Poll of the Day > Playing WoW really makes me appreciate fast travel in games

(+) Yeah! (+)

Endless fucking walking is not always fun.
I understand the argument that no fast travel is more immersive, but it's so goddamn boring.
Kinda makes me wonder why THIS is the mainstream most popular MMO. This is a walking simulator before the term even existed SMH

Kinda depends, walking everywhere when you're povo is lame but when you're strong and/or rich enough to afford all the flight paths and friends with teleports that makes those moments even better than if you just had fast travel in the beginning.

Obv everyone has different thresholds for how rewarding/enjoyable that is.

Morrowind is so shit in the beginning walking everywhere, but by end game when you're teleporting and flying across the map with speed enchants you really see how far you've come.

In EverQuest, if you wanted to travel to the other continent, you had to sit on a boat for 20-30 minutes to cross the ocean. Originally, if you got disconnected, your character would fall through the boat and you'd have to swim to one of the islands (if you knew where they were as the zone was huge) to get back on.

I remember the original version of the game, when you didn't get a mount until like 20 or 40 or something ridiculous. And then the mount was like 25% increased speed.

Melody_JR posted...

I remember the original version of the game, when you didn't get a mount until like 20 or 40 or something ridiculous. And then the mount was like 25% increased speed.

This is the version of the game I'm playing now. WoW classic. I chose it over retail because this is the version highly regarded while retail is trashed by everyone.
If retail is better than classic for travel then I'll just play Guild Wars 2.

delayed gratification

what race/faction? it's a time-sink, yes. it's why I stopped playing bliz games in general, they are fine-tuned to waste your time, and they drip-feed you improvements in patches that improve things that never should have been inconvenient in the first place. once I realized that patch notes were not fixing things that were broken, but were easing off on intentional inconveniences to hold on to more players, I gave up.

(it's not the inconveniences themselves really; if that's the game, that's the game. it's that I could see that the easing off of them was not a game-design choice, but rather a player manipulation tactic.)

Started playing FFXIV about two months ago and it's blown every other MMO out of the water. Every time I try to get back into wow, I'm bored of it before my first month's subscription is up.

vanilla had some long travel but it's basically been portals to everywhere since

Morrowind has the best fast travel. Instead of just clicking a map icon and teleporting there, you plan your route using the various methods of travel (boat, silt strider, mages, propylon chamber, mark + recall, almsivi/divine intervention, etc).

josh posted...

Morrowind is so shit in the beginning walking everywhere

You mean bunny hopping diagonally everywhere.

Morrowind's travel was fine. Definitely not terrible like this.

i like walking everywhere until later on when i've explored stuff and just want to get around fast.
Ferarri619 posted...

This is the version of the game I'm playing now. WoW classic. I chose it over retail because this is the version highly regarded while retail is trashed by everyone.
If retail is better than classic for travel then I'll just play Guild Wars 2.

retail is okay if you've been playing for a while, it's a nightmare for new players.

Travel in classic WoW actually makes the world seem real.
Compare it to FFXIV where you can teleport instantly to any location or any dungeon. I couldn't tell you where half the shit is in that game, because it doesn't fucking matter.

Gold was hard to get in the original WoW. Might of been lvl 40 but still did not have the gold to pay for it. Not everyone crafted to sell on AH.

I got my first mount in WoW because (I can't remember which) but I think training was expensive and the mounts were cheap, but then a patch switched them over so the mount was expensive and the training was cheap.

I bought the cheaper one before the patch then the more expensive one (now cheaper after the patch).

Big big big accomplishment after walking everywhere for hours.

I liked the taxi system where you actually got to see the world. Instant teleportation is lame.

Ferarri619 posted...

I chose it over retail because this is the version highly regarded while retail is trashed by everyone.

I still heavily prefer retail over classic even if actually keeping up with endgame is currently kinda ass. There's just too much good QoL and a couple of really cool expansions. I wouldn't say there's been a fantastic expansion since at least Legion, but Legion was fucking lit

Blizzards war on flight is, as stupid as it might sound, is one of the things that makes me not want to bother going back to the game. I'm several expansions behind at this point and being forced to go through the stupidly massive and pointlessly long achievements to unlock flight for various regions is just not something I'm interested in.

