Not as bad as Blizz saying they're taking out flight, period in WoD. But that's two threads now and growing!
That's an unpopular decision!
Will it be the straw that broke the camal's back like making Cata a "He man" game and losing 6,000,000 players over it? Don't know. But we do know people are upset on an already upsetting expansion.
Check out the posts above, they are falling over themselves in the rush to complain about the removal of some instantaneous travel. We know that eventually teleporters change a MMORPG into a lobby game, but that's what they want and they want it even in World of Warcraft.
You're mistaken... a casual is someone who takes their time and doesn't always focus on objectives. Non-casuals want to get stuff done and not waste time. You're actually the casual.
That's not intended as an insult.. just pointing out your definitions are off.
The generally accepted definition of casual to my knowledge is someone who wants to play/be in game for a brief time. What they do while they are in game is another matter but they want a good gaming experience no mater how little time they spend. We had a thread on here recently where the OP wanted a MMO to have "meaningful" content for casuals, what he meant was he wanted content that could be played quickly, while still levelling him up and so on.
So casuals tend to want a quick fix and be on their way, you are quite right though the term is used somewhat counterintuitively here.
I for one welcome our New Portal Devouring Overlords!... Sorry, had to But really, this had to be expected, given how out of touch the Blizzard Dev's have become. "Don't you people have phones??" Was just the tip of the iceberg.
For some people that work/do chores etc, they already have a time sink in real life, that they appreciate the time that they do have in a game.
I think its somewhat obvious this is a psychological analysis by WoW devs on the benefits that by making people do these 'boring' things that it will make them enjoy other content more.
Yet it seems this is more of a psychological effect for those that have time to spare in Real Life and for some reason are impatient and about instant gratification that they dont appreciate things as much as those that give up a lot of their free time for work/chores etc
So for those people it wold have a more positive effect.
And therefore WoW devs having stats can see that their player base has a lot of spare time in Real Life and are spoiled with instant gratification that they cant enjoy content as much as they should, therefore need to take long times to travel and meditate on that.
Basically WoW devs baby sitting the mmo generation of impatient people, teaching them to be patient and zen like.
And the people already one with buddha, will have to pay a higher price which might bring them closer to nirvana anyways.
Write bad things that are done to you in sand, but write the good things that happen to you on a piece of marble
Guess maybe classical WoW and current WoW have two completely different playerbases, cause I'd hope people upset about this change (and no flying) also don't want to play Classical WoW...cause both those things won't exist there
Naw.
I've been playing video games since 1975. The only difference between players then and now is, they're grown up and have 10000000000001 other things to do THAN play a video game. We live in a time compressed life now, that demands our time, unlike when we were kids.
The average age of MMORPGers these days aren't 15 years-old, it's 40. At that age they have family and work to deal with. They can't spend an hour a day wasting their life so a greedy publisher can make money DISHONESTLY.
This does seems like another random change with the usual lack on insight.
I don't think this is some sort of move to start selling convenience items in the cash shop though.
They could already make a fortune selling unlocks that normally require rep or time. (allied races, heritage armour sets)
No company would go ahead with random change in the face of - what certainly seems to be - over whelming negative feedback. Unless they have a desired endgame.
And as it doesn't involve improved customer satisfaction and they haven't articulated a reason then ....... I think we can assume the reason is financial.
Even if they don't resort to selling convenience items increased travel time will increase MAUs and, they will hope, subs.
A lot of people seem to think there are a bunch of evil geniuses behind every corporate decision. From looking at the world today and working in a large corporation in the finance industry, I tend to lean the other way. There are a lot of clueless people in power that make decisions based on their whim and won't ever admit it was their mistake. If they lose subs who is it to say for sure it was the "portal thing". People are always complaining on the forums yet BfA sold very well. It must have been the popularity of BR titles and other games releasing at the same time.
This is the kind of conversation I imagine based off similar ones I've witnessed.
