Well, you can look to it the way you want, but im with the OP on this one.
World exploration is no more in current mmo designs. And long travels are part of this factor, so i suppose i agree on calling it a feature. Everything is spoon fed to players. The game design itself is made in order to lead the player across the world map. Theres no exploration, no hard tasking in discovering by yourself the world map, and even grouping with other people to quest level around the map is useless because you can solo the content.
So, and this is ofc my opinion, having to level from lvl A to lvl B and taking a long time to do so is bad for some players, but what i hate most is to reach cap level in a blitz, because game design allows it, and be at max level really quick so i can do end game content. Whats the fun in it? I like to explore the game, and most of the mmos i have fun are the ones that allow me to slowly quest level, allowing me to know the games lore, my avatar, places, etc etc.
So yeah i miss the long travelling around the world..."thanks to devs by removing it" "time sink"...?? Well i guess those players that already are at max lvl in SWTOR had plenty of fun..even if almost instant, but the ones still leveling are still enjoying it.
Now for features i miss... The fresh community... You know before it became a stale pudgy mass that just complained and nit-picked at every thing that was not exactly like they wanted... That i miss... but like redundant time sinks they are not comming back.
More people would enjoy long travel if the game was capable of making it an adventure in itself. The trouble is today that these games are shallow, static and scripted. The world looks great if you are just running by it on the way to your next quest, but don't stop and linger too long or you will notice the flaws in the paint job.
Sort of like if you were always traveling somewhere different and always encountering a completely different set of enemies and/or storyline along the way!
Sounds an awful lot like modern themepark quest gameplay to me...
It sounds nothing like standard questing. I'm talking about a more interesting world capable of generating dynamic content. Quests are static events that you are sent to, and even given a marker on your map so you go straight to it, and then on to the next one.
Rift's rift system was sort of a start, but Guild Wars 2 will have something a bit more interesting where you will run across dynamic quests and events in the game while you are randomly adventuring. In other words, you are rewarded with unique content just for being out in the game world. Even just the act of making the game world more interesting with explorable points of interest, interesting and diverse mobs, surprises, puzzles and other things would be more interesting than what we have now in themeparks. The land in these games is just made to be a nice backdrop for your questing area, when it could be a lot more. No one wants to long travel because there is absolutely no reason to.
A sure sign that you are in an old, dying paradigm/mindset, is when you are scared of new ideas and new technology. Don't feel bad. The world is moving on without you, and you are welcome to yell "Get Off My Lawn!" all you want while it happens. You cannot, however, stop an idea whose time has come.
Originally posted by Metentso Back then, human cities had humans. Elf cities had elfs. Dwarf cities had dwarfs, and so on. Because traveling was hard. It took time and it was risky, and it had consequences, like not being able to train (depending on faction alignment). So if you were an Elf, an travelled to the human cities, you draw the attention of everybody, since it was strange for an Elf to travel from such a long distance. You were special and you had a tale to tell and people interested in it. Add this to the long list of things we have lost, thanks to modern developers.
I know some of you hated long travels.
Forget it these days most don't want the time sink even if its a short walk/run they already whine about it and demand faster ways to travel, it must all be INSTANT thats magic trick in most mmo's these days, its sad but true.
Luckly i dont have to deal with players in solo games so ive travel for HOURES on end in SKYRIM and i love it i dont use fast travel i go on foot AWESOME.
Hope to build full AMD system RYZEN/VEGA/AM4!!!
MB:Asus V De Luxe z77 CPU:Intell Icore7 3770k GPU: AMD Fury X(waiting for BIG VEGA 10 or 11 HBM2?(bit unclear now)) MEMORY:Corsair PLAT.DDR3 1866MHZ 16GB PSU:Corsair AX1200i OS:Windows 10 64bit
More people would enjoy long travel if the game was capable of making it an adventure in itself.
Probably. Make it so, Number One.
Self-pity imprisons us in the walls of our own self-absorption. The whole world shrinks down to the size of our problem, and the more we dwell on it, the smaller we are and the larger the problem seems to grow.
