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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."
Keeping it real... as real as a game like that could really be anyway...
sudo mount --milk --sugar
Of course, you could go the other way and make location actually matter - like, for example, EVE Online.
Small is not a bad thing.
With Guild Wars, you have to run/walk/fight to new cities/towns first (or get someone to "run" you there - e.g. do all the hardwork while you just tag along). After that, you can teleport to that town or any other town you have been before.
It's a _chore_ having to keep running to places you've been before.
Like "same old" cutscenes you can't skip, but must keep pressing "Next" (to kill anything that gets in your way) till you finally reach the real destination (the actual battle).
Being able to teleport straight to places you've been before is a good thing. I don't care if the world feels small in that way - as long as it's diverse enough.
It's like being in a small shop with a huge variety of products, and a different product on every inch of the shelves that you can choose if you like. Compared to being in a huge hypermarket with shelves and shelves of the _same_ items, so you need to walk about a lot more to get to the stuff you want.
Guild Wars is a bit like WoW Lite in some ways. So a lot of ppl won't like it.
The issue isn't that transportation is slow, it's that it's boring.
This is where static content fails. There is hardly ever anything new going on in an area you've already visited. Maybe game developers should focus less on expanding worlds when they do expansion packs and such, and more on coming up with systems for dynamic content delivery that mimics a living world better.
I wouldn't mind a 10 min trek through a known area, if the monsters changed, little random quests popped up, or whatever else happened on the way.
The issue is plainly the static nature of the world, not a lack of teleportation (or whatever other system is suggested)
Why would you pay to wait???
As the Lead Designer of the PC game Majesty explained to me the technical term is called "Dead Time." If the player is _bored_, you hav _failed_ as a game designer.
Anyone who thinks waiting 20 mins in a MMO getting one from one destination, has never played D&D. D&D has almost _zero_ dead time. Want to travel north? Ok, GM rolls a die, and usually 1 or 2 things happen.
1. Ok, you're there. Now what?
2. Half way there you get attacked. Now what?
In CRPGs, there needs to be a balance. Ultima Online showed that if any one can recall, then yes, the world does seem small. WoW has shown us that suckers, er gamers, will put up with paying to wait. In Diablo 2, there are check-points (waypoints) that once you reach them, you can instantly travel back to any of the ones you have reached. Guid Wars does this exact same thing. Want to travel back to any city you have previously reached. Bam, there. I would limit the distance warped, or allow mages to _sell_ tiered portal scrolls that allow for greater distances.
No, its not. Absolutely not fun at all. When you're doing a dungeon again, and again, and again because of the farming spirit of this game and you have to wait 30 minutes to get someone, it's awful.
You don't need more than 10 minutes ? If you got guys in a capital which isn't dalaran without their heartstone ready (reloading time 1 hour, so greaaat...), and you want to do a Lich King's dungeon, people will take so much time to come that you'll wonder why you're still playing this. Yes of course, you could ditch everyone and get another team and, if you're on a low pop server, wait forever.
Timesinks are stupid. Period. I don't play a game for awfully boring timesinks. And frankly people talking about "big worlds"... Who cares ! I've already explored this "big world", it doesn't seem "that" big, even if retarded automatic transportation methods takes a lot of time to go from one point to another. It's not because your character is slow as hell and takes 30-45 to run from one side of the continent to the other that a world is "big" and "nice".
People who wants ease of transportation in those games are people who don't care anymore about the landscape. They saw it so much times, they're sick of it. Flying mounts are slow, unless you want to farm as hell to get a "faster" transportation method, which you'll be unable to use if you're on Azeroth anyway, so it doesn't solve the problem indicated above.
Frankly, the number of timesinks of this game make me quit. Getting money by killing the fun with timesinks is completely stupid.
And, to finish this rant, "big" worlds comes with big citys. Almost all the "villages" look as big as highway gas-stations. The capitals aren't bigger than a small town. "Big" world ? Meh...