Rearranging and Removing Portals

[Kyawardly-hyjal]

Hi. I know people have been talking about the Caverns of time a lot. Please highly consider this, it even makes sense from a lore perspective.

In addition, please consider adding some easier way to get to the Isle of Thunder, especially where the portals to Pandaria now take you to Jade forest. Even if there was an Innkeeper on Isle of Thunder, that would be a great improvement.

[Lorethelin-emerald-dream]

Kaivax pretty clearly and accurately states that old portals from old expansions are removed with the exception of Legion and MoP. This is just staying in line with a Day 1 philosophy. It’s really not that big of a deal and it certainly isn’t worthy of the outrage this decision is receiving.

[Spanko-kiljaeden (Spanko)]

Basically this. Reminds me so much of that.

[Hocksy-emerald-dream]

This is not good.
The ‘world’ is 8 expansions, not a single classic world.
Deleting portals instead of improving/increasing it you are in fact making it beyond inconvenient. You are driving away even more of those who follow emergent play styles and they are your easiest customers. I posted the following earlier and it holds true even more now.
“It boggles my mind to be honest.
Highest cost: raiders/dungeon runners new content required constantly, generally cyclic subs.
Med cost: pvp…requires balance updates cyclically, not much content demanded, less cyclic sub than raiders.
Lowest cost: emergent players, make their own fun, reuse old content, generally constant sub.
Who is being driven out? The least demanding, lowest cost, highest profit players. It makes zero sense.”

[anon9085514]

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.

So what are we exactly seeing? Not everyone is currently on the PTR-- So a brief Summary of the changes thus far?

[Jalen-emerald-dream (Jalën)]

So not only have they made old zones irrelevant, but they’re still forcing people to travel through them. Genius. Absolutely genius…

[Amine-blackwater-raiders (Amine)]

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.

The only two that I can see that are really desirable to have is the portal to the Shrine in MoP since that is a central location to that zone, contains trainers, is close to the raids, and halfhill. Especially with the new raiding with leases coming, don’t make everyone travel from Jade Forest the whole way across the zone in some cases to those raids.

Secondly, the CoT portal which gives people access to all the old raids and dungeons there.

People farming old content repeatedly are not going to travel to inconvenient locations. They will park characters at that location and just not play them for anything but that content - which will just reduce the amount of time those characters and all characters are played. So it really is counterproductive to your purpose to remove those.

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

I would also like to address this. This may have been a concern at one time but that time has long since past. There is no way to make this game world small anymore. It just isn’t a concern. The world is actually too big. There is nothing, not a thing desirable about a world the size we have now and it just keeps growing. I don’t care if it keeps growing but the larger it gets the more people will ignore areas and content if they are inconvenient to get to. Bigger is not better, it is how you use the space.

[Rankin-shandris (Rankin)]

Kaivax pretty clearly and accurately states that old portals from old expansions are removed with the exception of Legion and MoP. This is just staying in line with a Day 1 philosophy. It’s really not that big of a deal and it certainly isn’t worthy of the outrage this decision is receiving.

It is a big deal and you’re being dishonest. They’ve never removed portal options. They simply got rid of capital city portals and replaced them with the same options in the new expansion hub.

[Sìmplejack-thrall (Sìmplejack)]

TLDR:

"We hear you, but we disagree. "

It would be nice if they stopped posting essays explaining their decisions and just agreed with us for once.

[Wasselin-thrall (Wasselin)]

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.

This is not true and is the basis of the problem with your decision making on this issue. Fast, convenient travel does not make the world feel small. Being stuck in one place because it’s too inconvenient to go anywhere else does. When you have portals to some places but not others it makes the places without portals feel more inconvenient to get to, and thus lowers the desire to go there.

I do agree that portals aren’t really the answer though, because a portal system that let players go everywhere they want to go would get cumbersome.

What WOW really needs is a fast travel system, like most modern RPGs. Flight paths serve this purpose but with the immersion breaking “cut scene” where you have to watch your character fly over a landscape that you aren’t able to interact with until you land. This leads to people checking out of the game while they wait to be allowed to play again and a group of players sitting afk at the flight path ends. Let us skip this cutscene and suddenly we can visit any place in entire world in seconds… opening up the entire world.

