Actually, I’m looking forward to Classic since it’ll be a difference experience. I’ve played a private server to try it and enjoyed myself until it got shutdown.
Removing portals makes no sense for how the game is atm though.
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quit trying to make live classic WoW. If you want classic WoW go play that when it comes out. Live WoW does not need to be classic WoW because soon you can go and play classic WoW.
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I could care less about seeing other people around me especially since most of them are people who phase in and out from other realms anyways.
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You just know there will be a separate reputation to unlock each allied portal fuled by another tedious time-gated world quest humping trickle grind. Calling it now!
When there is no portal, I use a taxi - alone - how does that make the world feel alive? That doesn’t make any sense.
That just sounds like Blizzard wants me to spend more time travelling, instead of actually playing the game.
Have a guess.
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Because freedom of choice has been removed.
Please indulge some hyperbole for the sake of making a point.
If the game continues in this direction, I foresee a time when there’ll just be one portal from Stormwind/Ogrimmar to the final raid since it seems The Powers That Be can’t seem to understand that there’s more to do in this game other than current instanced content.
All other portals will be removed and there will just be flight paths that are a fraction of the speed they are now, one per zone, because the increased travel time will make the world seem bigger and isn’t considered too much of an inconvenience.
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In Final Fantasy XIV, all players regardless of class can teleport literally anywhere on their own to nearly every single settlement and village they’ve visited and attuned to at will at the cost of a voucher or gold fee based on distance. The world still feels incredibly large despite this.
So I’m not really sure what point you were trying to make here, Bornakk. You’re just coming off as condescending as if we should just accept whatever arbitrary silly changes that are being made to the game at this point.
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Who cares, what’s even the longest amount of time it could take you to get anywhere?
I can understand this and I agree with it, however, i’m hoping this is not the reason being used to try and justify this change. If the goal was to make the world appear more vibrant and alive shouldn’t sharding and realm hopping be disabled? Those two things have a much more devastating impact on server community and sense of vibrancy within the world, wouldn’t you agree?
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I would link that gif from The Office of Michael tackling Jim to the ground with a hug but… I can’t. How about a crisp high five instead? 
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Honestly, as someone who was beyond excited at addition of a consolidated portal room, I am not a huge fan of the flat out gutting of portals either or the reasoning given here.
With that mind set, the whole “the world feels bigger”, whats next? Take away the Garrison portal’s to Stormshield/Warspear or the portals from said locations that go to Tanaan Jungle? Those portals are far more frivolous than the extremely helpful portals to Karazhan, Dalaran Crater, and Caverns of Time. It honestly makes even less sense that we are missing portals to places like Thunder Bluff and Ironforge which are primary capital cities.
While I am 100% for re-distributing portals, removing the portals from the old locations and making the new portal rooms the primary and consolidated portal location, I am not down for flat out removing portal options all together. Those portals need to be brought back in some way because they hold a great deal of value and help traverse a world that often feels overbearingly big after so many expansions.
There is a difference between “Making the world feel bigger” when content is current and “Making the world feel inconvenient to traverse” when handling older content.
If its not something you want to outright give players than at least consider giving us a way to unlock extra portals on our accounts!
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Ok. I almost never comment here in the forums, but this one I ought to. First of all, you sound like you’re mocking us. Seriously!
Why do you want to make the world(s) – with the addition of a “s” – bigger than they are? Just to recap, maybe you’re not aware (now I’m mocking, just to be clear) we have not one, but FOUR worlds ingame: Azeroth, Outland, Draenor and Argus. While the late three could be considered as 3 continents, Azeroth itself has two huge continents, two medium ones, that can be compared to the other 3 worlds and finally 3 more islands that are pretty big themselves, almost like 3 other continents.
