I like this post. Clicking a heart apparently has a complex micro-managing system too.
Just replace the Aszuna portal with a CoT portal. Oh and don’t touch the Legion Dalaran portals either.
Ion should have never have been hired for an MMO.
He would be wonderful on the diablo team, on the WoW team, he makes holinka look like gc
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I like this post. Clicking a heart apparently has a complex micro-managing system too.
Yeah, that’s the problem. Taking choices away.
I’m sorry, but hitting autorun and flying straight to my destination and alt-tabbing for 5 minutes isn’t going to make anything feel more alive for anyone.
I said this on reddit and I’ll say it here, this would work a lot better if it was ESO, or FF14 or GW2. I wouldn’t mind being forced to take the long way around if I could run into dolmens or hunt marks or some type of zone event on my way, something that would be worth stopping to do. Instead all this does it make it take longer just to get to the content I actually want to do.
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A lot of the boats, Zeplins stopped working properly some time ago. For example the darnasus boat hasn’t worked properly for years, that’s why there is a “portal” at the end of the dock instead.
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Flying on a flight path and going AFK for 10 minutes as I go from one point of a continent to another doesn’t bring life to the world.
It means I’m tabbed out of the game, suffer an afk logout because I get wrapped up in something else IRL, or I don’t start the flight in the first place because that 10 minutes could have been spent tromping through Caverns of Time and that’s all I’d had, so now I just don’t log in at all.
It means I’m instead clicking my phone for mission checking… because that sure makes the world feel bigger and alive. sarcasm
Removing portals for removing sake doesn’t make any sense, plain and simple. They literally created a hub room where all the current portals were supposed to go, yet magically what’s happening instead is they’re removing portals entirely and calling it an improvement.
At this rate, when the next expansion comes, they’ll ignore the portal rooms entirely and say something nonsensical like, “oh, the portal room was a special BFA feature. Don’t you have hearthstones?”
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A decade ago the were only three continents and Outland. And you still had portals to various places. Considerably more locations has been added since
then, many of them of which are either very time consuming to reach via flight point. That’s also not taking to account that the Cataclysm revamp made some locations harder to reach (I’m thinking specifically of northern EK for Alliance).
Ok, but I do not think it is going to do it. It is going to lead to either less people going out in the world, or people going AFK on a 10 minute taxi ride.
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The word “tedious” comes up frequently in discussions about convenience and “skipping” “content.”
Just gonna throw it out there that if the core content of the game (specs/combat) were more engaging, it would be the domino that set in motion a lot of other dominos. People would enjoy playing the game more if that system weren’t feeling so repetitive and hollow compared to earlier expansions.
Blizzard keeps treating the symptoms of problems rather than the actual problems themselves.
- Rewards feel too small. World mobs feel like trash now–that is, they drop nothing of value and feel like a slowdown mechanism BECAUSE…
- The general game doesn’t feel challenging enough, and that’s not something you fix by adding a slider (scaling). You fix that by making the core gameplay better. More exciting. More engaging. Faster! (GCD was bad. Slowing down combat was bad if you didn’t make abilities more exciting to compensate).
Fix the problems, not the symptoms. People wouldn’t complain as much about inconveniences if the alternative was rewarding, fun, engaging content.
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Warlocks, who require their target to be in the same group as them. Then for TWO OTHER PEOPLE in the same group to make every stage of the summoning work, are notorious about maintaining their nightmare monopoly of dealing with mouth breathing idiots
nice to see the club penguin overwatch on daddy blizzards part. Flagged for a no-no word…
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I just logged on to the PTR and found there’s no Dalaran portal but the Kirin Tor Emissary seems to think I can find it upstairs. Can also confirm there is absolutely no CoT portal to be found in Old Dalaran OR New Dalaran OR the fancy new portal room.
This portal room should just have all the things OR you should keep the old portals around.
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WoW being a game they want to play and them forcing you to play it the way they want it to be played is not the same. I like spicy food doesn’t mean that I should shove ghost peppers down everyones throat.
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Ion had been doing raid encounters since 2008 and the achievement system before becoming game director. Nobody can say that the raids started to suck then. He wasn’t even director when the biggest change was decided, the removal of max level flying.
Check my profile. I have Explorer. I have Loremaster. I don’t have a lot of Dungeon and Raid achieves done when they were current, and almost no PvP ones. Going out in the world is what I DO.
Removing portals–not moving them to a new location, but removing them–makes it harder to go do things out in the world.
I feel like the folks who don’t see these removals as a problem are the ones who just sit in the major towns and wait for queues because if they had been going out in the world, they’d know why the portals are necessary.
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People have been flying on long flight paths for the entirety of this game. I remember I used to go from Darnassus to Gadgetzan and that took a while.
So… you’re saying if it takes you 10 extra minutes to get to Caverns of Time, you’d rather not do the activity at all? Am I reading that correctly?
I’m just having a hard time understanding how adding five or ten minutes to go do older raid runs, or whatever you’d do in the old world, is a bad thing.
If I want to go see a movie and there is an accident delays me 10 minutes I don’t suddenly turn around. If I were to do that, I clearly didn’t want to see the movie all that badly.
I think if people want to get to their activities and if they’re being delayed by a few minutes, they didn’t want to do those activities all too much if a small delay will stop them from doing them.
