Rearranging and Removing Portals

Thorhàmmer-proudmoore · March 7, 2019, 4:41pm

I don’t know which portals you’ve added back in.

BUT - I would like to thank you for the thorough explanation. I wish this kind of elaboration was more common with many other questions about the game.

Rankin-shandris · March 7, 2019, 4:42pm

It’s not the only solution, and I will still have a choice. Now try again with an actual attempt at honest discourse instead of the hateful and toxic arguments you’ve been spewing.

Taienna-aerie-peak · March 7, 2019, 4:42pm

Isnt that cute. no choice in the matter.
Sure we have choices.
Mage portals. MOST of us have mages here. Which makes Blizzard a liar on what they claim is the goal here…making the world ‘bigger’.
So they took the portal TO the MoP Temples. So what? Any mage of mine can port me there anyway.
So much for making the world ‘bigger’ as they claim.

Stockholm Syndrome at its finest.

And my other choices include opening that FF14 account today.
The wife is already on board. Just need to hit up her brother and his wife about moving over to that game instead.

anon96172537 · March 7, 2019, 4:42pm

What are the chances this is an early change for a revamped Azeroth, with World Quests dotting the entire world map?

If it isn’t, and therefore would seem nothing but arbitrary, why not let players unlock a portal in each zone by completing the quest lines there?

This change will make me less inclined to go out and do things in old content zones.

Taienna-aerie-peak · March 7, 2019, 4:43pm

His posts are the definition of trolling, yet he never seems to get expelled for it.

Tarc-fenris · March 7, 2019, 4:43pm

I’m having a slow morning, and not catching what this is a reference to.

Unless you plan on posting an apology in the unlikely event that Blizz reverses this decision

That would be a regrettable backtrack that I think would only embolden the screamers, much like every cop show you see where the commander says sternly “we don’t negotiate with hostage-takers”.

If by some dire miracle it happened, I’d shrug, possibly eyeroll, and log back into the game and play.

Áysha-moon-guard · March 7, 2019, 4:43pm

Kaivax:

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.

That was a stupid change for the sake of metrics and you know that, the only person you’re fooling with this is yourself, we’re not stupid.
These changes make no sense, they’re inconvenient, annoying and negatively impact the quality of life to everyone, absolutely nobody benefits from these changes.

Changes are supposed to fix things, but lately Blizzard seems to be breaking things that are working for no apparent reason, this is one of these things.

The portals were useful and weren’t hurting anything in the game, the sheer amount of people who are unhappy of this change was supposed to be more than enough to let you guys know how stupid this decision is but for some reason now the law within Blizzard’s rank is to always go against what the fanbase wants.

Spanko-kiljaeden · March 7, 2019, 4:44pm

He’s done nothing but troll for two threads now. Haven’t we learned that yet? If you mention “Whataboutism” he’ll have a field day about it!

Darkconda-area-52 · March 7, 2019, 4:44pm

Absolutely garbage decision and totally unnecessary

Rankin-shandris · March 7, 2019, 4:44pm

Translation: If Blizzard goes back on this, you won’t be able to antagonize players any more and your personal enjoyment will decrease.

Taienna-aerie-peak · March 7, 2019, 4:44pm

since Im again out of likes

Jose-blackwater-raiders · March 7, 2019, 4:45pm

Kael’thas in Magister’s Terrace.

So everybody who dislikes this is a screamer? I guess everybody who is fine with it is a mindless fanboi then, right? C’mon man. That’s not good rhetoric on anybody, doesn’t further discussion or anything. If people are legit ‘screaming,’ ignore them, don’t say that a few bad eggs ruin a bunch.

Taienna-aerie-peak · March 7, 2019, 4:45pm

Tarc-fenris · March 7, 2019, 4:46pm

Good morning Taienna! What is your going rate for your mage ports up to now?

This is the only part I find a little silly about the new setup, and where we may be in agreement; why they chose to shift the destination portals to Jade Forest and Azsuna for MoP and Legion, respectively.

Taienna-aerie-peak · March 7, 2019, 4:46pm

its called Stockholm Syndrome. Some got it bad.

Quanadin-malganis · March 7, 2019, 4:47pm

Seriously. Stop removing things from this game. You pruned way too hard coming into bfa and ruined the amount of fun of alot of classes. Now youre removing these portals that alot of us use EVERY SINGLE DAY.

Taienna-aerie-peak · March 7, 2019, 4:47pm

You just drove it up to 37,500.

Cyniel-dentarg · March 7, 2019, 4:47pm

What level do I have to be to use the Uldum portal? What was the intended level of most of the stuff in CoT?

Kasaka-eitrigg · March 7, 2019, 4:47pm

I have a one year old, so I normally don’t have a whole lot of time to do things. I usually farm stuff to sell, do some world quests, and farm old raids and dungeons for transmog and achievements. Not just on my main but my alts mainly so they can’t port around like my mage can. Removing portals isn’t going to make me more immersive in the big world, I’ve already had my time exploring and realizing how big it is after playing for 12+ years.

You just want us to spend more time in the game so we will have to buy more sub time, but a lot of us are older now and have lives. All you’re doing is driving people that don’t have the time anymore away. I don’t have the time I used to to play this game. The portals helped me get around to do the things I enjoyed quicker.

I loved this game, and I loved this company. But the decisions being made over the last couple of years and what’s been going on with the company, I find myself taking more and more breaks and its not just due to limited time.

You acknowledged our feedback and responded which I am happy about and a bit surprised due to your lack of communication towards feedback the past couple of years. But you are not fully listening, just like you haven’t been for a while now, and giving off the attitude of ‘we don’t care what the community says, we’re doing it our way’ like you have been for a while now. You need this community to keep this game going.

With that said, my sub ends soon, and I don’t think I am going to resub. I greatly enjoyed my vanilla, BC, Wrath, MoP, and some of Legion years; but communication was a lot better back in the old years and while I think Activision has a big role to play in the lack of communication now, I’m just disappointed in the company. It’s not just the portal decision, limited time, and lack of communication that is driving me away, but it is in the list of reasons why I am quiting.

I hope things improve so I can come back, but with the way the company is going, I just don’t know.

Ashrea-argent-dawn · March 7, 2019, 4:48pm

CoT has multiple dungeons so it’s more logical to have a single portal there than a portal to each instance.
The removal of RNG drops makes me feel like you’re creating a red herring/distraction/tangent that doesn’t align with the portal discussion.