I could absolutely see Stormwind having a system like this.
lol yes! It’s also a buncha gnomes that handle the bureaucratic process.
Your request is denied with a note you forgot to dot an I in section 2. b. on page 72 and you used the wrong colour black ink when signing pages 34 and 152 and only this black ink is accepted for signatures. If you wish to object to your request being denied here is another stack of 100+ forms you need to fill out.
I could see Goblins running the portal rooms in Orgrimmar in the same manner except you could skip the line with a gold donation to the portal room management team.
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Danuser is non-canon.
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Kirsy headcanon is that the portal room doorway is laced with explosives, so if something went wrong, the mages would blow the door and dip out, closing the portals behind them.
More seriously, most people operate in the “lore is cool, but I’mma do my thing” field. Sure, you’ve got some sticklers on the “CANON ONLY” bus, and others roleplaying the half-draenei, half-worgen son of Yrel and brother of Anduin. However, 4/5 roleplayers are comfortable flexing lore as needed, filling in gaps, handwaving stuff that doesn’t make too much sense. I very much doubt this will effect any change in roleplay, since people have gone back and forth on the canonicity of permanent portals forever. It doesn’t hurt that the portal room was already largely treated as an OOC room anyways. Not always, but usually.
Also, I’m not gonna let Steve Danuser tell me how to RP.
He can make suggestions, but that’s it.
Orgrimmar’s layout is just bad all around, it wasn’t great to begin with but the Cata remakes makes it feel even more of a mess. It’s supposed to be a fortress city right? Yet you can look at a number of the existing Horde towns and those actual feel like a proper fortress settlement while Orgrimmar feels like everything is just kinda squeezed into whatever corner they (the devs) can fit them.
Like you have the seat of the War Chief right as the city center, also located right outside the front gate and surrounded by things like a chicken vendor and the brewfest vendors? Wouldn’t they be better suited in some of the empty buildings that are in the Drag and instead we have things like the PVP hall, class trainers and weapon smiths and vendors or something more like war like instead?
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Haha honestly the old Grommash Hold was so much more secure, I dunno why they moved it. It’d be a much bigger fight to get to it in the Valley of Wisdom, as it wasn’t super close to any of Orgrimmar’s gates
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Thrall was bad at fortress design.
Didn’t Gallywix design Orgrimmar?
I should get on pepsi and redesign orgrimmar so i can be even more mad at the official city design lol
I’ve largely never considered the portal room canon and only mechanics use, even if there are flavor NPCs in there talking to you, the spot has to be lively for players running about. Portal usage is something very split on with players, but judging by reading a lot of the books and looking at the stories, most people dont have access to portals. It does make it hard to justify how to go to Pandaria to hang out, but just because I dont think portals are easy to come by doesn’t mean I feel each visit should be a 2 week fade to black. I try to find ways to mesh the reality of how unrealistic it is in terms of this universe to have portals everywhere while also still justifying how to get around quicky with or without portals.
Normally, what I do, is Gotosh talks about just how annoying or frustrating it is to book a local mage who has been to the place he needs to go for a quick travel with also an agreement of means to get back. Because if you’re portaled to Stormheim from Orgrimmar, sure you might get there. But to get back is another thing. Not to mention, massive usage of portals is draining on the mage itself. Thalryssa was extremely fatigued getting people to Zandalar and any massive portal takes a lot of control.
It lets me still justify, though, the means of using a portal to get some place while also awknowleding how impratical it is to rely on it. For the most part, Gotosh stays home in Highmountain. And he could go weeks or months without going back to Orgrimmar even if in RP it might seem like its every day or every other day. In my mind, I weigh the times of travel. That then helps develop his life and my over all writing on how to handle it. I think its a good little mental system I’ve figured out for myself to help realistically interact with portals.