I like travel times because that is what a world is all about, soon as you take them out you may as well not have a world.
Right, and that's what you see in some areas in SWTOR now. You have these little gameplay zones that are walled-off because they are small, and not really connected to a larger open world. You just travel from zone to zone (Space Mountain to The Matterhorn), ride your ride, and then head for the next one. Because these areas are so small, they have long server queues and multiple instances of the zones.
A sure sign that you are in an old, dying paradigm/mindset, is when you are scared of new ideas and new technology. Don't feel bad. The world is moving on without you, and you are welcome to yell "Get Off My Lawn!" all you want while it happens. You cannot, however, stop an idea whose time has come.
Back then, human cities had humans. Elf cities had elfs. Dwarf cities had dwarfs, and so on.
Because traveling was hard.
It took time and it was risky, and it had consequences, like not being able to train (depending on faction alignment).
So if you were an Elf, an travelled to the human cities, you draw the attention of everybody, since it was strange for an Elf to travel from such a long distance. You were special and you had a tale to tell and people interested in it.
Add this to the long list of things we have lost, thanks to modern developers.
I know some of you hated long travels.
Forget it these days most don't want the time sink even if its a short walk/run they already whine about it and demand faster ways to travel, it must all be INSTANT thats magic trick in most mmo's these days, its sad but true.
Luckly i dont have to deal with players in solo games so ive travel for HOURES on end in SKYRIM and i love it i dont use fast travel i go on foot AWESOME.
Last night on Anchorhead (SWTOR), there were people in the general chat window bitching because their email was not just delivered to their client, and that they couldn't just pull up a screen and train their class or buy things wherever they are. It's just going to continue to devolve in this direction as people are happy having things handed to them.
What developers fail to notice, is that if they bothered to develop the game in an interesting manner, people can also be happy NOT having everything handed to them. At least some people will. Look how many people love Skyrim for example.
A sure sign that you are in an old, dying paradigm/mindset, is when you are scared of new ideas and new technology. Don't feel bad. The world is moving on without you, and you are welcome to yell "Get Off My Lawn!" all you want while it happens. You cannot, however, stop an idea whose time has come.
This is one vet that doesn't miss long, tedious travels.
"Tedious" is the key word here. But what if the world along the travel route was actually interesting, dynamic and provided opporunities to be led off the beaten path on adventures and exploration? It's tedious now because there is no reason to bother doing it thanks to uninspired game world design.
A sure sign that you are in an old, dying paradigm/mindset, is when you are scared of new ideas and new technology. Don't feel bad. The world is moving on without you, and you are welcome to yell "Get Off My Lawn!" all you want while it happens. You cannot, however, stop an idea whose time has come.
I had many nights of fun sitting on the dock in Freeport or Butcher Block waiting on the boat. And being on the RZ server at the time made for an even more intense time if some enemies happened to be around.
When that boat ride was 45 minutes long it was sweet. When people were standing around waiting, some would fish but we all would shoot the sh*t. It helped make for a better community. Even if you didn't want to wat, you could always ask a wizard or druid to zap you to one of locations you wanted to go.
Anyway, bring back long travel times, bring back death penalties, bring back all the stuff that made these games fun.
Really hoping EQNext will take these games back to the golden years...now where are my rose tinted glasses....
That Guild Wars 2 login screen knocked up my wife. Must be the second coming!
Well, wouldn't go that far. Every player needs some places that are not packed to the rafters with tightly bunched critturs, or ancient evil temples.
Roads are for transit and commerce. There's a reason the Romans patrolled them constantly.
Self-pity imprisons us in the walls of our own self-absorption. The whole world shrinks down to the size of our problem, and the more we dwell on it, the smaller we are and the larger the problem seems to grow.
Some of the best times ever happened during the wait for the ship/shuttle in Mos Eiseley.
Good times, I miss 'em.
"Censorship is never over for those who have experienced it. It is a brand on the imagination that affects the individual who has suffered it, forever." - Noam Chomsky
This is one vet that doesn't miss long, tedious travels.
