They gave you their insight as to why they’re removing it. Because once again, they feel that people won’t stop doing it because of the trivial amount of time the commute adds to the grand scheme of things…and that having more people in the world would make the world seem more alive.
Again, on paper, it can kind of make sense. If they believe the 2-3 extra minutes it takes to get from Uldum to CoT probably won’t affect how many people would actually do it, they feel having increased traffic in the zones would be beneficial.
Ultimately, I think the end result is that a lot of people who are lukewarm on mounts and transmog, and simply do it because they’re bored or can’t sleep just stop doing said content, and the end result is that there’s even less traffic within these zones. Just like how when the local high school english department tried to increase the audience size at the school plays by forcing the kids to go in order to get a complete participation grade. The kids took all the tickets, and only about a tenth of them bothered to show up, and the play was put up on youtube so the ones who didn’t show up could still pass the stupid quiz the teachers gave out.
It’s a shame because the art department really knocked it out of the park in WoD. I would have killed for a Shattrath raid instead of the ones we had, that would have been really gorgeous I think.
Unfortunately 90% of my time in WoD was spent either afk in my garrison, or not playing at all.
I’m sure there will be a mass exodus because people can’t teleport to Silvermoon.
I haven’t logged in almost 2 weeks. I stopped logging in because I realized that GMs were deliberately misinterpreting my tickets which they couldn’t fix.
Every time I think about logging back in, I look over upcoming changes. This particular change is annoying and makes me not to want to log in. Bornakk’s reply reminds me why I stopped logging in, in the 1st place.
Can you tell me where they commented on it directly? Was it the forum poster blue or some other source? Hard to keep track of this stuff.
Also, this change is stupid and pointless. Less options to travel around makes the game more annoying, nothing more. If you want to travel around, level up a new character and see the world that way. Also if you go to Shrine now (old news to you guys, new to me I guess) The other portals are already gone besides Org (SW) Dal and Shat. I know they are in the BFA cities now but like, why even mess with the old ones? Just leave them alone. There is not a problem with “cluttered portals” in this game. Get out of here.
Portals in other places do make it feel alive. It means, “In-universe, this area is relevant enough that the major faction cities and other regional powers maintain a line of communication with it.” If not portals, we should have some transportation. But abandoning older areas will just make them lifeless and barren. I will hearth at Shrine of Two Moons until the heat death of the universe, but not everyone is me.
I am sorry, I rarely post here often. But this time I disagree so whole-heartedly I had to jump in and say a few things:
No, lacking portals does not make WOW seem bigger, I know how big it is, because I played it when it was current content and walked and quested every single inch of it. Flying over it, with lower graphics settings where you cant even see the details of the ground under you, is not enjoyable in any way.
Even if it was enjoyable to fly over it, I wouldn’t be seeing it, because when I am on a 30 second + flight, I alt-tab or look at another screen. Again, I have seen it all, if I want a nostalgic look at old content, there’s ways to CHOOSE to do that.
How difficult…it takes time, and because you move stuff all the time, I sometimes have to log out to see where the latest maz of portals and boats are to get where I need to go. Why do I need to go there? Usually because you decide to put some questgiver/item in some random place in the middle of the old worlds. I HATE THESE QUESTS. And the reason I hate them is because they are a waste of time and make me spend 5-10-15 minutes flying/boating/portaling around old content just to talk to someone for 10 seconds or click some orb or some other simple quick task. If it takes 10 minutes to get there, I should be spending 30+ minutes doing things, or even more. OR…just make the flight quicker!
Want to make the world feel bigger? Add real content to older zones with relevant things to do. If you gave me a 200 yard path that had quests and NPCs, THAT would make the world feel bigger then having me fly over 10 minutes of dead, old, uninhabited Azeroth.
Making things convenient and making the world feel bigger should not have to compete with each other. Outside of this context, how does that even make sense to you? If I said, as a game design, do you think it’s a good idea to inconvenience the entire player base to artificially make the world feel bigger (artificially cuz you DIDNT actually make it bigger) ? If your answer is yes! Awesome idea, than there really is no point in discussing this because we are 2 very different people.
