Rearranging and Removing Portals

Community General Discussion
6647

This is more an open letter to blizzard than it is a response to the 6.5k comments already here.
I don’t expect that they’ll see it, nor do I expect that they’ll care, but I’m a paladin, doing potentially idiotic things for the right reasons is my raison d’être.

See, here’s the thing. I’ve been playing this game for 15 years. I skipped an expansion here and there, but for the most part, WoW has been a staple in my game rotation. But you guys, 15 years is a long time. In that time, I’ve become a parent, bought houses, been wiped out by a tornado, built the house again, I mean…just life, ya know, but life when you’re a grown@ss adult, is a whole different life than when you have hours and hours of time to play a game.

I maybe have an hour or 90 minutes to play at a time. If I have to spend half that time traversing a world I’ve seen already for 15 years, in the name of “immersion” or whatever, then I just won’t play.

I know BFA has caught a lot of criticism, and I have notes, but I enjoyed the story lines and the plotline and the character writing. What I didn’t like was timegates, equipment gear gates, and mythic gates to being able to finish the story.

Every design decision has been seemingly made to force the player to spend an inordinate amount of time grinding. I mean, I realize WoW has always been grindy if you were trying to do a specific thing, but the last few expansions where actual content has been hidden behind grind gates has made me less interested in playing.

Removing portals is another example of timesinking. It serves no purpose to the player to be forced to spend 15 minutes getting somewhere that used to take a screen load. Many other games have instant travel, and the world is still immersive and entertaining, and not a boring bird ride across mountains. Forcing vanilla travel may serve as a matrix for Blizzard to be able to show user engagement increasing, but I put it to you that the more you make players pointlessly grind, the less likely you are to have players.

Some of your player base are “filthy casuals”, and we’re the player base that’s mostly likely to just let a subscription ride for years, or indeed decades at a time. Pushing us out closes down a reliable revenue stream, and that seems like a foolish decision.

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6648

As a psychologist, I always get a kick out of people like Dire trying to proclaim any understanding of mental health.

It is often simultaneously morbidly amusing, and disturbing.

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6649

That’s quite true. Something many people forget. Support groups of course are also a great source to deal with problems upstairs.

WoW, like other games, is one way to distract yourself. Nothing wrong with it. So long as it doesn’t become the digital equivalent of drinking yourself into a stupor.

The problem that crops up is the company starts mixing salt and pepper into the sweet drink.

1 Like
6650

There was also one of their posts that mentioned saving “young people” from “losing their heads” I made quotes and changed the words they used, but it was much more graphic. Not sure if that one is still there but that one shocked even me and not much will do that on a public forum.

6651

As someone with “problems upstairs”, it becomes annoying when people believe they understand, but they haven’t even cracked open a single “book” to do the research. They simply listen to the media and what it says about various “problems”.

6652

My big thing is I see a lot of people quote the DSM as “support” for their assertions.

I honestly think you should have to be at the Masters or Ph.D level to even buy the damn thing. Lay persons are not going to understand a lick of it.

Hell, we barely understand it half the time.

1 Like
6653

This is totally unnecessary. You devs think you know better than the players, but didn’t even know why people were using the Caverns of Times portals. I’m tired of the arrogant “We know better than the players attitude.” I work during the week and don’t have 20 mins to afk on some flight point. All because you wanted to remove portals, to waste players time. Games like ESO have fast travel to certain points. Blizz, it’s time to get on board with modern times. “If it’s not broke , don’t fix it.” This is the final straw. Unsubbed…

10 Likes
6654

I’m more bothered by them removing the portal to Dal crater.

It was always amusing to me that we had a portal that just drops you to your doom. Removing that is just petty, and removes a fun little tidbit of goofiness.

Warcraft is goofy as hell, always has been. Don’t remove the goof, embrace it. Embrace that goof.

3 Likes
6655

It’s also very useful for alliance. Not so much for horde because we have UC to port to.

6656

Useful and fun.

I see why it had to go.

We cannot have “fun” and “ease” in our little Skinner-Box now can we?

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6657

No, fun isn’t allowed anymore lol.

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6658

There’s nothing wrong with a good dosage of comedy. I mean, there was a company that created a game where your characters are expendable. It’s called Paranoia. It’s never meant to be taken seriously.

Mutants are Traitors (and every character in the game is a mutant). So every player character in PAranoia is a Traitor. You may also be a communist. Which is also treason according to Friend Computer.

Silly and goofball. Nothing wrong with that whatsoever.

6659

I’d be less bothered by all this if Blizz’s reasoning wasn’t so half-arsed.

It was like the PVP currency argument. Having currencies was “too confusing” for players.

Players that have been using currencies and tokens for near on a decade, that mostly come from capitalist or near capitalist societies that use currency, that are currently paying for your bloody game with currency.

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6660

Consistency is king.

If you want people to trust you, one has to be consistent.

6661

:clock1: = Loading Screens 10-20 seconds, sometimes much much more.

Old route, going away:

  • Dalaran Hearthstone :clock1:
  • CoT Portal :clock2: 47 seconds

New “Best” route:

  • Hearthstone (to The Great Seal) :clock1:
  • Orgrimmar Portal :clock2:
  • Uldum Portal :clock3:
  • Fly to CoT entrance 3 minutes 25 seconds

The New portal room is further from Uldum Portal and ?doesn’t? allow mounting upon arrival, so probably add another 10-20 seconds.

If you’re one of many who have trouble with loading screens, like I do, THREE could significantly increase the trip time. Especially for me, because I have absolutely terrible luck with loading screens going into Orgrimmar. I will probably take a longer path to avoid it:

  • [Hearthstone] (to The Great Seal) :clock1:
  • Silithus Portal :clock2:
  • Fly to CoT entrance: 4 min 20 seconds

So it takes almost FOUR TIMES longer just to get to the CoT entrance, assuming you have 310% flight speed AND your hearth set to The Great Seal.

And then, you’ve got almost another minute of flight just to get to Dragon Soul’s entrance, on top of the trip you’ve already made.

Time I’d rather spend playing, not twiddling my thumbs waiting for loading screens and dull old empty desert terrain to pass by underneath me.

YOU NO TAKE PORTALS!

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6662

Consistency hasn’t been their strong suit of late

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6663

Pads the metrics.

6664

What’s sad is the people you’re aiming this at will likely not get the joke. They didn’t even know why we needed a CoT portal. :frowning:

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6665

We have so many problem in BFA all these time and this is what you Buzzard’s dev choose to spend your time “fixing”?!

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6666

People keep saying that…

I don’t get why any investor/shareholder/division manager would want MORE /played time.

They want to see much they’re making off game tokens… off the in-game store & services… off subscriptions. The more they make with less /played-time the better, no? Because aren’t they paying for computational and network resources?