Rearranging and Removing Portals

Val’sharah could have work the same, in the middle.
This way, if i want to go to hov, i have to cross the whole zone instead of half.
It’s the same for pandaria, old portal vale of the blossom, confortably in the middle of the zone, new portal is in the jade forest.

It’s not an excuse. It’s a design reasoning.

Honestly, having discussed this topic with you for quite a while now, I’m amazed you still play the game considering how many issues you have with it - as well as Blizzard.
If I shared 10% of your sentiments about WoW and Blizzard, I would not be here.

It could. But now they picked Azuna. Doesn’t seem to make a big difference. Everyone has access to the Dalaran Hearthstone if they really want to go to Dalaran. The portal’s main objective is just to get people to the Broken Isles. Azuna and Val’sharah do that all the same.

The same reasoning applies. The Vale of Eternal Blossoms is meant to be the climax to the storyline. The questing experience in Pandaria tells the tale of the land, and the ending is the Celestials opening the gates to the Vale which you get to enter as the first outsider in thousands of years.
That climatic ending to the story gets undermined if you have a direct portal there from the start.

I think this is a key thing about the whole thing.

There is many good points made on this thread why this change is made and how it is assumed to give positive impact on the game. If they would have originally built the game this way it would be fine. But this is issue about players getting used to something and then, purely mechanical reasons, removing that without thinking at all how players would feel. So while i agree for all the reasons why they did the change in principal, i just wonder how much these benefits will weight on games health when they same time make so many players angry. Like it didn’t matter at all. How many of those players will fly to their grindplaces now thinking “wow this really makes the world feel bigger and better and i am so immersed” compared to the amount of people who fly there thinking “how stupid the old portals where removed, what’s next?”. It’s like whole place is run by huge croud of engineers with no one around who knows even a droplet of human sciences.

So, i also find it plain insulting.

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I have to say i dont understand some things lately. I dont speak about WF and IE, these are proper content of the expansion and even if you dont like it is the same.
I cant understand the side actions they are doin. Portals removing. allied pushed too much away from the start, The new pets in old raid. Why?

I dont think is a plain insult. I always hope there is a precise Plan of action from the devs. I wanna hope this. But all these things make little sense to me.

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As you said we have discussed one topic -the removal of portals- and that’s it, I don’t see how you get to this conclusion.
but I understand that if you think that as soon as we disagree with something Blizzard does we have to unsub, I understand you’d find anything to justify what they are doing.
That said, there is little to hold me in game, I give you that.
Mainly my friends and the things we can do together.
Many things removed, less to do in game, it gets thiner and thiner.

If I felt Blizzard were insulting me in any way, shape or form, then I would immidiately give them my digital middle-finger and leave.
Why would I ever do any sort of business with a company that would openly insult me?
You’re seeminly still here despite feeling that you’re being insulted by Blizzard. I’m quite amazed by that.

I think this also is one key factor why people are angry. Changes that come out of nowhere, unexpected and make not much sense. And i don’t mean mechanical sense on “mmorpg building for dummies - guide” wise but story or mental sense. They have removed much bigger things (like Darnassus and Undercity come to mind) that have left people much less angry because those where written in story. Characters lived the events that lead into the current situation. If they would have written the destruction of the portals in the story, less people would would be so angry, because it would be their character trying to get used to new things in world instead of players trying to get used to something that just, well, disappeared with no good reason.

What i am trying to say here is, changes done for story reasons affect the character, changes done for purely mechanical reasons affect the player. And when you affect the player you risk of making your players angry.

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well said.
thats’ probably what we have been turning around for a while:
What affects the player differs from what affects the character.
Thanks for pointing that out.

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And that’s your personal opinion and way of reacting, and that has a little to do with the debate.
Most of the time when you don’t know what next argument to pick you make it personal against people. It harms you and what you step up for or against.

Guilty as charged.
I must admit that when someone claims to be insulted by these portal changes, then I have so many arguments that I barely know which one to pick!

