Why Don't MMOs Allow Easier Transportation?

Rock, Paper, Shotgun is running an opinion piece which asks why the majority of MMOs force users to spend a fair portion of their time traveling around a virtual world. At what point does moving from one location to another become a chore? From the article: "I love big, explorable worlds. They're by far one of my most favourite things about games. Running off in a direction without any idea what I might encounter is a rare pleasure, and one far more likely to result in an exciting discovery in a game's world than the real one. ... Not knowing what's coming up is huge and exciting, and I'd not want to take it away from gaming, not ever. But you know what? Once I've been there, that moment's gone. I've discovered it already. I did the exploring. I don't need to spend half an hour of my time that I've allocated for playing games trudging at whatever stupidly slow speed a game's decided to impose upon me. There is no good reason, whatsoever, to not just let me be there."

Comments

Re:Codswallop

[Bieeanda]

Have you actually played the latest expansion? You get to Northrend at level 70. You can't fly there without "Cold Weather Flight Training" or somesuch, which you can't even get until level 77-- which is most of the way through the Northrend content, and costs a serious chunk of change to boot.

The Howling Fjords starting zone is built heavily around sheer drops, switchbacks, irregular terrain and slow lifts. Its very existence is a poke in the eye for people who thought that the nether drake mounts they spent weeks grinding faction for made them the kings of shit mountain.

Re:As the great Bartle said

[thesandtiger]

Ive actually quit WoW over lack of instant movement. Waiting 30 minutes for group to ssemble is not fun, neither well spent time. When you spend more time afking game and reding book while you wait for someone than playing, something is very wrong ...

In WoW there are at least 2 options for getting other players to a dungeon virtually instantly - the meeting stones (requires 2 players be there already) and warlock teleporting (requires 3 players be at the desired location). If you're at a level where you're doing content that doesn't have a meeting stone (raids, pretty much) you are going to have the ability to travel to any location in the world in much less than 30 minutes, at most about 10 minutes, and that would be the most extreme possible case I can think of. The *only* time there is a longer trip involved is when you're first exploring an area with a given character. If you don't have the flight paths connecting one point to another, then prepare for World of Walking - but at the level where you're still getting flight paths it isn't like you're raiding or doing dungeons much, so waiting for people for a raid isn't happening.

People take so long to get to instances and raids not because of travel times, but because they are doing other things before the raid, like selling stuff, repairing, getting potions etc. ready for the raid, chatting, whatever. If travel time were the real determinant of how long it takes to get a raid together, the wait times would be down to 10 minutes, 15 minutes tops.

Further, WoW has done quite a bit to change the way you have to travel:

Original WoW had mounts that you could get at level 40 that would boost your speed by 60% for 100 gold (a decent amount of money back then) and 1000 gold at level 60 (the maximum level) would get you 100% movement speed increase. You could boost that another 2-3% by getting a trinket that would speed you up.

Then they added the Burning Crusade expansion with flying mounts. The level 40 mounts dropped to 60 (I think?) gold, the level 60 mounts dropped to 640 (I think?) gold, and the flying mounts were now 1000 gold for the riding skill (easy to get along the way to level 70) for a 60% speed flying mount and 5000 gold (about as hard to get as the old 1000g mount) for a 280% speed increase - as fast as the flighpaths, but quicker because you could do this point to point kind of travel rather than take the long way with flight paths that swooped around. You could boost those numbers by 10% or so by getting new trinkets.

In addition, they added Shattrath which has portals in it to every major city in the game. You could set your hearthstone to Shattrath and teleport to either continent in the old world (and close to other travel options) instantly.

Then they added Wrath of the Lich King. The level 40 mounts now unlock at level 30. There's a new city - Dalaran - that has a set of portals to all major cities. Cooldowns on hearth stones and other similar abilities were reduced to 30 minutes from an hour. 5000g for the VERY fast flying mounts is now pretty easy to get.

It isn't instant travel, but it's not 30 minutes, either. And if you're really impatient to get around, roll a mage or deathknight. Mages can teleport to many places in the world inside of 10 seconds, and deathknights have special abilities that make their mounted speed quite a bit faster than usual - it feels pretty peppy.

Guild Wars also uses a different model from WoW. They actually make more money if you buy the game and then stop playing because it's a pay once (and pay for expansions) kind of thing. WoW is a pay per month set up. Guild Wars doesn't really require timesinks for their business model in the same way WoW does. I think WoW does a pretty good job of varying the timesinks and even making them a little more entertaining (the people on boats can be fun to talk to; flying under your own control you can find interesting places) all things considered - and certainly the rest of the game is more than fun enough (for people who still play) to compensate for the travel stuff.