wow Portal Shennanigans of Patch 8.1.5

[Stan 5,022]

Patch 8.1.5 will hit live servers on March 12 and to offset the addition of new Orgrimmar/Stormwind Portal Rooms, Blizzard removed some portals in the open world.

Check out our hub for the latest Patch 8.1.5 news!

Table of Contents

• Blue Posts
• Orgrimmar Portal Room
• Stormwind Portal Room
• Boralus & Dazar'alor Portals
• Removed Portals

Blue Posts 

The removal of certain portals sparked quite a lot of interest recently, and Blizzard commented with a few blue posts on the issue. First, some removed portals will appear while you're on a specific questline and not including portals to Ironforge and Thunder Bluff was an oversight that will be fixed before Patch 8.1.5 goes live. On the other side of the spectrum, Mages will be quite happy with these changes.

Blizzard (Source)

I understand that changes can throw people off a bit at first, but I also think they help keep the world of Azeroth feeling alive. When there are fewer portals, does the world feel a bit bigger to you? Do you like that? How difficult is it to get to the locations you mentioned without a direct portal (talking to everybody who isn’t a mage here ?) ?

I do agree that it makes the world feel bigger. It is undeniably less convenient though.

I agree, but how convenient should things be for everybody? Why do mages have portals? Should everybody just have the teleport abilities that mages have? I don’t think that’d feel right, heh.

In addition, what about the legion artifact quests?

I didn’t get a chance to verify it, but the plan was for the portals to show if you are on these quests.

For the part that was brought up about things like Ironforge being removed from the BfA portal rooms, I don’t think that’s intentional and should be changed in future build.

What content are folks doing in like CoT that the portal helps so much with? What about other areas? How much time do you think the new setup will add to your journey?

Thanks to those who have been providing the impact on their gameplay. The more specifics we have the better. Please try to include the specific location of the portal so I don’t get things mixed up.

For those of you who have mentioned the Caverns of Time or Dalaran Crater portals, is this specifically about the Legion-Dalaran portals to these areas?

I’m sorry. Sometimes it can be difficult to tell in a post without a voice, but … Is this sarcasm here or are you actually being serious?

I wasn’t being sarcastic. Apologies to you and others who felt I was dismissing them in any way.

For how I personally play and enjoy games, I like when I feel like I need to travel for a few minutes to get somewhere. For me, it is more rewarding when I complete the task that way and I wouldn’t want to be able to get everywhere instantly but there is a good medium to find (but continuing to pile up various teleporting items feels strange). Traveling over large areas reminds me of how vast the world is and I often reminisce while flying on a flight path or a mount. Sometimes I have even just used the port to Timeless Isle and taken the flight path to Shrine (instead of going straight there) as I can enjoy the view and relax.

That being said, I know I can be a bit strange and I’m often not bothered by things that bother others - that’s why I ask a lot of questions. I want to understand the different play styles and opinions of others so I can better discuss them both with you and internally. Getting to the fundamental impact is important for me as the solution sometimes requires a different approach. Hopefully I can avoid the feeling that I’m just talking at you and want to be talking with you. Cheers!

As mentioned before, new portal rooms are coming and you'll automatically end up in one of them, whenever you use a portal in Patch 8.1.5. You can find more details in this post.

Orgrimmar Portal Room 

Here, you will find seven portals that will take you to important locations across Azeroth:

• Dalaran (Crystalsong Forest) // Wrath of the Lich King
• Honeydew Village (Jade Forest) // Mists of Pandaria
• Zuldazar // Battle for Azeroth
• Azsuna // Legion
• Warspear (Ashran) // Warlords of Draenor
• Shattrath (Outland) // Burning Crusade
• Silvermoon City // Burning Crusade

There is also a Thrallmar Mage who will teleport you to the Dark Portal in Blasted Lands upon request. All portals that were previously in the Drag have been removed. Cataclysm portals remain untouched, which is good, since Caverns of Time Portal has been permanently removed, so chances are you're going to be using Uldim Portal a lot more.

Stormwind Portal Room 

Very similar to its Horde counterpart, you will find seven portals here:

• Stormshield (Ashran) // Warlords of Draenor
• Boralus // Battle for Azeroth
• Dalaran (Crystalsong Forest) // Wrath of the Lich King
• Exodar // Burning Crusade
• Paw'don Village (Jade Forest) // Mists of Pandaria
• Azsuna // Legion
• Shattrath // Burning Crusade

You can talk to an Honor Hold Mage that will teleport you to the Dark Portal in Blasted Lands.

Boralus & Dazar'alor Portals 

Although these portals disappeared at one stage of 8.1.5 testing, the removal was likely unintentional, because the portals are unchanged for now. Note that you can easily reach Ironforge/Thunder Bluff from here before Blizzard adds the portals to portal rooms.