"Tedious" is the key word here. But what if the world along the travel route was actually interesting, dynamic and provided opporunities to be led off the beaten path on adventures and exploration? It's tedious now because there is no reason to bother doing it thanks to uninspired game world design.
No MMO has ever come up with what you're talking about, and quite frankly, it looks like MMO devs have all but given up on providing any sort of gameplay besides trying to see who can make the most meaningless game.
Ok so while I do NOT like 45-minute rides, everywhere and I think not mant players do AT SAME TIME I do NOT like instant teleportations everwhere. Like blink and you're in instance that theoretically is on the other end of a game world.
Sorry both of those are extremes and are equally bad.
Travelling should take some time, maybe there could be instant travelling between some biggest cities, but apart of that travelling should take some time.
Many players will never know the freedom of a virtual world where you stand waiting 10 minutes in a pink tutu surfing the baazar Flagged with guild members waiting on a shuttle. it's not the fact i was asking to get my toon killed wearing one,but the fact the game allowed me to do so.
It's the journey, not the end game that makes certain games of old beyond amazing.
New players don't care if the choices a game once offered are taken away. they just want the best gear to improve the false sense of the game giving them something for the 20 minutes they log on between wife aggro.
Well, wouldn't go that far. Every player needs some places that are not packed to the rafters with tightly bunched critturs, or ancient evil temples.
Roads are for transit and commerce. There's a reason the Romans patrolled them constantly.
Not that I said the roads would be overflowing with action every ten feet, but why would any player "need" a road to be a mundane travel lane? This is why no one wants to do it in the first place. I'm not talking about smothering roads with dangers, I'm talking about making the areas long the roads much more interesting so you want to get off the road and go do things.
I take it you don't do much hiking or adventuring in real life either. Roads and trails are not just on-rails lanes that you use to get from point A to point B. They can deliver you to all kinds of interesting places along the way. I know this might seem really strange to themeparkers who are used to just getting from one quest area to the other as fast as possible, but trust me on this.
A sure sign that you are in an old, dying paradigm/mindset, is when you are scared of new ideas and new technology. Don't feel bad. The world is moving on without you, and you are welcome to yell "Get Off My Lawn!" all you want while it happens. You cannot, however, stop an idea whose time has come.
Ok so while I do NOT like 45-minute rides, everywhere and I think not mant players do AT SAME TIME I do NOT like instant teleportations everwhere. Like blink and you're in instance that theoretically is on the other end of a game world.
It's not as bifurcated as commonly presented on message boards. There's lots of room in the middle ground.
Self-pity imprisons us in the walls of our own self-absorption. The whole world shrinks down to the size of our problem, and the more we dwell on it, the smaller we are and the larger the problem seems to grow.
I take it you don't do much hiking or adventuring in real life either. Roads and trails are not just on-rails lanes that you use to get from point A to point B. They can deliver you to all kinds of interesting places along the way. I know this might seem really strange to themeparkers who are used to just getting from one quest area to the other as fast as possible, but trust me on this.
Hello, what'd I do to deserve that little unjustified straw man?
Oh, right, not 100% agreement with your black and white position.
Self-pity imprisons us in the walls of our own self-absorption. The whole world shrinks down to the size of our problem, and the more we dwell on it, the smaller we are and the larger the problem seems to grow.
Back then, human cities had humans. Elf cities had elfs. Dwarf cities had dwarfs, and so on.
Because traveling was hard.
It took time and it was risky, and it had consequences, like not being able to train (depending on faction alignment).
So if you were an Elf, an travelled to the human cities, you draw the attention of everybody, since it was strange for an Elf to travel from such a long distance. You were special and you had a tale to tell and people interested in it.
Add this to the long list of things we have lost, thanks to modern developers.
I know some of you hated long travels.
When playing Skyrim I never use the fast travel features, used to do the same in oblivion, nuff said.
