Removing specific portals that made farming old content isn’t or wasn’t needed. Nor was it asked for in any capacity. This doesn’t make the world more immersive, it makes it smaller because “is it worth my time” is a metric players use, and this removal of certain portals won’t make that cut.
Freedom and Choice is what drew players to the game in the first place.
I’ve said it several times on this topic but there was a guy who THANKED Blizzard for creating Pet Battles. Because it kept an older member of the guild playing the game after he had a stroke(I think it was a stroke, this post was like 2+ years ago). He couldn’t do most progression stuff anymore, but he could still do pet battles!
The “choice” and ability to do other things in the game kept him from quitting.
hey boys and girls … blizzard took your free, easy access portals?
No Problem!
Just fill your bags with Skippys Handy Dandy Once A Day Portal Generator to Nowhere.
If thats an issue in a game where it take maybe less than 5 minutes to get where youre going, even when not using teleportation, maybe MMOs aren’t the greatest choice of leisure activity.
Of course it does… Is there anything that they do in this game right now that isn’t a direct reflection of driving up the minutes you stay logged in to play? That is their key metric now… Not subscribers… Gotta make that quarterly report look good.