“Ghetto” Hearthing Actually Did Get Nerfed
A few days ago I noticed a blue response to an off the wall thread in the official forums that asked for “ghetto hearthing” to be nerfed. The thread was, of course, started by a mage that claimed that the exploiting of the free hearth cost him/her gold because people didn’t need ports anymore…
Eyonix responded with what seemly looked like a sarcastic way of blowing off the subject:
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Well apparently Blizzard was listening and actually took action. As of the current 3.1 PTR build, “Ghetto hearthing” is a thing of the past.
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It only takes a couple of people whining to ruin it for the rest of us…
Great going guys, fantastic job…
I know… but it’s a pretty vicious cycle… Two people need to whine to start it, then 4 to change it back. Soon we’ll have rant over rant about crap like this. It’s like when rogues complained that warriors were OP in the way back when.
Ugh.
I wish they’d just reduce the cooldown on the hearthstone already.
Do they not realize how many (read: damn near everyone) people used that “exploit”?
That itself should show that people hate the blasted 1 hour cooldown.
Wow…. if you read that, the mage was losing 300g QUARTERLY. Now, forgive me if my mathematics are skewed, but isn’t that a 3month period? If your WoW-income is entirely dependent on 300g/3months, then that’s the least of your worries.
Just add a meeting stone to VH, I guess we are set then.
WTF!! You know what? Blizz should have NPC’s stop selling food/water cuz it takes away from a mage’s having to make foodstuff! Also no mounts should be sold anymore cuz that takes away from tailor’s and engineer’s gold making abilities. Matter of fact, No more gear from dungeons/questing cuz it takes away from professions being able to sell thier BOE items! There thats what I think. Am I missing any more QQ
If they introduce an AH in Dalaran and make flying from flightpoint A to fp B instant i’m fine with that change.
Terrible idea IMO.
When I go to Undercity and try to find a mage to port me back to Dalaran or Shattrath (back in the TBC days), it was always a terrible chore. Half the time they wouldn’t even respond to trade chat, and, of course, sending random mages tells is a good way to get yourself ignored or cussed at.
This is a very bad move by Blizzard. Even if we double that mage’s estimated port income, it still is far less than even grinding just one faction’s dailies.
I think Unholystryke put it best: it is an extremely slippery slope when catering to a player’s desire to make gold.
Simultaniously, it seems like Blizz is trying to put as much of a strain as possible on the WoW economy with this new patch, in an attempt to keep gold a thing of value. I’ve heard the new dual spec ability costs 1k gold per toon… So it seems like Blizzard’s current mentality is something like: if it makes the general WoW population farm more, then it is a good thing. I think the player-base would strongly disagree. Obviously they aren’t getting rid of “ghetto hearthing” to appease this one player… but moreso to increase the relative value of gold to put more pressure on the competitive aspect of WoW.
Personally, I think fun factor is more important than competition, and removing ghetto hearthing seems like another good way to make people spend time doing some repititive task (spamming in trade chat for a mage or sending tells) instead of speeding up the pace of the game and allowing players to feel like they have some semblence of freedom.
Terrible, terrible idea IMO.
Like I said on my blog, screw this sheep buggering bastard.
I will never be buying a port from a mage now. If it takes me a long assed time to get back to Dalaran from the Vanilla territories then so be it..
They are going to have to do something about it if they are removing the Ghetto Hearth.
On one hand, yes, using Ghetto Hearth is taking advantage of game mechanics that should not work in that way, BUT I think it’s still Blizzards fault.
The hearthstone on a 1 hour cooldown is fine for the most part, except for the fact that there is no way to travel the main cities. How do you get from Orgrimmar to Dalaran? Oh, well you just run outside of the city to a tower where you wait anywhere from 10 seconds to 2 minutes for the zeppelin. Then you wait another minute while it flies and screen loads. Then you run to the flight master. Then you take the 4 minute flight to Dalaran.
It’s no wonder people try everything they can to get back quickly, when you have to do that just about every time you go to the Auction House, trade with someone in Org, go to the Hall of Champions to buy PVP gear, or train your skills.
If Blizzard disables the ghetto hearth, people will just BG hearth, by having a friend queue them for a BG in the city of their choice. This will screw up the start of BGs even more so than they already are. (15 vs. 4 anyone?)
BTW, mage ports are more of a convenience thing, and helps mages become liked more, it shouldn’t be a main source of income. The argument the mage made about losing money is a moot point, the real issue is that ghetto hearthing is an abuse of game mechanics.
My solutions, I would suggest that Blizzard should implement a few of these, not all:
Mage ports cost no materials, and you don’t have to be in the party or raid to use it.
Hearthstone is on 30 minute cooldown or less.
All major cities have ports to all other major cities.