I mean, you being insulted implies that Blizzard wants to scorn you. But that doesn’t make any sense. Blizzard are inevitably better off having happy and satisfied customers, so they’re surely working toward that end.

Being insulted also implies that it’s personal. But it’s not. It’s just a change to the game. Some will like it and some won’t. Between you and I it’s impossible for Blizzard to please everyone since we want completely different things.

And as said, if you do feel insulted - yet remain playing the game - then you either have a high tolerance for abuse, or you’re not really being insulted and it’s just something you say to increase the pathos in your post - the appeal to emotion.

It is insulting because they mean “you wouldn’t understand”.
“It is confusing for players” means they are too dumb to figure it out by themselves.

I’m saying try me, put two Dalaran portals one next to another and let see if I can figure it out .

probably in the last year they are not so sucessful in this. Moaning always existed. But i dare to say that the last blizzcon changed the general view of Blizzard (or activision). In negative.

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But it’s not a matter of whether you can figure it out. It’s a matter of good design versus bad design.

(Dalaran, Northrend) (Azuna)
vs.
(Dalaran, Northrend) (Dalaran, the Broken Isles)

It’s like in writing. A golden rule for naming characters in a story is that they shouldn’t start with the same letter, because that’s confusing. So if you’ve named one character William, then you shouldn’t name the other character Wilburt. Name him Jim or Lars instead, or something else that doesn’t sound like William.

Regardless of whether that’s true, it’s obviously still not Blizzard’s plan to make everyone angry and upset and irritated. It’s not like the developers have a meeting where they sit around a table and go: “So what can we do to really insult our players today? Any ideas?”

No ofc. But i think they underestimate the amount of hate and shame they would have received in blizzcon. hate and shame fully deserved imho.

Blizz is no more the good old company that gave us the best games we played.

Of course it is not. Most of the time insults are done by accident with no actually meaning to insult someone. Most people mean well and do the best they can, it just doesn’t always work the best way. This is why we need people to explain how they feel and also this is reason why it is important to listen when someone tells about how they feel about something.

When “gaming fans” direct hate toward a developer on a stage because it’s his job to present a game that they don’t like, then that’s a low point for those “gaming fans” in my opinion. I don’t see how anyone can deserve hate or shame over a video game of all things. Sometimes people’s emotional attachment to video games is borderline psychotic, if not downright insane if you ask me.

I fail to see how you can try to add validity to vile rhetorics directed at other people. No one deserves to be on the recieving end of hate or shame. The fact that you even suggest that is abhorrent in my opinion.

Sure. But isn’t that what they’ve done? This giant blue post is a means of explaining their thought process and sentiments about the changes. That’s an attempt to create understanding.
And it’s not like they haven’t listened. They made the change so old portals would still be visible if a character was on a relevant quest. That came from player feedback.

To me it seems more as if some people are unhappy about some very specific things, or they’re just against the changes on sheer principle, and then they’re not going to budge at all unless Blizzard caves completely to their demands or reverts the changes entirely.

I mean, I’ve made numerous posts now trying to elaborate on reasons for certain changes. But it doesn’t seem as if anyone is willing to go: “Ah, I see. That does explain it I guess. I don’t agree with it, but I do understand it now.” Nope. It’s just point-blank refusal to accept any other conclusion than the fact that Blizzard are doing this for evil reasons.

I agree they are trying to to create understanding. But having those portal visible only for people who have quest shows they did not listen. Most people where complaining they need the portal to go farm kara and cot and that solution does not help them. So it sort of gives feeling they pretend to listen but they are actually not really hearing what people say (or caring about it). But i agree they are trying. They are just not giving convincing impression they are. So people are still feeling angry.

For the last part of your post, for example i have said in multiple posts that reason you give are fair reasons. But those are mechanical reasons and this is emotional issue, so while they are fair and true they don’t really work in this matter ( as you have noticed). You are right in what you write but you are talking about different aspect of the change than people who you are talking with. That’s why common ground is hard to find. They had good reasons to do it but they did it in the way that made players feel bad about the change.