What makes the world feel big is a large and diverse set of places to go to, with meaningful activities to participate in at those locations or meaningful things to discover. WoW has this, but for some reason wants to funnel players into only very specific locations-- this actually makes the world feel very small with each new expansion only really occurring in a couple of zones that we visit over and over again.

[Xyrtran-medivh]

if anything the so called “world” is nothing to be impressed by once you visit it for the whatever time after your 10-100th time.

once again, glad I went casual mode and only login for raiding and instant log off to the next week because clearly you’re NOT listening to feedback… clearly this is why I don’t think I might go back to login every single day and spend some time in your game so long as you don’t hear players feedback period, I’m still amused how you can create somewhat good raids but still doing deaf ears kid face on the rest of the game because raiding that’s the only thing that keeps me subbed.

[Revannia-draenor (Revannia)]

Reading /= understanding apparently. People are constantly accusing devs of being out of touch. Usually, I give the team the benefit of the doubt but this time I have to agree. I don’t know what it is with this team that they feel the need to remove things from the game constantly - from flying to abilities to now portals - but it is not improving the game imo.

FYI not everyone plays the current expansion or wants to hang out in the new cities. I play old content as much as I do new atm mainly because I don’t find it as interesting as older expansions. Nor do people want to be funneled into Stormwind and Orgrimmar. I can’t wait to see the lagfest that’s going to be. If you want to make the world feel bigger then put things in it that make people want to go out and explore. Put the same amenities in all the racial capital cities so they feel alive again. Also, so many quests in Legion use the portals there. Why do that if you were just going to yank them out later?

The idea of a central portal room in major cities was a good one. Sadly, the execution leaves a lot to be desired.

[Annalisee-moon-guard]

Really hilarious that this post wasn’t put up not even a half hour ago and it’s got over 90 replies…

Hey Devs? Think it’s time to start listening to your player base yet?

The major hint should be when people are actively talking about how much they’re enjoying a game OVER YOURS in like… EVERY BLUE POST.

[Valestia-wyrmrest-accord (Valestia)]

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.

Please summarize this current state of the ptr for the class.

[Abendroth-zuljin (Abendroth)]

Please… the bulk of the population won’t leave. Only those that consistently complain about this and that and the most meaningless problems threaten to leave and probably won’t.

[Hnetu-norgannon (Hnetu)]

Honestly it’s not even the portals. The portals are a symptom of the disease.

It’s the people who make decisions refusing to look at the playerbase’s feedback and respecting it, or even treating us with a modicum of respect.

They come out and condescend to us, saying ‘but doesn’t this make the world feel larger’ with the same time deaf frivolity as ‘do to not have phones?’

It’s their attitude toward changes and removal, their derision and dismissal, that’s doing this.

[Spanko-kiljaeden (Spanko)]

Dude they didn’t even read a single post in the other thread. If they did they’d realize that we offered suggestions on how to fix this problem THEY created, which was don’t go through with this change.

[Kilhub-khazgoroth (Kilhub)]

There is an innkeeper on the Isle of Thunder. It is located under the boat-on land.

When you first get to Isle of Thunder you get a beacon quest, and at some point after that you get a mini-hub, and from the mini-hub there is an Innkeeper.

There isn’t a way to fly there directly tho, or fly out. Or portal there directly.

And you can’t set your hearthstone to be there, and then get to the Isle of Giants conveniently, that is a really long flight without 2 moons/shrine.

[Annalisee-moon-guard]

We’ve processed a lot of feedback on this,

This feels like you’re lying straight to my face…

[Taienna-aerie-peak (Taienna)]

We believe that the numerous remaining means of quick access in the game make most locations quite reachable.

Absolute NONSENSE!
The MoP portal thats left is FAR NORTH EAST from what has been posted.
the ToT raid is FAR WEST.
You know full blasted well that that raid is farmed every day and its it POINTLESSLY TIME CONSUMING and SADISTIC to not have the portals to the temples where they were.