)]

While we’re at it, make the new Stormwind/Portal room > Boralus portal put you in the middle of the room instead of RIGHT IN FRONT OF THE FRICKIN’ SILITHUS PORTAL that fills up your ENTIRE SCREEN.

I have accidentally portaled to Silithus from Boralus so many times on arriving there just by moving forward via mouse controls, or trying to click somewhere on the game window to bring it back into focus since I’ve tabbed out through a hundred years of loading screen.

[Leondal-wyrmrest-accord (Leondal)]

Kinda reminds me of the no flying kerfuffle in Warlords. While not the end of the world, it does make it more of a hassle to get around. You’re also more likely to see an increasing number of areas empty.

Blizzard. Once you open the Pandora’s Box, one does not simply shut it.

[Quercus-ghostlands (Quercus)]

I’ve wondered this about shard tech.

If the “world” only exists while a shard is populated, it makes sense to disincentivize people out of using most of the world. Fewer resources used if you’re scraping coppers.

Terrible for actual user gameplay. Nothing breaks immersion like seeing players, herbs, etc phase out in front of me

[Taienna-aerie-peak (Taienna)]

Yes, they can, and I wish you luck on your future MMO endeavors.

hows that Master Loot removal going for ya?
Saving you any time gearing up?