Rearranging and Removing Portals

[Dumbeldorf-stormrage (Dumbeldorf)]

I know but i just don’t want them to lock it.

Out of likes

[Dumbeldorf-stormrage (Dumbeldorf)]

I think the big problem has always been that they underestimate just how fast the casual player consumes content. So they’re always looking at ways to slow us down. That and of course the fact they use time played as a measuring stick for their investors.

So its a mixture of both overall. However, the former doesn’t really hold weight in this matter because we’re talking about outdated content being impacted. So there’s no excuse for them to slow us down in that regard.

So, the only logical reason remaining is they’re doing this for monetary reasons and not for the health of the game.

If they would concentrate on giving us more immersion in the game by giving us more “FUN” things to do then I’m all for that but they are focusing their energy in the wrong direction by making things more tedious and less “FUN”.

Taking things away to make it take us longer to do things just makes the game more boring.

[Verdre-silvermoon (Verdre)]

Now if there is another reason (besides the time played metric) for them to do this, I’d love for them to be straight up transparent and tell us why.

The excuse they give feels like just that, an excuse, a cop out. A blanket answer that doesn’t really answer the question of “why?”

It’s a reason, but not a reason that makes sense, feels logical or seems to be beneficial to the health of the game.

If it was done for the health of the game, I think more players would be willing to go along with it. Some would of course grumble, players always grumble about things.

But, it makes no sense, its not logical and I don’t see how its healthy for the game. So I speak out against it, especially considering their line about “we considered feedback” but then turned around and all they gave us was a blanket answer which didn’t address the questions we asked.

[Verdre-silvermoon (Verdre)]

I will however agree that moving the portals to a better location was indeed a good idea. That I am not against, and I think most players agree with that. The fact its only in Stormwind / Orgrimar isn’t going to help matters.

I’ve been levelling my Hordie lately and when you portal back to Orgrimar the number of portals in the area does feel cluttered. So I am 100% in agreement with the idea to consolidate and move portals.

It’s the Removal of portals that many players have enjoyed having access to that I’m speaking against.

[Dumbeldorf-stormrage (Dumbeldorf)]

If it was done for the health of the game, I think more players would be willing to go along with it.

Exactly!

[Sincubus-moon-guard (Sincubus)]

Lass, let’s face it, the topic was buried the moment it was born. They’ve chosen to bury their heads in the sand and not communicate.

Blizzards only concept of communication is telling you what you think, lately. They learned their lesson from the flying issue. Dont give room for rebuttal, just tell everyone what they are doing then slam the door and ignore everything else. Would explain just about everything they have made this xpac too.

[Duanzao-moon-guard]

However, we’ve seen how updates to the game can leave the means of accessing different areas feeling increasingly chaotic.

you mean like how if i have my hearthstone set anywhere other than current content i have to go all the way back to stormwind/orgrimmar, find closest portal to where i want to go, then take a long flightpath there? also, what’s the point of the dalaran-hearthstone now? without portals there’s no resaon to go to that laggy place.

[Rankin-shandris (Rankin)]

Ran some tests on reaching the Caverns of Time through various means. All times started as soon as I began hearthing and ended as soon as I was standing at the Caverns of Time.

Hearthing to Northrend-Dalaran and taking the CoT portal took me 38 seconds.

Hearthing to Legion-Dalaran and taking the CoT portal took me 51 seconds.

Hearthing to Legion-Dalaran, taking the Shattrath portal, and talking to Zephyr took me 1 minute and 6 seconds.

Hearthing to Stormwind and using the Uldum portal took me 3 minutes and 29 seconds.

Going to Shattrath in 8.1.5 will probably be somewhat faster thanks to the portal rooms, but the NPC there is not very alt-friendly. The time spent flying out to the Caverns and farming Keepers of Time rep will completely wipe out any saved time from being able to use the NPC in Shattrath. It’s just pointless busywork to re-obtain basic functionality that is currently available without any rep restrictions.

[Verdre-silvermoon (Verdre)]

That’s a HUGE difference.

0:38 to 3:29

Huge difference.

And it adds up over the week. Say you run 5 toons through a CoT dungeon or Raid to have a shot at more mogs.

That’s an extra 2:50 x 5 (14 some odd minutes) spent over the course of a single day just in travel time alone. Now obviously they’re not going to report on a single player’s time played. They’re going to report in large chunks.

Now say 5000 players did the same thing. That’s almost 1200 hours of play time added over the week.

What they’re report is …

“We had an increase of 1500 hours of total play time this week across the playerbase!”

EDIT: Goofed on the math! Forgot to carry a zero. Bad geek, bad geek!

170 seconds (going from Rankins time difference), to simplify we convert to decimal for ease of math, ergo 2.83 minutes

5000 players each running 5 toons (that would be 25,000 toons total)

Then we divide this final result by 60 to get the number of hours.

