That’s one of the ones being removed.
34 Likes
So you are removing portals and forcing every single player to play the game how you like to play it, no matter how ridiculous that way of playing may be. Great plan.
65 Likes
Encourage the designers to use that principle in future content (without it being too tedious) and don’t impede on our ability to enjoy previous content (especially for alts)
BfA is unenjoyable for me. I’m sorry. But the only way I can kind of enjoy the game still is by running old content for transmogs and mounts in hopes of things improving in the next expansion (or future patches). These immediate changes seem like unnecessary fluff. Organizing the portals makes sense, but taking them away does not, especially since we’re been using them for ages.
42 Likes
I’ve been hearing this argument since 2006 and I promise you beyond any shadow of any doubt the answer has literally always been no.
Portals make it easier to jump enormous distances quickly, like cross-continent or cross-world stuff. It means that we can visit radically different locations quickly, hopping from Outland to Dalaran to Pandaria to Argus in a matter of minutes. Warcraft is a colossal game with a dizzying array of environments and aesthetics built over more than a decade, and that is what makes it feel big. It is big, and the team seems weirdly lacking in confidence about that. Making travel inconvenient just reduces the incentive to go to any of those places, which encourages us to stay in one place, which reduces the environments we see, which makes the world feel smaller.
Saying that making travel slow will make the world feel bigger is like saying you can make LOTR better by turning the pages reeeeaaally slowly.
(ETA)
Y’all remember when the team said that they thought Exodar and Silvermoon would become the new favourite capitals in TBC because they looked so much cooler, and then no one ever went there because they were massively out of the way from anywhere that anybody cared about? This isn’t a new scenario. Players aren’t excited about how hard it is to get around.
77 Likes
Why not?
There are two activities in WoW, doing fun things and travelling to do fun things.
When Blizzard counts MAU’s both activities are given the same weight.
Players, however, want to maximize their fun time and reduce their travel time.
When Blizzard removals portals it is increasing travel time and reducing fun time.
39 Likes
What about this is great?
11 Likes
Are you surprised given their approach to development in recent years?
9 Likes
You are alone in this. Travel time is not gameplay. I want to get where I want to go NOW, not fly straight up ten thousand feet and hit autorun.
49 Likes
Not even a little bit, I personally expect them to consistently make this game worse and worse. Eventually playing a game with my friends will no longer be enough to keep me subbed.
9 Likes
I realize, of course, that WoW and ESO are very different, but I’m a big fan of how they handle it.
There are no Flight Paths, but there are Shrines. Shrines are less common than Flight Paths, with only a handful per region, but they’re instant travel.
As a result, you spend more time traveling from the shrine to where you want, as compared to a flight path. However, because you got close to where you wanted much much faster, it actually feels more engaging.
I think that’s what I don’t like about removing portals. I don’t mind having to travel a couple of minutes, but I’d much prefer to have a “get close instantly” button, and have to manually travel there.
If you’ve ever ridden in a car in traffic and felt like you could just get out and walk faster (even though traffic is going 25), you’ll know what I mean. It just feels more productive when you have freedom when you travel.
I’ve often thought that WoW could do with some kind of “hearthstone network” where you could pay a hefty fee (100-200 gold) and teleport from an Inn to another Inn.
6 Likes
I thought Blizzard was all for going back to old content and now they’re removing portals to old content? Terrible. The world does not feel bigger with fewer portals, the world feels like a waste of time.
Aside from that; good luck finding a mage who aren’t afk and will stop what they’re doing to give you a portal.
-Signed, a mage
18 Likes
Adobe has had the same keyboard shortcuts in Photoshop for more than two decades and then with the latest release of Photoshop completely changed how core shortcuts for Undo and Free Transform tool work. Artists threw a fit on social media and a lot of them reverted to a previous release or looked for the legacy shortcut options since their livelihood depends on it.
On the WoW side, few are fortunate enough to be making a livelihood from playing this game, but there are many who still take it as a serious hobby. Two or so minutes is insignificant for one destination, for one character. When you consider multiple destinations, across multiple characters, for multiple types of content, there is a considerable time cost. Some players are still playing the game because of things like mount, pet, and transmog collections and have developed complex routes and workflows to facilitate that, and it’s no benefit to the game to alienate this part of the playerbase by removing the existing portal infrastructure. One player already mentioned earlier in the thread that it takes them about 2hrs to grind a specific checklist of old content, and that’s with optimal route including portals, on one character. Add in the extra travel time after portals get removed and it would no longer be feasible or enjoyable for old content, at which point, as seen in some of the feedback of others in this thread, they’ll stop doing it, and worst case scenario, they stop playing the game because it’s no longer fun for them.