I personally do not think they are doing it for evil reasons at all. I think they are just not doing very good job with this matter. They went for the quick way of removing those portals instead of meaningfull or fun way to steer players to areas they wish and this is what was result of it.

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I sort of feel that people often say that Blizzard should listen, but what they really mean is that Blizzard should obey.

The act of listening to feedback is very non-committal. All they’re really saying is that they will hear what people have to say, so the design-decisions they make are informed by the playerbase.

But people seem to think that if they’re listening, then they’re obligated to do what they’ve been told. I.e. if lots of people have said that they should add a portal to Caverns of Time, and Blizzard claims to have listened to that feedback, then they should also add a portal to Caverns of Time!
But that’s just not how it works. Blizzard uses the feedback to make informed decisions, not to have the decisions made for them.

I think players sometimes struggle to come to terms with the fact that they are powerless in regards to the development of the game, which is a super annoying feeling if you’re really passionate about the game.

On the flipside it must also be difficult for Blizzard. They cannot empower their own designers to develop the game according to their own visions, philosophies, and ideas - whilst at the same time concede all the design decisions to a random group of people on the internet who has no unifying visions or philosophies behind their ideas.

There are 3 styles of conveying a message: Logos, ethos, pathos.

Most people who’ve commented on the portal changes use pathos - the appeal to emotion - to convey their message. They’re angry, upset, insulted, frustrated. They’re using their emotions to explain why these changes are bad.

Blizzard (and myself I think) err on the side of logos - the use of logic and reason - to convey the message that these changes make sense and that they’re logically sound and reasonable and so on.

Pathos and logos don’t mix well. If you have a passionate and animated person talking to an analytical and objective person, then that’s not going to be a good conversation. Logos comes off as cold and detatched through the eyes of pathos, and pathos comes off as unhinged and unreasonable in the eyes of logos.

That’s how these forum subjects always go.

On the PvP forums they use a lot of ethos, just to throw that in there - the credibility of the messenger. I.e. whether you’re right or wrong depends on how high Arena rating you have, if you’re a Gladiator or a scrub, and so on.

Blizzard tends to opt for logos when doing informative forum posts, because that fits the informative style best. On the flipside, when they do presentations at Blizzcon, then it’s way more infused with pathos, getting people hyped and excited and such.

The perils of argumentation techniques. :yum:

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Took a good long break from this thread, because I needed it. This thread has insane levels of self-rightousness.

Even now, 500 posts later, we’ve still got people like Radium here being unable to tell the difference between listening to feedback and acting direcetly in accordance with it.

Actually, I take that back - it’s not that you don’t understand it, it’s that you don’t want to, but instead of just saying “Okay, I understand this reasoning, and here is why I disagree with it” and start a conversation about the overall design of WoW, you still pretend we’re arguing about the same set of facts and just start acting like you don’t know what they’re talking about or, worse yet, pretend they haven’t even responded.

And when anybody suggests that maybe there’s a different way to frame conversation and that there’s a larger debate about the use of portals in open world games, you start acting as if they’ve insulted you, and insult them in turn. And you know what? Maybe my language was harsh. But flaming Jito in this instance for being insulting? Dude, why?! Yeah, sometimes he doesn’t know the subject entirely and can go on for ages, but this time he absolutely does (and can still go on for ages) and presented it respectfully.

Get this: Blizzard are not going to fill this game with portals. They know, and I know that they know, that they’d gone too far. We need to talk about how we can get the world of Azeroth to be more interesting and healthy instead of all arguing about how annoying it is that Blizzard makes something boring faster that you didn’t have to do in the first place.

This. It’s absolutely surreal. Blizzard has listened and explained themselves, but it’s not “listening to feedback” apparently. Only obeying is, clearly.