Erich T. Wade

This post is entirely about World of Warcraft, so if you’re not interested you can leave now.  I really won’t mind.  :)

A fellow commented on the last Lynx regarding the Dalaran portals, and my reply to his comment turned out so long that I decided to write a blog post instead. It turns out I have more to say on the change than the small paragraph I afforded myself there.

Even with the portals removed, the world is definitely more connected than it was pre-BC. Old world zones have flight points everywhere now, which is really bloody nice, and Northrend now has flight points straight from the ports to Dalaran. (I hadn’t noticed this until Stephen, the commenter, pointed this out, but it’s actually a really nice change.) Hearthstones are on a 20 minute cooldown, down from the original 1 hour. So getting around isn’t nearly as difficult as it used to be. I’m still of the opinion, though, that the removal of the portals took a bit too much away. WoW is a very social game, and I believe that in an MMO there should be as few barriers to people playing together as possible.

You’re where again?

Consider a hypothetical person building a Tempest Keep run. She finds a person willing to heal it, but they’re off doing Argent Tournament dailies. For the sake of argument, let’s assume that this healer is at the tournament grounds right now, and their hearth is either on cooldown or set somewhere silly (such as near the tournament grounds).

Before the patch, when Dalaran still had portals, it was a pretty quick trip; about two minutes’ flight down to Dalaran, portal to Shatt, and then fly to Tempest Keep — I’d guess about five minutes’ flight there. All told, it was a seven- or eight-minute trip.

Post-patch, you instead need to fly from the tournament grounds all the way to Valiance Keep, then take the boat to Stormwind. Once there you ride up out of the docks to the mage district, portal to the Blasted Lands, run through the Dark Portal, and head for Tempest Keep — preferably flying there manually, since the flight paths there are rather circuitous. My memory puts this at a pretty annoying length of time, but just to make sure I’m not crazy, I did a test run.

From the Argent Tournament grounds, the flight to Valiance took six minutes. I just missed the boat to Stormwind as I arrived, adding about five minutes to my trip while I waited for it. (I did try to fly after the boat and catch it, but it barely got away.) Once I caught my boat, the trip was pretty straightforward; but the clock still read 15:48 when I landed at Tempest Keep. Note that for this test I was using 280% fly speed (I’m going to do the achievement instead of paying 5k for 310) but I had the Beast Mastery talent that adds 10% mounted speed. I also had to use a ground mount in Stormwind, because Cataclysm isn’t quite out yet.

While I was out there, I clocked the trip back to Shatt at about 3:40 (it would have been better if I’d gotten a slightly better bearing at the beginning). So correct the pre-patch estimate to about six or seven minutes. In other words it took me twice as long to get out there. It would have only been about eleven minutes if I hadn’t missed the boat in the most time-consuming way possible, but that’s a perfectly valid thing to have happen on the trip. The point remains that fifteen minutes is a very reasonable estimate.

Playing Together

For an actual TK run, that might not be so bad. Getting a PUG together can take an hour or more anyway, especially for old content, and by that time there should be a few folks out that way to start summoning people. I’m more worried about what this means for more casual players. If a friend of yours logs on and says “Hey, I only have twenty or thirty minutes but do you want to do some questing together?” there is a very real possibility that the answer will be “I’d love to, but we don’t really have time.” This is crazy. There are a lot of reasons I play WoW, but one of the big ones is that I get to hang out with friends I haven’t seen in the real world in years, or haven’t ever seen in the real world. Sometimes, when I log into an MMO, I want to play with other people.

To be fair, I used something of an extreme example – though I doubt it’s much worse than someone in Stormwind wanting to meet someone in Silithus. (Also to be fair, at least among my friends, it’s quite common to have one person farming rep in Stranglethorn, one grinding in Silithus, and one working on Tournament dailies when someone wants to do something.) If I’m playing for a few hours anyway this might not be a big deal, but I don’t think it’s unreasonable to want the means to reliably play alongside friends within twenty minutes of logging on (and still have time to do something). So what could be done to fix this?

My personal preference, as noted yesterday, would be to simply link all the capital cities with portals. This way players would choose whichever city they liked best as their home; Stormwind for its scenic canals, The Exodar for its surprisingly good layout (once you learn where everything is), Dalaran for its historic fountain. One of the stated purposes for the change was to make the Old World cities feel a bit more lived in, and this would certainly accomplish that. But, as was brought up yesterday, the ability to skip between the capital cities quickly is a major feature of the Mage class. It was suggested that a few staggered portals could be added, so that you don’t go straight between capital cities – just close to them. I actually really like this idea, though I’d take it a little farther than he did – his suggestion was a port from Dal to the Shattered Sun, and from Shatt to either the Exodar or Silvermoon. This sounds good, but I’d extend it so that every capital city had portals going elsewhere; as soon as one capital offers more options than another one, everybody will flock there and set their hearths.

If, on the other hand, we did get portals in every town, what would we do for the poor mages? Well, for starters, mages still have the quite enviable ability to get to the capital cities from anywhere, though anyone else would only have to run through town to get where they’re going. One possibility would be to put the portals somewhere mildy out of the way, so that the time savings are fairly noticeable; another might be to give the mages more locations to ‘port to. Alliance mages already get Theramore; the Horde gets Stonard; with Cataclysm, both factions get Tol Barad added to the list. Why not a few more? Perhaps a couple of Goblin towns – Booty Bay and Gadgetzan come to mind. This would have the added advantage of making it a bit more comfortable for mages to use the cross-faction auction house.

Ultimately though, I think the chances of any of this happening in the near future are kinda slim. I could be wrong, and I hope I am, but in the meanwhile we’ll just have to get used to the new way of getting around. We’re not without options. Those still interested in doing Northrend content may want to start with the Tournament, where for the cost of only a few days’ worth of dailies you can get a tabard that teleports you to the tournament grounds. Engineers can create a wormhole generator with a similar effect. If you’re on a character that got lucky during Brewfest, you can summon a mole machine that tunnels through the ground from . . .er . . . Outland to the Grim Guzzler? Don’t question it. Overall, even without these it’s not that bad, in a “I just spent twenty minutes of my life watching my character get to somewhere I can play” kind of way. A lot of the terrain in Azeroth is very pretty, and if I point my drake just right, I can turn to the other monitor and read an article or two while I wait.