We’ve heard that line before, just with another word in place of Portals.
They keep taking and taking and taking. Eventually there won’t be anything left worth playing. They’ll have murdered the goose that laid the golden eggs and they won’t have anyone but their own arrogant keisters to blame for it.
It’s a shame how many things these days fall under the “not a prob until Blizz made it one” category. 
No. It feels narrower. Like the geography is suddenly pinching me. It’s like going to Chicago and suddenly being told that I can only leave by Route 66 or O’Hare Airport and not the pretty awesome highways that go in every direction.
It is so difficult that it hardly becomes worth it. Listen, I play a Pandaren because it suits me. I feel a connection to the environment and to the aesthetics and, most importantly, the lore. And I appreciate the hard work I put in getting to the Vale of Eternal Blossoms (and I say this as someone who didn’t play MoP content until Legion.) And the Shrine is beautiful. Do recall that there are many ways to play and reasons to play (you’re likely familiar with Bartle’s taxonomy.) Roleplaying in scenic vistas is one of those ways. I supplement this roleplay with the most recent quests or scenarios or dungeons or, heck, raids when the mood takes me. Never assume that’s my primary purpose in the game, though. I mean, you even have servers called “Roleplaying” servers (I use them exclusively, though that title is laughable sometimes.)
Going to extra trouble to increase the travel time between destinations doesn’t make me feel like it’s a big world. It makes me feel like the game is run by misers. Consider the following:
Imagine this game is something that you have to call a phone to play, and that it’s all narrated to me. Long distance number on a land-line in the nineties. My time is valuable. And suddenly, the narrator puts the phone down, stepped away, and got replaced by a narrator who wants. To. Talk. Slowly. E
nun ci at
ing ev
'ry sylla
bull.
And they tell me it’s so that I can enjoy it all, and really appreciate the breadth and scope of things, but I just feel like they’re trying to eat up my time and increase my phone bill.
And if that’s the kind of dungeonmaster I’ve got now on the other end of the line? I don’t know if I wanna play anymore. If I wanted to run the exact same dungeons and raids over and over again while only being encouraged to go to three cities, I’d play DC Universe Online and start grinding speed force things in Central City again (ugh, that game…)
So please: give back my portals in the Vale of Eternal Blossoms and I’ll stop complaining about what you’re doing to my phone bill.
Yeah ok budy, you enjoy wasting time taking round about flight paths when we used to have the choice of using a portal. That is where the player base is getting angry about. Not that things take time, but that our options are being taken away from us with the removal of portals. We like choice, we like the things we used to have (such as flying) constantly taking player choice aka agency away is what alienates and angers the player base.
Options are good. Choice is good.
Removing choice leads to unhappy customers.
Unhappy customers tell friends.
Unhappy customers stop being customers.
Friends follow the unhappy customer to a happy place.
This is not something that should ever be considered to be a good thing, from a financial standpoint.
Oh, and this was a lesson I learned from working in customer service. Some of the facts about Customer Retention are Very Scary.
The exact numbers vary depending on the industry but its anywhere from 5 to 10 times CHEAPER to MAINTAIN a customer than to get a new customer. Advertising is expensive.
I agree with your statements. When I go to New Dal, there are tons of people there and it is nice to see. When I go to the shrine it is the same. When the portals are gone, there will be no reason to visit those places, which is a shame because someone put a lot of work into them to make them a place players wanted to be. Why discourage people from visiting these places.
What I predict is people will not spend time in SW or Org, they will spend time in a portal room.
It’s good to have choice.
Sometimes I like to RP a grand journey, so I hop on my ground mount and ride/boat my way to wherever I’m going.
Sometimes, I’m in a bloody hurry and I need to quickly get somewhere in a reasonable time. Which portals help.
And as someone above said, the way to make Azeroth feel alive…is to give us stuff to do in it.
Ive got a great idea, two birds, one stone.
Incursions Azeroth wide
Bird 1: Re use and revitalisation of old world,
Bird 2: Reason to keep portals.
are you RP walking the entire way?
