That would require Blizzard to actually care about player agency instead of trying to micromanage everything we do.
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It exists but it isn’t a VALID argument. Making a change of any kind to a publicly facing application needs to be vetted by the PUBLIC that will use it, regardless of whether or not that public PAYS for the application or not (in this particular case they do) further disincitivizing random unnecessary changes to the applications featureset because it in some sense of the word nearly becomes a trespass to chattel. Ethically it absolutely is a trespass to chattel (changing something ‘owned or leased’ materially affecting its performance or features after the contract has been invoked thereby rendering the change a tort). Yes they are legally covered by the terms of service but Ethically and Morally they are NOT covered. A concept or action can be legal and be as unethical or immoral as you like.
We the public that will use the application will not be given the opportunity to properly vett this change. Therefore arguing that it was a change long due is invalid as it wasn’t something asked for by those who will use it, nor is it something that was offered to the public to gather sufficient POSITIVE reaction to warrant acceptance by that public.
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If flight points or AFK-flying are “more immersive” or “more engaging” or “more fun,” they’re kinda like rollercoasters, right? You don’t have real control over where you’re going, you just experience the ride.
That works for rollercoasters because they are fun and thrilling. They are designed to induce adrenaline rushes, scare you, build anticipation. WoW has never done that with flight paths. They have attempted it with pre-zone fly-overs (the dragon ride over Sunwell Plateau and bombing run comes to mind) but it generally falls flat too–it just doesn’t translate well to the virtual medium without VR.
Flight paths, old world tours, etc., aren’t fun and thrilling after you’ve done them often enough. “Often enough” varies from player to player; but universally every player will have a point where they say; “It is no longer worth it to me to go to X because it takes Y time, even though I really want to go to X.”
They aren’t engaging gameplay. They aren’t even gameplay! They don’t make the old world feel more alive. They don’t add anything of value to the experience.
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Actually it won’t be.
You all need to understand that this isn’t really intended to “explain” anything to us because the thing that needs to be understood is that that they are doing it to deliberately WASTE PLAYER TIME in order to pad their game metrics.
It is the same thing with the removal of flight and that was “discovered” to be a problem after nearly a decade of not being one.
They do these things because players let them get away with them and because they think they are cleverly upping their metrics at zero cost to them.
Well the only way to get their attention is to make them COST BLIZZARD something and that thing is time played. Everyone should just take a vacation from wow for a couple of weeks and let them see their played metrics tank and this will get sorted. Keep playing and giving them what they want and they will keep ignoring you because you’re showing them they can.
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It would be pretty cool if the community as a whole could co-ordinate that much, but we all know that would never happen, especially with the level of addiction so many hold-outs feel (subconsiously or consciously)
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Yes because you’re so immersed in WoW when you’re looking at loading screens.
And it’s your choice to have so many alts.
Jadeforest to ToT isn’t far either, it’s the next zone over from where you’d normally start from, big deal.
Unsub because of portal removal? That’s sad.
So… you are complaining about a small increase in travel time so you can do an insanely boring activity with insanely small odds of dropping, and then repeating this boring activity on each of your alts…
The problem is not the lack of portals, it is the fact that the game has these incredibly small chance drops on old content that encourages you to engage in this type of self destructing behavior.
Or more likely it’s about the 5,000 post thread where they very clearly ignored about 97% of the posts saying they dislike the change.
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Who cares how he/she plays the game?
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You’re being intentionally reductive. Many people in this thread have said that they are unsubbing because of the attitude/response and the game design direction, and that this portal fiasco (entirely unnecessary) is just the latest and/or last straw to break their backs.
You shouldn’t paint upset people out with such broad strokes. It makes you look like the type of person who would rant on FB about DARN ENTITLED KIDS AND THEIR in a thread discussing the merits of improving the healthcare system.
Man, I’m so immersed in wow on FPs/afk-flying. I’m so immersed nudging my mouse/keyboard on a ground mount as I get from point A to B ignoring all the worthless trash/creeps in-between.
Also…who is getting long loading screens? I don’t. Lol. Maybe upgrade your PC…
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Ok, but removing many of these portals does make the flight over to be the bulk of the time spent. I question whether or not anyone involved in this has tried doing holiday stuff like the Greench quests as an Alliance player. Getting to the northern EK as an Alliance player takes forever, and has been a brutal slog.
Wait, what? Please explain to me how as a warlock I have a ‘unique mean of transport’ that allows me to easily do a transmog run in the Caverns of Time or a mount run in Karazhan. You mean the ability that requires me and two other people to be in a party, go to a location and then summon someone else in the party? How is that at all relevant in a conversation that is primarily focused on what impacts people solo farming older content?