The core of the issue is that consolidating portals into a portal room lowers barrier to entry for new players, and that’s good, but removing existing portals actually damages the player experience for those that actively use those to facilitate their endgame goals, which may not necessarily be the same endgame that you partake in.
19 Likes
How does eliminating the portals that people like and use impact this method of play?
It doesn’t. If the portal is there, you can choose not to use them. You can fly for 20 minutes from Uldum to Wintergrasp if you want. Or maybe you’ll portal to Timeless Isle and fly to the shrine instead of going to the shrine in a portal.
This is the issue that people have with the World of Warcraft Team. You add things and when you decide to play diffferently, you take the fun things you gave to people away. With no concern over whether they find it fun or not. You add extremely long cooldowns to toys, you remove fun abilities, you work to make the game “UNFUN!”
Maybe the development team doesn’t see this but the actions you take repeatedly in expansion after expansion keep driving this home. You removed talent trees, you removed the majority of our class abilities, you neutered garrisons, you neutered artifacts, you slowed down combat, you reduced our power progression. One thing after another. You’re not replacing them with things that are fun.
68 Likes
I think it’s just a good thing to remember-- we don’t all have two hours to spend in the game every night. So when we have time, we want to make the most of it by less travel and more content playing.
If you only have an hour to play and you spend 1/4 -1/2 of that time in travel, would you ever feel like you completed anything?
Some of us accepted we don’t have the time to do more in the game. But don’t mess with what time we do have in the game. Allow us the choice to either take our time when we can or get down to business asap.
But rest assured, when we have time to slow down and smell the roses, we do.
38 Likes
This is the sort of response that makes people think Blizzard doesn’t play the game and is completely tone deaf.
Here is my advice to you.
Revamp the old world. Make it relevent and for the love of god stop brutalizing the Night Elves.
It is a fetish at this point.
25 Likes
I don’t think you guys really “get it”.
You don’t make the world feel bigger by making it more of a PITA to get around.
That crap didn’t work with trying to get rid of flight, and it doesn’t work with time gating flight.
All you do is make it frustrating and annoying.
You make the world feel bigger by making a bigger world with more stuff in it that you want to go do.
Travel isn’t the point of the game. The point is the stuff you do when you get to your destination. Don’t make travel more boring, slow, tedious, or a barrier to entry.
Let people get to where they are going efficiently, and give them STUFF TO DO, if you want them to travel to those places. You can’t spit on people and tell them it’s raining and expect them to buy your bs, they still know you are spitting on them.
45 Likes
Literally a no point in my 14+ years playing WoW have I been like “man I really wish this flight point took longer to get where I want to go”. It’s actually completely preposterous that a Blizzard employee thinks that that is desirable gameplay.
56 Likes
I alt-tab or walk away from the computer when I’m on a flight path. I’ve noticed, since Legion, I come back to the game less and less. Removing portals just encourages me to do something more productive, like clean the house.
37 Likes
That’s something that I really like, though. That the choice exists for you and I to do that. Some days I feel like taking the scenic route. (Do you know how happy I would be if there was a Zidormi option for the Vale? I don’t particularly need anything from that zone, but I loved hanging out there and would do it again if there was an option) Other days I’m just trying to complete something quickly so I can enjoy doing something else.
But what feels particularly bad is the taking away of options. I would, for the record, but upset if every flight point in the game suddenly disappeared and were replaced by instant portals in their place. Why? Because, again, the option for me to choose what I want to do is now gone. I’m sure a lot of people wouldn’t mind or would actually prefer things to work that way, but I personally feel like having options-- and maintaining the options that we have had and grown to love works out for the best all around.
So I really am imploring whoever is able to make changes to re-think removing portals from places that had them in the past if it’s simply about “making the world feel larger”. I would argue that removing those options actually shrinks the amount of people going out and exploring the world, just because of the added inconvenience to do so when there is already so many other ways to spend time in-game.
35 Likes
Thanks for delving into controversial topics like this!
Thing is… the new hub can be added, and if the other portals are left alone, everyone can continue on as they have been. I think constantly removing things from the game is a bad idea, and ends up leaving a bad taste in everyone’s mouth. Azeroth is really big now, and I like having all sorts of options to get around.
20 Likes