BlackScythe0 posted...

Blizzards war on flight is, as stupid as it might sound, is one of the things that makes me not want to bother going back to the game. I'm several expansions behind at this point and being forced to go through the stupidly massive and pointlessly long achievements to unlock flight for various regions is just not something I'm interested in.

You can freely fly in all non-Dragonflight expansions since the launch of Dragonflight, though. They've actually been getting a lot more lax about it in the past few years. When I played back in Legion, unlocking Draenor flying was incredibly painful, but pathfinder's been optional there for four years

it shouldn't last past the relevant expansion, but i like that you have to unlock flying for each new continent. it makes you actually explore the world and makes the game feel large and alive.

agesboy posted...

You can freely fly in all non-Dragonflight expansions since the launch of Dragonflight, though. They've actually been getting a lot more lax about it in the past few years. When I played back in Legion, unlocking Draenor flying was incredibly painful, but pathfinder's been optional there for four years

I was unaware of that. The last time I played was BFA.

I never even bothered to unlock flying in the BFA zones. They finally unlocked flying there for everybody a year after Dragonflight came out.

Blightzkrieg posted...

I liked the taxi system where you actually got to see the world.

It was kind of cool, but some of the flight paths were just way too long. Even on the shorter ones, the novelty of getting to see the world kind of wears off after the first few times you do it, so for travelling to frequently-visited dungeons/farming spots or levelling alts it just became a pointless time sink (especially where you also have to wait for other party members to make the trek). I remember I installed Bejewelled and Peggle mods just so I'd have something to do on flight paths, and I'd still often end up alt-tabbing and doing something else.

There is something to be said for slow travel in what it does to create the sense that you're existing within an actual world and not just jumping between points of interest, but it's a very delicate balance between encouraging exploration and just forcing tedium on players. For single-player games, my preference is definitely to have the option of convenient fast travel, but then have a world that's designed well enough (both aesthetically and mechanically) that the player will want to explore on their own terms even once they unlock fast travel points that make that exploration unnecessary. For multiplayer games, it gets a bit trickier in that if 4/5 party members have already teleported to the dungeon and the fifth feels like spending an extra 10 minutes taking the scenic route, that fifth player is getting kicked for wasting everyone else's time, but I think the philosophy and core goals remain the same.

Nade_Duck posted...

it shouldn't last past the relevant expansion, but i like that you have to unlock flying for each new continent. it makes you actually explore the world and makes the game feel large and alive.

It also creates a sense of progression in the new zones. When you arrive, there are places you can't get to, not because you'll get massacred by the enemies, but because you physically can't reach them. You also have to deal with higher-levelled enemies blocking your path instead of flying over them. Over time, that lets you work toward getting to the new places by levelling up, gearing up, and eventually unlocking flying, and that all makes sense.

But yes, for old content that mostly just exists to provide a levelling bridge between previous expansions and the current one, automatically unlocking flying right out of the gate makes sense. I think there's also a case to be made for the unlock to be account-wide (at least on a given server), since forcing that sense of progression on players who have already experienced it isn't really necessary.

I mostly just use fast travel to get between places I've already been. I'm not walking all the way from Solitude to Riften when I've been to both, but I'll walk around and explore the map before that

adjl posted...

It was kind of cool, but some of the flight paths were just way too long.

alliance flight paths in vanilla were notoriously trash. they finally admitted it a few years ago, but there have always been signs that blizzard devs had favorites.

It also creates a sense of progression in the new zones. When you arrive, there are places you can't get to, not because you'll get massacred by the enemies, but because you physically can't reach them. You also have to deal with higher-levelled enemies blocking your path instead of flying over them. Over time, that lets you work toward getting to the new places by levelling up, gearing up, and eventually unlocking flying, and that all makes sense.

