Closing of the portals.

Below is pretty hot topic, one that I'm not in favor for at all. Yesterday I jumped on MMO Champion and looked over the news. To my dismay, they are closing the city hub portals from Dal and Shatt. It seems that they want people to see the new content and not continent hop. This is fine and dandy, I'm guessing when Cata hits and the new content is out you will get your fill leveling.

I see alot of pro and con threads, funny thing is the only real people that have no issue with this is Shammy's, Mages and Druids. Ironic, they are the classes that can get from place to place faster than others. LOL

The problem with shutting down these portals are many and the explanation by Blizz are few. Sure we get to fly in the old world when Cata comes but I still don't think that will be as quick as porting.

Here are a few others reasons its not going over well:
-The zeps and boats are way to slow, you have to wait when you get to the platform.
-When you jump on a long flight, say from Org to Silithus, I don't know about you but I'm tabbing out or AKF and thus, not seeing the content.
-Flying is cumbersome, FP aren't always direct and tend to loop you around instead of straight to the landing.
-Some have invested in Rings or other gadgets to get them to Dal that they spent gold on to get and this announcement is coming really late.
-With the "trainers and AH's" being put in Dal and Shatt, you essentially take the player that is at level 58-68 out of the content you are driving them to see. I doubt anyone is going to go to the faction cities during this time.
-Mages, with the BL they now get and the fact they can move all over the earth will be the "DK/Huntard" of Cata. (just a guess)
-Its a further time sink in a game that takes alot of time anyway. I don't want my time in game being consumed by FP, zep arrivals and boat rides. Let me chose how I use my hearth and other items I have to move around the world.

A few ways to fix this issue if the MUST take the portal out:
-Make your home city accessible once an hour and allow you to put your hearth where you want it.
-Make the portals accessible to capped level people.
-Don't make the change at all.

The lack of Blizz's response on this at time of posting and the amount of people voicing their concern for this is intriguing. I hope this is thought about carefully.


http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=26859191406&sid=1&pageNo=2

Q u o t e:


It definitely seems like a bad idea since for 1, shratt kept its portals when wrath was released, and 2, Northrend is still a questing area that is necessary to do to get to 80, and without the portals, you have to pretty much make a big decision about whether you want to take a ship to Northrend and make it hard to go back and forth.

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The reason the portals from Shattrath were not removed from Outland when Wrath of the Lich King released is that there was a new central hub with portals to all major cities in Northrend. There is no longer a neutral city hub which both factions will be using in Cataclysm. We want to ensure visiting the major faction capitals is still the most attractive thing to do in Cataclysm, rather than having people use Shattrath and Dalaran as easy connector hubs.


To make up for this, we'd like to add class trainers and Auctioneers in Shattrath and Dalaran for those leveling through The Burning Crusade and Wrath of the Lich King content.
[ Post edited by Zarhym ]