There is an NPC in Dalaran with the ability to pull you back to Dalaran if you have completed the appropriate quest.
All ports from Dalaran to any city gives you a one time use “return trip” teleport that disapears if you choose to leave the city for any amount of time.
This is bull. If I’m in an instance far away from my inn, and there is no mage in the group, then I actually have to get there manually, or pay for flight path. This is unnecessary. So what if mages don’t make a profit off porting people? If I had the ability to teleport/ make a portal to major cities, I wouldn’t care if I never made 1 copper. I’d be able to farm dailies, and stuff like that so much easier without having my hearth set to a city, but still easily being able to port back to the city.
Blizz needs to keep this feature.
Darkuja:
Correct me if I’m wrong or I don’t understand your post. You seem indignant at having to either run to/from an instance, or actually *gasp* PAY to fly?
Pardon the sarcasm….but…paying to fly at almost ANY level is virtual pennies, it costs more in time.
“I actually have to get there manually…” Damn the bad luck. Most groups have mages, most instances have summoning stones, most instances take long enough your hearth will reset. I feel your pain when it comes to auctioning, banking…that’s why all I need is a mailbox: I made a bank toon to handle that.
I guess I’m oldschool.
[...] way of blowing off a request. As the thread grew, however, it became clear that removing “ghetto hearth” meant that taking some form of action was inevitable. Well take action they will! Come 3.1 [...]
[...] way of blowing off a request. As the thread grew, however, it became clear that removing “ghetto hearth” meant that taking some form of action was inevitable. Well take action they will! Come 3.1 [...]
Speaking as a mage… I HATE being pst’d for ports, especially when people don’t tip me. I know most mages require payment before putting the port up, and sometimes I do, but sometimes I say screw it and just put the port up and hope for a few gold.
Using Portals as a source of income is retarded. Also, complaining that ghetto hearthing interferes with it is even more retarded. Take BG hearthing… If you’re in a party or raid and need to get everyone to a city fast, queing up for a bg is the most efficient way.
It’s not an abuse of game mechanics to ghetto hearth, because its still a pain in the ass, and it’s not like you gain anything out of it, besides a few minutes of travel.
Like was said before, if you’re a mage and you’re depending on ports for income, you have bigger problems. Do dailies, pick up a gathering profession, panhandle in stormwind on a low-level alt.
You’ll make gold alot faster than waiting around to sell a port for 5 g (average on my server between 5 and 10g)
Ry wrote…
“Darkuja: Correct me if I’m wrong or I don’t understand your post. You seem indignant at having to either run to/from an instance, or actually *gasp* PAY to fly?
Pardon the sarcasm….but…paying to fly at almost ANY level is virtual pennies, it costs more in time.”
I think the guy was referring to the time investment as opposed to the monetary one.
I agree with you about the bank alt though.
to be honest the higher end stuff like flying mounts especially artisan costs are insane on there own throw non serious gamers a cookie blizz and leave “ghetto hearthing” alone
Mages suck
Corpsicle, if you find a place where you can go where you need to get back to your hearth stone in less then 20 minutes then you can’t really be doing much anyways… yes I know the new CD is 30 minutes no 20, but still flat out getting anywhere takes you 5 minutes, the only reason you should be needing to hearth more then once in 30 minutes is if your bags where totaly full and you had to go AH something, in which case if your hearth is Dalaran just flat go to a capitol that theres a boat/zepline that takes you back to Northrend, oh my takes 40 seconds to walk outside of a town to wait for a “boat”… Oh wait thats right, besides SW and Org there is no instance close enough to where gheto hearthing saved you any time over just taking boat/zepline back… Even if you are not up to Northrend levels it doesnt take that long to get back to outlands either from either SW or Org or UC since SW you can fly directly outside the dark portal, and Org/UC you can take zepline to STV which is fairly close to the portal as well.
Point is your jsut really lazy if your gheto hearthing in SW to get back to Dalaran, and the new timer makes up for the gheto loss.
To see any Mage complaining is laughable. When a Mage like “Hempmage” on Chromassus steal 5 gold from my grandaughter, put up a portl, then refuse to invite her to group to use the portal, and laughs at her for paying him in advance, then maybe Warcraft needs to consider another means of transportation for the players. Depending on immature Mage’s that are thieves and only want to rip off and insult other players is a tactical error. It might be a good idea to create more portals in the major cities.
I have been advised that the realm is Chromaggus. Apparently Warcraft employees are not playing their own game enough to understand the complaints and opinions of their own customers. We will miss the “Forced Hearth” or “Ghetto Heath” as it has been referred to, during the past 4 years. Something as important as a portal to a location that millions of customers paid an additional $40 (plus the pevious $20 + $40) to access, and pay $15 every month, should be made easier to access by the players.
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