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portals and forced travel
smitty0356
Member Posts: 368
the pros to world travel is:
For the gamer, it helps immerse the player, and for the developer, it makes the world seem larger, and it can extend a players time at a level or zone.
When done wrong: Quests require the player to mindlessly travel back and forth along the same route, or between loading screens, or players get lost in confusing areas with inadequate maps or maze like zones.
Examples of poorly done portals, I would say is LOTRO, where a player had to either sit idle for up to 5 mins while a horse plods mindlessly to it's destination, or instantly zing to the destination paying a great deal of in-game money.
This could be solved by allowing choices in routes, allowing events to happen during player movement (such as a mini-game).
Destination-Destination travel is not the biggest challenge for immersion in game movement. The biggest risk is made by queueing up for instances or pvp.
What I don't understand about Cataclysm is, that the portals were removed or rearranged to bring people to, or remove un-needed areas. Unfortunately, this wasn't done well, and it brings to light, how poorly the zones were designed with character flow in mind. I'm not saying the zones are bad, they are pretty cool, but they are not made with character flow in mind, and this makes them pretty, but not quite as functional.
For another MMO, I would take it as a compromise for content, but WOW can do better!
Elite poster by 82
Comments
IMO worse ever travel system from all MMO i know, shame for WoW make you fly for 15 min to get from 1 extreme point to the 2nd, or wait for 5 min to get silly public transport ( zeppelin or boat), then 2 more min for it starts to move.
at this point even silly f2p asian clones have better deal then said MMO winner game, or may be it start to be MMO looser game?
try before buy, even if it's a game to avoid bad surprises.
Worst surprises for me: Aion, GW2
I'm happy they finally removed those damn portals. The worse thing they did was put them in in the first place. They took a large world and made it an instant travel tiny place. Too many people got lazy from it and now are complaining they got it rough. Go back and remember what it was like to travel from Darnassus to the Crater before the flight path additions and fly overs. When you had to do one flight at a time, then hop on the next part and then the next, and finally run out to the crater because there was no flght path there from Gadget. If you could do that trip in under 30 minutes you were lucky.
Seriously, stop complaining you have to go to the fridge and get your own drink already. We all had to, bout time all the newbs have to too.
You bring up some points that another poster touched on, which got me chuckling.. Everyone always seems to bring up the word "grind".. His new phrase was Run Grind, and I know exactly what he's talking about.. I never had issues with public transportation or just running from location to location as long as it wasnt' overdone.. As much as I loved Duskwood, I LOATHED the run grind in leveling in that zone.. I swear I spend more time running then actually fighting.. This tactic exist from start to finish.. The constant forced "travel" run time is mind numbing and serves no purpose, other then it being a time sink..
I dont mind the run fest.. lotta interesting side quests can be found doing a run from point a to b... or materials for crafts. I was first kind of annoyed with the portals gone.. and came to understand why it was done. Also in major cities... portals open to new zones, which is a plus.
I prefer to explore the world of azeroth than whine... hint cancel subscription.. and also its why there is 300++ flight. Now excuse me my 8 min flight is done...