I'd like to know how a boat would help you to get groups faster? According to what has been put out there, this is actually a tiny bit faster than what boats offered. So if they implemented boats rather than translocaters w/ timers, how would that be any different??? Sure, you get to ride on a boat (yipee), but the downtime is still present. Evil races still have to wait for the boat and risk dying. You still have to cross from one continent to another in a similar timeframe.
President's post underlined this for me. Classic was hard, and why would we expect any different? Still, the population is an issue. I play on this server often when it has between 80-140 people online. In live classic there were probably 2500-3500 people online. I remember there were a couple servers with 4000+ at some point. Even the conservative number is 27x more players than I see online with me. That's 27x more potential for someone to give you a sow, or an invis, or a port, or a bind, or a group. If there's a greater population, you have less reason to jump continents to find a group because groups are all over the f@$^!@! place. That would make things a lot more easier than boats would (yipee, a boat!). I don't think boats would make any of this better. The issue is downtime and population.
What I'm trying to say is, I don't see how boats would change anything beyond the "wow it's a boat!" factor.
It seems to me that the majority of people don't want timed translocaters OR boats. They both have the same drawback (downtime).
IMHO, we should just allow people to swim or lev/run across the zones to cross continents. Can we presently do that? Why have instant teleporters between freeport and bb, but not between west karana and east karana? Why not have instant teleporters between qeynos and freeport? IMHO, it's more consistent and balanced just to remove the translocaters AND boats, and just allow people to swim or lev/run across the zones like they do in all the other zones. This would remove the confusion and keep the issue from being a target.
Plus, evil races could just run (with sow, like they do in all the other zones they pass through) and wouldn't have to sit and die (because there's no place to go without a boat/translocater). This whole mess started with boats, and translocaters haven't changed it.
So my argument is that since we don't have the population to support the boat/translocater dynamic, lets just get rid of both of them and allow people to run from one continent to the other (or swim). This is more in line with the flavor of classic (that's how we travel most of the time without a porter class). It also would make things a bit easier for evils, but nobody would be getting anything for free.
The best thing is you don't have to fish. You're not forced to sit an wait. No buggy boats. You can go afk while crossing zones too. Downside is that those who do it this way would want levitate, and sow, preferably. Maybe it could be an alternative.
Oh, and a way to know when the translocater will pop or the boat will arrive would be nice to decide whether to do this.
Bottom line, don't blame this on a lame translocater. The wow-ness of boats would not make this any better. They're fun for most people the first couple times, but after that the only thing you'd see in the forums are people complaining about downtime and boat bugs.
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