Rearranging and Removing Portals

[Killimanjaro-aggramar (Killimanjaro)]

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.

Doesn’t a focus on directing traffic towards newer content kind of screw over those of your players that prefer to level alts? Especially considering you’ve just introduced a total of 8 new player races to level?

[Xaeris-proudmoore (Xaeris)]

The goal with that is to encourage transportation flow through newer places where players are more likely to interact with other players.

If this is your goal for the removal, don’t take offense at what I am about to say but, you failed.

In the 1000’s of times that I have gone through portal zones, the only player interaction that ever happens is racing to get to the portal or to an area to be able to mount up, and I am not even sure if the feeling is mutual. People are most likely just hitting their class speed boosts because they are pressed for time.

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.

Well if this is your answer, don’t be surprised when you start losing a lot of subs.

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.

Dude, this is so out of touch with the way players are today, nobody cares about that anymore. We don’t have unlimited time like we used to when we were younger. Meaningful size is only important when we first begin exploring new content, after that it gets really old, very quickly. Hence, why most people want BfA flying now.

[Natania-muradin]

Consolidating portals and revamping the portal areas is a great idea. Removing older useful portals is a bad idea. Whatever reasoning the Devs came up with that they asked the CMs to come here and shill doesn’t matter. The world is too big to not have lots of portals.

Put. Them. Back.

[Taienna-aerie-peak (Taienna)]

If you farm all day then you’re spending all day on this game anyway. Lol

lol…Im POSITIVE to my core that that makes perfect sense to you.
Which is very unnerving…and well a bit funny at the same time.

But yes, if you have every travel item (Like me), you can get to where you need to be in under 2 minutes ANYWHERE in the world except Eastern Kingdoms. Maybe you should pick those up to be a better farmer.

Or maybe the game maker can just NOT remove trivial portals to trivial content and irritate PAYING customers to begin with
Alien concept, I know.

[Verdre-silvermoon (Verdre)]

So the big question here is ‘why remove trivial portals to trivial content’
The rational, obvious answers make no sense at all. No logical, reasonable person would consider it beneficial in any way to the game at all.

All they gave us was blanket answers or double talk that said nothing of value. Which of course my mother taught us never to accept.

[Rorrand-wyrmrest-accord (Rorrand)]

So… my farming attempts for Mimiron’s Head is now going to require me to wait for the damned boat in Stormwind to Northrend because the portal to Wyrmrest temple doesn’t exist? An entire continent is now more trouble to get to than it’s worth. And for what? To make old zones feel larger?

Atrocious decision.

EDIT: Apparently on the PTR there is a portal that leads to Old Dal. I guess that’s cool.

[Taienna-aerie-peak (Taienna)]

So the big question here is ‘why remove trivial portals to trivial content’
The rational, obvious answers make no sense at all. No logical, reasonable person would consider it beneficial in any way to the game at all.

All they gave us was blanket answers or double talk that said nothing of value. Which of course my mother taught us never to accept.

[Ryudaraku-moon-guard (Ryudaraku)]

How about taking some of those, alternate means of travel “Signet of Kirin Tor” “Jaina’s Locket” and the like toys so that we can use them cross character.

[Xintao-tichondrius]

Dear Blizzard,

You have painted yourselves in a corner trying to fix what is not broken.

[Velnora-blackhand]

With new expansions, we’ve made a tradition of removing some of the portals from the previous expansion’s cities.

Quite a tradition you got there. Before BFA the portals from Legion, WoD, MoP and Cata were still there. When was the last time portals were removed during a new expansion release?

We neglected to do that initially following Legion (and we never did that following Mists of Pandaria for various reasons)…

The portals to Cataclysm zones will remain intact…

So I guess this “tradition” is every 6 to 8 years you use a mid expansion update to cherry pick some portals to remove from the last 4 expansions. Seems odd to me.

The goal with that is to encourage transportation flow through newer places where players are more likely to interact with other players.

