Stop removing portals

I like convenience in this game. Convenience lets me do more of the things I enjoy - is that so bad ?

17 Likes

Bornakk,

I’m not sure what the right amount of portals are. I remember the sense of exploration and adventure from classic/vanilla when some zones are “remote” and some are “near” to major portal or travel locations. But that game was a long time ago.

To be honest, I think in general you guys should not be using portals as much as you do. Rather, factions should have major outposts or cities connected by zepplins and boats. The fact that I don’t take a ship to and from Kul Tiras feels pretty lame from a fantasy perspective. But again, I’m not sure WoW as a “fantasy adventure” game exists any more. I feel like this also ties into the recent controversies surrounding flying.

I suppose my only advice is that Blizzard needs to grow a stiffer spine about it’s design direction. If you are going for a feeling of a large world of adventure to be explored, you should be removing as many portals as you can and connect major outposts of the world with more “adventurous” forms of transportation. If you are trying to facilitate WoW as more a theme parky action RPG (and honestly, there’s nothing wrong with that) then you should just keep every portal and put them all in the portal room so WoW players can get out to the “scenario” they are looking to experience.

My main point is that the designers seem to be trying to have both at once, and it feels half baked in both directions. Pick one and commit.

6 Likes

Player “/2 LF mage port to xxx”
Mage “Hey man what city you in?”
Player “Stormwind”
Mage “meet you at the portal room”
Player “here’s a tip, thanks! Mind if I add you to friends for ports in the future?”
Mage “sure thing bud! Have a good one.”

2 Likes

So, instead of a few portals you have essentially a million portals (just on a 15m timer)? Never really have to travel anywhere. That’s super convenient, but I feel pretty strongly super unhealthy for the game. Not sure that counts as a “compromise” at any rate. Sounds pretty broken to me.

A list for you, from Wowhead, of the portals being removed from Legion Dalaran:
Dalaran (Legion)

Ironforge/Thunder Bluff
Darnassus/Undercity
Caverns of Time
Dalaran Crater
Karazhan
The Exodar/Silvermoon City
Shattrath
Wyrmrest Temple
Vale of the Eternal Blossoms

Many of these will not be added to the new portal room.

3 Likes

I didn’t get a chance to verify it, but the plan was for the portals to show if you are on these quests.

For the part that was brought up about things like Ironforge being removed from the BfA portal rooms, I don’t think that’s intentional and should be changed in future build.

What content are folks doing in like CoT that the portal helps so much with? What about other areas? How much time do you think the new setup will add to your journey?

2 Likes

“LF X port”
whisper: x gold
invite
portal
pay
gone

Such immersion. Such big.

23 Likes

if you have to ask can you benefit from the answer?

49 Likes

You’re enjoying the game wrong. You need to do more things that Blizzard tells you are fun, in the way they have determined to be optimally efficient. God forbid you choose the wrong fun activity and miss out on the better fun.

15 Likes

Does the world feel bigger? Not really, but it certainly feels more obnoxious. Simply taking longer to get somewhere you don’t really want to go anyway just to get a quest done, does not make the world feel bigger or more immersive or alive.

Does timewalking no longer count for content people might be doing in COT?

17 Likes

Fantastic, so I’ll just not complete those quests on my alts for the teleport.

Lmao.

7 Likes

If your asking this, you should already know by now that it, by all means, will not add anything but frustration to game play.

55 Likes

bigger? how about more annoying instead, because that is all you seem to do now is make things annoying. quit talking down to your players because soon you won’t have them

26 Likes

Easy answer: Remove all portals as intended, buff max flight speed to 490% behind a 10k gold pricetag. Saves everyone millions (unless they’re the no-fly hardcores. they can pay the mages.)

Small joke aside, if we’re to be inconvenienced with portal removal, shouldn’t flightspeed be increased by now? We’ve been at 310 since WotLK.

9 Likes

This seems like a lot of work when the devs could have done literally nothing and it would have been fine.

88 Likes

There comes a point where focusing on metrics and not on what your actual paying customers becomes bad business. Will this be the straw? Who knows, but I am sure a lot more players will be displeased by this move than by other moves the company has made.

11 Likes

I think the answer to that is ‘all of the content that is in Caverns of Time’ are what is helped by efficient travel.

Whether you are there for the Dragon Soul raid, or Hyjal Raid, maybe one of the instances, it all benefits from getting their quicker.

Why aren’t you asking if people are going to do it more if you make it more difficult to get there. That’s really the operative question isn’t it?

58 Likes

It doesn’t matter what they’re doing, the fact is that they’re going there and the portal saves a buttload of travel time that would be spent getting there. Travel time IS NOT CONTENT.

84 Likes

Understandable. There’s a balance to be struck though. Some conveniences people want now would probably mean that they play for just 2 minutes at a time and become more and more disconnected from the game, their guildies, etc. Then they end up unsubbing because of those conveniences they wanted. Just one general example.

Every individual convenience sounds great, but adding them all up (seems there are 1000s by now) feels like its starting to be a death by a million cuts. You don’t notice the damage individually.

Maybe we can add conveniences, but we should probably remove as we do. Honestly, while I don’t feel particularly strongly about this portal topic, this feels like just that (adding some convenience while pulling back elsewhere).

The big problem with conveniences being added to the game is that they become a massive backlash if anyone tries to remove them later. Remember when at first they said the water strider would be changed to only work in MoP zones?

1 Like

This may be one interaction. This is not how every conversation went.

Player “/2 LF mage port to xxx” Asks several times, waiting until he/she draws social security or the universe ends.
Mage “Hey man what city you in?”
Player “Org”
Mage “How much money you got?”
Player “How much money do you want?”
Mage “100 gold.”
Player “I don’t have that much.”
Mage “Sucks to be you. Next time roll a mage noob.”

10 Likes