TL:DR - There are ways to make old, tired, uninhabited, inactive areas feel alive without inconveniencing players to artificially trick us into thinking the world got larger. Do better.
“It won’t cause that much harm” isn’t a reason to do something; it is, at best, sufficient reason not to halt something that has other benefits. And there’s no logic behind the idea that making it more difficult to get places will make the world seem more alive, for reasons you yourself point out.
So it doesn’t even look good on paper, unless the only places they’re concerned with making feel alive happen to be SW and Orgrimmar. If they truly wanted the world to feel alive, they’d give us reasons to be in the world, not to camp our faction capitals.
Yes… and those are reasons I personally see. But that’s not something they believe. They don’t believe that making the trek longer will negatively impact the number of people who will do things. And they think it will have the added benefit of putting more people into the world.
Again, you’re asking why they’re doing what they’re doing. This is why. This is what they think based on their data and their personal beliefs.
And honestly, what I’m saying is what I believe based on how I would react to it. I think it’s a bad idea. But in the end, I’m not in charge.
I appreciate your belief that Blizzard is acting in good faith. I’m just not sure there’s a logical progression from “making this take longer won’t stop players from doing what they’re doing” to “making this take longer will put more people into the world.” Which is why I doubt their goal is actually to put more players into the world.
As the previous poster said (and I agree), the limiting of likes allowed DOES make sure that there is less chance that a ton of likes, to posts, might make a view point look like there is even more agreement to the points raised.
There is simply no other reason why limiting the number of likes allowed would be throttled. If anyone can think of one, I would sure like to hear it.
These forums begin to look more and more like an attempt to control how much frustration is allowed to be expressed here.
I wish I could honestly says that this would surprise me.
That’s not really what he said. They actually didn’t give any mechanism for there being more people in the world. If people “play” an hour more a day to get the same content done, the amount of time they spend out in the world doing that content is identical. The only difference is time spent on zeppelins, flight paths, etc.
Do they really value zeppelins that much? They were broken for half of Legion and blizz couldn’t be bothered to keep them working.
But there won’t be increased traffic in the zones at all. If the same number of people do the same content, but with added time in between for travel, which is time not spent in any zone, then the zones will inherently be less busy. The only way to make them more busy is for more people to go there and do that content.
Ultimately, the end result is that people will play less. People whose favorite content was old content are going to reconsider whether the game is worth paying for.
The purpose of this is twofold. First as everyone is saying, they’re trying to increase the time played for those people who do this content. Time spent on flight paths is time played. Time spent tabbed out while you are waiting for your hearth to come off cd is time played. And they certainly aren’t going to report sub numbers, which will again drop. They’ll find a sleazy way to spin this no matter how it hurts the game.
But the other purpose is to get people to play BfA content to improve their metrics, which right now probably suck donkey eggs. Ion figures if people are prevented from doing stuff like farming mounts, they’ll have no choice but to do progression raiding and spam high keys.
Ion only raids. He doesn’t do pvp. He doesn’t do transmog.
They don’t have to. Transmog already has more arbitrary and absurd rules than any other system in the game, because “MUH IMMERSION” or something even though it hasn’t been valid since they handed every Paladin Ashbringer on a silver platter.
I’m out of likes, but: yes, all of this. This is precisely my point. Even if they had actually said, “We want people to spend more time in the world, and we don’t think the average player will stop doing older content if we remove portals,” the changes they’re making to portals run completely counter to any idea of getting more people out to do content.
The only real motive I can see is getting more people into SW/Org, at the expense of the Shrines and Legion Dal.
Have Oculeth give us an epic legendary quest to acquire a truly special hearthstone toy. A toy that lets us teleport DIRECTLY to ANY flight-point that we already know.
And if you feel that’s too powerful, limit it to 3 charges per 24 hours, or give it a cooldown interval 2-3 times that of our hearthstone.
Don’t rob us of playtime by making us suffer more loading screens than ever to get to destinations.
What transmog? This game already has the most pathetic character customization of any MMO on the market. The only saving grace is the wardrobe feature.
![:+1:](https://d38bqls1q93fod.cloudfront.net/en/wow/images/emoji/twitter/+1.png?v=6" ":+1:")