Rearranging and Removing Portals

[Vokire-cenarion-circle]

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. 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Kaivax,

I would like to thank you, generally speaking, for your communications (here and for Classic). It certainly feels like an improvement comparatively to what we have experienced over the last few years… The depth and comprehensiveness of the communications from you is appreciated greatly as well.

To preface my response to your communication, I have already cancelled my subscription in relation to portal removal. This was done prior to your post when Bornakk responded to the other larger thread. This could change (I highly anticipate bringing back my subscription for WoW Classic access) based off of future content or differences in decisions.

There are some areas within your post that I can understand and somewhat agree with - such as

Too many eliminations of the distances between places can diminish a sense of the world having a meaningful size.

I actually can readily agree with this, but I would have gone farther to say eliminations in distance or the speed of travel between distances. This can have profound perceptions on the ability to traverse the world, the size of the world, and the impact of dynamic changes to the world (such as the destruction of Riverbend in Highmountain).

However, this is a significant departure from the direction that World of Warcraft has had. These changes resulting in shrinking of the world (or the perception of shrinking of the world) started in The Burning Crusade with the implementation of flying. As was experienced in Warlords of Draenor, you cannot go back to change core game functionality/expectations that have been developed over years and doubled down on. For example, Legion added portals to locations we’ve never really had portals to. Legion consolidated many portals with fairly rapid access in a fairly central location (Dalaran).

If this were a new game or a relaunch of the game and the relaunch took a different direction, I could understand never implementing portals or flying or x or y or z. However, you’re trying to actively remove features/conveniences/quality of life improvements players have come to expect or rely upon. This will, generally, be received very poorly by players. I anticipate that you will find extreme backlash and, likely, a substantial decrease in active subscriptions.

Another important note is: the World of Warcraft has never been larger than it has been now (with or without portals).

Let’s take a look at how larger the world is in terms of continents/zones:

Vanilla/Classic:

• Kalimdor

1. Teldrassil
2. Darkshore
3. Ashenvale
4. Felwood
5. Winterspring
6. Azshara
7. Stonetalon Mountains
8. The Barrens
9. Durotar
10. Dustwallow Marsh
11. Desolace
12. Mulgore
13. Feralas
14. Thousand Needles
15. Tanaris
16. Un’goro Crater
17. Silithus
18. Moonglade

• Eastern Kingdoms

1. Eastern Plaguelands
2. Western Plaguelands
3. Tirisfal Glades
4. Silverpine Forest
5. Alterac Mountains
6. Hillsbrad Foothills
7. The Hinterlands
8. Arathi Highlands
9. Wetlands
10. Loch Modan
11. Dun Morogh
12. Badlands
13. Searing Gore
14. Burning Steppes
15. Blackrock Mountain
16. Redridge Mountains
17. Duskwood
18. Elwynn Forest
19. Westfall
20. Deadwind Pass
21. Swamp of Sorrows
22. Blasted Lands
23. Stranglethorn Vale

The Burning Crusade:

1. Azuremyst Isle
2. Bloodmyst Isle
3. Eversong Woods
4. Ghostlands
5. Isle of Quel’Danas

• Outland

1. Hellfire Peninsula
2. Zangarmarsh
3. Terokkar Forest
4. Nagrand
5. Blade’s Edge Mountains
6. Netherstorm
7. Shadowmoon Valley

Wrath of the Lich King:

• Northrend

1. Howling Fjord
2. Borean Tundra
3. Dragonblight
4. Grizzly Hills
5. Zul’Drak
6. Sholazar Basin
7. The Storm Peaks
8. Crystalsong Forest
9. Icecrown
10. Wintergrasp

Cataclysm

• Did not add continents, per se, but added zones

1. Mount Hyjal
2. Uldum
3. Vashj’ir
4. Deepholm
5. Twilight Highlands
6. Tol Barad
7. Molten Front
8. Gilneas
9. Kezan
10. The Lost Isles

Mists of Pandaria:

• Pandaria

1. The Wandering Isle
2. The Jade Forest
3. Valley of the Four Winds
4. Kun-Lai Summit
5. Townlong Steppes
6. Krasarang Wilds
7. Dread Wastes
8. Vale of Eternal Blossoms
9. The Veiled Stair
10. Isle of Giants
11. Timeless Isle
12. Isle of Thunder

Warlords of Draenor:

• Draenor

1. Frostfire Ridge
2. Shadowmoon Valley
3. Gorgrond
4. Talador
5. Spires of Arak
6. Nagrand
7. Tanaan Jungle
8. Zangar Sea

Legion:

• Broken Isles

1. Broken Shore
2. Stormheim
3. Highmountain
4. Val’sharah
5. Azsuna
6. Suramar

• Argus

1. Krokuun
2. Mac’Aree
3. Antoran Wastes

** various class exclusive zones, sometimes used for only small questlines were also added

The old world is not lacking in size. Even with the various portals, access could still be challenging. Although consolidating, in some ways, the locations of portals available is good. I can also see possibly reducing the redundancy of portals from older content.

