Places I have no clue how to get to without portals; Northrend (used to be a boat?), Pandaland, and Shatt. I still have my hearthstones for Garison and New Dal, but no clue how I would get there without them. I also have my main hearthstone set to BFA main town, and without it or a portal, I have no clue how I would get to the new zones. For me the world feels very disjointed, and removing portals for me only cuts me off even more, making the world feel less alive.
There was this idea that pvp vendors were a bad thing because people could not find them, and part of that was in pandaland they were put out in the middle of nowhere on some wall rather then in the capital city. However if I ask in trade where are the pvp vendors, I’ll get a response in 15 sec and have had a community experience, if however I ask in trade how do I get to northrend, I’m less certain anyone can explain it to me as easily as where a pvp vendor is.
What I don’t understand is why so many useless changes are happening. Sure the portal rooms are great and something wanted for a long time, but when you add hurdles into it like an Azsuna portal instead of a Dalaran portal, a Jade Forest portal instead of a Shrine portal, or entirely remove a capital city portal(ie Thunder Bluff/Ironforge) it makes these additions far worse than the current systems we already have in place.
My issue with all of this is that there’s actually development time being wasted on things like this. We’re at a point in BFA where the content is dull and boring and have had very little added in terms of current content. Class design is still in shambles, Azerite Armor is still in shambles, Islands and Warfronts are still terrible and boring…but a focus was actually put into making portal rooms that once again remove player choices instead of fixing several problems with current content. In my eyes this is the same as a few months ago when you wanted to make it so players 110+ couldn’t stop experience gains, like why does Blizzard feel this need to ‘fix problems’ that aren’t viewed as problems by anyone in the community. When you do things like this you’re only causing problems, not fixing anything.
Taking portals away from Legion Dalaran will make the city a ghost town as the Dalaran is in northerend. The lag in capital cities will be awful with amount of people now stuck there. Not everyone likes the alliance and horde bases in BfA, particularly horde where everything is miles apart. I can understand taking away other portals except to CoT. It doesn’t make the world seem bigger, it is lame and an a inconvenience.
Why do we need to always have to compromise on any unpopular removal/change of popular features? Who are the old players that requested this? Ion and a couple of his guildies? Vanillophilles like Sodapoppin/Asmongold/Alexsensual and so on?
They nerfed camera zoom, they wanted to remove flight (and essentially on end game areas like Argus they have), glyphs, reforging, tier sets, xp from leveling, now its portals, and how did all this made the game better and more popular?
How about the devs stop fiddling with things that aren’t broken and focus on making this expansion less of a bore. And if they really care about the world looking bigger, actually MAKE the new zones bigger.
I think they’re trying to solve the upper end of the “fast travel problem:” if fast travel in your sandbox game is too easy, players spend more time looking at loading screens than actually playing the game, and your cool open world might as well be a series of instanced rooms.
Except they’re also forgetting the other end of the problem: it’s not fun to run the exact same route for the thirtieth time just to get to the thing you actually want to do. I always use Dark Souls as an example of this: it has an amazing, interconnected world that’s a ton of fun to explore all the nooks and crannies of, but the twentieth time you have to run all the way from Firelink Shrine to the bottom of Blighttown just to buy pyromancies will make you tear your hair out.
They’re replacing the boredom of looking at loading screens with the hassle and frustration of having to make the same run you’ve done a million times. It’s not a great replacement.
These blue posts continue to prove the point that they dont play their own game, or are super casuals. You would think they would understand their players after 15 years.
To me, the fix for this mess is a complete no-brainer. Just put the portals underneath Legion Dalaran back.
Removing them has obviously upset a lot of people (me included) for no apparent reason. It shouldn’t matter if it’s going to take me an extra 2 minutes or 20 minutes, it’s an inconvenience for non-current gameplay that Blizzard has created.
Am I going to quit over this? No, but it’s just one more little thing added in that will frustrate players, and add enough of those little things together and people will decide their time is better spent elsewhere.
If by “bigger” you mean it takes longer to get there…y…y…yeah BUT it does not make the world feel bigger when there is only one place you can go to to portal travel to other places. It does not make the game feel better, or more fun to play. It just looks like the devs are trying to give us even less reason to be anywhere but SW and Org.
It’s like the devs are wanting to make the world smaller by giving players no reason to go anywhere but SW and Org after the have done the mandatory questing in areas. If portals are more available in various places, people are more likely to travel around more. I know I will think more carefully about where I quest on some of my alts based on how difficult it is to get to and from those areas.
We hear a lot about how pointless the areas are after questing is done.
Rather than create more reasons to return to enjoy much of the old world, it seems we are erasing (Darnassas and Undercity) original content zones. It makes me wonder if things are not just getting set up to make more areas disappear.
I have already lost my Nelf home city, the first thing I experienced when I logged in to WOW at the beginning of BC. I can only “visit” it in a past time where there is no connection to the current world at all. I worry about how much more we are going to lose.
It is also sounding like the portal consolidation is not going to be complete.
I hope my concerns are wrong. It is just that I have lost so much faith in the decisions that have been made over so many things, beginning in WOD and how flying has become the new “holy grail” for getting players to do any content that they don’t want to do in order to fly. The red flags come up very quickly these days when things change.
Many of us are frustrated by the levels of RNG that keep getting piled on top of one another, the increasing “mystery” of what will be required for Pathfinder in each xpac, since it keeps changing and classes that just seem anything but a “class fantasy” these days. The priorities do not seem to include “what will be more FUN” any more. Communication is close to non-existent and that relationship that used to exist between Blizzard and their customers/players feels pretty empty and frayed.
Trust is a bit harder to come by these day. Earning that trust does not seem to be very high on the list of priorities for the devs these days either.
The first mention of this being an issue in the PTR forums was on January 9th. So it should not be a surprise to Blizzard that the player base is angry about this. Yes, there is not as much participation in those PTR discussions, however, given the fact that the bulk of the player base does not play on the PTR (I don’t because I do not like spoilers) or read those forums (again I don’t like spoilers), you cannot blame the player base for their lack of knowledge or their lack of feedback on this issue.
Blizzard should have realized that only a fraction of people play the PTR and the issues raised there should be explored with the live server player base to determine what the real impact would be. Back in December there was some portal discussions about the removal of portals from the shrine, and those who responded to that thread for the most part complained about the removal. Again, another clue as to what the player base might be thinking.
Blizzard had plenty of warning that this backlash was coming, however, they are going by the rule, “change is difficult but the players will adapt to what we want to do” rule of thumb. It has worked in the past so why wouldn’t it work now? My answer is that this time you are making a change to a system that everyone in game has not had any problems with.
I’m homesick too. I used to go back to Darn on a regular basis, to see if I could help a lowbie or to just hang out and listen to the awesome music. I’m still sad
So then do it that way - but why do you need to remove the option for other players to shave some of the travel time off?
If you have that kind of time to pump into a game - great. But some of us have families, kids, etc. That extra amount of time just isn’t a good thing for players with limited time.
With all of the current portals in place - you can still travel however you feel is most satisfying. You don’t have to remove the option for other players to still get whatever sense of satisfaction you get from traveling beyond what is necessary.
On a positive note, the new Portal Rooms look really nice! I like how magically large the Stormwind portal room is compared to the outside look of the tower. And it’s an unexpected place for the Org room to be.
![:frowning:](https://d38bqls1q93fod.cloudfront.net/en/wow/images/emoji/twitter/frowning.png?v=6" ":frowning:")