Blizzard's excessive use of Portals

[Ealyssa]

Chances are he's leveled up with a friend through dungeon spam, he probably hasn't even seen half, if even a third of the world Azeroth has to offer.!

And that's fine. He didn't want to explore the world when leveling, it's his choice, that doesn't impact your gameplay at all.

Enough of the crazies "How dare you play the game not like me !!!!! RAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGE"

[Jakisuaki]

Yep, read your post, found it salty, lacking and unimaginative.

So my question for you is, are you wanting to see folks squander the time necessary to fly from Kara to SW then take the boat to Northrend then squander even more time traveling to wherever? or perhaps you want everyone to walk everywhere? I dont know, thats why I'm asking how much time are you demanding folks invest.

I believe your first question was about the correlation between fast travel or no fast travel and how it has anything to do with an rpg. I answered that in my post, it's fine if you found it salty, there's nothing I can really do there, but to elaborate on it; I don't want anyone to walk anywhere, hell I'm even fine with flying to an extent. I do think it needs to be harder to obtain, but I'm fine with it, the same goes for portals. Portals can be cool, but not when used to squander the open-world feeling of the game.

[BEYR]

As someone who vividly remembers both the warlock summon quests and the warrior WW ax (and berserker stance for that matter) quests, slow travel for the sake of "exploration" can go directly to hell.

[Deleted]

Actually I would like MORE portal usage.

Instead of flight paths taking real time to travel around replace them with instant taxi service. You click a gryphon and there's a loading screen. BOOM you're at your destination. In 5 seconds, not 5 minutes.

Because a proper loading screen in 2016 is 5 seconds long. Not 5 minutes like a fucking flight path. What is this, fucking Pentium MMX?!

[Jakisuaki]

And that's fine. He didn't want to explore the world when leveling, it's his choice, that doesn't impact your gameplay at all.

Enough of the crazies "How dare you play the game not like me !!!!! RAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGE"

Oh get your head out of your ass. WoW is an open-world mmo, it should be explored. There, I said it, it should. It's not some rush-time job that you do on a dare. If you like a linear straightforward game go play trackmania or something. What reason would blizzard have to trivialize their own game world?

[Mad_Murdock]

This is like flying, we'll say we want more portals because it shortens the tedium, then we can't put a finger on why the world feels smaller as travel (world scale, being a part of the world) gradually devolves into loading screens between the key areas you happen to find "relevant".

I must be special, I never thought a world felt better or worse because of Portals. Elder Scrolls On-line PvP area is gigantic, you can easy spend 20+ mins riding your pony across the the zone, maybe closer to 30 I dunno. At first every one is like OMG this is so awesome and then after a bit, it's like "OK, who wants to go to Bob's farm which is 15 mins away? Anyone ? anyone?" And then you get killed and rezzed back at your starting area for a 10 min hike back to the front lines.

If the content is engaging and fun, the world will feel just fine. If the scenario quest takes 5 mins or less to complete, adding 10-15 mins of travel isn't going to make that scenario feel epic and rewarding!! I wasn't paying attention and actually flew to the new Dalaran location, and I still felt the quest series was meh!

[BEYR]

Oh get your head out of your ass. WoW is an open-world mmo, it should be explored. There, I said it, it should.

That's all well and good, but there is also a balance to be struck between forced "exploration" and return on investment. From kara to ulduar via conventional methods takes 15~ ish minutes. (thanks, mount runs...) But that 15 minutes isn't spent exploring. It's boring flight paths and waiting for the damn boat to show up. So you just wasted a half hour of someone's play time to fly over a dead continent to do one quest without much reward. Welcome back to vanilla.

[MasterHamster]

Because a proper loading screen in 2016 is 5 seconds long. Not 5 minutes like a fucking flight path. What is this, fucking Pentium MMX?!

No, it's a persistent online world, not a set of separate key areas with loading screens inbetween

[Deleted]

A trend I've been noticing increasingly over the expansions is that blizzard tends to use portals a lot more. Now call me crazy but I find that incredibly uncreative and lazy.

Let's not forget that wow is an mmo-rpg, and while fast travel might be available in most rpgs, atleast it requires you to go discover the location first.

In the Legion-prepatch quest where we go to Dalaran (Over Deadwind Pass) and witness Jaina's desertation of the Kirin Tor, we talk to Brann Bronzebeard, who has some urgent business in Ulduar. Instead of telling us (The player) to meet with him in Ulduar, he just happens to conveniently have a spare teleporter to the place.

Now I know that a lot of you have been to Northrend and Ulduar countless times in the past, you've probably seen every nook and cranny and you'd much rather have a teleport, but look at this from a new player's perspective. Chances are he's leveled up with a friend through dungeon spam, he probably hasn't even seen half, if even a third of the world Azeroth has to offer. For him or her, going on a journey to Ulduar could offer scenery they've never seen before, which adds to the rpg feeling of the game. With a teleporter they just go and do their business, then hearthstone back to Stormwind to afk. It's so unimaginative!

why exactly should I re-discover the same location over and over again? Why should I waste time afk travelling instead of playing the game? and why do you claim WoW to be RPG when its not? :O

edit: and no, new players have not leveled through dungeon spam, they use instant max lvl boosts these days, "old-school" leveling would make any new player vomit because its like 10 years behind other modern mmos.