Removed Portals 

In this section, we're highlighting portals that have been removed.

Orgrimmar & Stormwind

The Hellfire Penninsula Portal has been removed from the Drag/Mage Tower.

Dalaran Chamber of the Guardian Portals

All portals from the Legion version of Dalaran have been removed. Permanently gone are Caverns of Time Portal, Portal to Dalaran Crater, Karazhan Portal, and Wyrmrest Temple Portal. Shattrath Portal can be found in the new portal rooms. Removing the Caverns of Time Portal doesn't make much sense, why not just add a NPC to the new portal rooms which teleports you to Caverns of Time? Dalaran (Broken Isles) portals have been removed too and you must now use the portal within the portal rooms to teleport to Azsuna (Court of Farondis) and reach Broken Isles.

Dalaran Portals (Other)

You can no longer teleport to the Vale of Eternal Blossoms from Dalaran (Broken Isles) or to any other city with the exception of Stormwind and Orgrimmar.

The Caverns of Time Portal in old Dalaran (Northrend) is no longer there.

[jinsu2301 273]

This is why you shouldn't make things convenient for your players, because once you take it away, even if it's for the better of the game, the whining will never stop.

Flying mounts were a mistake.

Edited March 2, 2019 by jinsu2301

[Haheisenberg 32]

16 minutes ago, jinsu2301 said:

This is why you shouldn't make things convenient for your players, because once you take it away, even if it's for the better of the game, the whining will never stop.

Flying mounts were a mistake.

There was time for exploration in this game when no one really knew much about it and its locations. Now we are bored of it and we liked the shortcuts. The content should be the only thing that makes you play the game longer, not the annoying necesity of travel every time you want to do that content.

Honestly, Blizz should be happy that anyone wants to do their old content at all, and not do things that would make it tiring and boring. Do you think I'm looking at the game every time I fly from point to point and there are nice sights? I've already seen them. I'm just alttabbing and waiting for this to be over. And when I think about doing something, it's often a turnoff when I think about travel time.

Another thing is that I remember the QnA when the portal rooms were announced. Ion said the reason is that it might have been confusing to have so many portal rooms like cata portals, Cleft of Shadows portals and Dalaran portals, especially to new players so they will make a single room to make this more convenient. And now we get to know they are removing the portals instead of making things convenient. Don't blame players for skipping things. Make content that we wouldn't want to skip.

Edited March 2, 2019 by Haheisenberg

[thurk 52]

My main issue with this is that they're going back to making us take boats/airships.  For Horde going to southern Eastern Kingdoms, without the Legion Dal port to Karazan, you have to take the boat from Org; same thing for Alliance going to southern Kalimdor, though there's still the port to Uldum.

The boats and airships are crazy slow and sometimes don't arrive at all - after about 10 minutes, if one doesn't show up, you can reload or log out/in and discover that they've been coming and going without ever showing up for you.  Maybe they could turn them into ferries like in Tiragard Sound?  Waiting for an airship that may never come is one of the most annoying things in WoW.

[Sintharis 3]

This is really bad idea.. how is this going to make the game better? It will be just much more cumbersome / time cosuming (=boring!) to do old stuff. I do (did) very much like the situation, where i can (could) quickly reach many different locations, running old raids, etc..

[Zadina 923]

If I am in new Dalaran, why should I take an additional loading screen to go to Orgrimmar and fly to wherever the portal room is in order to take a portal to, let's say, Thunder Bluff?

The only ones benefiting from this change are Mages. I bet Shrine portals will be the highest on demand. I remember I made a lot of money making Dalaran portals to new Demon Hunters in the beginning of Legion. I charged anything between 0 (when I felt charitable) to 5000 gold... *evil laughter*

[Trest 61]

While some may be fine with, or even favor, extended periods of effectively doing nothing in the game, the excessive travel times lead me to not do some of the content in the game. I find it boring, and sometimes outright annoying, having to just sit and wait for a minutes-long, often needlessly winding, flight path to complete; or, worse, manually navigating a long flight route where you can’t just hit auto-run and tab out for a few minutes to look at something interesting instead.

I want to play the game—not “sit and stare at” the game.

The loss of the Caverns of Time and Dalaran Crater portals are the most frustrating (although I’ll miss all the others, too). There are a pile of old instances in CoT which I still sometimes run as I slowly finish off my completionism around transmog, mounts, pets, and achievements. And since I main Alliance, the Crater portal has been of massive value in doing things like the recent Love Is In The Air holiday dailies nearby. I simply would have barely touched that content—or maybe skipped it altogether—if I had had to have the much, much, longer travel time to get there from Ironforge each day on my various alts.