You’re removing portals that accessed:

1. Vale of Eternal Blossoms
2. Caverns of Time
3. Dalaran Crater
4. Karazhan
5. Wyrmrest Temple
6. Hellfire Peninsula

These are not being replaced. This contradicts one of your statements:

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.

Additionally, some of the portals you’re adding will not go to the previous hubs, but rather to seemingly random locations we’ve never had portal access to before. Why create a portal location to Azsuna if we have never had portal access to Azsuna before?

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.

For Alliance, access to virtually anywhere in Lordaeron is almost completely lost. The nearest access point, without being a certain class OR having control of the Arathi Highlands in the warfront cycle, is Twilight Highlands. If you wanted to complete the “Love is in the Air” quest in Silverpine Forest, your travel time is drastically longer and removes the value of completing this quest. This will also be true for many players to kill Grumpus. I believe Horde will have a, potentially, harder time accessing Karazhan, Zul’Gurub.

I also wanted to add that the removal of portal access to Hellfire Peninsula will be very confusing for new players. You travel to the Dark Portal, expecting either Hellfire Peninsula on the other side OR Draenor. What if it’s not what you want? Do they know about having to talk to the Bronze dragon at x location to go back to change it to whatever timeline? It’s going to be a source of confusion and frustration.

I’m disappointed that the attitude, thus far, seems to be doubling down on removing portals that this same development team implemented and thought were OK until now.

Edit: There was another issue/area that I wanted to potentially address.

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.

Although some transportation items do exist, many have to be obtained individually by each character. If it was as simple as talking to X and they give you Y, this would be less of an issue. Instead, some of the transportation items require completion of questlines, reaching certain reputation requirements, or use of various currencies. Some of the questlines are long. Some of the reputation grinds are long. Acquisition of some currencies takes considerable amounts of time.

Having to regrind access to those items/areas on each character can be overwhelming. This is especially overwhelming/frustrating when you consider all of your characters could use the portals that took you to these areas before without grinding/obtaining anything special or unique. Now, not only will you be unable to access some of those areas at all, some you have to grind to create/restore access to across multiple characters.

[Mahatma-blackwater-raiders (Mahatma)]

I’m not talking about Orgrimmar. There’s already a mage there. I’m talking about putting mages in other locations, in other expansions.

Well, I have seen them in every racial capital. All the expansion capitals have portals to Org/SW anyway (but I have seen them in Northrend Dalaran and expect there are ones in other expansion capitals too). So, where do you want them to be? Wandering the countryside? I guess that could be useful for some people. I’m such a cheapskate though, that I’d just hearth, take the portal to Org, then fly to TB, rather than look for a DMF Mage wandering out in the world.

[Tarc-fenris (Tarc)]

You can easily say it, just like you’ve easily said a lot of untrue things. Especially with how easily you can be proven wrong.

No one “proves” an opinion wrong. It is a shame you’ve wasted so many posts on ad hominem remarks rather than focusing on the topic. It ends here, however.

You’ve done nothing but be condescending and hateful

A demonstrable lie; if there was anything posted of the sort by me, I would have gotten a suspension days ago, as has happened several times in the distant past.

[Pikkarg-bleeding-hollow (Pikkarg)]

Ok I get the argument about world size and immersion but frankly the world is a nothing burger. Would you prefer a larger or smaller nothing burger?

Smaller is it. For everyone.

If your world wasn’t a nothing burger then small vs large would be a relevant discussion.

[Mossclaw-wyrmrest-accord (Mossclaw)]

I certainly won’t quit over something as “my beloved portal”; however the more I learn about the industry, the more I realize that this game is going in a direction that fits less and less with every RNG and feature removal added.

I’m an “inhabitant”. I want to “live” in the virtual environment. They keep adding gaming metrics and taking out the little things, removing memories, and overall making it less and less enjoyable to live here.

At this point I’m open to relocating the guild. It’s a small guild, so this isn’t a threat. I’m mentioning it to emphasize just how rooted I am here, and how much of an impact tweaking the game to appeal to the cyclical gamer has caused me.

At this time, I just feel that they don’t want my type of player anymore.

