A part of me, a morbid part, wonders what would become of WoW if they’d stuck to their guns.
Would they have recovered from the PR nightmare, or would they have started to move toward a maintenance mode mentality like most MMORPGs do when they start their fall from grace?
conversely, had they not acted like spoiled children ripping the ball from another childs hands and left flight alone, WOD might have been seen as one of the best expansions to date. I hate the garrison crap, but WoD has some of the coolest dungeons and raids outside of MoP.
Seems as if laziness and greed will eventually force WoW into either the free2play realm…or ‘gone outta business’
As always, these types of changes are more of an issue for low level characters than they are for max (or even just higher) level ones.
I’m doing the “free weekend” I made a new goblin. Got out of the starting area and was given a quest to take the flight to Razorhill… only I didn’t have the flight path for Razorhill, so I had to hoof it.
I wanted to go to Thunder Bluff on that goblin. Did not have the flight path. There is no portal in the new portal room. I had to take the zeppelin. As I was heading to the zeppelin tower, I saw it leave. It took 20 minutes for the zeppelin to get back.
I have those toys that are supposed to teach the flight paths in Kalimdor and Eastern Kingdoms. They do not include any of the starter zones. I paid 10k gold for each of them. As far as I am concerned, they are not worth that if they don’t teach every flight path in every zone. All they do is teach you one flight path for each zone… and not even every zone (as I said, they don’t give you flight paths in any of the starter zones).
I am just getting fed up with how Blizzard screws low levels all the time!
Interesting thought. I had just assumed that it was a bribe to try to stem the loss of subs since that is pretty much something that a lot of people have been asking for.
As far as I can tell, not one of the things the devs in this game think are (or would be) a problem have ever caused any kind of issue in other games that treat those things differently than Blizzard does.
They were so desperate to yank old portals that they did so with little or no regard for people actually trying to level through those areas who still need them.
Clearly they’ve burned the boats and aren’t going to retreat from this decision. Their concession so far? They’ll ADD one of the most wanted portals to the new portal room.
Just praying in the wind that they’ll add something to make up for the 8minute+ travel times to some of the more remote but still often used destinations, and recognizing that if they do… it’ll probably be in the mighty portal room, all hail the portal room… and no where else.
First time in two releases we didn’t get a hearthstone for the content. Should have known there was a reason coming down for it: they were planning on screwing everyone over on travel once again. Just like they screwed everyone over on the extra bag space for the backpack by tying it to an unsafe and outdated piece of security technology…for a lousy four slots.
Because they can’t just give quality of life improvements anymore.
“slated”
It could be back, right now. Once again the devs are being petty and petulant. This isn’t something that requires massive amounts of code to be rewritten, guys from legal to sign off on, or an act of (insert your country’s legistlative body and/or supreme leader’s name here). They just want to drag it out as long as possible to let us know they’re doing it…but they’re not happy about it.
Like a kid who is being forced to do their chores.
I’ve been doing the pandaland Raiding with Leashes, so tonight I decided to do a test.
One toon took the portal in Jade Forest. The other toon was a mage and I used multiple hearths to take me to stormwind then used my mage shrine portal from the portal room.
I did all 3 raids and the non-portal toon used the group finder so that she could be teleported to a graveyard vs running out of the raids.
Non-Portal toon: 45:10 min total time
Portal toon: 35:10 minutes total time
I’m sure they rely on most of the older players no longer being around, or not caring about the portals. It lets them rewrite history to suit themselves.
Hated it so much that they revamped the entire old world to allow for flying everywhere. Yeah, that sounds like something they really hated.
I’m just sorry this dev team is incapable of designing anything that isn’t completely on rails. It’s sad that player agency has become such a terrible thing in their eyes.
That’s some Orwellian level stuff going on. Not even the first, second, or third time it’s happened, either. Everyone, including the higher ups at actiblizz knows he’s doing it, because they have to sign off on the announcements and public statements someone in his position makes.
Long story short: they’re perfectly fine with him lying to their customers on a regular basis, and have been for years.
Once, maybe twice would be a mistake. But this kind of dishonesty is a regular occurrence.
This is such a time gate grab. I had to take the damn tram to Ironforge and back (because there’s no mog there) to upgrade my heirlooms after subbing back to a single portal to stormwind. I really don’t understand these little QoL downgrades that come out every so often. It took me an entire session just to get my character set up and ready to go for the next expansion. The real failure here is if you thought everything but stormwind was a ghost town before, it sure is now. I don’t think I saw a single other player in Ironforge. Now there’s literally no reason to go there unless heirlooms or for funsies at max level. That’s the problem, things like every capital city not having a barber and a transmog so people are incentivized to one stop shop in one place, stormwind. Now that I have my heirlooms I doubt I’ll visit any of the other capitals. The portals were never the problem. Missed the mark by a mile. All you did for me as a returning player was make me waste more time traveling. And there is no social interaction when you’re traveling, either you’re putting on coffee while you fly and can literally do nothing at all, or like someone said it’s like stopping for every car you see along the road just to make sure they’re okay. People aren’t like that. Stop making the game take longer to accomplish things than it used to. People were used to quality of life improving with every expansion, now you continuously draw it back. Why?