Are these “new” places your referring to the portal rooms in Stromwind and Orgrimmar? Or is it Boralus and Dazar’alor? AKA the centers of current content in the game. Do you mean that the reason for this change is to funnel players through these areas? Wouldn’t that make the world feel smaller? If all portals lead to Stormwind, then everyone is gonna be in Stormwind.

The main reason to go outside these new areas is to run old content, which doesn’t require player to player interaction 99% of the time. The removal of these portals just seems like a punishment for people that run old content regularly. It doesn’t feel like its a change made to benefit of the players at all. It feels like change for the sake of change.

[Rankin-shandris (Rankin)]

If you want I can list all the items for you

I shouldn’t have to farm a bunch of items on all of my characters just to keep the same functionality that is currently available.

[Verdre-silvermoon (Verdre)]

Consolidating portals and revamping the portal areas is a great idea. Removing older useful portals is a bad idea.

I’ve made this statement several times on this topic, and pretty much Every time Blizzard goes pants on head stupid.

Blizzard is a master at creating wonderful ideas.
Blizzard is also a master at botching said wonderful idea in some insane, silly or outrageous manner. The end result is either simply “ok” or ends up as being quite simply a bad idea.

Blizzard seldom manages to do the former without proceeding to the latter.

[Taienna-aerie-peak (Taienna)]

So… my farming attempts for Mimiron’s Head is now going to require me to wait for the damned boat in Stormwind to Northrend because the portal to Wyrmrest temple doesn’t exist? An entire continent is now more trouble to get to than it’s worth. And for what? To make old zones feel larger?

Atrocious decision.

not in the least.
They WANT it to be irritating enough for you so you just STOP going there and stay in their chosen zones to make the server seem more populated.
My guess is someone we dont know about is observing and theyre trying to keep them impressed.

[Spanko-kiljaeden (Spanko)]

You honestly don’t believe that do you?

[Rorrand-wyrmrest-accord (Rorrand)]

Still, atrocious decision. All that does is encourage me to stop playing. I would totally remain subbed for an entire month just farming old mounts and mogs if I felt the devs weren’t actively discouraging me from doing so.

[Kyrex-wyrmrest-accord (Kyrex)]

One such lodestar has been “don’t overuse portals between locations in the world”.

Is the content current and travel is still a core element?
Don’t use portals.

Is the content 14 years old and people are going to pull 40-man raids and AoE literal raid bosses down?
Maybe it shouldn’t take longer to get there than it does to walk through content that is older than most of the people playing the game.

If you want it to be annoying to travel through the old world, perhaps you should consider making there reasons for the old world to be relevant. All this does is make it less likely someone will do that piece of content at all because it went from the walk through whatever instance taking forever to just getting to the instance taking forever.

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.

While I think you chose the most boring, uninspired, and overused places to place the portal hubs, nobody is complaining that you’re cleaning up places like Cleft of Shadow so it isn’t a mess of random portals (and a couple duplicates, funny enough).

We’re complaining because you decided to add in portals to places that honestly needed them in the old world with Legion Dalaran, and then half a year after the expansion is over then suddenly decide to remove them.

It’s a pain to get anywhere in Southern Eastern Kingdoms as Horde, and it (still) is annoying to do anything in middle Kalimdor as Alliance.

tradition

Instanced content runs on formulaic designs.
Progression systems run on formulaic designs.
Open world content should almost never have the words “consistent”, “traditional”, or “formulaic” used with them. By their very definition that goes against the purpose of building a world.

[Taienna-aerie-peak (Taienna)]

They.Have.Items.You.Can.Pick.Up.for.Travel.Which.Trivializes.Travel.

Alien concept I know.

so…how many alts do you intend on posting on tonite?

items?
OH…you mean crap I have to rep grind for…then fill up my limited bag space with…and have horrid CDs…all because THEY removed portals for NO good reason.
Got it.

[Verdre-silvermoon (Verdre)]

The toys/items actually make it FASTER than taking portals so nothing is being removed.

And the problem is their CD is account wide. So if you pop a 4 hr CD toy, on one toon, it is now on CD for your entire account. So it doesn’t help people who decide to run multiple toons to maximize their chances are low drops rates.

Ashes of Alar ring a bell anyone?