Boss: So, the new portal room looks great! Good work team! We are going to be taking a KPI from the number of people using the new room, we want big numbers. How many other portals are there left outside the room? Employee: There are a bunch in Legion Dalaran and The Tempel of the Two Moons in Pandaria. Boss: Hmm, let's remove all of those. Employee: Those portals are used by a lot of players all the time. There are portals there that we don't have in the new portal room. Boss: What? Why don't we have all the portals? Employee: You told us the budget for the portal room didn't include all the portals, and that as there were available in the other areas they shouldn't be required . . . Boss: I see . . . can they get to the areas the portals connected to by other means? Employee: Well, yes, but . . . Boss: Great! No problem then. Employee: But it won't be as convenient for the player. Boss: Convenient? How much longer will it take? Employee: Maybe 5 to 10 minutes more. Boss: I can't see that being a problem. Don't we give these guys items that send them to the corner of the earth for some trivial reward? Employee: Yes, but we can't do that too much, it's a big world. What will we tell the players? Boss: We'll use that, it's a selling point. We want to bring back that big world feeling. Done. On to the next item on the agenda!
I think anyone who has worked for one of these large corporations has heard a similar conversation. My theory explains why WoW isn't doing that well in general too :P
I somewhat agree with their decision, removing these shortcuts if you're beyond the content they were designed for. Had this been a standard policy ages ago, it wouldn't be a problem for the majority of the community.
But people had grown used to it. Convenience became the norm and long distance travel was a thing of the past. Taking it away now, taking away somthing the community had long since gotten comfortable with, is a recipe for disaster because the majority won't be able to understand it anymore.
It was too late to make this change and now they're suffering the backlash.
This is a bad idea. That's coming from someone who hates all the quick travel options in games. Guild Wars 2 being the biggest offender, in my eyes. It makes a large world feel tiny. I'm all for games doing away with a lot of this.
However, WoW turned their players into efficiency monsters. They're in there to get their loot ASAP and gtfo ASAP. This isn't enough to bring any old players back but it's enough to alienate a lot of their current base. This is one of those things, like flying, that should've never happened in the first place but now that it has they can't go back without taking a significant hit to their customers.
WoW has had a major identity crisis for a while now. You can't go back to hard/tedious mode after training your players with speed and efficiency for years. If they were smart they would have Classic branch off in the hard/time consuming/tedious direction and create an entirely different game and experience. Attempting to do that now, with their current base, seems silly to me. You already lost the players that like that experience. All you're doing is putting yourself in danger of losing your current subscribers.
However, WoW turned their players into efficiency monsters.
Not only performance monsters, it's about practicality. There's like 7 continents now, unlike 2 in vanilla.
Blizzard wants folks to waste 15 minutes ONE WAY to get to any destination.
All the gryphons and boats and trams are time sinks to slow people down. It's the same with attunements.
They have people even believing the lie that it's some Casual vs Hardcore junk, even.
There's no reason to have ghostwalking anymore, for example. That was 100% about wasting players time as a penalty for dying, to keep content from being used too fast. Just like the artificial barriers in raiding (i.e., paying gold to carry people, while trolls try to ruin raids people put together to bypass that racket. You may get the first tier, but second/third they'll block such raids intentionally. Now it's Raid.io as the ghostwalking mechanism. You notice Blizzard doesn't break addons if it slows progression??? They break addons that speed it up, though).
Even EQ did away with the "old skool" time sinks as it was pointless, and they created these time sinks that Blizzard COPIED.
Bad move. Most of us don't enjoying wasting 60% of our play sessions with autorun on in any game.
Disagree, there is no community in game anymore because of how fractured the gameworld is. This is a good move to attempt to try and bring people in an ONLINE game back together again. And you are grossly exaggerating your 60% of "our" game time traveling that's a kneejerk statistic and you know it. Time spent traveling verses no travel time in any MMO cant be for than 5% unless ALL you do is level alts and do dailies which would make you an outlier.
"We have heard your feedback and decided on this compromise. Next patch
will introduce a new meta achievement called GateFinder. With this you
will be able to grind rep with certain factions that will allow you to
reopen the once forgotten portals across Azeroth. . . . "
Comments
.:| Kevyne@Shandris - Armory |:. - When WoW was #1 - .:| I AM A HOLY PALADIN - Guild Theme |:.
So casuals tend to want a quick fix and be on their way, you are quite right though the term is used somewhat counterintuitively here.
"Err boss a chunk of our playerbase has left over this. Our MAUs are down."
"No worries. Congratulations team our average MAUs are up!"
I think its somewhat obvious this is a psychological analysis by WoW devs on the benefits that by making people do these 'boring' things that it will make them enjoy other content more.
Yet it seems this is more of a psychological effect for those that have time to spare in Real Life and for some reason are impatient and about instant gratification that they dont appreciate things as much as those that give up a lot of their free time for work/chores etc
So for those people it wold have a more positive effect.
