No flying in 8.1.5, but some portal removal

[Radium-dragonblight]

@Zeva-defias-brotherhood

All you devs: go play Guild Wars 2. There are no flight paths, only instant teleports. The mounts are amazing. Gliding is unlocked once and then a base part of all your characters. It feels fun and natural to go through the world in GW2. It doesn’t take much to get the same fun into WoW. Removing portals is not the way.

This. GW2 is fun in the way that it has been just getting better year by year same time that wow has been turning worse. I play much more gw2 nowadays than wow, even wow been always my “main game”. In gw2 if there is “fun detected” they don’t nerf it but they build something awesome to make that fun even better. And if wow would implement such mounts that gw2 has, i would probably never complain about teleports or flying, i would be just zooming around on lightspeed with my rollerbeetle. Wrooom! Play it, devs!!!

[Nightwing-azuremyst]

Looking at the US forum on this issue and here on the EU forums I can clearly see how much this has angered players, as many of you do too.

It’s the same as when they thought making leveling slow would be cool and groovy with us? That didn’t go down well either as I recall.

So what is this change really about blizz? It certainly isn’t about “making the world feel huge again” which is condescending to say the least.

It’s just pure and simply about keeping their share holders happy. Increase game time artificially by removing a QOL option that didn’t effect anyone negatively since it was an option.

Now you’ve just angered your player base. /slow golf clap

Now some mages will enjoy the extra income. Others will be annoyed because they’ll be constantly pestered by other players for portals, maybe even harrassed.

This change has more negative effects than positives imo. In fact I can’t see a positive tbh.

I for one will refuse portals out of principle on my mages.

[Vintoleth-ghostlands (Vintoleth)]

@Nightwing-azuremyst

Now some mages will enjoy the extra income.

thinking about it, will they really? if things stay as planned, aren’t the “only” portals being removed kara, cot and dala crater? while keeping all 3 in the game is what everyone wants and is a godsend to instance farmers, by the time you find a mage that can port you anywhere near these, you probably would have flown there from the new nearest point. kara will be blasted lands, which is about as close as swamp of sorrows (horde) or just flying from SW. uldum will be closer by far than thunderbluff/theramore, and dala crater, you can just take the uc portal in org. which is exactly the same place as the mage will be able to send you. alliance getting to the dala crater will be best either using arathi warfront portal when up, or you’re stuck between theramore or if!

so even mages aren’t getting perks now

terrible move blizz.

[Raiden-stormscale (Raiden)]

yeah man pressin -W- must be so hard for your life

[Jito-turalyon (Jito)]

@Vintoleth-ghostlands

kara will be blasted lands

I think Darkshire in Duskwood is slightly faster for Alliance. That’s the path I usually take at least, and then manually fly the remaining way.

@Vintoleth-ghostlands

uldum will be closer by far than thunderbluff/theramore

You can take the Portal Room to Shattrath and then talk to Zyphyr to teleport directly to Cavern of Time if you’re revered with Keepers of Time. But otherwise yes, Uldum will likely be the fastest.

@Vintoleth-ghostlands

alliance getting to the dala crater will be best either using arathi warfront portal when up, or you’re stuck between theramore or if!

You can take the Cataclysm portal to Highbank in Twilight Highlands, and then fly from there. That’s somewhat faster than traveling to Ironforge first.
Arathi Highlands portal is superior of course, when it’s available.

[Vintoleth-ghostlands (Vintoleth)]

@Jito-turalyon

I think Darkshire in Duskwood is slightly faster for Alliance

i meant by using portals and 310% mount. as long as your loading screen is not lagging (they are ok atm), port to sw/org, port to blasted lands, fly to kara. you are only crossing 1 country (blasted lands) not 3 (elywnn, darkshire & deadwind). for horde blasted lands is a no brainer.

@Jito-turalyon

and then talk to Zyphyr

i totally forgot about him. lets hope that doesn’t get removed, but then again, that only helps on my main which is exalted. all other toons are honored or less

i did think about twilight hinterlands, but as i main horde, i didn’t know where ally base was, and horde base is basically on the east coast, so IF would probably be faster.

[Jito-turalyon (Jito)]

@Vintoleth-ghostlands

i meant by using portals and 310% mount. as long as your loading screen is not lagging (they are ok atm), port to sw/org, port to blasted lands, fly to kara. you are only crossing 1 country (blasted lands) not 3 (elywnn, darkshire & deadwind). for horde blasted lands is a no brainer.

Ah yeah, sure.

@Vintoleth-ghostlands

i totally forgot about him. lets hope that doesn’t get removed, but then again, that only helps on my main which is exalted. all other toons are honored or less

I think it’s fairly easy to grind to revered. Just burn through Black Morass and Escape from Durnholde some times (super nice during Timewalking).
Whether the convenience of a teleport is worth the effort is debatable though.

[Feidreva-argent-dawn (Feidreva)]

(https://us.forums.blizzard.com/en/wow/u/Kaivax)

Kaivax

80 posts

Community Manager

6h

As we read most everything posted here (and elsewhere) about next week’s content update, we can’t help but be impacted by the subject of transportation portal removal. It’s a subject that’s approaching 5000 replies in one thread alone, and the question raised there, repeatedly, has been, “why?” Here’s the answer to that question.

