How to make no portals acceptable.

[bloodkin]

In my opinion, the only way to make portals being removed from Dalaran/Shattrath even remotely acceptable, is to fix the taxi system in general.
Mounts are going to be 310% speed in general, so why are the in game taxis this slow when they fly a path 150 times more convaluted than the worst tour guide ever.
Make flight paths move around 500% - 750% speed, and stop circling around the departure and arrival points(and any points in between).

In one of the earlier beta builds when paladins were REALLY bugged, you moved at what I would assume to be around 500%. I thought to myself, this is what all flying should be. It was awesome. But, it still got old pretty fast, having to fly from one end of the continent to the other... SUCKS. Which makes the other half of my prerequisites to make removing portals acceptable, is to have at least 1 portal hub per continent near the middle of the continent. (ex. Portals in SW / Theramore / Dalaran / Shattrath that only go to the other hubs, so you still have to fly from one point to another on the continent you're on, but not have to wait for some stupid boat to get to the other continents.)

damn your lazy

[LQDMTL]

Wouldn't you rather see my six alts traveling to the AH to do their business rather than have one lame level 10 bank alt that sits there doing thousands of transactions worth of gold when they can't even go anywhere in the world to actually earn that gold? My time sink is a personal choice. I'm not saying that Blizzard should ban bank alts for everyone and remove in-game mail for characters because I rarely use them.

My bank alt is a level 80 rogue with max engineering. Why would a bank alt HAVE to be level 10? Short sighted... I'm not telling you how to play the game. I'm saying that if you choose to play the game inefficiently you have no ground to argue for ways to make your inefficiency more efficient when the most efficient method is already implemented and unchanging.

[Togarox]

Aren't there going to be portals in the major cities anyway? I could've sword that was the case, and if it is, who cares if shatt and dal don't have portals.

If there are no inter-city portals, then it's inconvenient, and a little boring.

The portals in Org and SW are there for traveling to 80-85 zones, not other cities. They don't need inter-city portals because it would be a redundancy. They already have inter-city travel with zepplins/boats.

[Usagi Vindaloo]

It's pretty simple, Blizzard want players to hang around in SW/Org/favourite major city. They don't want everybody staying in Northrend because there's portals there and you can see opposing faction... They are very much pushing the alliance and horde split at the moment and I fully agree with this move.

You've hit upon one of my pet peeves with this expansion; the fact that they're pushing the alli/horde split with NO OPTIONS for players who don't like the split to establish their neutrality or work towards peace. I love World of Warcraft, and I come to fight a war... with Deathwing, with the naga, with the Scourge, etc. I don't want to fight against the Alliance... they're not even evil! The fact that they're pushing the war isn't so bad - whatever, I understand some players like it - but I would be much happier if Blizzard provided ways for players who don't like the fight to avoid it entirely, to work towards peace (e.g. dailies where you sabotage war efforts on both sides) or even just simple ways for us to say, "Hey, we like the Alli/Horde, and we're cool with them." Even if it's something just as simple as setting your hearth in Dalaran. So go ahead, push the war, just leave some factions or outs for players that want nothing to do with it.

By not giving us that option, it's really taking control out of the player's hands and forcing them to march in lockstep with the war. What happens if you're RPing a peaceful friendly type? What if you prefer helping other players as opposed to hindering them? So far, the lore/gameplay has allowed for that sort of play, but I'm worried that Cata won't.

Ah well. I'm sure we'll all be back in Dalaran again for holidays when we're looking for that one dwarf rogue/undead warlock we need to shower with petals or whatever. ;D

[LQDMTL]

Let's take an example where your statement is untrue even when the destination is on the same continent:

Assume I set my hearth in SW in cataclysm. Let's also assume there's something I want to get to in Hinterlands. In Cata I fly my way up there directly from SW. However, if the portals were still around, I'd start in Dalaran and portal myself to IF, cutting travel time.

And how did you mysteriously, and evidentally spontaneously, realize you needed to go to Hinterlands? If you logged out the night before with the quest in your log you could've planned head some, maybe... ya think, and logged off in Ironforge (if not in Hinterlands).

No matter how you dice your example the only thing this doesn't allow you to do is be somewhere, realize your on the wrong continent or on the far end of the one you're on, hearth to Dal and click down to another city to correct your mistake. The vast majority of your play time questing / leveling, if you follow the quests as they're laid out, don't cause you to NEED to do that. And even in your example the added flight time is what.. 1:30? OH MY GOD... end of the world. Let's all go huddle and cry...

[Plagued00]

You lost the argument and so you resorted to absurd name-calling. Congratulations on proving both your intelligence and your overall credibility in one fell swoop. The rest of the forum is now free to ignore anything and everything you have to say as useless opinionated drivel.

The fact of the matter is that Blizzard makes the decisions it does and, regardless of how vehemently you disagree, they make bank doing so. Removal of portals is not going to cost them a single dime of profit, even if you nerd-rage and quit. You are the vocal minority. The vocal minority does not "pay the bills". You've thus no leg to stand on.

