World of Warcraft Portal Removal in 8.1.5 Sparks a Firestorm of Controversy - MMORPG.com

SBFord

World of Warcraft Portal Removal in 8.1.5 Sparks a Firestorm of Controversy - MMORPG.com

While World of Warcraft v8.1.5 adds a lot of new content, it also will be removing things from the game. In this case, many of the portals that get players around Azeroth in a timely fashion are being taken out to keep "the world having a meaningful size". However, this design decision has sparked a massive backlash with the community, with several threads topping the 5,000 response mark. A new dev post acknowledges the outcry but essentially says, "Sorry, not sorry. We're sticking to it."

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cagan

Nobody travels anymore anyways... Spend 1 week to get to max level, bind your heartstone to max level raid/daily quest hub. Then same thing everyday:
-login
-Do dailies
-If any friends left playing do a heroic or maybe a raid
-get bored
-logout

TheDarkrayne

Bad move. Most of us don't enjoying wasting 60% of our play sessions with autorun on in any game.

[Deleted User]

The user and all related content has been deleted.

Nepheth

It's actually a pretty good move. Well WoW community will cry about anything name it good or bad so I'm not surprised they are crying about a change "again"...

sipu

everything that can bring back world pvp is good

Rain_Deathraven

Nice.Bring back some more RPG elements and we are good!

Rain_Deathraven

If you want to teleport where the action is, play Vindictus.

SBFord

Honestly, my biggest beef is that this was an unneeded change. WoW has so many other, much more important issues right now like class design, outrageous RNG, poor systems (Azerite that won't be fixed by "improvements" going forward), imbalanced and poorly designed PvP and so forth. 

TheDarkrayne

sipu said:

everything that can bring back world pvp is good

I'd rather they made it so that portals don't work while you have Warmode enabled and leave the PvE players alone.

Antarious

The portals aren't really a thing to me.  I mean you go into an area and blow through the levels you need, then you're done with that area.  Unless you go back at some point for achievements or something.  Then *tada* you are at max level as someone else posted and can just sit in a hub.  

The "sorry, not sorry" type responses are what I find interesting...  Why?  They just had a bunch of people lose their jobs due to underperformance.  So if portals are a "thing" to some number of subscribers you still have... way to go.  I'm sure the investors are happy that development is trying to lower their dividends even more.

You want to remove the portals.  Just remove them and keep them removed.  No need to stir the pot unless you want to be unemployed too.

JeroKane

SBFord said:

Honestly, my biggest beef is that this was an unneeded change. WoW has so many other, much more important issues right now like class design, outrageous RNG, poor systems (Azerite that won't be fixed by "improvements" going forward), imbalanced and poorly designed PvP and so forth. 

It's Activision that is in control now.

Removing the Portals is a first step.

Soon they will start adding Quick travel potions to the Cash Shop. 

Mark my words. This is just the beginning!  ActiVision hired physcologists, etc a while back to form a dedicated Monetization team, purely focused on how to max monetize their games!
Have people already forgotten about that leaked document that sparked quite the outrage?

This is all ActiVision now!  First get rid of the old garde at Blizzard, to pave way for their new greed focused practices going forward.

You can bet they going to milk World of Warfract to death with a heavily expanded cash shop and when the sub numbers drop significantly enough, they just make it fully F2P.

Galadourn

I think that's a wrong move, and I'll explain why: while not playing retail WoW for some time now (avid supporter of Classic), current WoW has been developed on different gameplay principles in comparison to Classic, where the difficulty factor WAS part of the gameplay. Making design changes now incoherently might not have the desired effect, because other gameplay elements might also break from this change. 

Lokero

JeroKane said:

SBFord said:

Honestly, my biggest beef is that this was an unneeded change. WoW has so many other, much more important issues right now like class design, outrageous RNG, poor systems (Azerite that won't be fixed by "improvements" going forward), imbalanced and poorly designed PvP and so forth. 

It's Activision that is in control now.

Removing the Portals is a first step.

Soon they will start adding Quick travel potions to the Cash Shop. 

Mark my words. This is just the beginning!  ActiVision hired physcologists, etc a while back to form a dedicated Monetization team, purely focused on how to max monetize their games!
Have people already forgotten about that leaked document that sparked quite the outrage?