But yes, for old content that mostly just exists to provide a levelling bridge between previous expansions and the current one, automatically unlocking flying right out of the gate makes sense. I think there's also a case to be made for the unlock to be account-wide (at least on a given server), since forcing that sense of progression on players who have already experienced it isn't really necessary.

tbh as far as old zones go they might as well just at least give you the option to keep everything leveled up with you. timewalking is one of the best things they've added to the game in recent years and it lasts about a zone and a half before you're level 60 and onto current content. as long as it's an option so solo people can still farm vanity stuff i don't see why it would hurt the game to have the option for it at max level too. pandaria remix has been really fun so far, i hope it's a sign that they're testing this idea out.

I dunno how close WoW Classic is to the actual original experience but it was a very annoying time sink. Training weapon skills, having to mine nodes multiple times instead of just getting everything from one in one click, failing at gathering, no mount until high levels. Possibly the most annoying thing was using flight paths, the closest thing to fast travel, and having to get off at every stop, and start another flight until you get to your destination.

I played the free trial for WoW many years back, and I didn't like it just due to how slow your character moved around the maps. Even some older MMORPGs like City of Heroes, or even Acheron's Call had better options for moving around. Travel powers were nice in CoH, and Acheron's call let you tie to portals and lifestones and recall back to them. Other players could summon a portal to a dungeon as well. Even if you needed to barefoot around in AC, buff enhanced running speed in Acheron's call was faster than ground mounts in WoW.

Both perspectives are valid.

Let's take a game like Starsector. It would be a mistake to put fast travel in that game because traveling IS gameplay. The difficulties of traveling is what defines the conflict of the universe. It's what makes piracy possible. And it is the reason why ships are armed. Putting in fast travel would invalidate the game.

In a game like World of Warcraft though, aside from the odd mob on the road, there is no difficulty associated with traveling. It's JUST walking. It's gameplay that is a waste of the player's time.

VioletZer0 posted...

In a game like World of Warcraft though, aside from the odd mob on the road, there is no difficulty associated with traveling. It's JUST walking. It's gameplay that is a waste of the player's time.

I think this hits on it. The experience of walking through interesting scenery counts as gameplay to a certain extent, but if that's all that's going on then there should be an option to bypass it with fast travel. WoW's flight paths were purely cinematic, so unless you specifically wanted to watch that cutscene, in every way they were just a glorified loading screen before you could play the game you wanted to play.

I think WoW probably went a little too far in the other direction with the ability to just teleport to/from a dungeon at will with the LFG tool, since that removed any sense of place from those dungeons, but I'd rather lose the sense of place and just get to do the dungeon I'm looking for right away than have to sit through 20 minutes of cutscenes I've seen before to get there. Toss in that there very often isn't anything worthwhile to do near dungeons so you can't reasonably hang out nearby while looking for a group, and really it's just a broken design that will never make anyone happy.

adjl posted...

I think WoW probably went a little too far in the other direction with the ability to just teleport to/from a dungeon at will with the LFG tool

So retail WoW has fast travel? Haven't tried yet

I can't speak for the current state of things, but in WotLK they implemented a LFG tool that runs dungeon matchmaking in the background, then when your group is formed, will teleport you and the whole party to the dungeon. When you leave the dungeon at the end, it dissolves the party puts you back where you were (I think. It's been 15 years since I've played WoW and you might have had to HS out, but I'm pretty sure it wasn't that disruptive). On paper, it seemed like a fantastic idea: No more hanging around capitals spamming LFG/LFM messages, no more waiting 20-30 minutes after the group formed flying to the dungeon's location to then gamble on whether or not the party was even competent enough to finish it, just seamless integration of dungeon runs into whatever else you felt like doing.

In practice, it worked for making dungeons conveniently accessible, but it meant they lost any sense of being part of a broader world, and the fact that the party was just assembled for you without having to communicate with anyone really depersonalized the whole grouping experience (especially once they added cross-server matchmaking to help deal with certain servers not having the population for quick matchmaking, so you'd be grouping with people you couldn't add to your friends list). That's taking fast travel a little too far, stripping out most of the game world for the sake of convenience.