Any intelligent, well versed player is able to adapt and roll with the punches without complaining unnecessarily about things that truly mean nothing. Removal of the portals is a minor inconvenience that does nothing to hinder your ability to play the game. The worst it will do to you is incur an additional 5 or 6 minutes travel time every now and then. Boo hoo, cry me a river.

Lost the argument, and resorted to absurd name-calling? Wow. The irony of your reply is so AMAZING. You are proving without a doubt that my calling you a moronic jackass, is not just name calling, but pure truth. You think that because you feel there is no real gaming changing aspect that you are somehow in the majority? I've seen more posts siding that removing this optional feature is a bad idea, than I have seen posts from egotistical jackasses. Sorry. Also, I haven't said that this is "omg portals are gone /wrists", which helps my case for calling you a moronic jackass, as you have absolutely no idea of how to read and understand ideas, but have obviously fell into the belief that, using big words helps win an argument.

As far as an additional 5 or 6 minutes of travel time "every now and then", you must not travel much. The 5 or 6 minutes of travel time, will be often, the cases of 10-15 minute travel times, will be every now and then.

The argument is also not one of, "omg don't take my portals away." It's one of, here's my ideas on how to make having no portals acceptable to those who are obviously going to whine about it. Personally, I dislike the idea of having the portal hubs in Dalaran, because of exactly the same reasons as Blizzard, almost everyone just congregates to these areas. But I wholeheartedly do not believe that by just removing them will they change the problem. Sure, no one will use Dalaran any more, but hey, no one uses Shattrath anymore either. I think the best way to let people be dispersed through the most cities, is to just have a portal system in all of the cities, and let people choose. Just removing the portals will not make people spend more time in the "world" outside of cities, it will just make them pick the city with the most access to everything they need to access.

As to the idiot that said something along the lines of "it's in beta /thread" you're either just a troll, or dumb. They had paladin's doing 40k exorcisms in beta, guess that means they'll always do 40k exorcisms. Oh wait, that's right, beta means testing phase as far as gaming / programming is concerned, I bet that means that things change.

[Grithmir]

The amount of lazy players is amazing. I for one am glad the portals got removed. Good riddance, I won't miss them.

[Its Electric]

lol

B a n k A l t. They have this thing. It's called Mail. You can send stuff to another character that's parked next to the Auction House. It's as fast as your internet connection can handle swapping characters. You'll be back to questing before the tool that took his leveling toon to the AH in person even gets halfway done.

So you WANT this to happen? Am I understanding this correctly?

[Togarox]

Arrogant. Some of us have alts in the 60-70 range, and will be spending a LOT of time in Shattrath and Dalaran because of questing in Outland and Northrend. Unless they add auction houses out in those places that are accessible to everyone but engineers, it's adding up to be a pretty large annoyance.

Set your hearth to a major city. When you level, hearth and learn ablities/use the AH then take the portal back. It will actually save you time compared to flying to Dalaran/Shat to use the portals and then hearthing back and flying back out to where you were.

And I'm sure 80-85s Alliance-side will want to leave Stormwind to go to, you know, the other continent. I admit it's nice being able to just hearth to Dal and hop a portal to CoT or Darnassus depending on my destination rather than wait for a boat. As someone who has to AFK frequently, that ends up being a lot of wasted time and missed boats.

You answered your own question here. Boats.

[ItachiZaku]

As with taxi's in major cities, they line up and go in order, so usually that one run is all they get, so they hope for airport trips or such that'll be a big fare. Also, if you drive the same route to work every day, do you suddenly start driving faster and faster and faster trying to make it home in 4 minutes vs the normal 9?

[Usagi Vindaloo]

The amount of lazy players is amazing. I for one am glad the portals got removed. Good riddance, I won't miss them.

Again, some people are not bemoaning the portal loss because they're lazy. Some of us are annoyed because Dalaran is one of our favorite cities for non portal related reasons (the music, the architecture, the neutrality between Alli and Horde) and the change is forcing us to leave or spend MUCH longer getting to where we want (as in, not just a zepplin/boat and a flight path, but an extra 10-20 mins)

Seems to me that the ideal solution that would make EVERYONE happy would be to have just one portal. It would prevent people from abusing the portal privileges, while still allowing those of us who adore Dalaran to use it as a base of operations and a jumping off point to Org, SW, or wherever the portals go.

[LQDMTL]

So you WANT this to happen? Am I understanding this correctly?

I don't care either way. I auction on a bank alt. The only reason I ever NEEDED** the dal portals on a leveling toon was to train. And now all of the trainers will be right there in dal ready to use without going back to a normal city. As someone who's leveled a LOT of toons and done a LOT of travelling, I don't get why people NEED to complain about this at all. This change is completely fine and doesn't impact me or my playstyle whatsoever. Then again I don't just travel the game arbitrarily or unnecessarily and I tend to log out in pre-selected and planned locations based upon what I'll be doing the next time I log into that toon, so... I'd like to think I'm not some statistical anomoly and that more of the playerbase actually plays somewhat strategically and puts some thought into planning how and when they travel, etc... but I could be wrong.

**NEEDED is subjective here because I made the decision based upon where that particular toon was and known flight times. If it was quicker to fly to Dal and click down to a city to train then hearth back to my quest hub (which is where I set my hearths in Northrend), then that's what I did. If it was quicker to take a boat, I did that instead.