I never really minded the long travel times it was exciting going through area's I hadn't seen before I still remember my first run to direlands in AC to the swamp. Alot of times I would run all over Asherons Call simply because never knew what I might find or not find might be a vendor tucked away in some remote part of the world etc etc.There was a time in that game were travel wasn't that easy specially if you didn't have item magic so the only way you did get somewhere was to hoof it.
Originally posted by MindTrigger Originally posted by Golelorn This is one vet that doesn't miss long, tedious travels.
"Tedious" is the key word here. But what if the world along the travel route was actually interesting, dynamic and provided opporunities to be led off the beaten path on adventures and exploration? It's tedious now because there is no reason to bother doing it thanks to uninspired game world design.
See, I got a taste of this in Skyrim. I deliberately avoided fast travelling everywhere because I knew simply by walking across the map I would come across gorgeous scenery, dangerous and rewarding battles, and interesting hidden treasures and areas. Who knows, maybe I would meet an injured NPC who would send me off on a sidequest. It PAID to explore and "travel times" were simply part of the adventure.
I do not think Skyrim went remotely far enough, however. There were still huge tracts of land devoid of monsters and not enough interesting side areas and secrets. Take the design philosophy of a game like Skyrim and up it maybe two or three times and you will have a game that makes fast travel totally unnecessary from a gameplay perspective.
However, we're still working on reaching this point in terms of single player RPGs, which means we're not even CLOSE to this point in MMOs. Maybe in a decade or so developers will put in enough time and energy into games that removing fast travel may actually be enjoyable, but for the time being it's a needless time sink that drives away players.
Ok so while I do NOT like 45-minute rides, everywhere and I think not mant players do AT SAME TIME I do NOT like instant teleportations everwhere. Like blink and you're in instance that theoretically is on the other end of a game world.
It's not as bifurcated as commonly presented on message boards. There's lots of room in the middle ground.
Sure.
I WANT middle-ground, but nowadays most mmorpg's adapt or plan to LFG tools that teleport you to all instances + add teleports to more and more and more places.
So I want middle ground, but situation at least in 'mainstream' mmorpg's is going towards extreme. Just opposite kind of extreme than in f.e. early EQ1.
This is one vet that doesn't miss long, tedious travels.
"Tedious" is the key word here. But what if the world along the travel route was actually interesting, dynamic and provided opporunities to be led off the beaten path on adventures and exploration? It's tedious now because there is no reason to bother doing it thanks to uninspired game world design.
No MMO has ever come up with what you're talking about, and quite frankly, it looks like MMO devs have all but given up on providing any sort of gameplay besides trying to see who can make the most meaningless game.
That's true of dynamic content as we know it today, but older games had very cool open and explorable areas that could be enhanced further with today's technology. Dynamic content is coming with games like Guild Wars 2.
Games like Star Wars Galaxies had multuple huge areas (planets in this case) with caves, dungeons, beautiful points of interest, rare mob spawns, etc that made exploring rewarding. Even before SWG had the POI badge system, you could journey out in any direction on the maps and go look for places to adventure. There were no quests there, just awesome map design, mobs to kill, lore areas, ruins, majestic waterfalls, volcanos, whatever. These things were peppered all around these huge worlds, and along the way you always found some kind of trouble/fun, or met new people to adventure with. Enhance these areas with today's technology, some puzzles, mini-games, ultra-rare (and rewarding) mob spawns, dynamic content, and suddenly you have open world content that brings the world to life.
This doesn't have to be a "sandbox" game either. Features like this would go a very long way to makeing themeparks or hybrids much richer games than they are today. All I see when I look at these new games like SWTOR are shortcuts being taken in game design. I may not be able to code my own MMO game, but I would love to sit down with a bunch of people and help design one.
I think the saddest thing about MMORPGs is that people cannot even fathom a game where they aren't going down the checklist of their quest log so they know what they should be doing.
A sure sign that you are in an old, dying paradigm/mindset, is when you are scared of new ideas and new technology. Don't feel bad. The world is moving on without you, and you are welcome to yell "Get Off My Lawn!" all you want while it happens. You cannot, however, stop an idea whose time has come.
Comments
Well, you can look to it the way you want, but im with the OP on this one.