From the beginnings of World of Warcraft, game designers have had a number of guiding principles. Sometimes these notions change quickly, and sometimes they evolve slowly, but a few guiding principles have remained more or less the same throughout WoW’s history. One such lodestar has been “don’t overuse portals between locations in the world”. Too many eliminations of the distances between places can diminish a sense of the world having a meaningful size.

Of course there’s an equal and opposite design consideration—“don’t make it too inconvenient to get from most places to most other places”. Some amount of convenience is vital. Not every visit to a wondrous landscape is your first. We know when it’s your 100th visit, you don’t want the flight over to be the bulk of your time spent. And of course, some players have chosen to play as Warlocks or Mages specifically because those classes offer unique means of transport.

With new expansions, we’ve made a tradition of removing some of the portals from the previous expansion’s cities. The goal with that is to encourage transportation flow through newer places where players are more likely to interact with other players. We neglected to do that initially following Legion (and we never did that following Mists of Pandaria for various reasons), but we feel that we should have. We’re correcting that now.

Boralus and Dazar’alor will continue to offer portals to a full range of capital cities, as well as to Silithus. The portals to Cataclysm zones will remain intact, and many other modes of transportation, such as Dalaran Signet Rings, Karazhan’s ring, the Timeless Isle trinket, Coordination Cloaks, and boats and zeppelins between many regions, will all be retained and functional.

However, we’ve seen how updates to the game can leave the means of accessing different areas feeling increasingly chaotic. For example— today if you go to the Cleft of Shadows in Orgrimmar, you’ll find it dotted with portals in a way that almost looks sporadic. We’re cleaning that up, and we see this as an opportunity to consolidate a lot of travel into a consistent venue with a consistent look and feel, and room for future growth when needed.

We’ve processed a lot of feedback on this, especially feedback about specific locations that feel like they’re going to become disproportionately inconvenient to reach, and we’ve followed that feedback through to the conclusion that you’re seeing on the PTR. We believe that the numerous remaining means of quick access in the game make most locations quite reachable.

If there are any specific locations that feel as though they’re about to become unreasonably inaccessible, we’re certainly open to adding additional means of travel in the future.

In other words, “you are wrong, we are right, we know better what is good for you even if there is 5000 replies saying otherwise, even if you do the travel for the 100th time”.

[Fluxache-draenor (Fluxache)]

Thanks for grabbing this blue post.
TLDR:
“We have listened to your feedback and have concluded that we are right.
Perhaps none of you got the memo. This is a dictatorship, not a democracy.
You have phones right?”

[Vorthalasian-argent-dawn (Vorthalasian)]

@Raiden-stormscale

yeah man pressin -W- must be so hard for your life

Spewing a condescending phrase must be excruciating as well. For your info, on all my characters W is the main resource spender, while forward is E . And I’m glad you value your time so little that some extra minutes / character brought out of the blue is nothing. Don’t extrapolate this vision, though.

[Burton-xavius]

@Vorthalasian-argent-dawn

For your info, on all my characters W is the main resource spender, while forward is E

I use same keybind for forward, sdfe instead of asdw, feels like better placement for your hand, never understood why ‘game developers’ didn’t use these keys for steering, ive always used sdfe in all games I could choose it

[Plamcia-draenor (Plamcia)]

I really don’t like traveleling in WoW, world is full of stupid bugs! There is my gallery of bugs I found in last year and they are still in game after many reports.
https ://imgur.com/a/8f3wLpw

You need remove spacebar from link.

[Destruct-runetotem (Destruct)]

So some simple maths I have 10 chars at 120 (more on 110 but they never got the gear to reliable solo mythic Blackhand for example and are still 110 because I CBA), so 10+ instead of being able to portal directly from Dalaran to crater for example Straholme is now thanks to all the flying from a portal and 1-2 minute trip suddenly a 5-10 minute just to farm that mount. Same for the new Kara mount, now especially Horde chars will be screwed. Unless I pester mages for portals (which I don’t because I know it sucks). But CoT is the most important even if it’s only 2 or tops 3 minutes, that means on a weekly basis I lose 30m+ on game just going AFK. Now I do this every week and that’s 2 hours+ a months or a full day+ just extra traveling time farming Ultraxxion every year it still won’t drop…

The world sure feels bigger!

[Heymom-tarren-mill (Heymom)]

expect more sub cancels.

[Adunakhyr-magtheridon]

That lack of flying pisses me off too. I do as little as I can in new locations BECAUSE I can’t fly there.

[anon42604664]

The Ingame cinematic in ToT raid at that point in the raid. Is not a bug, that was intentional from day 1 of the raids release.

[Zaroff-argent-dawn]

@anon42604664

The Ingame cinematic in ToT raid at point in the raid. Is not a bug, that was intentional from day 1 of the raids release.

If it’s not a bug, why is there a “Cancel cinematic? yes/no” pop-up when you press Esc, but the buttons don’t work?

[Burton-xavius]

@Zaroff-argent-dawn

If it’s not a bug, why is there a “Cancel cinematic? yes/no” pop-up when you press Esc, but the buttons don’t work?

Agreed either the pop-up where you can cancel cinematic is a bug or its a bug that you cant cancel it clicking the cancel button, either way its a bug

[anon42604664]

Because they forgot to actually make you able to skip the cinematic, execution implementation properly. So they left that thing unfinished so to speak.

[Destruct-runetotem (Destruct)]

Yeah it’s better to drop down and die (not all classes can avoid it) to then ress than to wait. Why they never fixed the skip. MoP they had alot of passion, was this their only “Ah screw it!” moment?