[Hardwire-velen (Hardwire)]

what happens in the beginning of new expansion of them removing portals and us being unhappy about it

Please don’t help Blizzard rewrite history. Portal removal happened in Cataclysm. It’s not a tradition; it’s not something they always do at the start of an expansion. It’s something they haven’t done in the last three expacs.

Not upset with you, but there’s enough revisionist history going on with the Blues already; we don’t need to spread their misinformation further.

[Tarc-fenris (Tarc)]

People think WoW is a lot of things, but thinking it is anything approaching f2p is not a valid one.

It may not technically be F2P, but they have pushed a lot of F2P features into the game. They are using some unholy amalgamation of the paid subscription and F2P monitization models. They actually charge more for their services than a true F2P game does.

I’m not even sure what you refer to as a “f2p feature”, can you elaborate?

[Hardwire-velen (Hardwire)]

Huh, that’s actually a pretty neat trick. Though I suspect my monk could run out of most instances faster than the countdown timer, it will be useful for my other toons. Thanks!

[Nillah-uldaman (Nillah)]

At this time, I just feel that they don’t want my type of player anymore.

I’m not even sure what type of gamer they’re trying to attract anymore.

[anon23092290]

I’m trying to figure out that myself.

What type of gamer is Blizzard trying to attract?

[Mahatma-blackwater-raiders (Mahatma)]

I’m not even sure what you refer to as a “f2p feature”, can you elaborate?

The cash shop is a big one. Using “time played” instead of subscription numbers is also a F2P thing.

[anon23092290]

F2p = Free to play.
Which is how Blizzard is going it seems.
They want WoW to be f2p so they can get money off the blizz shop.

[Dessious-emerald-dream (Dessious)]

The world already feels small because it’s all useless except the current patch.

[Rollo-thunderhorn (Rollo)]

One that really enjoys slot machines when they go to Las Vegas.

[anon23092290]

I don’t like slot machines though the rng is a bit much.

[Spanko-kiljaeden (Spanko)]

Almost 4k responses. Keep them coming, fam. Save our portals.

[anon23092290]

Not going to happen it look like though sadly.

[Tarc-fenris (Tarc)]

The cash shop is a big one. Using “time played” instead of subscription numbers is also a F2P thing.

Well, “cash” and “free” seem to be mutually exclusive.

Time played as a metric, I see your point there.

[Hocksy-emerald-dream]

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. 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Kaivax,

I would like to thank you, generally speaking, for your communications (here and for Classic). It certainly feels like an improvement comparatively to what we have experienced over the last few years… The depth and comprehensiveness of the communications from you is appreciated greatly as well.

To preface my response to your communication, I have already cancelled my subscription in relation to portal removal. This was done prior to your post when Bornakk responded to the other larger thread. This could change (I highly anticipate bringing back my subscription for WoW Classic access) based off of future content or differences in decisions.

There are some areas within your post that I can understand and somewhat agree with - such as

Too many eliminations of the distances between places can diminish a sense of the world having a meaningful size.

I actually can readily agree with this, but I would have gone farther to say eliminations in distance or the speed of travel between distances. This can have profound perceptions on the ability to traverse the world, the size of the world, and the impact of dynamic changes to the world (such as the destruction of Riverbend in Highmountain).

However, this is a significant departure from the direction that World of Warcraft has had. These changes resulting in shrinking of the world (or the perception of shrinking of the world) started in The Burning Crusade with the implementation of flying. As was experienced in Warlords of Draenor, you cannot go back to change core game functionality/expectations that have been developed over years and doubled down on. For example, Legion added portals to locations we’ve never really had portals to. Legion consolidated many portals with fairly rapid access in a fairly central location (Dalaran).

If this were a new game or a relaunch of the game and the relaunch took a different direction, I could understand never implementing portals or flying or x or y or z. However, you’re trying to actively remove features/conveniences/quality of life improvements players have come to expect or rely upon. This will, generally, be received very poorly by players. I anticipate that you will find extreme backlash and, likely, a substantial decrease in active subscriptions.

Another important note is: the World of Warcraft has never been larger than it has been now (with or without portals).

