Rearranging and Removing Portals

[Caelwn-proudmoore (Caelwn)]

Too many eliminations of the distances between places can diminish a sense of the world having a meaningful size.

While the basic premise here seems reasonable, I am not sure it’s being applied to the right thing in the design.

There’s a difference between inter-zone and intra-zone travel.

The Inter-zone travel that portals replace is generally done by catching boats or getting on flight paths. During this type of travel, player engagement is reduced due to the enforced nature of the trip: I sit on a griffon and am flown through a predefined path, or I stand on a boat and wait for a loading screen.

At these times, I’ll usually go browse the web or something while I wait to arrive, because there’s nothing to do in game. The scenery may be nice, but my goal when going somewhere is to get there. It’s like a morning commute - The scenery may be nice but after I’ve done it a few times I just want to get off the road and do what I set out to do. The scenery is often very nice, but there’s no engagement, so instead of ‘the world feeling big’, ‘the process of getting to my interaction goal is boring’.

Intra-zone travel is where the world really feels big. If I ride, or even fly manually through it, I’m more engaged because I’m the one driving the motion. I might see something I decide to go look at closer, take a different route etc. Sure, after I’ve done this loads of times it gets a bit dull again and I just go straight for my goal, but that just means that it makes even less sense to force additional travel time on me, I’m clearly not enjoying it. I’m not arguing for instant teleport to every location, I’m just arguing that the current portal system is fine because it doesn’t break any of the actual engagement that makes the world feel big.

You can’t force people to like doing stuff they find boring. Taking out portals to ‘make the world feel large’ is, just in my opinion, a poor design decision predicated on a misunderstanding of why the world feeling large is a good thing in the first place. Don’t stretch out the non-interactive parts of travel, people’ll just alt-tab out so your large world might as well just be a big loading screen.

[Lorethelin-emerald-dream]

Sounds like you are very upset and need a hug

/hug

[Rankin-shandris (Rankin)]

I’m actually happy they are showing some spine and not buckling to the outrage mob. It’s a welcomed change.

A welcomed changed? Really? Show me anyone asking for these portals to be removed. And it has to be prior to the 8.1.5 PTR.

[Fallynn-wyrmrest-accord (Fallynn)]

We believe that the numerous remaining means of quick access in the game make most locations quite reachable.

Except not everyone has such things and going through all those ridiculous questlines on every single alt is nonsense. That’s rep grinds and questlines I ALREADY DID but I’d have to do over again on many alts… And that’s not fun at all. It’s a lazy excuse. That “functionality” isn’t functional at all. No one wants to rep grind the same thing 20 times over. Even 2 times over is absolute nonsense.

You don’t understand what we’re saying. We’ve seen the world already thousands of times. It isn’t any bigger at all with what you’re doing.

“Don’t overuse portals” give me a break. Who cares if we want to get places quickly? Those that don’t want to use the portals don’t have to. You provided something only to take it away and that’s really annoying. That’s what it’s been lately–“let’s make stupid decisions and preach control over our players and pretend it will be better in the long run”.

News flash: it’s not. Those obsessed with Vanilla can go play vanilla. Giving us quality of life changes only to take them away is a terrible idea and you folks clearly can’t afford all this upset right now. More are going to quit due to these pointless decisions.

Give the portals you’re taking away to mages then, if you’re so set on removing them forever. I don’t enjoy my playtime more with increased travel time nonsense. I tab. I get bored. And if the pointlessness increases? I might just leave. At this point I was trying to do old content. But now it’s being made a whole lot more pointlessly difficult.

1. Keep the portals in Dalaran. It is entirely pointless to remove them.
2. Add Shrine to the portals room if you have to. I don’t know why the center of that continent portal needs to be taken away and an additional amount of pointless time wasted flying from one part to another.

Your response is unsurprising. But honestly I’m tired of the bad news. I’m so close to leaving it’s not even funny. And I used to love this game.

[Xyrtran-medivh]

again this is clearly another case of:

"We read your feedback but we disagree, this is our game and we want you to stay logged forever if we could"

the entire of BFA is basically the same feeling, removing portals for what purpose no other than increasing the time being logged in the freaking game?

[Taienna-aerie-peak (Taienna)]

Being able to get to more of the world quicker makes it feel larger.

THAT!
Exactly THAT.
We all know that. Even the blue and the devs know it.
They just want to play semantics games and blow smoke where the sun dont shine.

Good with me though.
I can just play another game and take my $45 a month plus extras with me. A game is a game is a game.
I did without WoW for 12+ years. I can do without it again.

[Cyniel-dentarg (Cyniel)]

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 directed at you and I’m a WYSIWYG kinda guy… that being said

I would believe that line of bull rear cookies if the caverns of time portal hadn’t been in place since 2008 and it remained untouched… until now. Yes you removed the portals in each factions area, but the CoT portal remained… The portals leading to the different quest areas in the Legion Dalaran should remain… because they were put there specifically because of our artifact weapons.

Also to note other portal removal in this game occured when travel was more convenient. Blizzard has done everything within its power to make it less convenient over the last several years… and to us it is nothing more than drawing out the amount of time you want us logged in… So while your message is flowery, pretty and cute… It is a sieve that doesn’t hold water.

[Sìmplejack-thrall (Sìmplejack)]

Remember how the game used to be about playing how YOU want to and now they dictate it should be played?

