Rearranging and Removing Portals

[Taivora-dark-iron]

I can’t wait. I’m not sure what I should do: TW, leveling a Zandalari druid, or making popcorn and reading the forums. I hope they actually understand the repercussions this time and actually try to help players, add things to the game, instead of removing.

[Nillah-uldaman (Nillah)]

They’ve always designed World of Warcraft as a game THEY want to play.

Many of the people who made WoW were ex Everquest hardcore raiders.

The game director today was top ten US guild raider in the Original World of Warcraft.

And that was great, nearly two decades ago. They had the same mind as their players back then. But the playerbase has changed since then, and Blizzard isn’t changing with them.

Actually that’s not true, they’re changing and deciding it’s more about the money than making fun games.

[Brahmina-khadgar (Brahmina)]

The sad thing, too, is I was excited for the portal room because I thought it would just be a centralized location for all of the portals in the game! And then it was revealed what portals were actually there, and then the news of removing the rest, and all of that excitement for this room immediately vanished.

Sad day…

Dang, all out of likes. Have this instead:

[Miadra-arygos (Miadra)]

The problem isn’t that people don’t want to explore, the problem is they don’t like being forced to explore content they have explored 5k times already, just to reach their destination.

[Ðirespirit-goldrinn]

If a player is engaging in self harm, I find arguments against inconveniences coming from that player to be hypocritical.

[Ashrea-argent-dawn]

The portals brought me back to the forums only to find that they’ve changed horribly with the like system and whatnot.

I do appreciate that the threads can grow larger than they used to but the color scheme is still awful for my eyes so I can’t stick around long at all (probably better that way. )

[Hushkawnek-cenarius (Hushkawnek)]

So you’re sticking to having a single portal on the eastern end of an entire continent?

[Supervitti-arthas]

Why are people playing an MMORPG if they don’t want to go out and explore the world?

Because a lot of these players have done it a hundred times already. I’m done exploring after having been to a place a hundred times already.

[Rhuor-wyrmrest-accord (Rhuor)]

Dang, all out of likes. Have this instead:

And I’ll give one of mine!

[Fendendis-wyrmrest-accord]

There’s a huge problem here, and it has nothing to do with convenience or perceived laziness on the player’s part.

The problem is that the world has nothing to explore. There’s nothing for me to see in Terrokar Forest that I haven’t seen 30+ times since Burning Crusade came out. The Barrens remains as barren as it was shortly after the release of Cataclysm.

You want us to go out and be part of the world, to embrace the size of it and the journey from point A to B, but you don’t support that. Blizzard has not made an organic world that gives us a reason to stay in it.

You need to give player’s a reason for being part of the world, to encourage that kind of exploration and travelling that you want to be a guiding principle of WoW’s design. Simply removing portals does not give us a living world, it just makes things inconvenient for players.

Give us new outdoor challenges. Take old zones and sneak in some secrets. Put treasure chests in the world that actually have some value, so it’s exciting to see them! You had something really good with the pre-event Legion Invasions, start creating random world events! Just chilling Orgrimmar when bam! there’s an announcement that Alliance Forces have launched an attack on Arathi basin.

I’m sure there’s been hundreds of ideas of how to make the world feel alive on these forums, so I’ll stop there. That’s what we need though.

tl;dr If you want to make us be part of the world, give us a reason. If we’re just running through it to get from one Transmog farm to the other, than there isn’t any point.

[Luuni-area-52]

The game has grown considerably more casual. And I think we’re seeing that in this thread.

If you complained about lack of “travel” a decade ago, you would have been told to “deal with it”.

I’m not saying removing the portal room is good or bad. I’m just stating I understand why Blizzard is doing this. Not that it is good or bad. They’re doing this to force players to maybe take a boat once in a while? Do sometime besides being instantly teleported to your destination.

I agree they do a poor job at giving you incentive to go out into the world. But they want to make their world feel more alive. And this is how they’re planning on doing it.