World exploration is no more in current mmo designs. And long travels are part of this factor, so i suppose i agree on calling it a feature. Everything is spoon fed to players. The game design itself is made in order to lead the player across the world map. Theres no exploration, no hard tasking in discovering by yourself the world map, and even grouping with other people to quest level around the map is useless because you can solo the content.
So, and this is ofc my opinion, having to level from lvl A to lvl B and taking a long time to do so is bad for some players, but what i hate most is to reach cap level in a blitz, because game design allows it, and be at max level really quick so i can do end game content. Whats the fun in it? I like to explore the game, and most of the mmos i have fun are the ones that allow me to slowly quest level, allowing me to know the games lore, my avatar, places, etc etc.
So yeah i miss the long travelling around the world..."thanks to devs by removing it" "time sink"...?? Well i guess those players that already are at max lvl in SWTOR had plenty of fun..even if almost instant, but the ones still leveling are still enjoying it.
Long gone features....slow travel...
UO had moongates... they teleported you...
And we were done with that "feature"
Now for features i miss... The fresh community... You know before it became a stale pudgy mass that just complained and nit-picked at every thing that was not exactly like they wanted... That i miss... but like redundant time sinks they are not comming back.
This have been a good conversation
It sounds nothing like standard questing. I'm talking about a more interesting world capable of generating dynamic content. Quests are static events that you are sent to, and even given a marker on your map so you go straight to it, and then on to the next one.
Rift's rift system was sort of a start, but Guild Wars 2 will have something a bit more interesting where you will run across dynamic quests and events in the game while you are randomly adventuring. In other words, you are rewarded with unique content just for being out in the game world. Even just the act of making the game world more interesting with explorable points of interest, interesting and diverse mobs, surprises, puzzles and other things would be more interesting than what we have now in themeparks. The land in these games is just made to be a nice backdrop for your questing area, when it could be a lot more. No one wants to long travel because there is absolutely no reason to.
A sure sign that you are in an old, dying paradigm/mindset, is when you are scared of new ideas and new technology. Don't feel bad. The world is moving on without you, and you are welcome to yell "Get Off My Lawn!" all you want while it happens. You cannot, however, stop an idea whose time has come.
I like travel times because that is what a world is all about, soon as you take them out you may as well not have a world.
Forget it these days most don't want the time sink even if its a short walk/run they already whine about it and demand faster ways to travel, it must all be INSTANT thats magic trick in most mmo's these days, its sad but true.
Luckly i dont have to deal with players in solo games so ive travel for HOURES on end in SKYRIM and i love it i dont use fast travel i go on foot AWESOME.
Hope to build full AMD system RYZEN/VEGA/AM4!!!
MB:Asus V De Luxe z77
CPU:Intell Icore7 3770k
GPU: AMD Fury X(waiting for BIG VEGA 10 or 11 HBM2?(bit unclear now))
MEMORY:Corsair PLAT.DDR3 1866MHZ 16GB
PSU:Corsair AX1200i
OS:Windows 10 64bit
Probably. Make it so, Number One.
Self-pity imprisons us in the walls of our own self-absorption. The whole world shrinks down to the size of our problem, and the more we dwell on it, the smaller we are and the larger the problem seems to grow.
Right, and that's what you see in some areas in SWTOR now. You have these little gameplay zones that are walled-off because they are small, and not really connected to a larger open world. You just travel from zone to zone (Space Mountain to The Matterhorn), ride your ride, and then head for the next one. Because these areas are so small, they have long server queues and multiple instances of the zones.
A sure sign that you are in an old, dying paradigm/mindset, is when you are scared of new ideas and new technology. Don't feel bad. The world is moving on without you, and you are welcome to yell "Get Off My Lawn!" all you want while it happens. You cannot, however, stop an idea whose time has come.
Last night on Anchorhead (SWTOR), there were people in the general chat window bitching because their email was not just delivered to their client, and that they couldn't just pull up a screen and train their class or buy things wherever they are. It's just going to continue to devolve in this direction as people are happy having things handed to them.