See, when they first mentioned Incursions, I thought they were going to be planet wide…
Instead the GLORIOUS FACTION WAR consists of us plinking at each other at two islands we didn’t even technically own yet.
Just another reason not to bother returning to the game. The current development team just DO NOT “GET IT!”. These portals being removed may only be an inconvenience in the grand scheme of the game, but its the constant removal of things that many players enjoy that is just proving WoW is no longer made for the players.
I’m starting to feel actually that Blizzard is trying to push as many players to want to play Classic when its released, current WoW is being prepped for maintenance mode.
I can confirm that Wyrmrest Temple will show up if you are on the Chromie quest. Karazhan will also appear if you are on an Artifact quest that uses it (like the UH DK).
However, despite being marked on the map for the Fire Mage Artifact quest (The Path of Atonement), the Ancient Dalaran Crater portal to Hillsbrad doesn’t reappear to toons on the quest.
trying to push as many players to want to play Classic when its released,
Classic?
THAT will be a ghost town in three months.
The key to make things feel more alive, bustling, and engaging is often to add rather than subtract.
Maybe if they added different and interesting ways to get around it wouldn’t be so bad. Add more boats and airships, gliders, portals, etc. Then add more stuff to do at the places those things lead to.
You guys have not one, but three entire planets to tinker with. Surely ya’ll can think of something interesting to fill it with.
I understand the reasoning for streamlining the portal system, but I think you’re wrong, and that you may be underestimating the negative effects that methodical, streamlined systems have on how we experience the game world.
To me, the game world does not feel any bigger with fewer portal systems, it just feels linear, mechanical and less connected. There’s a lot of enjoyment that comes from considering “how do I get from A to B?”, and the experience that results from traversing several different portal systems to reach your destination. There’s a great deal of charm to that that I think you’re undervaluing.
There’s also an undeniable effect that older game hubs look more gutted and abandoned (indeed they’ll be even less frequented) as a result of ripping out the portals.
I really think you’re making a mistake.
[quote=“Bornakk, post:978, topic:113178, full:true”] Getting to the fundamental impact is important for me as the solution sometimes requires a different approach. Hopefully I can avoid the feeling that I’m just talking at you and want to be talking with you. Cheers!
[/quote]
The fundamental impact is that every time you take something away to make something take longer, it feels only like you are making changes that negatively impact game experience in order to artificially increase playtime metrics. The end.
It shouldn’t feel strange. It’s exactly how things work in real life, except we accumulate airports, bus stops, and subway stations. A plethora of highly trained professionals do nothing but continually refine how to get people from A to B with maximum speed and minimum connections. This happens just as much in civilian endeavors as it does in war, as these things are what ultimately power the logistical chains that keep business and combat operations functional. If it feels strange to you, you don’t know enough about logistics or transportation.
You’re welcome to play the game however you want but you have to recognize that not only do some people prefer to play differently than you, most do. The #1 thing I see people talk about doing when they’re on a flight path is exactly what I do - get up and walk away from the keyboard and do literally anything more productive. My #2 activity is to turn to the tv and focus on what’s on. #3 is probably alt-tabbing and using other computer programs. Sometimes I might be able to accomplish something in game, like having a conversation or queueing up for dungeons. Please note how many things I had to go through that basically amount to “stop playing WoW” before we got there.
I want to do a ton of things in the game to progress my character. I want to do all my world quests, I want to raid, push M+, cap my islands, help friends get the stuff they struggle with done, and maybe have a bit of time to do secret mount stuff and farm a few aesthetic items. To me when you remove options or reduce transportation efficiency, the direct feeling is that you are telling me you want me to get less done in WoW from now on. And I don’t like it, it’s not fun, and it’s frustrating that you never, ever just come out and admit you’re wrong on things like this.
maybe, maybe not. If its heavily populated you may find a lot of people stay and have fun. Current WoW is the ghost town and will only get worse.
When there are less portals or easy access to past locations, I won’t go there unless it’s for something relevant to the current quest I’m doing from whatever content is current, (like anything for BfA related story lines.