So removing portals doesn’t make the world feel bigger, it just makes your travels take LONGER, that’s it! Here I have to agree with the people who say that this kind of strategy actually aims to take the player base attention off the real problem that is the lack of new content! Not that I don’t like BfA, for instance (btw I love the new ‘choosing quests’), but I can’t see no logic reason to put time gates to old content, for flying paths are simple that: time gates.
I really hope you guys at Blizz can rethink removing portals like you’re doing now. We could compromise in removing capital cities’ portals from old content major hubs, like already done in Northren Dalaran and Valley of Eternal Blossom. We could remove them form Legon Dalaran and keep them at Daz’aralon and Boralus and removing them in the next xpac. But we should keep the portals for key areas like Caverns of Time, the lower Legion Dalaran portals etc. Or, at least, attend to one old request of letting us use each ‘hearthstone’ we have to a different city. What about that?
Just PLZ DON’T REMOVE PORTALS FOR OLD CONTENT!!!
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LOL. Yeah, you just removed portals in areas no one will now go because there is no need to. Thats “alive” to you guys?
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What do you mean by “more alive”? You think making us sit on a flight path for 5-10-15 minutes is “alive”? We can’t interact with anything except the chat, and even then, if someone said something, we couldn’t do anything about it… we’re on a one way ticket to alt-tabbed station while we wait for a bar to fill up.
Taking players free time that they are investing into WoW and putting it into travel will create the opposite affect of “alive”. You will be turning the world into a boring pile of nothing while we attempt to get where we’re going.
Picture being the driver and all of us are the bored and tired kids in the backseat… you know it’s coming, you can hear it in the back of your head because even you are asking it to yourself.
- “Are we there yet, Bornakk?”
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oh geez lol ok
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Your superiors should equip you with better arguments than this, if your answers will be feeble then saying nothing is fine. I get the urge to “communicate” but “what content is in Caverns of Time anyway” isn’t great man. One of the arguments that people keep making when others say there is “no content” is to point to the ways you can zip around the continents and do things like see old instances, collect transmog or pets or achievements. All removing portals does is make it less convenient.
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You don’t get around much, do you.
I don’t just travel to places on my main. I’m a serious altoholic, and removing the portals doesn’t increase immersion; it actually takes me out of the game both figuratively (my mind is full of anger at this stupid change) and literally (hey, bio time!).
Just. Stop. Removing. Stuff.
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Blizzard has often clung to the seemingly bizarre concept that the only way to create a “large” and “immersive” world is to make it more difficult to get around that world.
Usually this comes in the form of tricky terrain creating geographic obstacles, more enemies in the way of things, and other “tricks” to draw more out of their content. It also comes in the form of restricting higher-end travel such as flight to keep us both on the ground and slower as well.
Some of the biggest game worlds don’t restrict you in these ways. Skyrim, for example, has fast travel and even then it feels huge. ESO has way shrines all over the place (instant travel, like portals). FFXIV, as you say, also has fast travel.
These worlds feel huge despite the fact that getting around is supremely easy. Heck, ESO doesn’t even have mob density like WoW does either. It’s not so jam-packed with mobs that you can’t run through places. You can go clear through a huge field without bothering a single mob.
If anything I’d argue that Blizzard has lost “scale”. The maps aren’t small, and they’re certainly densely populated, but it just feels smaller these days (specifically the newer content). I sometimes wonder if that’s because of all the obstacles everywhere making it feel like, even if it’s a good size, it’s annoying tedious to get around because of the lack of truly openness in many areas.
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Let me play your game. Stop putting more tedious time wasting into your game. I don’t want to flight path somewhere legit AFK on a flight path from ORG to CoT. I want to go into a dungeon or raid on a old zone farm transmogs and mounts. You know actual gameplay? Pushing buttons not AFK in your more “alive” bigger world where I’m AFK on a flight path seeing and talking to interacting with nobody because I went afk for a 5 minute ride from the top of a zone map to the bottom. I like playing your game not going AFK in it. I don’t pay for a traveling sim.
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So you do care.