What developers fail to notice, is that if they bothered to develop the game in an interesting manner, people can also be happy NOT having everything handed to them. At least some people will. Look how many people love Skyrim for example.
A sure sign that you are in an old, dying paradigm/mindset, is when you are scared of new ideas and new technology. Don't feel bad. The world is moving on without you, and you are welcome to yell "Get Off My Lawn!" all you want while it happens. You cannot, however, stop an idea whose time has come.
This is one vet that doesn't miss long, tedious travels.
"Tedious" is the key word here. But what if the world along the travel route was actually interesting, dynamic and provided opporunities to be led off the beaten path on adventures and exploration? It's tedious now because there is no reason to bother doing it thanks to uninspired game world design.
A sure sign that you are in an old, dying paradigm/mindset, is when you are scared of new ideas and new technology. Don't feel bad. The world is moving on without you, and you are welcome to yell "Get Off My Lawn!" all you want while it happens. You cannot, however, stop an idea whose time has come.
I had many nights of fun sitting on the dock in Freeport or Butcher Block waiting on the boat. And being on the RZ server at the time made for an even more intense time if some enemies happened to be around.
When that boat ride was 45 minutes long it was sweet. When people were standing around waiting, some would fish but we all would shoot the sh*t. It helped make for a better community. Even if you didn't want to wat, you could always ask a wizard or druid to zap you to one of locations you wanted to go.
Anyway, bring back long travel times, bring back death penalties, bring back all the stuff that made these games fun.
Really hoping EQNext will take these games back to the golden years...now where are my rose tinted glasses....
That Guild Wars 2 login screen knocked up my wife. Must be the second coming!
Well, wouldn't go that far. Every player needs some places that are not packed to the rafters with tightly bunched critturs, or ancient evil temples.
Roads are for transit and commerce. There's a reason the Romans patrolled them constantly.
Self-pity imprisons us in the walls of our own self-absorption. The whole world shrinks down to the size of our problem, and the more we dwell on it, the smaller we are and the larger the problem seems to grow.
Some of the best times ever happened during the wait for the ship/shuttle in Mos Eiseley.
Good times, I miss 'em.
"Censorship is never over for those who have experienced it. It is a brand on the imagination that affects the individual who has suffered it, forever." - Noam Chomsky
No MMO has ever come up with what you're talking about, and quite frankly, it looks like MMO devs have all but given up on providing any sort of gameplay besides trying to see who can make the most meaningless game.
Ok so while I do NOT like 45-minute rides, everywhere and I think not mant players do AT SAME TIME I do NOT like instant teleportations everwhere. Like blink and you're in instance that theoretically is on the other end of a game world.
Sorry both of those are extremes and are equally bad.
Travelling should take some time, maybe there could be instant travelling between some biggest cities, but apart of that travelling should take some time.
Many players will never know the freedom of a virtual world where you stand waiting 10 minutes in a pink tutu surfing the baazar Flagged with guild members waiting on a shuttle. it's not the fact i was asking to get my toon killed wearing one,but the fact the game allowed me to do so.
It's the journey, not the end game that makes certain games of old beyond amazing.
New players don't care if the choices a game once offered are taken away. they just want the best gear to improve the false sense of the game giving them something for the 20 minutes they log on between wife aggro.
Not that I said the roads would be overflowing with action every ten feet, but why would any player "need" a road to be a mundane travel lane? This is why no one wants to do it in the first place. I'm not talking about smothering roads with dangers, I'm talking about making the areas long the roads much more interesting so you want to get off the road and go do things.
I take it you don't do much hiking or adventuring in real life either. Roads and trails are not just on-rails lanes that you use to get from point A to point B. They can deliver you to all kinds of interesting places along the way. I know this might seem really strange to themeparkers who are used to just getting from one quest area to the other as fast as possible, but trust me on this.
A sure sign that you are in an old, dying paradigm/mindset, is when you are scared of new ideas and new technology. Don't feel bad. The world is moving on without you, and you are welcome to yell "Get Off My Lawn!" all you want while it happens. You cannot, however, stop an idea whose time has come.