You did it once after Cataclysm when you removed the portals from Northrend Dalaran. Doing something once hardly counts as a tradition.
Well of course, because some of the Cataclysm zones can only be reached via portal. So please don’t make it sound like you’re doing us some favor by allowing us to actually access certain zones.
Why is a ring that transports you to Karazhan ok, but a portal is not? Why is it ok to go to the Argent Tournament via tabard but it’s not ok to go the Wyrmrest Temple via portal?
Ok, that explains why you decided to create a single room in SW/Org to act as a transportation hub. That doesn’t explain why you outright removed some portals completely.
Going back to what I said at the start, I’d like to see the people involved in this decision take an Alliance character up to the Artathi/Hillsbrad area (without the Warfront portal which is not always available) - and say with a straight face that isn’t “disproportionately inconvenient” but is instead “quite reachable.”
There have been very few times where I thought the WoW development team was completely out of touch with the players - this is one of them. It still floors me that in the other thread Bornakk seemed surprised that people actually go to the Caverns of Time still, as if transmog runs and the Raiding with Leashes achievements weren’t a thing that many people did. I feel like you guys didn’t “process feedback” in any meaningful way - other than to craft a PR statement.
I get that the players don’t design the game, and developers have to do what they think is best. But there also needs to be some room to adapt when a decision is unpopular - especially when we’re talking about quality of life changes (as opposed to stuff like raid difficulty).
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Blizzard. Do you want the world to simply “feel large” for the sake of it just being large? That is not necessarily a good thing if the world you created(a very beautiful design) feels dead because you have neglected it. Why would I decide to travel to such places and, in light of this, how is it a good idea to make it even harder to get to those places? I argue that it is going to have an adverse affect to what you want because people will not choose to travel out of the relevant zones because the pain is not worth the reward and the world will become that much smaller. Prove me wrong.
Hah. Nice catch there.
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making it more difficult for me to get around in the game simply means i don’t bother to go out unless i absolutely have to. i don’t bother with that quest or zone or any of those aspects of the game that i know aren’t 100% a sure thing to progress my character in a meaningful way, ie loot.
the long term effect is that i go and play a different game because my time feels wasted.
15 years of experience have proven this.
once you add quality of life changes, you can’t go and remove them without looking like you’re completely out of touch with your own game.
this decision, and the response to the overwhelming feedback, has an air of arrogance and disconnection that frankly, i’m becoming exceedingly tired of. too often i see outcry, and a response that says too bad we’re doing it anyway.
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Loading screens take a heck of a lot less time than a FP. And where the heck did the alt thing come from? I said nothing about my alts.
I don’t know what MOP map you’re looking at, but Jade Forest is far away and is a most inconvenient location to port people.
No, if I unsubbed, it would be a pile of things that I’m done dealing with from the dev team. Championing inconvenience for players and Blizz ignoring feedback is what’s sad.
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100% THIS. They don’t get that it seems.
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I mean…you really aren’t though? What you’re going to do, and I hate that I have this low of opinion of the developers, is add the portals back in at a later date and claim that you’re listening to the overwhelming amount of feedback about this. You’re going to act like you’re some kind of hero for adding them back in, and you’re going to expect praise to come with it.
Blizzard, we explained why this change isn’t good. The response does not even cover the valid concerns of reaching places that will actually be inconvenient to visit. Unless it has changed (and pardon me if it has, I haven’t been on the PTR) I can’t visit the city that I want and normally would visit because you guys deemed it unimportant to include in the current expansion portal room. You guys literally decided that my favorite major city wasn’t major enough to include in the Great Seal to start with, and now it’s also not even in the portal room. What’s more, that favorite city is also the only way to get to the portal to the Darkmoon Faire for the Horde, which makes it that much more out of the way if we can’t portal there.
What you, and I use the Royal you as in all Of Blizzard, don’t seem to understand is that while to some this will increase the feel of the world, to others it absolutely reduces it. Guild Wars has teleport spots instead of flight paths, and while there’s still travel once you reach your teleportation destination, you don’t have to take a flight path and then travel to where you want to go. The automated flight path was a novelty at the start, but now people AFK and get up from the PC when on a long one. Sometimes they even forget to come back for a while and end up logged out without ever doing what they set off to do. That’s what you’re fostering, Blizzard.
And the old world? We’ve all seen it, hundreds upon hundreds of times. You don’t put any current content in it so we have no reason to enjoy the trip to our destination. That’s why the removal of portals is getting such massive backlash.
Please reconsider this stance. At least keep the portals that we have now, and give me back my Thunderbluff one.
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I really wish there was a way you could ignore the shills on these new Forums.
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A small increase per character per attempt, that will quickly add up to a lot of lost time. Which is something that you should already know if you claim to have read so many posts.
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