Unpopular Opinion: I Agree With The Portal Changes

Community General Discussion
21

Why is AFKing on a flight path better than a instant portal? With the portal I am 100 % engaged and playing. The flight path takes my attention to other places

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22

Of course they aren’t trying to make it easier
 but why would they be trying to make it harder? It is kind of preposterous to present this whole thing as a way to “keep the world feeling big” or some other such nonsense. The game is 15 years old, everyone knows every square inch of every map.

This only adds TIME. Time spend NOT PLAYING THE GAME. People only have X amount of free time to pursue leisure activites, some less than others. This is like Blizzard reaching into your life, taking a couple dozen extra minutes per week and throwing them in the trash. They do this in return for NOTHING.

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23

I have nothing against the new portal room. My problem is that its implementation apparently required removing the portals in Vale and Legion Dalaran. I’m in the “more options is better” camp.

And the folks who prefer slower methods of travel still would have had those options. Just because portals are there doesn’t mean you’re obligated to use them if you prefer to play the game another way.

Grind if you want; just don’t force other people to do the same if they prefer to have fun in a matter that’s different from your preference.

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24

10,000 posts went whinging about portals, 4 people accounting for a quarters of it. There’s even a guy in that mega-thread now who thinks it was a vast conspiracy by Blizzard to offer this fake “compromise” of re-adding the CoT portal, to make people forget about the other removals.

The hysteria such a tiny issue has whipped up is hilarious.

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25

Portal room is fine, I like it. I do wish the portal for Pandaland sent you to shrine, though.

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26

I love the portal room. I don’t love that other portals were removed to make the portal room.

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27

You know what I have never seen in a game review?

“This game is great, but it needs more load screens! I’m spending far too much time actually playing the game”.

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28

Nice. Another thread that mentions how the removal of things Blizzard put in the game for us to use is a good thing. Imagine let’s say the government took away your car without any explanation or warning.

Tell me, would you enjoy that convenience being taken away? I know I wouldn’t. :smiley:

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30

Removing portals also does nothing to enrich the gaming experience.

What it does do is ensure every capitol city outside SW/Org and current content is a dead zone, because now those cities are cut off from everywhere but SW/Org.

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34

I mean you were one of them whining about the whiners
so
yeah.

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35

At least I would have immersion irl

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36

Lol I can’t argue with that. Doesn’t make me less mad my car was taken away, though. :smiley:

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37

  1. No one (except the Horde) are complaining about the looks of the portal rooms.

  2. I sincerely doubt this was their intention since this change made things even more confusing. Especially with quests telling people to go to portals that no longer exist. This was done purely to funnel people into SW/Org to make those places look more populated.

  3. This doesn’t explain why they removed a portal from Northrend Dalaran, or the various portals from the Shrines in Pandaria or Ashran in Draenor. There was zero attempt to make up a lore explanation for this.

  4. Adding portals is going to be like pulling teeth from an irate Tauren. It’s going to take us several months just to get the CoT portal back and they’ve so far shown zero interest in re-adding any of the other removed portal locations.

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38

I find it odd we keep using new players as a metric and reasoning for our changes.

It’s not like WoW is a hot spot for new and younger gamers. All those gamers are playing other games that are popular.

WoW is an old game. Can make as many changes and touch ups as you want, the only people you’re bringing are people who’ve played before, but left for one reason or another. Or the occasional new guy which id say is rare.

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39

Wrong. Blizzard looked at other MMOs and removed a lot of the tedium, WoW being less hardcore than the other options is what put it on the map.

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40

Uhm, ok.

Thanks for telling me your “unpopular” opinion.

What an edge lord

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41

I think the portal changes were dumb, and the rationale for removing them is dumb.

It is a bizarre, regressive civilization that works to improve the lives of its citizens as they go about serving the needs of that civilization and then deliberately self-destructs everything but the latest iteration of its infrastructure, infrastructure that was seemingly designed without actually asking the citizens what they used the old infrastructure for.

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42

It really didn’t.

Back in the day, WoW had more quality-of-life features than Everquest and Final Fantasy XI, their primary competitors. Like, by a long shot. And that, more than anything, is what made WoW so hugely popular that it dominated the genre. Flight paths, leveling and gearing through fairly intuitive solo questing with good quest flow, portals, and mounts that were relatively quick and relatively easily obtainable were all features that made WoW a breakaway hit compared to the absolute slog of other games that had even slower and larger grinds that often could only be done in a group, not to mention close to zero travel conveniences. The introduction of flight in BC only solidified the game’s hold on the market. But people didn’t think of the other games as an absolute slog until WoW, because they didn’t have anything to compare it to.

Putting in conveniences, letting people get used to them, and then taking them out again, particularly if it’s only for transparently mercenary, anti-subscriber reasons, is always, always going to cause resentment. The current business model where they’re constantly playing a game of “but will they hate it enough to unsubscribe?”-chicken is an incredibly short-sighted business practice and has lead to an angry, distrustful player base and a constant bleed of subscribers.

But what originally made WoW money hand over fist was that instead of trying to find ways to tick off their subscribers just enough that they wouldn’t leave in droves, they wanted to look for ways to add more convenience and more quality of life for the players.

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44

Agreed. Shrine is definitely the worst decision. They kept a portal to every other previous expansions’ hub; seems really weird to remove this one. CoT absolutely is the least important since there’s still several perfectly convenient ways to get there, really weird that that’s the one they choose to add back in first


Not specifically, but we really should have been expecting it. I was actually super surprised they weren’t removed when BfA was released.

What content are you trying to reach that has that drastic of a difference in time-spent getting there?

They didn’t remove the portals from Ashran


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45

I’ve heard they got rid of the ones to Ironforge and Darnassus, so all that’s left is SW and Tanaan.

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