Fast travel, and why it's hard to find in MMO games
by Mike Schramm 
Jun 30th 2009 at 8:00PM
Rock Paper Shotgun has an interesting piece up looking at travel in massively multiplayer games, and while the analysis is really about travel in all MMOs, of course World of Warcraft gets placed front and center -- with the notable exceptions of Mages and Warlock summons, it's a game that squarely places you in its vast world, and asks you to make some solid decisions about where you want to be. While travel has certainly gotten easier (and will continue to do so), it's still an important part of the world -- sometimes, when you're in a backwater zone and your hearthstone is down and there's no summons available to you, you've just got to get on a griffon and put the time in to fly around.Why is that? Why can't we just teleport around at will to places we've been before (a la Fallout 3 or Fable 2, if you've ever played those games)? Why does Blizzard make us traverse the wide world? RPS lands on two solutions: either they just want you to play the game more (certainly possible, especially since big worlds with long travel times and subscription fees are a trademark of the MMO genre), or they're just being jerks about it. But their panelists, and Blizzard, have offered one more suggestion: they want this world to feel vast, and one way to do that is to make you move around it rather than warp anywhere you want at a moment's notice.
Then again, that's some deep psychology, and sometimes you just want to get in an instance with your friends and fight (hence the recent changes to summoning anywhere, queueing from anywhere, and so on). Travel definitely serves a purpose in MMOs, but the genre has shown in the past few years that while instant travel all the time might shrink the world a little too much, sometimes you just need to get to where you want to be.
[via Slashdot]
Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Odds and ends, Blizzard, Leveling, Mounts
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 4)
Hades Jun 30th 2009 8:07PM
especially when you have no mount at all =)... "fun" times
and now the QQ about the new mount system and how all these people below had to walk up hill both ways with one leg until lvl 60:
splodesondeath Jun 30th 2009 8:42PM
And through six feet of snow, while hail the size of grapefruits pelted down on them.
nyctef Jun 30th 2009 8:58PM
Hail? You were lucky! We were pelted by great balls of hellfire!
Cashew Jul 1st 2009 2:29AM
We would have KILLED for hellfire. No, no, we trudged through 6 feet of snow, while wading hip deep through a freezing stream, dragging all our gear, uphill both ways, while flaming balls of basketball sized hail smashed us on the head and brained us every step of the way. But, you know, we were happy...
JamieG Jul 1st 2009 3:15AM
I just took the bus. Never understood why others didn't, and continued to wade through snow and streams and firey hail.
Redpostit Jul 1st 2009 6:18AM
So you were one of those rich bastards who could just "take the bus" as you please eh? You little whippersnapper, sitting there all high and mighty on your stupid "bus", thinking you're better then us poor snow trudgers... In my days, we would have stoned the likes of you we would! I ate cold poison and kobold roadkill for dinner i did! Did ye think i had money to pay them 50 copper for a buss ride?
Cashew Jul 1st 2009 10:15AM
Cold poison and Roadkill Dinner?! Luxury. We used to have to get out of the lake at three o'clock in the morning, clean the lake, eat a handful of hot gravel, go to work at the mill every day for copper a month, come home, and Dad would beat us around the head and neck with a broken bottle, and if we were LUCKY he'd let us go out and travel around the great and wonderful land of Azeroth!
Catrie Jun 30th 2009 8:08PM
The thing I like about Free Realms is that you can port to any city you've been to. You can also teleport directly to any friend or guildy, even if they aren't in your party. It saves sooo much time.
Valensword Jun 30th 2009 8:08PM
Coming from Oblivion it was a huge shock to me that you couldn't insta port to any place you've previously been. And I play solely as a mage, I can't even fathom what questing / doing achievements and world events must be like if you can't just get from one continent to another to another at any time.
Apra Jun 30th 2009 9:46PM
the instant travel ruined oblivion for me. Being able to teleport anywhere not only shrinks the world, it completely ruins the atmosphere of the game. There was something extremely cool about walking around the world in Morrowind.
pandaba Jun 30th 2009 11:43PM
Morrowind's travel system works perfectly for a combination of fast travel while retaining immersion.
In Morrowind, you could instantly port from one city to the next. In the game, it was described as riding a strider, or catching a boat, or even using some ancient transporter technology, but any of those got you from point A to B instantly. But it didn't break immersion or the sense of the huge world, since it wasn't teleporting you to any point on demand. You still had to plan routes and the particular scary dwarven ruin you had to visit for your quest was not on any of the bus routes, so you still had to walk there on your own.
Clbull Jul 1st 2009 7:44AM
I disagree.
In Oblivion, you can only fast-travel to areas you have been to (this excludes cities), so theres still this somewhat large feeling of exploration. I'm glad its like that else the game would have pretty much been:
1) Fast Travel
2) Complete objective
3) Repeat
Starsmore Jun 30th 2009 8:09PM
"...Blizzard, have offered one more suggestion: they want this world to feel vast.."
That's just the nice-PR-way of saying "the more time you spend running, the longer you play, and the more you pay. Sucker!"
Coldbear Jun 30th 2009 8:09PM
Teleports are awesome for convenience, the casual player who just wants to get X done, or the hardcore who wants to min/max his time playing.
But sucks for immersion and world pvp.
Velina Jun 30th 2009 8:09PM
I actually really like mounting up on my epic ground or flying mounts and strolling around. :)
bob Jul 1st 2009 8:16AM
One of my favorite parts of the game is just cruising around in Swift Flight and seeing the world. It is one of the reasons I the game. Exploring and travel are fun. If all you want to do is run from objective to objective in a set path go play Halo. Immersion in the world is part of what makes the game so interesting and alive. Stop and smell the roses sometime.
Bryan Creel Jul 1st 2009 9:57AM
How would having more instant travel stop you from doing that?
Bizzy Jun 30th 2009 8:12PM
When I was a new WoW player, my sole reason for choosing a mage was because of teleportation. Now I can't even manage to level an alt because it takes them freakin' forever to get around.
adshiel Jun 30th 2009 9:02PM
you can't level an alt? sad....
it takes about 60 mins to get to 10...
get some help...it takes about 1 day to get to 20....
travel doesn't stop you levelling and alt, laziness does.
all that said...I played Asherons Call for years...loved the portal system. Still made you run around but did help you get places quicker.
Ringo Flinthammer Jun 30th 2009 8:16PM
It's not a scam and it's not deep psychology. If you played EverQuest before and after they added the Plane of Knowledge, which let you teleport to pretty much anywhere worth teleporting to, it absolutely changed the game, and not for the better.
Yeah, it was more convenient -- to put it mildly -- but suddenly, PoK was the only place that made sense to be. Want to hit a dungeon? The fastest way to get there is from PoK. Have a raid? Well, we're meeting on the far side of the PoK portal. First thing you do when you create a new character? Figure out the fastest way to get to the PoK.
EverQuest went from having an extremely vast world to being reduced to one zone.
The WoW dev team -- almost all of whom are veterans of EQ1 -- are right on this one.