Let’s take a look at how larger the world is in terms of continents/zones:

Vanilla/Classic:

• Kalimdor

1. Teldrassil
2. Darkshore
3. Ashenvale
4. Felwood
5. Winterspring
6. Azshara
7. Stonetalon Mountains
8. The Barrens
9. Durotar
10. Dustwallow Marsh
11. Desolace
12. Mulgore
13. Feralas
14. Thousand Needles
15. Tanaris
16. Un’goro Crater
17. Silithus
18. Moonglade

• Eastern Kingdoms

1. Eastern Plaguelands
2. Western Plaguelands
3. Tirisfal Glades
4. Silverpine Forest
5. Alterac Mountains
6. Hillsbrad Foothills
7. The Hinterlands
8. Arathi Highlands
9. Wetlands
10. Loch Modan
11. Dun Morogh
12. Badlands
13. Searing Gore
14. Burning Steppes
15. Blackrock Mountain
16. Redridge Mountains
17. Duskwood
18. Elwynn Forest
19. Westfall
20. Deadwind Pass
21. Swamp of Sorrows
22. Blasted Lands
23. Stranglethorn Vale

The Burning Crusade:

1. Azuremyst Isle
2. Bloodmyst Isle
3. Eversong Woods
4. Ghostlands
5. Isle of Quel’Danas

• Outland

1. Hellfire Peninsula
2. Zangarmarsh
3. Terokkar Forest
4. Nagrand
5. Blade’s Edge Mountains
6. Netherstorm
7. Shadowmoon Valley

Wrath of the Lich King:

• Northrend

1. Howling Fjord
2. Borean Tundra
3. Dragonblight
4. Grizzly Hills
5. Zul’Drak
6. Sholazar Basin
7. The Storm Peaks
8. Crystalsong Forest
9. Icecrown
10. Wintergrasp

Cataclysm

• Did not add continents, per se, but added zones

1. Mount Hyjal
2. Uldum
3. Vashj’ir
4. Deepholm
5. Twilight Highlands
6. Tol Barad
7. Molten Front
8. Gilneas
9. Kezan
10. The Lost Isles

Mists of Pandaria:

• Pandaria

1. The Wandering Isle
2. The Jade Forest
3. Valley of the Four Winds
4. Kun-Lai Summit
5. Townlong Steppes
6. Krasarang Wilds
7. Dread Wastes
8. Vale of Eternal Blossoms
9. The Veiled Stair
10. Isle of Giants
11. Timeless Isle
12. Isle of Thunder

Warlords of Draenor:

• Draenor

1. Frostfire Ridge
2. Shadowmoon Valley
3. Gorgrond
4. Talador
5. Spires of Arak
6. Nagrand
7. Tanaan Jungle
8. Zangar Sea

Legion:

• Broken Isles

1. Broken Shore
2. Stormheim
3. Highmountain
4. Val’sharah
5. Azsuna
6. Suramar

• Argus

1. Krokuun
2. Mac’Aree
3. Antoran Wastes

** various class exclusive zones, sometimes used for only small questlines were also added

The old world is not lacking in size. Even with the various portals, access could still be challenging. Although consolidating, in some ways, the locations of portals available is good. I can also see possibly reducing the redundancy of portals from older content.

You’re removing portals that accessed:

1. Vale of Eternal Blossoms
2. Caverns of Time
3. Dalaran Crater
4. Karazhan
5. Wyrmrest Temple
6. Hellfire Peninsula

These are not being replaced. This contradicts one of your statements:

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.

Additionally, some of the portals you’re adding will not go to the previous hubs, but rather to seemingly random locations we’ve never had portal access to before. Why create a portal location to Azsuna if we have never had portal access to Azsuna before?

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.

For Alliance, access to virtually anywhere in Lordaeron is almost completely lost. The nearest access point, without being a certain class OR having control of the Arathi Highlands in the warfront cycle, is Twilight Highlands. If you wanted to complete the “Love is in the Air” quest in Silverpine Forest, your travel time is drastically longer and removes the value of completing this quest. This will also be true for many players to kill Grumpus. I believe Horde will have a, potentially, harder time accessing Karazhan, Zul’Gurub.

I also wanted to add that the removal of portal access to Hellfire Peninsula will be very confusing for new players. You travel to the Dark Portal, expecting either Hellfire Peninsula on the other side OR Draenor. What if it’s not what you want? Do they know about having to talk to the Bronze dragon at x location to go back to change it to whatever timeline? It’s going to be a source of confusion and frustration.

I’m disappointed that the attitude, thus far, seems to be doubling down on removing portals that this same development team implemented and thought were OK until now.

^A very good read.
Also refreshing to see a Classic fan realizing the issues, and that Retail is far, far larger than Classic and thus requires different solutions to get people ‘out there’.
I really do hope Classic succeeds even though I don’t wish to return there.

[Mahatma-blackwater-raiders (Mahatma)]

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.”

I have seen some players suggesting that Blizzard should do to expansions what they did to professions… with each expansion going from level 1 to (whatever the cap is). As if Blizzard doesn’t come up with enough bad ideas on their own.