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Town Portal

562 bytes added, 15:05, 2 August 2011

added new info and image

Town Portals were present in early Diablo III development. They were removed in 2010 as the developers found them exploitative, in that they allowed players to too easily escape danger in battle. Town Portals remained out of the game for over a year, until they returned during development in 2011, as revealed in a Bashiok forum post in June 2011. [http://diablo.incgamers.com/blog/comments/town-portals-return....-sorta/]

Though they are back in the game, there are ~~unspecified~~ limitations on TPs, to prevent players from using them as escape portals during combat. They have also gained a new name, '''Scroll of Recall''', which is also the name of a crafted item in [[World of WarCraft]].

==Diablo 3 Town Portals==

[[Image:Scroll_channel.jpg|frame|left|[[Wizard]] casting Scroll of Recall.]]

Town Portals returned to the game during development in 2011, as revealed by [[Bashiok]] in a forum post. [http://diablo.incgamers.com/blog/comments/town-portals-return....-sorta/]

<blue>We’ve always been trying to see if we can create a better system than town portals, making waypoints the main travel back to town mechanic. But, it’s looking like it’s just simply more fun and a quality-of-life-nicety to be able to jump back to town from anywhere even if waypoints are all over the place. Plus it’s not really that hard to avoid the few pitfalls that TPs in Diablo II had.</blue>

~~Though no explanations were given~~There are, however, limitations to the new Scrolls of Recall. It is now a spell which must be channeled for ten seconds, an exact duplicate of the "hearthstone" system from World of WarCraft.In the image to the left, the Wizard is channeling the spell, ~~Bashiok stressed~~ meaning that ~~there~~ the little red bar above her is draining. Once the bar is drained, the spell is complete. Any damage taken while channeling will cancel the cast. Scrolls of Recall are not drops. They are ~~now limitations on using TPs~~a permanent part of the [[UI]] once attained through a [[quest]], ~~which~~ similar to the ~~developers feel will overcome their stated reasons for removing Town Portals previously~~[[Nephalem Cube]].

[[File:Town-portal-cain.jpg|frame|A portal for Cain.]]

~~Though there are no player-cast Town Portals, there may still be portals for transportation.~~ There were numerous red portals in Diablo II, to take players between distant locations that weren't appropriate for Waypoint travel. There were also town portals cast by NPCs that players could not use, such as those the rescued Barbarian NPCs cast in Act Five.

These types of portals may return in Diablo III. One was shown in the first gameplay movie, from June 2008. In it a [[Barbarian]] rescues [[Deckard Cain]] from the dungeon, and sends him back to safety through a portal. Likely there were still player-usable Town Portals in the game, at that early point in the development. How this sort of [[quest]]-related NPC travel will be handled, now that TPs are gone, is unknown. The Scroll of Recall is likely to not make a portal at all, and simply move the character back to town.

Risingred

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