On one hand, I can understand removing redundant portals in an effort to make things more centralized. But a lot of those extra miscellaneous portals were added for convenience and I don’t think it’s right to just take them away. The argument about “making the world feel bigger” falls flat when you think about the fact that some people have very limited time they get to play this game. Sure, someone like me has no lack of time to go from place to place, but there are people who have very limited play times in their schedules. If they want to do a quick transmog run in Caverns of Time they’d go from the trip taking a few seconds now to a few minutes after this change and eating that much more away from their total play time. Players want more time directly engaging with the game, not less. Let’s not forget that there used to be an official Bejeweled addon specifically designed to be used while on a flight point.
If I could suggest a compromise to help with the perceived convenience balance issue, bring back the miscellaneous portals but require them to be “discovered” before they can be freely usable. So in the Org portal room we can start with just the faction cities, then add new portals as we reach the content. Run past Karazhan while questing? New portal unlocked in Org. Visit the Caverns of Time? There’s another one unlocked. This would retain the fun of exploring and discovering things without taking away convenience from those with limited time. I’d also argue for having portals like the Jade Forest either swap to the more central shrines once those are discovered, or have an NPC that lets you switch the portal between the two. I don’t feel as strongly about the Azsuna portal simply because the Dalaran hearthstone exists. Same with the Garrison hearthstone for WoD content. Pandaria doesn’t have anything equivalent to those for the shrines, and it doesn’t feel right to have the only portal go to a far corner of the continent instead of our faction’s central base of operations.
Right now, the only acceptable solution is to implement the portal room as is, return the Hellfire Peninsula and Blasted Lands portal to their original locations (for now), and undo all the phasing in the Dalaran basement’s portals. That gives them all of 8.1.5 to 8.2 to work on making the portal rooms a little larger to include the portals they are trying to rob. Along with every other bullet point I made in a previous post somewhere way up there in like 1900s lol.
Because of cumulative time stacking up between his alts, thanks to the new distance travelled for an optional item.
Some of these posts make me think the concept of 10c per customer adding up to millions for a retailer is in an alien language. It ain’t rocket science.
Convenience is good. Convenience that’s been in the game for a very, very long time with no tangible, negative consequence is good.
Removing that convenience with poor alternatives is bad.
If you guys wanted to make the world feel alive. Then put these portals and other “capital city only” stuff in the other faction cities as well. I love Silvermoon, but there is absolutely no reason to ever go there. Same with the other cities. Well except Thunderbluff, since everything is packed into Orgrimmar and that’s the only place people go, the AH there has become so laggy it’s better to do that stuff in Thunderbluff.
As someone pointedly mentioned earlier, this is not something that a compromise should be reached on, simply because there’s no beginning benefit to the removal, let alone a reason for said removal.
I’d rather they pull back the Room for now, keep the portals up, and split up some more wings for miscellaneous portals in a later rendition of said Room. Waygate them if they must, since Pathfinder-type solutions seem to be the only way to do it. ._.
It’s got to be a difficult thing for them to subscribe to a singular objective view of immersion, when it means something that is totally subjective to the players.
It just shows once again how woefully out of touch the developers are with the players that actually play this game.
The thing is, most of the people who are playing don’t play like Ion does. Ion has one character that he plays. Most of us have ten or more characters. We need things to be convenient, otherwise there is no point to doing things.
When I log into play WoW I’m not looking to be challenged by things. I have a challenging life outside of gaming. I have a full time job, a family to raise, bills to pay. The last thing I want is more process. I want choice.
It wouldn’t be such an issue if the taxi flight path system wasn’t so convoluted and far too often takes the scenic route. Can they just phase out of current zone and phase into destination zone or somthing.
Fun fact. When I was a glorified new player (unsubbed and doing the Elders event for the Hearthstone on a level 20), I came across not one, not two, not three but FOUR instances of false pathing.