It's not as bifurcated as commonly presented on message boards. There's lots of room in the middle ground.
Self-pity imprisons us in the walls of our own self-absorption. The whole world shrinks down to the size of our problem, and the more we dwell on it, the smaller we are and the larger the problem seems to grow.
Hello, what'd I do to deserve that little unjustified straw man?
Oh, right, not 100% agreement with your black and white position.
Self-pity imprisons us in the walls of our own self-absorption. The whole world shrinks down to the size of our problem, and the more we dwell on it, the smaller we are and the larger the problem seems to grow.
When playing Skyrim I never use the fast travel features, used to do the same in oblivion, nuff said.
I never really minded the long travel times it was exciting going through area's I hadn't seen before I still remember my first run to direlands in AC to the swamp. Alot of times I would run all over Asherons Call simply because never knew what I might find or not find might be a vendor tucked away in some remote part of the world etc etc.There was a time in that game were travel wasn't that easy specially if you didn't have item magic so the only way you did get somewhere was to hoof it.
See, I got a taste of this in Skyrim. I deliberately avoided fast travelling everywhere because I knew simply by walking across the map I would come across gorgeous scenery, dangerous and rewarding battles, and interesting hidden treasures and areas. Who knows, maybe I would meet an injured NPC who would send me off on a sidequest. It PAID to explore and "travel times" were simply part of the adventure.
I do not think Skyrim went remotely far enough, however. There were still huge tracts of land devoid of monsters and not enough interesting side areas and secrets. Take the design philosophy of a game like Skyrim and up it maybe two or three times and you will have a game that makes fast travel totally unnecessary from a gameplay perspective.
However, we're still working on reaching this point in terms of single player RPGs, which means we're not even CLOSE to this point in MMOs. Maybe in a decade or so developers will put in enough time and energy into games that removing fast travel may actually be enjoyable, but for the time being it's a needless time sink that drives away players.
Sure.
I WANT middle-ground, but nowadays most mmorpg's adapt or plan to LFG tools that teleport you to all instances + add teleports to more and more and more places.
So I want middle ground, but situation at least in 'mainstream' mmorpg's is going towards extreme. Just opposite kind of extreme than in f.e. early EQ1.
That's true of dynamic content as we know it today, but older games had very cool open and explorable areas that could be enhanced further with today's technology. Dynamic content is coming with games like Guild Wars 2.
Games like Star Wars Galaxies had multuple huge areas (planets in this case) with caves, dungeons, beautiful points of interest, rare mob spawns, etc that made exploring rewarding. Even before SWG had the POI badge system, you could journey out in any direction on the maps and go look for places to adventure. There were no quests there, just awesome map design, mobs to kill, lore areas, ruins, majestic waterfalls, volcanos, whatever. These things were peppered all around these huge worlds, and along the way you always found some kind of trouble/fun, or met new people to adventure with. Enhance these areas with today's technology, some puzzles, mini-games, ultra-rare (and rewarding) mob spawns, dynamic content, and suddenly you have open world content that brings the world to life.
This doesn't have to be a "sandbox" game either. Features like this would go a very long way to makeing themeparks or hybrids much richer games than they are today. All I see when I look at these new games like SWTOR are shortcuts being taken in game design. I may not be able to code my own MMO game, but I would love to sit down with a bunch of people and help design one.
I think the saddest thing about MMORPGs is that people cannot even fathom a game where they aren't going down the checklist of their quest log so they know what they should be doing.
A sure sign that you are in an old, dying paradigm/mindset, is when you are scared of new ideas and new technology. Don't feel bad. The world is moving on without you, and you are welcome to yell "Get Off My Lawn!" all you want while it happens. You cannot, however, stop an idea whose time has come.
I'm an explorer, so I enjoy long travel times.
I love getting lost in the worlds I explore.
Sometimes though, I want to get to my destination a little faster. Much faster. The built-in spell mechanic of UO, mark/recall was very useful.
You can have both in any game.