Rearranging and Removing Portals

[Tadpo-eldrethalas (Tadpo)]

so once again, just like in the past two Alpha/Beta cycles - screw player feedback. I wish it were surprising but this is all I have come to expect from this development team.

[Ralanbék-frostmourne (Ralanbék)]

This will reach 5k in a day!

[Hnetu-norgannon (Hnetu)]

“No one liked that.”

[Vertigineux-thrall (Vertigineux)]

This is what I do. If I were ever benched or my raid team fell apart, i’d probably quit. The 6 hours of raiding is really all I do.

[Cipactonal-zuljin]

It probably won’t change your outlook, but it seems like this is a change for the sake of making a change, with a narrow-minded frame of mind on the issue. The issue of the world feeling bigger (or conversely, not big enough with the portals), seems lame to me.
Once upon a time, hearthstones were 1 hour CD; flightmasters took you from one destination to the next without chaining connecting flights; flying mounts didn’t exist. I don’t want to eat my words, but justifying the removal of portals for the sake of making the world feel bigger is half-baked - why have hearthstones with such a short CD (or flying mounts, or seamless FP’s, etc.) (PS: please don’t take away flying mounts).
We have 8 continents with content that people go back to for different reason.

Why make it more inconvenient for players who are taking advantage of the content that’s still there/they’re still farming/working/etc?

Imagine the players who haven’t upgraded to BFA (who don’t have access to Zandalar/Kultiras for the full suite of portals) who suddenly now have less access & transportation in the game they already have less access to.

[Aukos-barthilas]

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 two biggest annoyances of the removal are pandaria shrine and caverns of time.

Caverns of time is in the middle of nowhere and does not have a quick way of getting there. Shrine is a significantly better portal than the new jade forest one as it is actually central to the pandaria region. Being across the country at jade forest just means I have to spend longer sitting doing nothing on a flight path before I get to actually play the game.

The outrage behind removing these portals is because people want to play the video game, not sit on a flight path for the hundredth time.

[Maizou-proudmoore (Maizou)]

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.

Also, on top of my response pointing out the fact without the Dalaran Crater Portal, Alliance have no access to Northern Eastern Kingdoms without a 10+ minute flight path (no, Boralus Port to Ironforge doesnt count, cause low levels exist and even then, it just cuts off like 3 minutes on the flight path, so Stormwind Flight Path is closest), and with holiday events like Greench up there, that’s not acceptable.

How do you guys legitimately look at a thread that got OVER 5,000 posts in less than a week and just go, “Naw, we know better than the players who pay to play our game.”

[Bramblés-tanaris (Bramblés)]

Its not just the portals, the things they are changing without needing to, is what is killing my desire to play. Think back, when was the last thing that blizzard did that was freakin awesome?? Yea ill wait.

[Verdre-silvermoon (Verdre)]

Blizzard didn’t learn in WoD when they came out and stated they didn’t want flying in Draenor.

It’s a sad statement, but Blizzard only seems to learn when Fire, Pitchforks and Unsubs are brought into play.

It’s really a shame they can’t be reasonable. Yes, obviously the playerbase can be unreasonable, I won’t deny that. Their job is to look at all the comments, weed out the bad ones, and find the genuine message underneath. Then once they’ve found the real message, they are expected to respond to it. That’s part of their job.

The Blue’s response up top feels like they didn’t even listen. They just made a decision and made with the pretty words to act like they heard us.

[Upton-demon-soul]

How do you guys legitimately look at a thread that got OVER 5,000 posts in less than a week and just go, “ Naw, we know better than the players who pay to play our game. ”

Because they’re the same idiots who blamed us for the 7.2 ilvl scaling not getting any feedback because they purposely made the decision not to tell us when they implemented it into the PTR.

[Lorethelin-emerald-dream]

Take the portal to Uldum from SW/ORG. The flight takes less than a minute.

You’re welcome

[Taienna-aerie-peak (Taienna)]

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.

Clearly it IS a big deal.
Having someone outside my burning home telling me that its ‘not a big deal’ doesnt change the fact that my house is burning.
Its just some joker who has no clue what hes talking about.

The PLAYERS decide what a ‘big deal’ is, friend. Remember who pays the salaries and server bills around here? it AINT Bllizzard devs or the blue posting here.
This is akin to some janky politician telling me they know whats best for me and what i really, really want while I am paying their salary.

[Spanko-kiljaeden (Spanko)]

Lol probably more than that. They just don’t listen to us and I think players are starting to get more frustrated than ever about it.

[Slyas-thrall]

Traveling 12 hours to Paris France doesn’t make the world feel bigger. Experiencing Paris, New York, LA, Moscow in a day makes the wold feel bigger. The same concept applies to your game. Being able to get to more of the world quicker makes it feel larger.

The removal of portals from old hubs literally makes no sense.

[Taivora-dark-iron]

“We know how the game really needs to be played, you’ll see.” Restrictions upon restrictions upon restrictions. I’m really tired of being micromanaged in a game.

[Valestia-wyrmrest-accord (Valestia)]

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.

Not IN THE FUTURE. NOW. PUT PORTALS TO KARAZHAN, CAVERNS OF TIME, AND THE DALARAN CRATER BACK -RIGHT NOW-.

[Bailm-ghostlands]

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.

We have told you hundreds of times in the last thread what locations are being made unreasonably inaccessible. Had you really read through the replies like you claim, you would know this.

You don’t want our feedback, you want to keep fishing for responses until you get the ones you like.

[Kyawardly-hyjal]

Removing easy transportation options doesn’t make us play longer. It just makes us do less while we’re playing.

[Rekknots-lightnings-blade (Rekknots)]

These changes are nothing but an attempt to increase the amount of time players spend in-game. I said it before and I will say it again… These kinds of changes succeed only in infuriating the established World of Warcraft community. You are not improving the game for anyone, and you are only further frustrating your player base by endlessly and needlessly fiddling with every single conceivable facet of the game to an absolutely absurd degree.

It’s astonishing to me that the developers cannot see how detrimental they are to the health and community of their own game. Good god, I cannot express enough how freaking gobsmacked I am at the inadequacy of the entire Blizzard team to get things right the first time and to just freaking stop screwing around with things that don’t need to be revised over 10 million freaking times! You guys constantly break things that were not broken to begin with! Utterly ridiculous!

[Palatina-garrosh]

Increase Flight Speed it’s all I want. Put a pricetag of 10k, 20k, 50k. Just make it an option. Make us want to pay a vendor for something worthwhile.