Do you consider travel as part of your adventure?

[Shinrael]

Yep. I love travelling in-game. Sure, sometimes you just want to get to point B as fast as possible, but that is more of a problem with the game design overall. If you design the game to be something you do during lunch break for 15 minutes, people will sure hate having to spend those 15 minutes just travelling. If you design the game to be an adventure (and each separate element as a part of that adventure) then yes, travelling could be fun and immersive. I quite enjoyed the delivery quests from between zones in Vanilla. Like the one in Wetlands which takes you to Hillsbrad, or the ones in Duskwood which return you to Westfall. Some random quest in Westfall which sends you to Loch Modan and vice versa. Darkshore quest which takes you to Wetlands. I can go on and on. I liked those. Especially lately I've been playing with camera zoomed into my character (as close as possible while still being able to see my whole character while fighting and with the ActionCam I can enjoy the fighting animations!) and when you look at the world from that angle while travelling, you can truly see its beauty. I think that's how Blizzard meant us to see it.

[Tazr]

travel in wow was fun until they decide :
1. that flying is an evil thing and must be slowed the most they can
2.they begin to make island with spiral mountain everywhere, so your 1km long point A to B become a 10 km long road of spiral running

flying is life and the only travel way fun in the game

THIS! I absolutely loved leveling in Cata because you could fly. I also loved that you auto-learned flight paths as you hit the correct levels for the related content, instead of having to go back and painfully acquire them later. Then again, isn't that when we got Have Group Will Travel? I LOVED HGWT because it made it SO easy to get or give help. And they took it ALL away. NOW they want to take away waterwalking, and force you to buy THAT skill back on a per character basis.

I just pray there is a major Dev cleanout coming up. Surely SOME exec somewhere will remove their head out of their ass long enough to realize the Devs are alienating the player base with each and every quality of life nerf.

[Rozz]

For wow, I would say travel is incorporated into the adventure and encouraged. Even though it has questing hubs, you have rares and nodes and other things to enrich your experience as you move between locations.

To say the adventure occurs once you reach the hub doesn't feel accurate, because the hub itself isn't important. The world itself is. The hub is ultimately a vehicle to optimize/direct travel and leveling.

[Linkedblade]

In WoW, I used to consider travel as part of the adventure, that is, before the annoying map design from WoD onwards. Atm it's nothing but a boring chore. Imo GW2 is the MMO that does the travel (and general world characterization) part best.

I'm just so used to most games where you hoof it for a good portion until vehicles are introduced. RPGs like Zelda or ff and shooters like halo. But I enjoy that. Especially with how warmode is, it's nice to have a comfortable memory of the map so you can dodge and weave away from people.

[stross01]

World of Warcraft is a pretty unpleasant game to look at and even more unpleasant to move through.

Legion and BFA are as if they let some intern go insane with a random doodad brush and there's just unless clutter in the way. This is probably done to 'extend' content by putting something you can catch on every five yards.

The landscape of this expansion is pretty dull and uninspired. A lot of it is riding around a structure, looking for the path up that's only on one side. Every cave being the same layout is dumb. Every zone in Kul Tiras is small enough so that you can see every goofy quest that's coming next.

Flying is a godsend that cannot get here soon enough.

[Linkedblade]

THIS! I absolutely loved leveling in Cata because you could fly. I also loved that you auto-learned flight paths as you hit the correct levels for the related content, instead of having to go back and painfully acquire them later. Then again, isn't that when we got Have Group Will Travel? I LOVED HGWT because it made it SO easy to get or give help. And they took it ALL away. NOW they want to take away waterwalking, and force you to buy THAT skill back on a per character basis.

I just pray there is a major Dev cleanout coming up. Surely SOME exec somewhere will remove their head out of their ass long enough to realize the Devs are alienating the player base with each and every quality of life nerf.

I'd prefer a talent like system for mounts, where you can just change out the ability you want. But they're changing the system so you don't get shoe horned into one mount for all your travels.

[Onikaroshi]

Not really, hate travelling in any game and a lot of games are using the "big open world" thing lately, just to make it seem like they have more content then they do because you spend 10 minutes traveling to get anywhere.

[Fred Skinner]

I consider exploration as part of the adventure. But not traveling over and over.

That said, i think flying should be available in a zone once you explored it.

[Dormie]

Yes, WoW Vanilla through-Wrath wouldn't have been the game it was with something like fast travel.

[Daedius]

First time exploring, sure. After that it's just a chore going back and forth between WQs.

[Nasuuna]

Depends on the game.

FF14 absolutely not

WoW as it stands, no.

Vanilla, yes.

[SNES-1990]

In WoW, I used to consider travel as part of the adventure, that is, before the annoying map design from WoD onwards.

Glad I'm not the only one that noticed this. In WoD it that realization came to me in Spires of Arak where all of the pathways are lined with 90-degree angle ledges that you can't walk or jump up, resulting in a linear and forced quest path.