I agree with what others have said and Blizzard has created this problem, because the vast majority of players have come to expect portals for some time now and they are convenient. But if I want to go to Caverns of Times and the portal isn’t there. Well it’s time to get on a boat or figure out a way to Darnassus or Ratchet.
I don’t remember seeing any solicitation for feedback on portals prior to it dropping on the ptr which has seen no changes since it dropped.
Bad changes are bad changes with or without an explanation.
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Because I for one love alt-tabbing to Netflix whenever I want to go anywhere in this game /s.
Really makes the world feel alive.
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At least this wasn’t smarmy like the last blue response. Still infuriating, though, because almost every other MMORPG I’ve played has streamlined/reduced travel time as the game got bigger.
But almost 5k posts and the best you can do is “we’re open to adding additional means of travel in the future”? Yeah, the previous plans I had on finish leveling up my unlocked races (2x each, one to unlock cosmetic and one to actually look cool in said cosmetic armor) have started to look like I’m going to have to put them away for now. I don’t mind the travel experience at lower level but once I hit the upper levels I enjoy the fact that I can go almost anywhere quickly and efficiently. Till now, at least.
Bad enough we’ve already had enough time-wasting thrown with the race unlocks, “pathfinder” and slow leveling (at least that’s partly reverted, but still) at us but now you want to make old content even harder to get to.
Yeah, time to start checking out some other games.
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First I want to say kudos for cleaning up the portal situations in Orgrimar and Stormwind. De-duplicating and centralizing portals inside an expandable structure is a much-needed change, especially in Stormwind where the portals were inexplicably spread all over the city.
However, as a player who returned little over one year ago I deeply disagree with the decision to remove portals from prior expansions as new expansions come out. This decision excludes leveling characters from enjoying one of the benefits of advancing through level ranges that had existed when the prior expansions were current content.
If you feel you must close portal hubs to funnel traffic to the faction capitals and the main hub(s) of the current expansion at least consider allowing old hubs to remain open to lower level characters while those hubs are level appropriate at least until lower level characters have access to the next portal hub (or provide adequate alternatives in the faction capital portal rooms for those closed portals that would become accessible as characters progress in level similar to how the Hellfire, Blasted Lands, and Boralus/Dazar’alor portals become accessible as one levels up on live at present).
What I mean by this is as follows:
Lvl 1-59: “Classic” portal access, which I believe is no portals at all.
Lvl 60-79: Northrend Dalaran portal hub becomes available
(I’m not aware of what portals were available in BC other than the capital city portals, but if other city portals were available in Shattrath they should be available in this level range as well)
Lvl 80-89: WotLK (and BC if applicable) portal hubs closed except for portals to faction capitals, Pandaria portal hubs open.
Lvl 90-99: Pandaria portal hubs remain open (because Cataclysm did not add a city portal hub and WoD spread city portals around a large camp instead of grouping them together in a convenient hub room)
Lvl 100-109: Pandaria portal hub closed (except for faction capitols), Legion portal hubs open.
Lvl 110-120: Legion portal hubs close except for portals to faction capitals and the Vale of Eternal Blossoms faction hubs in Pandaria (this allows players who’ve presumably leveled through Pandaria to still reach Pandaria’s faction shrines instead of forcing them to go to the starting villages… alternatively, have the Pandaria portal in faction capitals change target to the faction shrines at level 100, nobody wants to go to the Pandaria starting villages after they’ve leveled out of Pandaria.)
One exception to the above is the portal hub in Legion Dalaran’s Aegwynn’s Gallery. This hub provides access to the Cavern of Time, Wyrmrest Temple, Dalaran Crater, and Karazhan. These are locations that are very convenient for players trying to obtain mounts and battle pets for their collection. Sure, some mages have access to Dalaran Crater, I obtained this teleport and portal myself, but there are no teleportation options to take us directly to the other locations.
As for the transportation items, these items take up bag space and must be obtained individually on every character. They are certainly more convenient than static portals for people who’ve chosen to obtain them, but they should not be considered a suitable replacement for the standing portals that are being removed from the game.
Thinking back through what I’ve written and the majority of the comments I’ve read I feel like what all the backlash boils down to is this:
It feels like we’ve earned these portals by paying our subscriptions, paying for expansions, and leveling through content. Taking away these fast travel options feels very much like you are taking away conveniences we have earned in one way or another for the sake of forcing us to travel the way you want us to, to experience the content the way you want us to, instead of allowing us the freedom of choice to experience content the way we’ve come to expect. This is especially true of past expansion content that long-time players have already experienced.
It feels like most of us expected all of the existing portals to be consolidated in the new portal rooms. Finding out a limited selection of portals have been chosen and some very convenient portals that have no other means of direct travel will soon be inaccessible unless we are on a quest that requires them has been a huge shock to an apparent majority of players who are actively paying attention to upcoming changes.
Taking away Quality of Life conveniences we feel we have earned is always going to feel unreasonable. If you must close portal hubs as expansions go on at least allow leveling characters access to portal hubs appropriate to their level range. If you must close the vast majority of the portals in Legion’s Dalaran to drive traffic to faction capitals and current content please at least leave those portals open for characters in the 100-109 bracket and give 110-120 characters equivalent portals in the faction capitol portal hubs.
Thank you for listening.
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I think Ion was a better developer than leader, and certainly better than he is at public speaking. They are not his strong skills and it shows.
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