The Alliance side doesn’t look all that expandable either unless they plan to do some major remodeling every time they add new portals. While it wouldn’t look nearly as pretty, they should have gone with using several NPCs that teleport you to various locations. That way if they need to add a location, they can just add another dialog option.
True,it sadden me when i was down there in legion Dalaran looking at people running down there not knowing what went on ,Some players don’t come to the forums and get the news about these changes.
Well ok u wanted to make the world bigger okay yea sure but umm i just have one teeny tiny question . The only enlargement u did was the PORTAL room thats it nothing more as instead of using heartstones now i and a lot of my friends use 3 cloaks from guild vendor ,so the only <except kara/cot> enlargement u did was that we have to go through 2 loading screens now thats all . Simply irritating , time consuming and in some cases making the game crash for some peoples who have low computers or internet as it freezes when they go somewhere like a main hub . So how in the hell the world will get bigger if we dont even go out there? So why seriously why ? I was so irritated by the change that i spend 100 k gold for my 5 alts to learn engineering on them just to avoid those 2 STUPID DUMB LOADING SCREEN .
Everyone at Blizzard has the best computers. They probably never even thought of this. Another reason to give us back portals. Less load screens means people with bad computers won’t crash as much.
Y’all just dig and dig for any reason under the sun to complain about this. Upgrade that potato, bro. At the very least, get a $50 SSD and just use it for WoW, you’ll never see a loading screen for more than a few seconds again.
New group of developers. They weren’t the ones who did it before so they have no memory of it. I have seen this a lot in business.
We can only hope that there has been enough people discussing it for them to realize it would be a very good idea to open the portals back up. I am tired of flying to the shrine when I need to go there. -_-
New group, old group, they still claimed it was something they had a “tradition” of doing, as if that in and of itself would make it good for the game. Which it wouldn’t, even if their claim was true. The fact that they lied about it makes it even worse, of course.
Between the removal of portals and the dev’s continued insistence on pushing flying later and later into the expac, not to mention the rental gear that allows them to make us constantly re-earn the same abilities under a different skin, it really does feel like they’re pruning the game down to run with just a skeleton crew.
I think people are noticing the lack of flying more now than in legion because there is nothing to do in BfA. In legion, the content kept us busy and the flight whistle was fine to use.
I am not sure if their intent is to prune the game down so they can manage it with a smaller group. I think they just are too disconnected from their customers, although I am sure there is data that shows people hung out in new dal due to all the portals.
Obviously, there’s no way for any of us to be sure of their motives, but the definitely aren’t hiding the treadmills as well as they used to. They aren’t really expanding the game at all, at this point. Maybe they genuinely are out of ideas, or maybe they’re too focused on “how can we make repeatable content under budget”.
I don’t really think they’re trying to kill the game (well, sometimes…), but every round of pruning, whether it’s portals or flying or abilities, makes it seem like they’re testing to see how little game they can get away with providing, and how much of it can just be reskins of existing content. And that doesn’t seem like the kind of thing a vibrant, thriving game would be doing.
(I also kind of suspect this team of devs would rather be working on stand-alone games rather than expansions, because it’s a lot easier to repackage “same stuff, different skin, here’s a new gimmick to distract you from the reskin” in stand-alone games.)
I only (mostly) get bothered by lack of flying in Horde areas as my Alliance character due to poor flight path placements. Also, Nazmir is not fun to traverse. Otherwise, I kind of consider it easier, ground mount only, than Legion. raises fist at Highmountain
All good points and thank you for your feedback. Since the CM is not doing his job you can crown me the unofficial CM haha.
You are a valued member of the WoW community and don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.
Well said! An excellent and informative post!
Welcome to the noblest profession, although I am sorry it was a forced decision.
Flips hair and then salutes with a cup of Morning Thunder tea.