And therefore WoW devs having stats can see that their player base has a lot of spare time in Real Life and are spoiled with instant gratification that they cant enjoy content as much as they should, therefore need to take long times to travel and meditate on that.
Basically WoW devs baby sitting the mmo generation of impatient people, teaching them to be patient and zen like.
And the people already one with buddha, will have to pay a higher price which might bring them closer to nirvana anyways.
Write bad things that are done to you in sand, but write the good things that happen to you on a piece of marble
.:| Kevyne@Shandris - Armory |:. - When WoW was #1 - .:| I AM A HOLY PALADIN - Guild Theme |:.
This is another, one of many, decisions that came from management, that don't make any sense.
From looking at the world today and working in a large corporation in the finance industry, I tend to lean the other way. There are a lot of clueless people in power that make decisions based on their whim and won't ever admit it was their mistake. If they lose subs who is it to say for sure it was the "portal thing". People are always complaining on the forums yet BfA sold very well. It must have been the popularity of BR titles and other games releasing at the same time.
This is the kind of conversation I imagine based off similar ones I've witnessed.
Boss: So, the new portal room looks great! Good work team! We are going to be taking a KPI from the number of people using the new room, we want big numbers. How many other portals are there left outside the room?
Employee: There are a bunch in Legion Dalaran and The Tempel of the Two Moons in Pandaria.
Boss: Hmm, let's remove all of those.
Employee: Those portals are used by a lot of players all the time. There are portals there that we don't have in the new portal room.
Boss: What? Why don't we have all the portals?
Employee: You told us the budget for the portal room didn't include all the portals, and that as there were available in the other areas they shouldn't be required . . .
Boss: I see . . . can they get to the areas the portals connected to by other means?
Employee: Well, yes, but . . .
Boss: Great! No problem then.
Employee: But it won't be as convenient for the player.
Boss: Convenient? How much longer will it take?
Employee: Maybe 5 to 10 minutes more.
Boss: I can't see that being a problem. Don't we give these guys items that send them to the corner of the earth for some trivial reward?
Employee: Yes, but we can't do that too much, it's a big world. What will we tell the players?
Boss: We'll use that, it's a selling point. We want to bring back that big world feeling. Done. On to the next item on the agenda!
I think anyone who has worked for one of these large corporations has heard a similar conversation. My theory explains why WoW isn't doing that well in general too :P
.:| Kevyne@Shandris - Armory |:. - When WoW was #1 - .:| I AM A HOLY PALADIN - Guild Theme |:.
But people had grown used to it. Convenience became the norm and long distance travel was a thing of the past. Taking it away now, taking away somthing the community had long since gotten comfortable with, is a recipe for disaster because the majority won't be able to understand it anymore.
It was too late to make this change and now they're suffering the backlash.
However, WoW turned their players into efficiency monsters. They're in there to get their loot ASAP and gtfo ASAP. This isn't enough to bring any old players back but it's enough to alienate a lot of their current base. This is one of those things, like flying, that should've never happened in the first place but now that it has they can't go back without taking a significant hit to their customers.
WoW has had a major identity crisis for a while now. You can't go back to hard/tedious mode after training your players with speed and efficiency for years. If they were smart they would have Classic branch off in the hard/time consuming/tedious direction and create an entirely different game and experience. Attempting to do that now, with their current base, seems silly to me. You already lost the players that like that experience. All you're doing is putting yourself in danger of losing your current subscribers.
.:| Kevyne@Shandris - Armory |:. - When WoW was #1 - .:| I AM A HOLY PALADIN - Guild Theme |:.
Disagree, there is no community in game anymore because of how fractured the gameworld is. This is a good move to attempt to try and bring people in an ONLINE game back together again. And you are grossly exaggerating your 60% of "our" game time traveling that's a kneejerk statistic and you know it. Time spent traveling verses no travel time in any MMO cant be for than 5% unless ALL you do is level alts and do dailies which would make you an outlier.
“Let’s make a dedicated portal room.”
“Sounds good.”
“With less portals than the Vale.”
“That kinda sounds pointle-”
“And we’ll remove all of the other portals so people have to use it.”
“That sounds like it would anger a lot of people.”
“I knew it was a good idea.”
“I hate you.”
https://us.forums.blizzard.com/en/wow/t/stop-removing-portals/113178/6293
.:| Kevyne@Shandris - Armory |:. - When WoW was #1 - .:| I AM A HOLY PALADIN - Guild Theme |:.