TELEPORTS. As much as I’ve grown fond of flying through the world and taking boats, this particular aspect of the “Classic feel” is wearing on me.
My proposal is to create quest chains to unlock teleports for every major city for your respective faction. These would have cooldowns that would be reduced on completing a later part of your quest chain at a higher level. Level 25 to start the 3 quest chains, 40 adds quest onto the same chain, 50 does the same, etc.
The cooldowns for these are up for debate, but I think at level 60 they should cap at a 1hr cooldown while lower levels would have a longer cooldown.
You might be thinking, what’s the point of mages then? I also propose giving them much more useful teleports at level brackets relevant to the content we are currently engaged in. Level 25 should include a teleport AND portal to Ashenvale. 40 will have something that caters to the end game in that phase. 50, the same thing, and so on. This is an opportunity to create unique class quests that have significant meaning and impact for all players.
I also hear the argument “just roll a mage kek”, but I believe this is a symptom of a player base who is so used to getting abused and robbed of their precious time.
In my opinion, Season of Discovery changes have not been drastic enough. I ultimately want Classic+ and this is the time to make radical changes for the health and longevity of this game we love.
(Also, for the “just play retail” Andy’s not contributing to the discussion: You clearly were once part of the “no changes” crowd upon Classic’s release and look at where we are. You are on a historically losing side of this argument. QoL and new content is what will keep this game alive. Making those kinds of propositions are a much more valuable use of your time instead of saying “just play retail”.)
I despise teleports personally, I think the overwhelming majority of moving from Point A to Point B should happen through the world in some capacity. When it ties into some part of the world & characters interact with it it’s bearable, so like mage portals & summoning stones are things I don’t mind. The retail WoW structure of just having portals to every major destination completely waters down the concept of distance and a world your character exists within.
I’d prefer if they like doubled the speed of flight paths, or ran two zeppelins/boats on each route so there’s half as much waiting. Reduce downtime but there’s still that aspect of actually moving through the world to reach your destination. I would like summoning stones personally, I think it’s a nice medium where there’s still an element of someone in the group having to travel manually to the dungeon, but they are able to interact with the stone there to rally their team to you. An element of camaraderie that can cut down dead time and still largely respects the game world IMO.
I would also be okay if nothing changes. Flight paths and boats make great opportunities to get up and stretch, socialize in guild chat etc. There is value in downtime too rather than just a nonstop stream of stimulation
Difficulty increases are likely the biggest change that is needed. The game is based around classic tuning, but with our new abilities everything is super easy. And this is only going to continue as we keep leveling.
If they do something like two raids per phase, 1 for entry-level endgame gearing/casuals and a second for more hardcore players/guilds, that’d solve that.
Seriously though I don’t think travel is too bad here on any of my other classes either. Maybe I’ll rethink that when the southern half of Kalimdor becomes viable, but atm I’m good.
I’d like some more travel options for sure.
Had many times I found out I needed to go to Wetlands after being in Stonetalon Mountains and decided just to log off, that’s like a 40 minute journey or something… And I can’t even do it all AFK on a windrider.
The reason I consider travel the biggest change in this game is because many players will not reach even level 25 or step foot in the new content because of the drag of travel.
I agree that more content should be added because who doesn’t want more content. But I’m realistic in the sense that the dev team is going to be strained throughout SoD’s lifespan to keep up with player expectations.
My issue is that, there will be plenty of opportunity for players to travel throughout the world despite the changes I proposed.
Downtime is good, but 20-30mins of downtime to get to the place where you actually want to play the game is not good. Additionally, I can’t even count the number of hours I spent in a major capital city waiting for something to happen. I think there is an oversaturation of downtime if anything.
But something needs to change. I don’t know exactly what that should look like and what would appease the greatest number of players, but it’s a huge source of frustration for me at the moment.
Well, if you recall, there are no portals available at the current level bracket. So it’s kind of an unreasonable demand to force everyone to play a mage because the travel system is from 2004 and outdated. Not everything about this game is good, and getting over that hurdle and recognizing that is better for this game in the long run.
It’s important to recognize things that retail did that hurt the game (LFD/LFR/convoluted systems) are not what I’m proposing.
There will still be plenty of people taking boats and flight paths to more niche locations in the game I assure you.
I am also saying that mages can have a redefined and much more useful role in their ability to make portals. I’m not saying to give everyone a mage’s ability. Change the mage ability, make the home cities universal for all players and unlockable through new content.
I don’t think I can convince you, but you’re taking my post and assuming what I meant by it is putting portals everywhere which isn’t the case.
No it’s not. Yea, there are no portals at this bracket because you’re supposed to get out there and travel around and explore. That’s the INTENDED DESIGN.
I disagree. I think portals absolutely hurt the game. It made a single location the hub for everyone, and it ruined world PVP. Forcing players to get out in the world and move around is what created dynamic PVP engagements on PVP servers. If you can just portal around, then the zepps and boats are pointless. You have plenty of solutions to your problem that you don’t want to use because you’d rather the game be less about the world. I think that’s objective harm.
Why? Because you think so? You don’t even seem to want to take them now.
I can tolerate running around within zones. The 15-20 minute trip from a place in Ashenvale to Stormwind is just beyond what I can personally tolerate.
The intended design of SoD is discovering new things about the world of Azeroth. What’s so engaging about going on the same flight paths that take 20 minutes since… 2019??? 4 years?? There’s no exploration done on a flight path or boat.
Also sorry to admit this, but the general populace (even on pvp servers) will pvp just fine with the changes I’ve proposed. People will still be doing the Ashenvale event. They will still be running to BFD to raid. They will still be questing. The zeps and boats won’t be pointless. Players still have to traverse these modes of transportation prior to the quest chain I’m proposing as well as anytime it’s on cooldown.
The reason world PvP stopped existing in retail is because PvP as a whole stopped existing in retail. Let’s not fool ourselves.
I love the world just as much as any seasoned player, but I’d much prefer getting to the place I want to explore and mess around in faster.
lvl 25 cap is so dumb.