Because other than that, your best bet is on foot travel, boat, zepplin, flying mount and so forth. And hey, don’t pass up the chance for a good travel RP! You can have some fun times of doing things like camping, hunting, swimming in rivers, getting caught up in danger or trouble, robberies, surprise weather…a lot you can do with your friends if you want to plan for that instead of automatically snapping your fingers without much thought. Of course, you still can, do what you want - but dont pass up a chance to do something else!!
Theres plenty of empty boats and even some empty zepplins out there too to RP on some compressed travel!
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I can’t imagine letting Danuser dictate my RP, with a trifecta of backpeddles, retcons and bad writing… I’m more likely to get a good story out of walk-up in Oribos than I am the actual game.
Some of the best RP I had in years was in Oribos on MG this expac — and I don’t even like that city!
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If you’re RPing in the Shadowlands and someone goes ‘well aCTualLY steve danuser said in this single interview from six months ago that you can’t easily get to the shadowlands’, you should probably put them on your Ignore list.
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I actually like that the portal rooms are non-canon, personally. Makes it seem a bit harder to just take a leisurely stroll across continents in a single RP xD Feels more grounded to me!
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Right but when none of that lines up with all of the RP events I want to attend that are continents or worlds away from each other, I say screw it.
I think this was something covered sort of in Wrath era lore, but back then the Arcane was chaotic and also a gateway to the Fel.
WoW’s world building has changed a lot over time.
One time I was trying to play a very sheltered character who had never left her hometown and was in awe of people from faraway lands.
It was a lot of fun having her walkup to people and ask them questions about what life was like in dun morough, draenor, or teldrassil, and listening to their stories!
But it always kind of spoiled things for me when people would instead just say “hey, come with me to the portal room and I’ll show you! Its only a 2 minute trip!”
It kind of felt like mentioning your character’s missing eye and having someone roleplaying a healer offering to regenerate it for you. For certain types of character, making the world a huge, epic, dangerous place thats difficult to traverse is part of the appeal imo.
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Haha this hits home! I tried the same thing once! I made a young Forest Troll from the Revantusk tribe who’d never actually left his village, but was offered on opportunity to go to Orgrimmar for work! His parents gave him some of their sparse money to put him on a Horde trading vessel, and send him on a months-long voyage to get to Orgrimmar.
First RP I had someone approach who tried to show him every major Horde city due to the portal room haha.
I think easy access to these portals really does cheapen the experience, honestly.
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im completely ignoring whatever Steve “rope analogy” Danuser has to say
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Yeah, and it’s not like they have to explain every little detail of what is and is not mechanic. I find it rather obvious (to me) that something like a portal room would just be there for the players and not really for the world. Theres far too many characters who just don’t know the outside world. Who haven’t experienced anything past home. And that is the same for people in the real world.
Some people are lucky enough to own a private plane or have some sort of strange jetpack with a giant fan and fly to mcdonalds. Some people have the means to just hop on their boat and go where ever they want down the river. But a lot people don’t. Even simple things like public transport can be a long process on where you want to go. I’ve seen a lot of good character concepts, that are rooted in a humble beginning with hopes of building up their adventure immediately have that taken away by just teleporting them somewhere to solve their problems.
But yeah I completely agree, a lot of rp goes untouched because as soon as you mention you went on a campaign and traveled across a part of Pandaria on foot for days you might get met with “Why didnt you just portal its so much easier.” Magic has to be treated with a certain amount of responsibility in writing. It needs to be a tool that enhances your world, but you can’t rely on it for everything with your situations. So what you have around you I think should be weighed at the size of the universe and actually pay attention to what characters say and how they react to new places and yes I recommend reading novels because theres certain context of the universe you won’t really get in-game like descriptions of how a place actually looks and moves. I agree that big moments shouldn’t be caged in books, but I really do think taking a crack at the novels or even the short stories can help with visualizing your character in the universe of Warcraft.
Including how to deal with travel and when it feels right to do certain things! Which also includes knowing when not take away someones excitement for their character by providing them with everything at the snap of their finger.
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