Traveling in patch 3.1
by Amanda Miller 
Mar 1st 2009 at 2:00PM
Patch 3.1 will be changing how we all get around. Travel is usually a bit of a touchy subject, but there are some huge improvements on the way. If you love Kirin'Tor bling, you'll be happy to note that their transportation rings are getting an upgrade. Should you purchase one, you get a free teleport to Dalaran once every hour.
The Hearthstone that you've carried with you since you day one, unless you deleted it and had to bribe an Innkeeper for a new one, is changing radically. The cooldown is being reduced from one hour to half an hour. This was done partially to appease the whining over nerf to ghetto hearthing.
Ghetto Hearthing is/was the process of dropping your group while in a dungeon and waiting one minute for a free hearth, provided your hearthstone was on a cooldown. In 3.1, you will no longer be able to do this. Fortunately, you can still use the method to get yourself out of a dungeon.
Ghetto hearthing will be less of a hearth and more of a shifting of your virtual person to the nearest graveyard, alive and well. This will stop people from doing things like entering Ragefire Chasm while grouped, dropping, and getting a free hearth.
This may seem like a tedious difference, but it will also really help for quest hand-ins and reputation turn-ins. This way, we can teleport out of the dungeon to a nearby area, without the use of a hearthstone, and without running back through the dungeon manually just to stay in the same area.
One forum poster has even suggested that the ghetto hearth could drop players at the door or the summoning stone, which would be handy for repairs, summoning new players, and would make navigation easier even in unfamiliar areas.
The other means of "hearthing" was an exploit of the battleground queue. If you queue in Dalaran, you can hop over to do auctions in an Old World city. Then, if your hearth is blown, you can jump into a battleground, and type /afk. This will boot you from the raid group and send you straight back to Dalaran, because that is where you queued.
This mechanic could also be annoying. Trying to do dailies while waiting for your battleground to pop, getting partway through it, going into the BG, and then getting dumped back in Dalaran can be a pain. You have to re-queue, and fly all the way back out.
As of 3.1, at the end of a battleground, you'll be dumped at the location where you entered. This means that you can go off and do other things while you wait in queues, and be dropped back and ready for business at the end. Considering you will be able to queue a battleground from any location, you'll never be inconvenienced this way again.
Patch 3.1 brings us Ulduar, dual specs, significant changes to all the classes, and more! We've got you covered from top to bottom with our Guide to Patch 3.1.Filed under: Items, News items, Wrath of the Lich King, Forums, Battlegrounds
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 3)
xnera Mar 1st 2009 2:06PM
Gona be so win! *questing* get corpse camped fu then *enterBG* >: ]
Trasken Mar 1st 2009 2:08PM
That's one thing I did enjoy about Warhammer when I was trying it, being able to queue anywhere and then going back where you were. It will makes BG's a lot more accessible and attractive imo.
Good Mar 1st 2009 2:14PM
You forgot to mention swimming mounts, they too will affect traveling :)
Dave Mar 1st 2009 2:17PM
My question is, what about those people who say go afk or are removed from a raid or dungeon - what happens to them - do they then just exist in the dugeon to not allow anyone else in or do they get pushed out to the entrance of the dungeon. I haven't seen any thoughts or discussion as to when a member afks or gets removed but doesn't want to go.
Kevin Gass Mar 1st 2009 2:34PM
they still port out, just not back to their hearthstone location, just to the nearest graveyard. Trying reading the post first, it did say that.
DrFaust Mar 1st 2009 4:02PM
Kevin Gass, I think what Dave is referring to is to is the problem in Naxx when a raid member dies and goes forever AFK (usually due to disconnect or an angry mom). What happened when we removed the dead AFK'er from the raid group and tried to summon a replacement was an error message saying the instance is full. Even more annoying is that the body would just linger there way past the six minute release.
Many WoW players are notorious for not fully reading or comprehending the text so I understand, but I don't believe that that is the case here. Consider yourself lucky, Kevin, that you have not yet experience this problem in your instance raid group.
TJ Mar 1st 2009 2:17PM
Something tells me theres going to be some more BG activity across all the servers.
Karilyn Mar 1st 2009 4:46PM
That's a good thing IMO.
K Mar 1st 2009 2:20PM
Say you queue up for a BG in the Storm Peaks while flying around on your flying mount, and you enter your BG. After you exit the BG, will you be ported back to Storm Peaks in the air or on the ground below where you entered when you were flying?
Or if you took a FP to someplace and you queued up and entered the BG. When you exit the BG, will you be exactly where you were on the bird flight or at your destination?
RogueJedi86 Mar 1st 2009 6:31PM
That's why we have the Public Test Server, to see what happens when one does that, and get it fixed if doing as such crashes WoW or whatever. So we'll see soon enough. :)
edward Mar 2nd 2009 1:02AM
Also what if you want to queue again after the first BG?
You queue, go do dailies, BG pops, you enter it, once done, you are back again where u were doing dailies, what if you wanted to queue again? You can't?
Simon Mar 1st 2009 2:21PM
The 30 min HS thing is long overdue, but I've never understood the moans about long travel times post TBC - I mean come on, Outland and Northrend aren't that big really... Travelling from one end of the original continents to the next - now that took time, but it's just not like that in the xpacs
pscof42 Mar 1st 2009 2:32PM
Travel times on Northrend, in my experience, are still long because of the long arcs you have to make around Wintergrasp.
tagashi Mar 1st 2009 5:53PM
Well, it would have been really nice in TBC. I never really have to ghetto hearth in NR, but it's mostly because the zepplins are so accessible. This was not the case with outland. Just one freaking port to get there. It was such a pain in the ass, especially before getting to shatt.
Darxide Mar 1st 2009 2:22PM
ok so the old mechanic of joining a BG to get a free hearth back while you go to the trainer/AH/etc, is gone, but does this mean that the new one allow you to do this from anywhere ?
this requires explenation:
So, say you are doing dailies or whatever. you join a battleground remotely and keep doing dailies while you wait. you enter the battleground and then leave again.
do you return to where you were when you queued up or where you were when you zoned into the BG ?
Balius Mar 1st 2009 3:39PM
"you'll be dumped at the location where you entered", a direct quote from the original article.
Wasuremono Mar 1st 2009 2:29PM
I tried to test this on the ptr but am no longer able to use open my pvp menu. =P
Estele Mar 1st 2009 2:56PM
Where you queue'd up. This is going to be a big asset bc if you're doing ur dailies and you queue up while doing this and then go about doing the dailies, when you're popped...that is where you'll exit at.
Ryan Mar 1st 2009 2:37PM
NO
ONE
CARES
Berenixium Mar 1st 2009 2:44PM
Hope they've done the math on more HS's being active thanks to the CD halving, and servers don't melt from extra CPU strain.
Will be interesting to see what happens post patch 3.1 day, about 24 hours later anyway (Headline: Blizzard server building burns down shock! More on page 35)