Miss those days.

[Lorethelin-emerald-dream]

I did. I actually made a 4-part series about it on YouTube. Also, a big portion of the Classic community thinks its a good change. Wonder why…

[Nicodemùs-argent-dawn (Nicodemùs)]

Honestly there are two sticking points for me.

First: Caverns of Time.

I am unsure if the npcs with dialogue options to transport you to the Caverns of Time are staying, but since you’re removing the portals from both Dalaran’s why not put one in the portal chamber?

The Caverns of Time is a place visited regularly for dungeon/raid transmog hunting. Don’t you guys WANT us doing stuff? Making it a pain to actually get to the “stuff” we want to do isn’t incentivizing us to play.

Second: Dalaran Crater.

Maybe there really is a Horde bias and you guys don’t realize it, but ever since the Alliance lost Hillsbrad, the only convenient way to get to the northwest part of the Eastern Kingdoms for the Alliance, is that portal to Dalaran crater. The closest flight point is Chillwind Pass in the Western Plaguelands. That makes doing stuff like the Valentine’s event, and Christmas event a real pain for us.

I could deal with the lack of the portal if you’d say drop a few Gilnean npc’s in Gilneas and add a flight path so I can actually get to that general area in a reasonable amount of time, but right now I use that portal to Dalaran crater on quite a few toons, and losing it is a real quality of life hit.

Conclusion:

Please add a Caverns of Time portal to the portal room.

And please add either a portal to Dalaran Crater to the portal room, or an Alliance flight path to Gilneas. The fact that the Alliance just sacked Lordaeron should mean we have some sort of foothold up there now at the very least.

As an aside, you guys need to stop putting everything into just Stormwind and Ogrimmar and ignoring the other capitals. All capitals should have most of the same amenities like barbers, transmog, void storage, and portal tooms.

[Nillah-uldaman (Nillah)]

If any of ya’ll decide to migrate to FF14, hit me up. I’m on Brynhildr. I’d be glad to help out some new players. I’m hoping to get enough together to make a “WoW refugees” free company(guild).

[Moonslayer-lightnings-blade]

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.

Tone deaf as ever if after 5000 replies in the other thread and this is the conclusion the designers are sticking to. I won’t be as directly negatively impacted as my friends but if the game is not fun for them why are they gonna stay around? if they leave what motivation do I have to stick around?

The design philosophies are severely outdated when matched against competing products of the same genre. Can you guys at least give more of a care for the community feedback instead of stubbornly sticking to bad ideas?

I’m exasperated from explaining why it’s a bad idea in the other thread.

I’ll offer a simple solution:

1. a Caverns of Time portal in the portal room.
2. a Portal to Dalaran Crater, Wyrmrest Accord, and Kharazhan in the portal rooms. You could put a Kirin Tor NPC next to these to make it look cool.
   (satisfying the need for northern EK for alliance, and mid-southern EK for horde).
3. A portal to the Vale of Eternal Blossom shrines in the portal room (leave the current Jade Forest portal near the Cata portals alone).
4. a portal room in ALL faction capitals, even the destroyed ones (but in the time rewind).

[Adon-moon-guard]

Just another show of how blizzard is unaware of how the players feel the disconnection and the lack of care

[Cysrel-azralon (Cysrel)]

I give up, more garbage update.

Hi FF14.

[Spanko-kiljaeden (Spanko)]

This isn’t classic. Nice one!

[Livara-stormrage (Livara)]

I’m done giving money to a company ran by idiots stupider than a bunch of monkeys. Bye. Uninstalled the game. Screw the game time left. I’m off to FFVIX.

[Brahmina-khadgar (Brahmina)]

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

No, it doesn’t. It takes more than three minutes, multiplied by the number of alts people run through the CoT instances.

When people feel their time is being wasted on travel, they simply don’t do it. That equals playing for shorter periods, which leads to logging on less often, which eventually winds up with another lost subscription. I can’t believe that is the outcome the devs really want.

[Enived-thrall (Enived)]

I’m sitting here struggling to imagine a scenario where I decide I know better than one of my clients, and send them, say, a logomark consisting of bright colors and animals instead of the professional, demure logotype they need for their law firm. Upon the appalled, clamoring response I could have easily predicted, I respond not by reassessing my customer’s needs and working to fulfill them, but by sending them a ridiculous essay about what I wanted for THEIR logo… Where I say that my services are not about THEIR needs, but instead about what message I want to put out for MY graphic design brand… The fact that they are paying me to produce a product be damned, because apparently the fact that I’m continuing a creative pursuit gets to invalidate every criticism.

I can’t do it. My brain keeps breaking three seconds in.

[Tiridan-aerie-peak (Tiridan)]

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.

Personally, I don’t think the Karazhan portal should’ve been removed, for Horde Players in particular that is. Without it, it’s harder to get to central Eastern Kingdoms.

[Sinelus-moonrunner (Sinelus)]

Alright so:

1. Why is the portal to Azsuna instead of Dalaran? This has 0 logic. A HS isn’t a “portal” and has a CD.

2. I would like you to keep the COV portal and Karazhan portal because they make it easy without having to do the quests involved for rings(horrid for alts players like me).

3. What’s happening to Shattrah? Its too far away from entry portal to outlands and I don’t wanna have 2min flights just to turn in TW on many alts.