I had totally forgotten that one – and haven’t seen anyone mention it either!
It just goes to show that the means of teleportation in the game are many, and it’s actually rather hard to keep track of the myriad of options that exist.
I honestly believe the portal changes are fine. I don’t think the inconveniences the changes present are greater than the conveniences that the changes also present. You lose Dalaran Crater, but you gain Shattrath. And portals like Karazhan and Caverns of Time that disappear, they do have other means of teleportation to them. So it’s still possible to get to those places really fast, if that’s a priority.
I think it’s all good. What I think is a bit overlooked in this discussion is the Portal Rooms themselves – because they look super amazing! They’re an awesome addition to Orgrimmar and Stormwind and should be cool little traffic hubs going forward.
I didn’t even know it was a thing until today. I got my attunement for Kara and didn’t continue any other quests. This was news to me that such thing even existed.
We already had Shatrah, it was literally two portals to the left of the Crater.
We already know what you think and a good chunk of us virulently disagree with you.
We’d all have time to enjoy the portal room if we didn’t have to trade portals for it.
An extreme analogy would be not being awestruck at the triple kickflip that the skateboarder did because he bollocked the landing and cracked his head open.
I really don’t think anybody is arguing that the Portal Room itself doesn’t look pretty. It isn’t relevant to this discussion, and doesn’t do much to bring players and developers to a consensus.
Ah yeah, that’s true! I confuse it with the Hellfire Peninsula one. It’s such a mess to keep track of all these portals.
Yay for consolidation, it reduces the amount of errors in Jito’s forum posting!
I would argue it is. I rarely play my Horde Paladin alt. But when I do I don’t know where any individual portals are located in Orgrimmar. I flap around on my mount for a period of time until I stumble upon the portal I’m looking for by accident, or I give up and google it. The Portal Room is nice in that regard – it’s much easier to remember the location of a single place that stands out than a myriad different ones that are inconspicuous in their locations.
I don’t think we disagree, and I’d wager a lot of players agree with this point as well. However, there seems to be a disconnect with just how far the Portal Room was supposed to go in resolving sprawling portal issues. Players were also not expecting certain useful portals to be removed from places outside and within the other capital cities without replacements. That is where I believe the current impasse between players and developers lie.
We need to discuss that, and as requested, we need to highlight exactly where the pain points are. It is a pity that this is being done now and not months ago, but here we are.
Removing portals is stupid, no matter how anyone would want to twist it. It ruins the “Main expansion hub” meaning and feeling and makes them into nothing more than yet another generic settlement/camp/fortification to quickly run through IF reached at all. That goes tenfold for Dalaran.
On the topic of portal rooms themselves - we need those, along with Transmogrifiers and Barbers in the Non-SW/OG cities (those exist too, you know), preferably wit their own aesthetics.
Exodar and Silvermoon should make this easy - plenty of empty space there to work with. (But we all know that would actually require some effort on A-B’s side.)
Ironforge’s entire Portal building can simply be filled with said portals, even ever so slightly redesigned if A-B are feeling generous (HAH!).
Thunder Bluff’s Spirit Rise could easily be redesigned just a bit to fit the portals in (for example that currently useless cave underneath).
I don’t know. I honestly think there’s still a lot of confusion. Even I who’ve played this game for 15+ years seemingly still forget the existence of various teleport items and portal locations.
The loss of the Caverns of Time portal comes up a lot. But Zephyr in Shattrath offers a teleport too, people just seem unaware of it.
And I just learned of the Karazhan ring. I had totally forgotten that one existed.
The only one that I find myself agreeing with is the Dalaran Crater one for Alliance. Numerous holiday event quests send you to Undercity, and that’s quite a travel destination for Alliance – making it not worthwhile doing those quests.
At the same time the Dalaran Crater portal was sort of a joke, getting teleported above a crater and falling - almost - to your death.
I wouldn’t mind an Alliance teleport location for northern Eastern Kingdom, but I think a better one can be thought of than Dalaran Crater.
I already find it too much effort to travel around more than I have to.
And so fed up with being grounded!
Making portal rooms in Stormwind and Orgrimmar is nice. But in my opinion adds absolutely nothing to the game when you at the same time remove portals to places people want to go for a quick thing. No matter how pretty they look.
To spend time on a flight path equals time out of the game. Tabbed out or at the loo or in the kitchen. Like others said: It’s breaking the immersion way more than a portal does! And no one will enjoy the scenery any more than they already do. Likely they’ll, like me, will just get more annoyed with the travel - if they can be bothered going there at all.
I honestly don’t think there is even that much rational thought behind it. I don’t even think that a) increasing time played metrics is such a big deal as it is sometimes portrayed on the forums or b) this would have a significant effect even if it did.
This is, as so many people have said, just being disconnected from the vary large part of the playerbase who don’t spend all their time hopping from instance to instance in KT/Zandalar.
Dalaran Crater and CoT removals are going to be really annoying, with no upside, and that “world feels bigger” line is frankly risible. The Shrine/Dala removals are going to be hellish for levelling.
This is not important, in the way so other things are - well, used to be - important. It’s just mindless.
+all posted by other players before: this is complete nuisance.
im not gonna unsub, but it makes me completely unhappy.
And feeling unheard.
Why U guys are ruining your game for me?
twas ofc rhetorical one. it just again seems “play it our way” mentality. Their reasoning is wrong imho. they are not making the world bigger, but more boring, and time consuming with no reason. I welcome portal room, but the removal is wrong move imho.
Leave the portals that are in Legion Dalaran Chamber of the guardians. They are not cluttering anything there, that lower part of the room is just for those portals. The whole “cleaning up the cluttered areas” story is not making any sense when it comes to these.
Stop removing things from the game. It is hard to get exited about anything you add to game anymore because you keep removing things. Who knows how long feature x or y are gonna be in game. Everything is just disposable junk that can be gone tomorrow. No reason to get any emotional bonds to anything in this game, forming routines or certain playstyles.
If you want people to be busy on certain areas make those areas interesting enough for people wanting to go there, not removing reasons to go elsewhere.
The answer everyone has been waiting for: “Cuz we said so 14 years ago”.
What do you think a “meaningful size” is, Blizzard? Is it 1 minute travel? 5? 10? I don’t see a fun calculation anywhere in there. Wasn’t WoW only about fun? Or is alt-tabbing out since you’re on a flightpath from Stormwind to Hillsbrad part of the fun and engaging gameplay the devs envisioned?
All this will do, is make me stop doing old content on alts.
Being a mage isn’t so bad because i can portal everywhere, but theres 0 chance of me repeatedly wasting as much time flying as i would have used clearing somewhere.