Well ok u wanted to make the world bigger okay yea sure but umm i just have one teeny tiny question . The only enlargement u did was the PORTAL room
Lol, exactly. “Those portals in Dalaran, the shrine, etc, were (like old over stuffed chairs) taking up so much room! Doesn’t the place feel bigger now that we got rid of that junk?!”. /Snark
Oh, and fwiw, finally gave up and moved my main off of grizzly hills/Lothar. Would love to say it was because there are so few hordies there that finding a mage to Port me was impossible… But that was only part of it. Faction imbalance is really unpleasant when you’re out numbered 2 to 1.
Anyway, couldn’t keep my name after the transfer, and my forum identity/history is all mucked up now. yaaaay
You know how a room seems bigger when its empty compared to full of people…
I have played this game for many years, but that may be coming to an end. As a long-time player, I don’t need to take half an hour to get from one place to another. I’ve seen the content, and I am going somewhere specific to do something specific. The removal of the portals diminishes the quality of the game experience significantly. To put it in the language of today - it F’s up the quality of the game, and may be one more step leading to another person leaving the WOW family. Stop mucking around with things that work.
You know how a room seems bigger when its empty compared to full of people…
And right now, WoW seems pretty empty, might be that the removal of portals had something to do with that.
I know it was one of the many reasons I quit playing WoW, not the main reason by a long shot, but one of the many reasons.
Semper Fi!
Aww, its population may have dropped, but we’re still here. My sister and I and her old boyfriend all have highlevel mages…Not that they play anymore, and I don’t play the mage much because the squishiness overrides the convenience…
Already hate the portal removal with the fire of a thousand suns. Yes, I’m aware that stars are fusion powered and not actually on fire, thank you.
First, I didn’t really like going to SW/Org to begin with. There are more interesting places in game to do in-game business. Now I’m stuck going there for portal reasons.
Second, loading time. Good lord. I’m running a desktop that runs on about 8/10 on the video settings in game at 40+ FPS IN CITY, connected over a gigabit internet line. Despite having no hardware (or software) issues on my end, loading SW/Org is painfully slow since the portal removal, obviously due to funneling EVERYONE into that bottleneck.
Finally, places I really enjoyed, like Broken Isles Dalaran, which were lively and full of people up until 8.1.5, have become ghost towns nearly overnight. This doesn’t make the game feel bigger or more immersive; it makes the wider world (of Warcraft) feel sad and empty.
Keep the portal rooms themselves; they aren’t the problem. Put back the old portals that got removed for no meaningful benefit!!!
Finally, places I really enjoyed, like Broken Isles Dalaran, which were lively and full of people up until 8.1.5, have become ghost towns nearly overnight. This doesn’t make the game feel bigger or more immersive; it makes the wider world (of Warcraft) feel sad and empty.
I agree. I enjoyed visiting new dal because it was well laid out and it was a hub that could take you anywhere you wanted to go. I also liked the fact that it was always busy with both factions.
I know that the fact that up to 8.1.5 that city was so full of people played into them making the decision to gut the portal system. After all, it meant, more people were hanging out in old content, both factions were hanging out together, and they were using portals to even older content. Hard to justify the current xpac when that was happening.
I also agree with you about SW/Org. I have never liked Org at all. It is a very ugly city and SW is so very out-dated. I love Boralus as it is laid out very nice for getting things done and it is an interesting city to explore. Can’t say the same for Dazar’alor. It is horrible to get around.
Keep the portal rooms themselves; they aren’t the problem. Put back the old portals that got removed for no meaningful benefit!!!
I can’t like this enough.
The portal rooms were a good idea. Removing the other portals was a very, very, very bad idea.
Making travel take longer doesn’t make the world seem more populous or make people want to play the game more. Artificially trying to cram everybody into only two cities only makes the entire rest of the world look like a wasteland.
Putting portals back–especially if they got put back everywhere they’ve been removed–would help encourage players to go out into the whole world and do stuff.
I know, radical thinking here, but right now, I can’t think of anything that would create more positive buzz and possibly save WoW from its current slide into oblivion than to reverse a whole bunch of the most controversial decisions that have been made recently. Bring back all the portals. Remove the global cool-down changes. Open Pathfinder part two right now. Turn whatever the current guiding philosophy has been completely around and make the game fun again.