Less convenient travel = less play.

Some years back, I switched my main (not a mage because mages don’t have a tank spec, yet…) to engineering specifically because of all the extra ports. With the new portal situation, I’d be tempted to race-change to Dark Iron for access to the Mole Machine network, but I’m too attached to my character’s identity—built up over the past decade in the game—to do that.

[breck 29]

Before they nerfed raid boss gold drops i ran cot consistently on my alts. Average week was about 20k on a third of my toons. If i was bored or in contents drought i hit it up hard and paid my wow subscription and bought store mounts. The gold nerf ended that for me and i went back to making gold off the ah. I still hit up cot weekly on a couple characters trying for my last mount from there. The portal change is going to make that a pain for my non mage and engineer characters.

[Zahli 6]

So much for using portals to run old content, I'm not even gonna bother now it will takes more time to reach the raids/dungeons.

[Xenuk 3]

16 hours ago, Stan said:

For how I personally play and enjoy games, I like when I feel like I need to travel for a few minutes to get somewhere. For me, it is more rewarding when I complete the task that way and I wouldn’t want to be able to get everywhere instantly

Good for you, it's your personal choice... however the portals being there doesn't stop a person exploring if they wish to, the existence of the portals has absolutely no effect on the players who actually *want* to travel about discovering the interesting nooks and crannies of the game. Removing the portals is removing everybody else's choice, which is unbelievably short-sighted and in a way, selfish. 

You are removing the ability to choose an easier option from the players (of which I would bet outweigh the explorers) who don't need or want to forcibly be "reminded of how vast the world is". Removing the portals only inconveniences the people that don't want to waste time or simply don't have the time to faff about flying around, waiting for boats/airships etc.

I actually think that it's disgusting that a change like this would get so far into development with no regard for the wants and needs of the player base as a whole. I've played the game since 2005, I rarely feel the desire to fly around looking at the pretty things I've seen a thousand times... but if and when I do, I can - the choice has always been there.

From time to time I like doing old content for mounts, pets, transmog and achievements etc... I don't often have the time for this though, I liked the access the portals gave me to travel to the locations I needed to go quickly. It wouldn't 'feel more rewarding' to me if I had to hike to a raid for the 200th time to try yet again for a mount drop, it would add nothing to my 'achievement' AT ALL.

All this change does is make this harder, more time consuming and altogether less convenient for the vast majority of players. Adding to the already laborious process of old content farming only makes things less fun and less enjoyable, it will likely result in fewer people bothering or being able to find the time. Seems like a counter-productive move.

Well done Blizzard, you really have a gem of a development team there - they really are in touch with the player base. <- Note: This is sarcasm.

[dsc 18]

Que Blizzard making xxxxx  #'s $$$$$ on race changes to dark iron dwarves in 3, 2, 1.....

not doing that here, engineer for life nowadays. ;)

I'd love to see the internals of the profit they will make on this.  

[Brutalis 165]

Is the CoT portal still there in OLD Dalaran? May have missed a part mentioning it because I don’t see it talked about here.

[ReplicantGirl 1]

Accept the change or unsub. It is really that simple.

[Aegrotat 80]

16 hours ago, Brutalis said:

Is the CoT portal still there in OLD Dalaran? May have missed a part mentioning it because I don’t see it talked about here.

No, it in fact isn't.

 

14 hours ago, ReplicantGirl said:

Accept the change or unsub. It is really that simple.

This is such a toxic mentality. The idea that people just aren't allowed to be unhappy with a change? I find it hard to believe you're ok with EVERY change that blizz makes to the game. Not to mention ya people are unhappy with the change, but they aren't sitting there like "Wow, this change makes the game literally unplayable" but rather they just don't like it. NO ONE is required to be 100% ok with everything blizzard does

[Hedonismbot 9]

Limited play time spent traveling is not very fun. When a game becomes a travel time sink, that doesn't sound very fun.

[Ragingwolf 286]

Well that puts a damper on my Kara mount farming...was using the Dalaran Hearthstone followed by the the portal once a week to farm for those two horseman mounts.  Oh well I guess.

 

[STINKFIST87 7]

Blizz I think you should worry more about the lack of content and how dull you made class play and feel in this xpac  with no new abilities and and lack of cool looking gear hints removal of tier sets I have been on the fence about being done with wow for the past few weeks the only thing that has kept me logging on is mount farming and now you have made that more of a job I think iam officially done with this game you know the majority of your player base are grown up now with life’s so time is of the essence for a lot of us keep up the horrible decision making your doing great

Edited March 7, 2019 by STINKFIST87