The Daily Grind: What do you think about travel in MMOs?
If you never played Final Fantasy XI, you missed the singular joy of trying to catch a connecting flight in a video game if you wanted to go from, say, San d'Oria to Kazham. And sometimes you missed the flight and had to sit and wait for the airship to come land again. World of Warcraft might have eliminated that issue, but Alliance players still have nightmares about arriving in Darnassus and flying across an entire continent just to go through a single dungeon run. Compare and contrast travel in Guild Wars, a game in which you scroll around the map, click where you want to go, and port there with no fuss.
On the one hand, there's something to be said for keeping travel an inconvenience, as it helps contribute to the feeling that the game world is huge and difficult to get around in. On the other hand, there's no reason in the world why a video game needs to be made that obnoxious and difficult to navigate -- you're not trying to chart a course to India in the fifteenth century, you're trying to go kill internet dragons. So what do you think about travel times in MMOs? Do you like a big world that takes a while to traverse, or would you rather just take the lead from the map travel of Guild Wars?
Every morning, the Massively bloggers probe the minds of our readers with deep, thought-provoking questions about that most serious of topics: massively online gaming. We crave your opinions, so grab your caffeinated beverage of choice and chime in on today's The Daily Grind!