This is all ActiVision now!  First get rid of the old garde at Blizzard, to pave way for their new greed focused practices going forward.

You can bet they going to milk World of Warfract to death with a heavily expanded cash shop and when the sub numbers drop significantly enough, they just make it fully F2P.

That could likely be the case.  Fast travel "scrolls" and such are already a thing in other games.

They could very well be adding items to their cash shop that allow fast-travel to the major cities/important locations, etc.

Nepheth

Galadourn said:

I think that's a wrong move, and I'll explain why: while not playing retail WoW for some time now (avid supporter of Classic), current WoW has been developed on different gameplay principles in comparison to Classic, where the difficulty factor WAS part of the gameplay. Making design changes now incoherently might not have the desired effect, because other gameplay elements might also break from this change. 

There is nothing breaking from this change. They are just removing couple of portals from the game and putting the remaining portals in the same place for a better experience. It's just the classic whinyass WoW community crying about nothing. How could they remove the cot portal and force us to take a portal to Uldum and go Tanaris from there. Thanks to them I will spend +3 min. to get where I want!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

There are soo many things to cry about in the game rn but they are choosing this one cry. I will never understand the WoW community...

Renoaku

I agree removal of portals and major changes like this is what made me leave WOW in the first place, I want the old World OF Warcraft back to what it used to be when it was the original WOW.

Verdewhis

This is just another example in a long series of the devs spitting in the face of players and saying players are too incompetent to know what they want.

SBFord

Nepheth said:

Galadourn said:

I think that's a wrong move, and I'll explain why: while not playing retail WoW for some time now (avid supporter of Classic), current WoW has been developed on different gameplay principles in comparison to Classic, where the difficulty factor WAS part of the gameplay. Making design changes now incoherently might not have the desired effect, because other gameplay elements might also break from this change. 

There is nothing breaking from this change. They are just removing couple of portals from the game and putting the remaining portals in the same place for a better experience. It's just the classic whinyass WoW community crying about nothing. How could they remove the cot portal and force us to take a portal to Uldum and go Tanaris from there. Thanks to them I will spend +3 min. to get where I want!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

There are soo many things to cry about in the game but they are choosing this one. I will never understand the WoW community...

It's more than a couple of portals. It's all portals in both Dalaran versions, including the ones under the city in the Legion version and both of the ones to Caverns of Time. It's all the portals from the Shrines in Pandaria. It's all of the portals from Ashran. Of course, all of these with the exception of Stormwind & Orgrimmar. 

While I get what you're saying, the problem really is that removing a way to get to old content is just stupid since max level players mainly use the portals to expedite the search for pets / mounts / mogs, etc., something a LOT of players keep their subs up for. 

Removing portals won't increase world PvP. It won't make the old zones more relevant. It only decreases the reasons why a lot of players bother staying subbed to WoW.

But even more than that, there is just so much more that needs actual developer attention. Fast travel isn't one of the top 100 issues facing WoW today.

Nepheth

SBFord said:

Nepheth said:

Galadourn said:

I think that's a wrong move, and I'll explain why: while not playing retail WoW for some time now (avid supporter of Classic), current WoW has been developed on different gameplay principles in comparison to Classic, where the difficulty factor WAS part of the gameplay. Making design changes now incoherently might not have the desired effect, because other gameplay elements might also break from this change. 

There is nothing breaking from this change. They are just removing couple of portals from the game and putting the remaining portals in the same place for a better experience. It's just the classic whinyass WoW community crying about nothing. How could they remove the cot portal and force us to take a portal to Uldum and go Tanaris from there. Thanks to them I will spend +3 min. to get where I want!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

There are soo many things to cry about in the game but they are choosing this one. I will never understand the WoW community...

It's more than a couple of portals. It's all portals in both Dalaran versions, including the ones under the city in the Legion version and both of the ones to Caverns of Time. It's all the portals from the Shrines in Pandaria. It's all of the portals from Ashran. Of course, all of these with the exception of Stormwind & Orgrimmar. 

While I get what you're saying, the problem really is that removing a way to get to old content is just stupid since max level players mainly use the portals to expedite the search for pets / mounts / mogs, etc., something a LOT of players keep their subs up for. 

Removing portals won't increase world PvP. It won't make the old zones more relevant. It only decreases the reasons why a lot of players bother staying subbed to WoW.