[Otaka]

don't use them? if u don't want lets say a Portal from Sw to hyjal just fly there..no one is forcing u to take them

Ofcourse you are forced. its the fastest way.
If you didnt use it you would be wasting your time traveling... if you were forced to travel, it would bring more immersion to the game. Not every class has teleportation, also even if they do they wouldnt be using it all the time, lorewise.
But since gameplaywise casters dont lose any mana anymore from anywhere it doesnt matter that way how many times they spam portals.

Theres a reason why WoW playerbase peaked at 12 mil in wotlk, vanilla - tbc - wotlk we barely had any portals. TBC added portals in shattrath to quickly transport back home, wotlk did the same. After that... portals every zone everywhere.
Ofcourse there are other beneficial immersion things that affected that... but portals are just one necessity we dont need to overuse... flying mounts are already horrible in that regard.

[bromanbro]

I would have been pretty pissed if I had to travel to Ulduar (Shrine Hearth, Dalaran port, 5 minute AFK flight), THEN have to travel back to Karazhan (hearth, Shrine, portal to SW, Blasted Lands, fly).

Traveling in this game isn't fun. Hasen't been since Vanilla when WoW was actually new.

[-Gr-]

I love portals. Portals are your friend.

[mysticx]

I would have been pretty pissed if I had to travel to Ulduar (Shrine Hearth, Dalaran port, 5 minute AFK flight), THEN have to travel back to Karazhan (hearth, Shrine, portal to SW, Blasted Lands, fly).

Traveling in this game isn't fun. Hasen't been since Vanilla when WoW was actually new.

On top of that, Karazhan and especially Ulduar are pretty huge places, can you imagine the whining if the quest just said "Go to the celestial planetarium in Ulduar" and you had to first fly from Wrath-Dalaran (Whoops! Immersion breach!) across Storm peaks to get to Ulduar, then ride through Ulduar to get to the proper part of it, all for a pretty small bit of actual content (It sets the scene well enough, but there's not much mob-killing), all so OP can have the immersive experience of flying over irrelevant content, immersion! :P

[Ciddy]

I don't feel that the use of portals in WoW is excessive. It makes sense to me that we're using them.

In a world where we can do stuff like resurrect the dead, conjure food from thin air, ride around on dragons, summon people from the opposite side of the world to us instantly, and shoot fireballs (and on top of it, we do those things pretty regularly), it would make a lot LESS sense to me if "need to get to a battle that will determine the fate of Azeroth? LOL gotta stand here 5 minutes and wait for the boat" were a thing.

[Coils]

They are convenient, as was the intention. Probably saved 10+ min of pure travel time in the new Dalaran/Khara scenario alone. That said, it ruins the immersion and sense of scale to a significant degree, imo.

[Heladys]

No, and stop complaining. For a lot of their quests they implemented the portals as optional elements, meaning you could travel if you wished the scenic and presumably "immersive" view.

[Linkedblade]

<OP>

Given the severity and hastiness of the situation I think it's well suited to the sorry of the quest line.

Although I would rather replace the flight parts with teso/ff teleportation. Or maybe a choice between the two?

[Foj]

Sorry, I've done enough slow traveling in WoW to waste real world days of my life. And you want me to waste more time just traveling from point A to point B? I would kindly ask you to take a long walk off a short pier. Thanks.

Oh come on commuting is FUN

[Gib Lover]

Lmao this dude wants me to get back on my mount, fly to Stranglethorn, zepp back to Org, zepp to Borean, fly to Storm Peaks, then go in to Ulduar, run down Flame Leviathan's gauntlet, through the hallway to XT's room, then TAKE A PORTAL to where we are supposed to go.

Fuck outta here with that.

Oh and I suppose the portal going back to Kara was taking you out of the experience as well. Well then let's run back to where Brann's portal took us, port back up to XT's room, down the hallway, through Flame Leviathan's gauntlet, zone out of Ulduar, fly from Storm Peaks back to Borean, zepp back to Org, Zepp to Stranglethorn, fly back to Kara.

Nah, thanks Blizzard for saving me all these stupid steps so I could get back to doing things in the game I actually want to to instead of gophering around.

[Gimlix]

You arrived in Twilight Highlands and Vash by boat / airship, Uldum via ground mount, and Hy'jal via flying mount.
You arrive in Pandaria via boat or airship as well, the first few quests you have revolve around them.
You also arrive at the Broken shore by boat initially as well, hopefully there's some continuity there once the expansion is official.

Nope to all of that. You arrive once by quest. Then you take the shitty portal way.
Wotlk had best way of transpost aside with vanilla WoW.

Those who think portals are more immersive then taking a boat or zepplin, are lying rats.