[shadet]

TL;DR "I did it once on the beta and it wasn't an issue. That means it'll never be an issue and won't be an issue when considered as an aggregate."

Correct. Because then I changed my hearth location. Problem solved!

Jeeze, people can figure out strats to kill HC LK but can't figure out how to change where they hearth stone to?

Are most of the people complaining also the people that think that Hearthstones should be on like a 30 second cooldown not 30 minutes?

[Grithmir]

Again, some people are not bemoaning the portal loss because they're lazy. Some of us are annoyed because Dalaran is one of our favorite cities for non portal related reasons (the music, the architecture, the neutrality between Alli and Horde) and the change is forcing us to leave or spend MUCH longer getting to where we want.

Seems to me that the ideal solution that would make EVERYONE happy would be to have just one portal. It would prevent people from abusing the portal privileges, while still allowing those of us who adore Dalaran to use it as a base of operations and a jumping off point to Org, SW, or wherever the portals go.

Purchase a ring of the Kirin Tor, and set your hearthstone in Azeroth. Problem solved, no? As you now have acces to Dalaran (ring), EK (HS) and Kalimor (CoT teleport)

[danawhitaker]

My bank alt is a level 80 rogue with max engineering. Why would a bank alt HAVE to be level 10? Short sighted... I'm not telling you how to play the game. I'm saying that if you choose to play the game inefficiently you have no ground to argue for ways to make your inefficiency more efficient when the most efficient method is already implemented and unchanging.

You *are* telling people how to play the game essentially though. That's what you fail to realize. I'm choosing to play the game in a way that's comfortable to me. I prefer efficiency in some things (like travel) because my game time gets interrupted a lot. It's easier to portal and throw myself on a flight path than afk auto-fly across the continent and risk dying from fatigue. For some things, I'm ambivalent about efficiency (like questing vs. running dungeons to level, or spending time at the AH). Because of the fact that I keep my gold separate on all my characters, and I don't use one to fund the others, it would actually end up being less efficient for me to use a bank alt because I'd actually have to track which items belonged to which character and make sure everyone ended up with the proper gold they earned - not fun. Not efficient. A lot less efficient than just going to the AH individually, especially since at most I'm taking one of those six characters every 2 days when they finish up a zone or dungeon they're working on and run out of bag space. Even for the sake of argument let's say I didn't want all my gold separate. It would probably end up taking me longer to mail off all the items, switch to the other character, open my mail to get all those items, and then scan and post them than it would take me to hearth to Dal, portal to IF, run 30 seconds to the AH, and start doing it without having to log in or make two mailbox runs.

You know what they say about assumptions. Stop making them about other people. I'm sure you do things in the game that are extremely inefficient. Making a blanket statement that because someone does something different from you that you deem inefficient by your standards doesn't make it so, nor does it mean that something they prefer to do efficiently should be yanked out from under them for no reason - especially when it affects characters that won't even be *using* Cataclysm content for 14 levels or more.

Some of us have real responsibilities outside the game, like children, household chores, taking care of aging parents, work, etc. Those few minutes not spent waiting for a boat or having to take a flight when a portal was once available to make a difference to us.

[Togarox]

Fine, but what in any way does it add to the game that is beneficial? THAT is my point, that it does nothing but remove convenience for the game and therefor any statements that it's 'better for the game' are completely untrue and solely based of bias interpretations of how players experienced parts of the game that didn't have that convenience.

You are only looking at it from a players point of view. If you look at it from Blizzards point of view, it is beneficial to the point that they want everyone to congregate in SW and org.

[Sunscorn]

I like a nice AFK break while on an flight path.

[Usagi Vindaloo]

Purchase a ring of the Kirin Tor, and set your hearthstone in Azeroth. Problem solved, no? As you now have acces to Dalaran (ring), EK (HS) and Kalimor (CoT teleport)

... DOH!

You are absolutely right, and I am a gorram moron. I totally forgot about the Kirin Tor rings (I never got one for my tankadin because I don't think they had one for tanks, and... well, in hindsight I should have gotten one for my hunter, but for some reason I continually blank on those rings). Course, it means I have to carry it around with me in my bag and I now have to spend tons of my hard earned cash, but it certainly is an option. Thanks for reminding me!

[commanderbeatdown]

Removal of portals is a good thing thus acceptable

This.

[Togarox]

Again, some people are not bemoaning the portal loss because they're lazy. Some of us are annoyed because Dalaran is one of our favorite cities for non portal related reasons (the music, the architecture, the neutrality between Alli and Horde) and the change is forcing us to leave or spend MUCH longer getting to where we want (as in, not just a zepplin/boat and a flight path, but an extra 10-20 mins)

Seems to me that the ideal solution that would make EVERYONE happy would be to have just one portal. It would prevent people from abusing the portal privileges, while still allowing those of us who adore Dalaran to use it as a base of operations and a jumping off point to Org, SW, or wherever the portals go.

I enjoy hanging out in Theramore on my alliance character. Does that mean that they should put portals there for my benefit? Sacrifices are part of the game.