The biggest offender was a sneaky B in Thunder Bluff. One of the Elders is in Feralas, right?
Well, even though it’s marked as a straight A>B flight to the Camp in Feralas, it actually wound up taking a 5 minute detour north, north east, then south, south west through the Barrens, Thousand Needles, then finally Feralas.
Tell you h’what that didn’t make me feel immersed in WoW. Made me feel plenty immersed in the video I tabbed to while I waited for a landing ping.
I’ve flow from west fall trying to get to stormwind, going west fall to stormwind to goldshire looping around then back to stormwind. I was like WTF?
Oh for those who say just use the boats or the zeplins. Well they had stopped working for a lot of spots. That is why there is a portal on the dock in darnasus and a few other places. I don’t know how many times I have been stranded in darnasus on a new NE unable to go anywhere.
And I think it would be easier to reinstate the code for the existing portals than it would be to create entirely new code for a paid portal system. So if Blizzard were, by some miracle, to stop being dead set on removing our existing portals, it would probably be an easier “compromise” to just give us back what they’re taking away.
Maybe when it was my first time getting to locations or the 5th the travel time made the world feel bigger. Now that its 100+ I just want to get there and get back don’t really give a damn about making the world feel bigger. After I hit 120 I was ready to fly in BFA and now I’m sitting waiting for one of my favourite features to actually be in the game.
I guess you don’t have direct deposit for your paycheck then, you just walk around the block sixteen times before you go into the boss’s office to pick it up. Then you take the extra long way to the bank, and of course let everyone there go in front of you until your entire day is wasted. Direct deposit is for suckers.
Makes your paycheck feel “more rewarding” amirite?
FYI this is a game, not real. Stop wasting our lives for no reason but to make it take longer just to be longer. There’s content, and then there’s just wasting or time for no reason. This isn’t content…
Removing convenience things = forcing everyone to play the same way
Portals, flying mounts, etc etc etc
And their arguments are always the same: " well I PREFER the game without xyz and if the option is there, I will take it because it’s more convenient so please remove xyz for everyone"
Meanwhile people who support portals, flying, convenience/fun things say:
“Hey, we should be able to play the way we enjoy. Why do you keep removing options from a game that feels increasingly devoid of them?”
If people want to play the game a certain way and it is that important to them, they need to be an adult and make the choice to do so. The rest of us can enjoy Nice Things in our own way. That doesn’t work if options are removed to cater to…whatever those people would be. Difficulty fetishists? I don’t even know. What a weird hill to die on.
My own $0.02 on this is that removing convenience for the sake of a feel of travel is, to put it bluntly, stupid.
We already have that feeling with the fact Pathfinder Part II is not in the game yet. So we are forced to travel everywhere on the ground and using flight paths in Zandalar and Kul’tiras. And the same thing will happen again in Makkagon and Nazjatar.
So having the convenience of the portals and such was a nice break from it. We can quickly warp around do some transmog farming or whatever.
When I can easily get to other areas, I play more. Simple. I do more transmog runs, I do more old content, I catch up on old achievements more, I stop and enjoy the world more.
Otherwise, it feels like I’m on a plane trip with 5 transfers instead of a direct flight. That doesn’t make the world feel bigger. It just feels crappy. You ask why Caverns of Time is important? You have two raids and multiple dungeons in there. Dragon Soul drops 3 mounts, none of which I have. So, when things aren’t at a peak of activity in the eurrent expac, I can either easily go and farm mounts and achievements, or I can log off and play something else.
I also want to add a “this, this and more this. All of this.”
The people that still log on everyday in my various guilds are those that are chasing down that one pet/mount/toy/xmog that hasn’t yet dropped in some far flung instance. People already tab out and “forget” to come back during the between times. Making adults take multiple portals (load screens) and the long taxi flights doesn’t make the world more alive rather the opposite. It is literally dead time. Dead time that will lead them away from the game, which will make the guilds and then the game more dead for others.