LFG though still kind of used, for higher content, its not used at all. M+ you have to go to the dungeons yourself, and also find the group yourself. Raids unless youre staying at LFR level, you will be going to the raid yourself.
But there are lots of portals around nowadays making it quicker to get between certain areas, like going between cities, in some cases cities to certain zones. Plus with Dragonriding/Skyriding/Dynamic Flight getting to places can be pretty quick and engaging. It doesnt take that long to get anywhere in retail nowadays for the most part at max level.
I tested flying from Everlook, Winterspring, to AQ, Silithus and it took me just under 5 minutes to do that. Classic flight would have taking 10-15 minutes most likely. And ground mount almost an hour and normal walking 2 house. If I had to guess.

Ferarri619 posted...

So retail WoW has fast travel? Haven't tried yet

Not officially but effectively yes because you can put your hearthstone location somewhere where you have easy access to portals to go wherever you want.

No fast travel makes a great deal more sense in PVP servers, and it was the lack of fast travel that made certain PVPers legendary in classic days.

Ogurisama posted...

LFG though still kind of used, for higher content, its not used at all. M+ you have to go to the dungeons yourself, and also find the group yourself. Raids unless youre staying at LFR level, you will be going to the raid yourself.
But there are lots of portals around nowadays making it quicker to get between certain areas, like going between cities, in some cases cities to certain zones. Plus with Dragonriding/Skyriding/Dynamic Flight getting to places can be pretty quick and engaging. It doesnt take that long to get anywhere in retail nowadays for the most part at max level.
I tested flying from Everlook, Winterspring, to AQ, Silithus and it took me just under 5 minutes to do that. Classic flight would have taking 10-15 minutes most likely. And ground mount almost an hour and normal walking 2 house. If I had to guess.

That makes sense, and is more or less in line with how I'd say a good fast travel system should work: It shouldn't completely cut out all sense of travelling around a world that's much bigger than just your origin and your destination, but it should respect the player's time enough to not force them to spend half their session walking for the sake of walking. Being able to fast travel to within 5 minutes of a destination is what I'd call the sweet spot, give or take a bit depending on how involved the travelling is (5 minutes of being ferried to your destination is boring, 5 minutes of walking/controlled flying is okay, and more than 5 minutes of having to actively fight your way through is fine).

don't play dragons dogma then

lack of proper fast travel really made the game a lot shittier feeling than it is

I have heard that, with the sequel being criticized even harder for that because it failed to improve on the first game's shortcomings (and even more so because it sold fast travel points as microtransactions).

i probably wouldn't hate it so much if it just let me fast travel like a normal game.

as it is, having to constantly go back and forth back and forth back and forth back and forth was just such a mood killer.

you could make an argument that it's trying to capture old role playing games of the past, where fast travel wasn't a thing, but that's just flat out not fucking fun. it wasn't then, and it's not now.

they could have even just made it so the carts teleport you, that would have gone miles towards making the game better. but no. it's just a slightly faster than on foot travel, that you can actually be kicked out of and are quite frequently when the game throws a troll in front of it that immediately destroys the cart before you can even fucking stand up. so now not only do you have to walk the rest of the way, you wont even be remotely close to where you wanted to go or were at, and it's night time, so it's immediately harder to even travel.

ConfusedTorchic posted...

don't play dragons dogma then

lack of proper fast travel really made the game a lot shittier feeling than it is

Understandable, but I actually like the way early game travel is handled, and wish more games had something like it.

Visibility is extremely poor at night, and there are more enemies about, so it's generally not advisable to traverse long distances in the dark. I enjoyed reaching a checkpoint and having to determine if I have enough daylight to reach my destination, or if I should rest until morning. Added to the sense of adventure. I also like how some roads are blocked by armed rogues during the day, but actually safer at night since they're at their own camp. Felt rewarding being more knowledgeable about the world, and helped plan a route.

But then you get the Eternal Ferry stone as soon as you reach Gran Soren and that element of the game kinda vanishes. It's still there when traveling to new areas, but it's not as prevalent. I also liked the port crystal system where you could set your own fast travel points anywhere you wanted, and it's especially handy on replays. I like placing one at the chest containing Salomet's Grimoire so I can clear the quest immediately with a quick back and forth. The system encourages you to be a bit picky with where you place your stones, but still offers huge skips without completely breaking the game.