[SirCowdog]

I had a debate with a friend the other day regarding travel in lobby games, open world games and games like Neverwinter that fall in the middle. Both of us have been playing mmorpgs with the same people since UO launched and have played most of the mmorpg games out there over the years. Each of these games has had their own spin on travel. I was wondering how a community like mmo-champ looks at travel


Do you consider travel in WoW to be part of your adventure or does your adventure start when you arrive at your destination?

Do you find travel fun?

There's a difference between travelling, and making a JOURNEY. This is something I think Blizzard gets mixed up.

Generally speaking, travel is fairly boring. You'll notice how often in movies and books when someone is getting on a train or bus or hopping in a wagon, there's a cut oor a montage to when they actually arrive at where something interesting is actually taking place. In real life, most people will sleep or read a book or have a conversation unless they're doing the actual piloting.

Now....having a JOURNEY is what games should be all about. Adventure. Conflict. Struggle. This is the story of how your character develops and improves. This is unlocking new paths and areas in a game, fighting new monsters, learning new abilities that change the gameplay, and interacting with or progressing the story. This is not done very well with filler content that's just repetitive nonsense. That's why they call it a treadmill; because you're not really going anywhere.

Specifically to WoW: Travel in this game is not very fun, for the most part. This is why you see conveniences like being able to AFK on a flight path, or just hopping through a portal. The problem is that Blizzard thinks that traveling in WoW is fun, when it really kind of isn't. What's fun is doing the thing at the end of traveling; the thing that's relevant to your entertainment.

Putting unnecessary barriers between you and your fun is something that should generally be avoided. And note that I bolded "unnecessary". Sometimes getting to a place should be difficult. The example most commonly used is how skipping to the end boss in a raid would make the rest of the run pointless. The problem with that, however, is that all too often the trash mobs between you and the boss are already pointless.

This is something Blizzard really needs to work on. If they want traveling around open world zones, or traveling through dungeons and raids to be interesting, they need to give that travel some relevance or purpose to the content players are trying to get to. Trash mobs maybe need to guard a buff or a trigger that changes how a boss fight works. The open world needs to have randomized triggers that lead to hidden world quests or valuable crafting resources. The Witcher 3 did an excellent job of this, if you wanted an example.

[Agera]

I would like the option to choose how to travel the way i want at the moment i want. I'm disabled and can't travel easily so, yes there are times when i like going through the game and looking at the scenery. but there are times when i want to get to the destination and get the job done. What do i think about many of the convenience portals being taken away? Bathroom breaks, cleaning room time, etc.. while the game flys me from point a to b.

[avitush]

It's part of the adventure the first time I do it, sure.

After I've gone from the same point A to the same point B a few dozen times, it just becomes tedious and boring. That's when I start to want flying.

[Scottyjscizzle]

Depends, if travel is fun. That greatly depends on the methods and world itself. I love traveling in worlds adrift purely due to using a grapple to move like spider-man, or building my own airship. Where as travel in most traditional mmos, such as wow, ffxiv, gw2, etc is interesting for maybe the first pass through a map then I zone out while moving.

[Margamanthak]

I really liked traveling in Outland back in BC. Nagrand was beautiful to look at, it was easy to fall off in Netherstorm, and the knowledge that there could be something not too far off that could rip your face off with ease always made traveling for dailies, farming, quests, or whatever a bit of an adventure. Heck, most of Northrend's zones had some nice music to them that made travel worth it (at a consistency that future expansions just haven't been able to match IMO). Now it's just "OMG QUIT DISMOUNTING ME", run through everything, or flight master's whistle at max level. There's no real reason to care at max level, since you just wanna get to your objective and move on quickly.

[Arakakao]

Only the first time I reach a zone. After that it becomes boring and monotonous and makes me miss flying more and more....

[clevin]

Travel really used to be part of the adventure.

Back when I was a lowbie Night Elf in late vanilla/early BC, I wanted to get to Stormwind to quest with my brother who made a human. Since there wasn't any direct way to get there, I embarked on my first journey to Stormwind by foot. I made a lot of different friends on the way a lot of them guided me through parts of the journey, past higher level mobs and whatnot. It was literally my first experience with WoW and it's what sold me on the magic of this game.

WoW has potential for those kinds of journeys, but in it's formulaic state it's very difficult for them to pull off. They are doing a good job with the secret mounts/pets/toy items. Those have encouraged grouping with friends, and have you travelling around azeroth for a very satisfying and unique reward at the end.

I did something similar, walking/running to Wetlands from IF.

Travel also can add to atmosphere. Hell, old Desolace was big and empty and you get a feel for it as a bleak zone (though the quest layout was annoying). Same for Tanaris, etc. Almost any zone, really.

Now.. INTERzone travel is often not fun in that sense but it provides a sense of scale and I know that when I first played that sense of a large world was one of the things that impressed me about WoW. After a while, of course, you tab out if you're on a FP bird because it's to entertaining to fly from old Darnassus to, say, Ratchet for 10 minutes.

[Boricha]

Running from Teldrassil to Westfall was an adventure. Flying back to Heart of Fear for a Tmog run isn't. It really depends on the scenario.