Adventures in Azeroth #2: Traveling the World or Are We There Yet?

World of Warcraft's travel system sucks.

There's no way of getting around it; of all the critiques and praise I have for the game, traveling is one of the biggest complaints. It makes the game incredibly slow, in places where it really doesn't need to be slow. As a result, players become easily bored or fatigued because it takes forever to get anywhere. So why does Blizzard insist on keeping this system intact? I can think of a couple of reasons:

1. It adds to the game's atmosphere

There's a reason why the game is classified as a Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game. Part of WoW's design philosophy is to simulate a living, breathing, massive world. When a player travels from place to place, they're not always traveling to the town down the road. Their journey takes them across three continents and another dimension. Making travel time between places long adds to the sense of scale the game is trying to build. Traveling from the top of a continent to the bottom shouldn't be instantaneous because it would make the player feel like each location is crammed next to each other.

Prolonging travel times also serves the purpose of showing off Blizzard's art design. Depending on one's mode of transportation, the game treats the player to some wonderfully done locales, each following a unique motif. This includes:

Dalaran's previous location in the Alterac Mountains complete with weird ethereal aura;

The alien and barren world of Outland with two moons (planets?) in the sky;

Or the Jurassic jungle of Un'Goro Crater where giant dinosaurs will try and eat you if you so much as look at them funny.

Of course Blizzard wants you to take your time and check out all the cool locations, so forcing a player to slowly explore each place allows them to really take in the scenery.

I understand that the game is pretty, and I get the fact that Azeroth is supposed to feel like an entire world. But here's the problem: the structure of the game undermines both of those design elements. Players must constantly backtrack to parts of the world in order to do quests, buy spells, run an instance, etc. If a player must travel to the same places over and over again, they will enjoy their scenic routes once, maybe twice. After that traveling becomes a chore. During long travel times, many players will surf the web, get a snack, or even play another game while they travel to their destination. I'm not trying to say WoW needs to do away with travel times altogether, but something needs to be done so this doesn't happen:

Yep. I'm guilty of that last one too.

2. Traveling as a reward system

Despite these complaints Blizzard does offer in-game items that expedite travel. Every player starts the game with an item called a hearthstone, which allows players to instantly travel to whatever town they've designated as their home. This can reduce travel times between places dramatically if used correctly. Likewise, mages can eventually learn to teleport themselves and others to their faction's capital cities which is especially useful when a player needs to run errands like buying spells or making posts to the auction house.

The mount system also allows players to buy transportation that lets players travel across the world at a much faster pace. As a player levels they can purchase faster mounts as well as ones that fly. Some players also have the opportunity to earn mounts specific to their class or profession. For example, engineers can build a motorcycle complete with a side car so friends can travel with you:
With options like summoning spells, flight points, and mounts, traveling through the game shouldn't be that much of a problem right? Then why does it still take forever for me to get anywhere?

One night some fellow ICAM students and I decided to run an instance with each other. The problem was that we were all spread out across the world. I was on another continent and my hearthstone was not set to the continent I needed to be on. Another person had to walk there because he already used his hearthstone, and hearthstones can only be used once every 30 minutes. To make matters worse, he didn't have the correct flight point for our meet-up. Finally, nobody in our group had mounts at that time and nobody had learned group summoning spells yet. We couldn't summon everyone together until one person made it to the summoning stone just outside of the instance we weren't at. We lost 20-30 minutes of our play time simply because getting everyone to the proper destination was a convoluted mess.

The issue is that these fast travel items are practically useless because of the limitations placed on them. Yes you can instantly transport yourself to a capital and yes your epic flying mount can travel 3.8 times your walking speed, but there's always a catch. These limitations are supposed to balance out travel times but when five players all have a limitation on their mobility and are separated by continents if not planets, then getting anywhere in the World of Warcraft is painstakingly slow.

I just think there is something very wrong with the fact that you can be riding a bear who's driving a motorcycle and it still takes forever to get to your destination:

Plus the damn murlocs are always trying to bum a free ride.