But even more than that, there is just so much more that needs actual developer attention. Fast travel isn't one of the top 100 issues facing WoW today.

Well, looking at the thread %99 of the posts are about the cot portal and everyone is saying that Blizz should leave cot portal in Dalaran and they are pretty much ok with it. Sorry but this is just a typical case of crying for the sake of it. Nothing is changing. Rn we have soo many ways to fast travel in the game, couple of portal will change nothing. You can ask a mage, use engineering, take other portals and fly a little bit and even teleport cot from an npc in Shattrah if u want. The only problem is for Alliance players to get northern Eastern Kingdom. And today even that is not a problem anymore with the ways we have for the fast travel.

Blizz announced months ago that this portal room was in works and it was just wating to be added in the game. Other than that do you actually believe removing couple of portals from the game is taking developers attention from the real problems? Trust me "time" is not their problem rn. It's just the mindset issue. The problems you, me and a lot of people are facing are not real problems in the eyes of the developers rn. I mean I'm not even playing the game anymore but crying about something like this for whatever reason is just silly...

Utinni

I think the main concern is coming from folks who farm mounts and xmogs, which is a huge percentage of the still subscribed population. Removing these portals doesn't affect current content at all. This doesn't make the game more difficult just more annoying for these folks.

Albatroes

I wonder how many people are smart enough to realize that blizzard honestly stopped 'developing' the game past WoD. All the game was in legion and now bfa was just taking things away just to give them to the player again in a different form. At least the art team has been carrying their own weight though.

KalebGrayson

Whether you agree with this change or not, there is, according to this article, a massive backlash from the community. This is another example of how out of touch development is with their player base on this game. I think some people on this forum keep hoping things will get better. Maybe they can go back in the next expansion. Stop kidding yourself. It's not going to get better. EVER. Rip the band aid off. Make it a clean break. There are so SO many other games out there. Try them and don't compare them to WoW. If you can do that then you're well on your way.

SBFord

KalebGrayson said:

Whether you agree with this change or not, there is, according to this article, a massive backlash from the community. This is another example of how out of touch development is with their player base on this game. 

Also an important point: Devs actively solicited player feedback which they got in spades. Obviously, they didn't like what was said and came back again saying, "You think you want these portals, but you don't."

Xingbairong

This is among the dumbest things they've done in the last 2 expansions if I have to be honest.
Personally I've done literally everything in the old zones, so I have no reason(not really playing for like 4 months now but if I played)to go back, HOWEVER A LOT of people don't have A TON of stuff from those old zones. They are already struggling with keeping players with their current crappy content, yet they are basically limiting older content... Tell me if someone has 1 hour, hour and a half to play and he has to spend a good 20 minutes flying around to get to old content would that be a good decision? I bet that player with limited time wouldn't be thrilled.

This is dumb beyond any reason. It's illogical to make older content "harder" than new content, because let's face it, the current difficulty of everything apart from Mythic raiding is to actually get your character physically to the place you need to be. Once you get there you just faceroll it and are done with it.

To me this just looks like another poor decision(attempt) to keep players playing online longer. The idea behind AP in Legion and BfA is that, to keep you online longer and now since a lot of people don't want to do that they are trying to get any extra minute online from the playerbase from wherever they can.

FYI I'm aware of at least over 100 bugs that are still in the game. Simple bugs that should've been fixed before release, yet it seems like they won't ever address them.

Up until like 1 month in BfA release I was among the people who was defending Blizzard(WoW more particularly) the most, but lately I'm starting to be among the people who feel like they should really just end it. It's ridiculous how many bad decisions one after another are being done.


Also how many times have they said "you think you do, but you don't" or "we understand, but we don't care"... Seriously listen to the damn feedback from the community.

gervaise1

Will this change bring people back to WoW? Unlikely.

Could this change - this change alone - cause some people to leave? I suspect so; for some it will be a major QoL hit, impacting potential short play sessions etc.

KalebGrayson

Xingbairong said:

FYI I'm aware of at least over 100 bugs that are still in the game. Simple bugs that should've been fixed before release, yet it seems like they won't ever address them.

Doesn't the mission table for Islands STILL SAY "This is a work in progress"...8 months later...kek