Originally Posted by
Lime
I do appreciate this. I've been asking people why they felt like this was needed, but kept getting responses akin to "I don't like skipping content", which wasn't making any sense.
Your perspective, though, is simply something I disagree with. There aren't so many portals currently in the game that you don't get a scope of the world. My old mount run in Legion was DS -> TotFW -> Onyxia. Just off that path alone, with the CoT port in there, I know how large the world is. It takes like 7 mins to fly from TotFW to Onyxia.
It's also an argument for newer player vs older player. Even if there was a port from Org to Gadgetzan, I'll always know just how long the distance is simply because I've done the flight/run.
If you feel there are too many portals, I feel that's your right, but I disagree. Many newer portals added each expansion are for the new continents, not old ones. There's still plenty of flying that goes on.
There's also another angle to this. Players who've done the trip without a portal will always remember just how long the journey took. For them, it doesn't matter if there's a portal or not, they know how large the world is. Blizzard could always lock the portals behind a quest that requires you to make the trip the traditional way to ensure that, if they feel it's important enough. That's how FFXI handled it.