[Blays-bloodhoof]

The sad thing, too, is I was excited for the portal room because I thought it would just be a centralized location for all of the portals in the game! And then it was revealed what portals were actually there, and then the news of removing the rest, and all of that excitement for this room immediately vanished.

Sad day…

Also, and this is very important:

• Blizzard is planning on level-locking the portals or at the very least phasing them so that you cannot use any portals they don’t want you to use.

This very important to remember. They’ve already stated that they’ll phase portals in and out for quests you’re working on. This whole system is about one thing:

MORE CONTROL AND LESS PLAYER CHOICE

That’s it. Their statements about guiding principles and unique class travel options is inconsistent across classes, class changes, zones and xpacks. There is a clear pattern of inconsistency and disregard for community.

Only IONs vision remains. Weep and despair. You are having his fun now and the beatings will continue until morale improves.

[Midnâ-darrowmere]

You white knights are helping to kill this game more than the CMs at this point

[Hushkawnek-cenarius (Hushkawnek)]

Right, except it’s just stopping there. Removing avenues of quick travel is easy to do to up the /played metric, but building content requires actual work, so don’t hold your breath for that one.

[Liniariä-aerie-peak]

I’m not saying removing the portal room is good or bad. I’m just stating I understand why Blizzard is doing this. Not that it is good or bad. They’re doing this to force players to maybe take a boat once in a while? Do sometime besides being instantly teleported to your destination.

I don’t mind taking a boat every now and again and then using a flight point, but in order to find out which boat goes where and when, is 100% frustrating and you can’t find it in game, you MUST go to a 3rd site to look it up. That is a failed design. Fix that and maybe, just maybe you have a point in making traveling a good time sink.

[Amandiel-nesingwary (Amandiel)]

They’ve always designed World of Warcraft as a game THEY want to play.

Ok, and if they keep alienating their player base THEY will be the only ones still playing it.

Many of the people who made WoW were ex Everquest hardcore raiders.

And many of those people are no longer working on WoW or have left Blizzard, so I’m not sure what your point is or what that has to do with travel options?

The game director today was top ten US guild raider in the Original World of Warcraft.

Which is completely irrelevant to the topic at hand. But the hardcore raiding community currently isn’t very happy at the current state of WoW either.

[Sly-emerald-dream (Sly)]

I’m not leaving over such a minor change and I’m most likely not the only one. I don’t necessarily like them but I will not leave over it. It reeks of whining of the sake of whining. They’ve already removed portals before, why complain that much just now?

I can’t speak for anyone else as you seem to enjoy doing, but I can say for me that BFA is boring. But I quite enjoy wow. The way I enjoy it is by participating in content outside of BFA. I do pet battles, transmog, mount runs, and level alts. I find myself getting bored quickly by dealing with long travel times and staring at a wyvern through 30%+ of my gameplay. That will in turn make me eventually quit. When making it easier to get around is all I need to make things feel less tedious.

[Luuni-area-52]

Don’t you just talk to the boat NPC at the docks? They’ve always told me where boats go.

Also where is everyone going that they’re upset that it will take a bit more time to get to? If there is nothing to do in the Old World, as many have said, what is out there that you must get to and taking five more minutes upsets?

[Rollo-thunderhorn (Rollo)]

Yes, and Afrasiabi treated the Everquest designers the exact same way WoW players treat him, by pitching a fit when he didn’t like something.

[Vhx-kiljaeden]

I agree they do a poor job at giving you incentive to go out into the world. But they want to make their world feel more alive. And this is how they’re planning on doing it.

Making travel times longer makes the world feel more alive than say, having faction incursions outside of 2 dinky islands but rather across the breadth of their entire planet/world? In an expansion based around faction conflict, no less, giving players reasons other than soloing older content for xmogs & mounts to be in those older zones would have been a reason worth the development time put in.