The IF portal is in Boralus.
Yeah but that does you no good when you’re only 104, and at max level why even go there? Or anywhere besides stormwind for that matter? That’s the problem, they took options out of the equation. Every capital should have all the amenities of every other capital (especially transmog). I mean, maybe I like Ironforge because I’m a dwarf, but I literally have no reason to go there unless I want more heirlooms. I go to stormwind because I can mog there without going back to wherever, barber there, and auction there. I think that’s a bigger issue than closing the gates to these already ghost towns.
It was clearly never a mistake, lawyers lie, they get paid to lie. Call it twisting the truth, spinning the situation, or dancing around the subject, it’s lying. As long as he’s in charge, dishonesty will be the word of the day. I’m not stating anything that everyone doesn’t already know, the guy has already proven that he and truth aren’t even acquainted.
And that crap about making the world feel bigger, promoting more cummunity and it being a “long standing tradition” being the reason they removed those portals is all crap.
They removed the portals to inflate their “time played metric” and nothing more, because they know they’re failing to produce quality content and trying to charge more for it.
While over here in FF14, 14 million(give or take) people agree that everything that ActiBlizz is removing from WoW, makes FF14 a better, more engaging and way more fun game.
So, tell me ActiBlizz, fess up here, how many active, paying subscribers do you have now? You don’t have to say here, just email me, I know you got my email. I’d be willing to bet it’s less than 2 million and falling steadily.
You shot the golden goose, ActiBlizz, better find a damn good priest to res that poor fowl. A little hint: Ion and his “team” aren’t it.
Semper Fi! ![:us:](https://d38bqls1q93fod.cloudfront.net/en/wow/images/emoji/twitter/us.png?v=6" ":us:")
![:+1:](https://d38bqls1q93fod.cloudfront.net/en/wow/images/emoji/twitter/+1.png?v=6" ":+1:")
which is a STUPID place for it to be.
stormwind is where it SHOULD be since its frikking CLASSIC content and CLASSIC level characters are most likely the ones needing to even go there.
You know…the classic level characters that CANT GO into Boralus yet ![:roll_eyes:](https://d38bqls1q93fod.cloudfront.net/en/wow/images/emoji/twitter/roll_eyes.png?v=6" ":roll_eyes:")
Whoever thought this up is either intentionally obtuse…or the most ignorant game designer on the planet…in the history of games…ever…
Seems to be that Ion and his crew are intentionally…or quite ignorantly…trying to destroy the good name of a gaming company that has been around since they were covered in high school pimples and being ducked head first into boys room toilets.
I have absolutely no respect for anyone involved in trashing the good name of Blizzard.
They ALL need to resign at this point. Theyve destroyed any and all credibility of Blizzard and its very likely it’ll never recover after this crap.
Meanwhile ESO is SOOOO open ended that you can literally go do what you want, where you want, however you want and never ever feel like youre playing in a stinking maze like a rat.
This is horrible.
They managed to irritate me so much with this portal crap that I went and played REAL games and now I dont think I can come back to WoW even if the reverted everything theyve done to screw over BfA, Legion, MoP and classic content.
The most ironic part is ESO doesnt seem to have flight at all and even with that its FAR better than WoW in every possible way.
It even has these little mini ‘dungeons’ type things that you can run alone or tag along with other players if theyre in there when you go in.
I can port anywhere from anywhere and its not a problem.
Multiple portals per zone…half a dozen in some places scattered all over that zone…and somehow it manages NOT to be a frikkin problem for a REAL game with REAL game designers.
and the most hysterical part is they have $$$ shop where you can spent $150 on crowns to buy player housing, etc…meaning you can dump a crap load of $$$ in there…something WoW players seem to scream about not wanting…and yet even with that ESO is still far better.
Yeah…I dont think I CAN come back to WoW now no matter what they do. I’ll be forever comparing it to ESO if I tried. It’ll always feel inferior now. And their incessant, perpetual nerfing of all things good in WoW certainly wont endear me to the game any more, for sure.
Which they could have done without ruining the barrens and 1K. They couldn’t take the time to add new zones and revamp the old ones for flying. They had to “reimagine”. Which is crap. Just like all their class revamps. Crap.