Long quest lines for epics. Honestly, what is wrong with that idea? People can choose their route to phat loot. Scheduled raids or chunk out your own time. I think the problem wouldn’t be the players, it’s the development time of creating both flavors of the content.

I started fighting my way back into the dungeon again and found that having no cool down on potions was a novel idea. I forgot that games used to work that way. (Diablo 1/2 and a few others) Dungeon Runners doesn’t even have a healing class! So far so fun!

Travel in games is currently a joke. Does Oblivion feel any less huge by insta-travel? Not to me. The world is still vibrant and alive. I feel sad that the developers and decision makers over WoW hold onto beliefs that old school is the best way to do things period. I feel WoW is not living up to its potential because of the stubbornness of people who are traditionalists and won’t budge.

Equipment disparity is disgusting. I find it pointless to PVP anymore because of it. Playing on a PVP server can suck too. (Rolling a warrior doesn’t help the issue either) Guild Wars recently had a PVP/Event where anyone any level could join up and be effective in PVP combat. They allowed each player one weapon that was an insta-kill if you landed a blow with it. (Think WoW wand/bow that you could dodge if you were fast enough) I was fighting along with level 20s having a blast. I even got to put the smack down on a few! This eliminated the “raiders” from casual player gap and it was fun. Maybe WoW should consider something like that when it comes to the new Arena system. I want nothing more than the game to become skill based and not “EPICCED YOU IN THE FACE”.

Just my opinions. They are right, but still opinions. =)

KK

A game should have plenty of content, for all levels/classes/groups/raids/whatever within a reasonable distance from a player’s home.

Thats why everything is in the EK.

eventually you’ll have people asking for a town map that allows them to teleport from merchant to merchant because running clear across town is just a waste of time and I want to buy my muffins now!!!

That’s ridiculous. What do you think we have mages for?

“Be there in twenty minutes guys, I’m waiting for the boat.”
“Waiting for the boat?!?!? Why?!?! Just take the portal!”

The problem isn’t that the boat takes twenty minutes, the problem is that you appearantly have to travel to play. A game should have plenty of content, for all levels/classes/groups/raids/whatever within a reasonable distance from a player’s home. Designing the game to require a trip around the world every game session is the flaw.

Everyone seems to focus on the immediate problem (travel being annoying most of the time) instead of the underlying problem (travel being required for even the most trivial of game tasks). If you spend too much time focusing on the immediate problem and keep fixing that (portals and the docks, instance transport to cities), eventually you’ll have people asking for a town map that allows them to teleport from merchant to merchant because running clear across town is just a waste of time and I want to buy my muffins now!!!

If you’re at all familiar with Star Wars Galaxies, that game had a really painful travel system. We used to call waiting for the starport, roleplay time, cuz that was pretty much all the roleplayers did, stand around at the starports waiting for an audience.

"Around the world in 20 minutes"

It doesn't sound so bad to me. World of Warcraft, like many MMOs and even some single player games attempts to recreate the feeling that your character actually exists in a world. That if you want to get from point A to point B you need to take the time to travel there, because this is the recreation of a world. In most single player games, which I'm sure you're accustomed to, you talk to someone or visit a point, press a button, and your travel is alluded to with a fade to black. That works fine for those games as they aren't attempting to provide the illusion of a fully realized world.

The feeling of being in an environment and limited to some degree by the factors in that world actually help create a sense of involvement and immersion. That may sound ridiculous, that it's just a limiting factor, that the time you're spending in-transit is completely worthless and annoying. That may be true for you, but we're still going to attempt to create a cohesive world that draws everyone else in and lets them experience the game with a sense that they're in a living and breathing landscape.

The speed at which boats and blimps travel and the amount of distance they cover already approaches ludicrous, and that's about as far as we're willing to go. Allowing everyone to just teleport everywhere not only compromises the feeling of a cohesive world but really jeopardizes a lot of the sub systems that take into account the need for travel to remote locations. From specific viewpoints on how a game is perceived and played, such rules and ideas seem ridiculous and unnecessary, but we want and need to develop the game for more than just those with those viewpoints.

I responded.

I find the people usually against instant travel are those that have the time to sit there and “immerse” themselves. They also have the time to sit on a message board for a few hours a day and post.

Those of us in the real world like to get something done in the game. Travel time is one of the major time sinks we hate dealing with. Forgive me for being blunt, but, I think having people wait for boats, while magic exists in the world is just as ludicrous as the short travel time the boats take to reach the other side of the world. Just put a port you have to pay for on the docks and let those who want to wait for boats, wait.