(2.83 minutes x 25,000 toons) / 60 minutes(convert to hours) = 1,179 hours

[Lyánna-uldum (Lyánna)]

You can’t help yourself… you keep doing it.

You just “can’t imagine” anyone could possibly think differently than you do.

Your myopia is staggering.

[Sarcastryx-illidan]

I am 100% in agreement with the idea to consolidate and move portals.

They’re not even doing that right, though! Cata portals are staying put, so they’re still spread all over the city!

[Garion-uldaman]

PSA: Don’t feed the trolls. You seriously shouldn’t even bother replying to them - it’s how you feed them.

Request: Support the other folks that offer their personal stories why removal of portals is a bad deal for them (or why it doesn’t bother them).

Like today - I needed to pop over to Shattrath so I grabbed a portal in that magical little room in Dalaran. I realize that portal is moving to the portal room and it makes a lot of sense.

Also today - I needed to get back to Dalaran but my stone was on cooldown. So I trekked over to the ol’ cleft and BOOM! back in Dalaran. Now, when that shiny new portal room goes live … I’ll wind up in Azuna of all places. Why Azuna? Because of some magical leyliney wimey thing? Meh. Dalaran is a magical floating city for crying out loud. Why would I take a portal to Azuna?

Share your stories of travel throughout Azeroth folks. This thread isn’t going anywhere and blues won’t touch it with a 6k post-long pole.

[Avaelica-khazgoroth (Avaelica)]

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.

Removed them for BC and Wrath, left them for MoP, WoD and most of Legion.

Not a very consistent tradition.

Oh, and farewell all.
I wish all those staying the very best.

[Kaurmine-area-52]

Anyone quitting feel free to leave me your gold and mats.

[Nobully-blackrock (Nobully)]

IF it affects someone and they still approve one has to wonder how little they value THEIR time.

i can’t recall anyone saying that they approve of the change.

burden of proof wasn’t the best way to say it.

it was the perfect way to say it.
…the people who are complaining about excessive travel time, should be giving specific examples of trip times.

It’s on you because one side is easily quantifiable while the other has no actual argument shown so far outside of “reasons.”

and without showing actual examples of this “significantly increased travel time”, there is no quantification… just opinions.

These guys cant wrap their heads around the fact that this is the BEGINNING of something with these portal removals.

was it “the beginning of something” when portals were removed previously?

Honestly, I dont think Activision or Blizzard would know what ‘data’ is or how to collect or compile it if it was a snake and bit them in the rump.

you’re complaining about people not knowing what data is, while repeatedly refusing to be forthcoming with any.
woo logic!

[Saralin-lightbringer]

Removing Vale’s portal doesn’t make sense, at all. Sure remove the portals to other cities, outside stormwind/orgrimmar inside the city is fine. But removing the portal to shrine is incredibly lame. If anything, add an NPC that teleports you from wrath dalaran to the new dalaran, or vice versa. Also, WHY do we need a portal to azsuna…? New Dalaran is better, it’s almost in the middle of the broken isles? That seems redundant…

[Rankin-shandris (Rankin)]

i can’t recall anyone saying that they approve of the change.

You should read these threads a bit more closely instead of swooping in and out.

…the people who are complaining about excessive travel time, should be giving specific examples of trip times.

I gave some examples, just scroll up a little ways.

Changes like this have always been made, and like the blue has stated, they’re doing it later now, than they usually do.

This isn’t something they’ve always done. There has been one time they wiped out portals, and that was with the Cata pre-patch event nine years ago. And one of the portals being removed in a few days predates even that.

These quitters most likely think that if the game isn’t exctatly what they want, then its total trash.

What we want is for the portals to remain in the game. Stop acting like we’re asking for some massive change. It’s nonsense and shows that you’re just here to cause trouble.

[Trelii-aggramar (Trelii)]

It is a massive change for the reasons that the blue has listed. Blizzard wants players in the world more, however, it’s those of your ilk that would complain why there are not that many.

[anon44207803]

I suspect that none of them will delete everything on their account, or even put a request to Blizzard to delete all of their account information

Why would they want to? Thats utterly ridiculous. You ARE aware, are you not, that that system deletes ALL games licences and all accounts. over all of Blizzards games?

Dont be absurd.

This is for all of the posters that are quitting over this, because it’s appropriate.

Actually, whats appropriate is to acknowledge that WOW has severe issues that have not been, and will not be, fixed or addressed.

Video : Published on Nov 17, 2012

WOD launch date 13 November 2014.

An expac that led to the single highest sub WOW sub loss in a six month period…five million.

Those people will never be back.

“All that stands in our way…is pride”

[Rankin-shandris (Rankin)]

It is a massive change for the reasons that the blue has listed. Blizzard wants players in the world more, however, it’s those of your ilk that would complain why there are not that many.

It is not a massive change and you know it. And if Blizzard cared one iota about world exploration, they would have added incentives to go out into the world. But they didn’t. The reasons they gave are dishonest, but people like you will defend anything they do or say, so good job there.