A '''Town Portal''' is a spell that opens a portal to the closest [[Horadrim]] [[magic]]al gateway. This spell was learnable in Diablo I, but could only be cast from scrolls in Diablo II.
<u>Town Portals are not found were present in early Diablo IIIdevelopment. 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:/u>/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.
==Diablo 3 Town Portals==
There are no player-castable town portals in Diablo III. The [[D3 Team]] felt they were an exploitative game mechanism that made it too easy to escape from danger.[http://diablo.incgamers.com/blog/comments/jay-wilson-interview-gamespot-au/]
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, Bashiok stressed that there are now limitations on using TPs, which the developers feel will overcome their stated reasons for removing Town Portals previously.
==Why They Were Removed==
::Town Portals are gone. We found them to be For a crippling combat exploitlong time during Diablo III's development, there were no player-castable town portals. We found The [[D3 Team]] felt they were an exploitative game mechanism that while they had some cooperative uses, they tended made it too easy to split players up escape from danger. Jay Wilson explained their reasoning in a lot2010 interview with Gamespot. As soon as players wanted to go back to town they did, and then they had to figure out how to get back to their party[http://diablo. We don’t want players to ever be split upincgamers.com/blog/comments/jay-wilson-interview-gamespot-au/]
::<blue>Town Portals are gone. We found them to be a crippling combat exploit. We found that while they had some cooperative uses, they tended to split players up a lot. As soon as players wanted to go back to town they did, and then they had to figure out how to get back to their party. We don’t want players to ever be split up.<br><br>But the big thing is that Town Portals were a combat exploit. When players can essentially portal out of any situation, it makes it almost impossible for the designers to create a game that’s challenging and compelling, or a world that you’re really immersed in. To replace the need for town portals we’ve added salvaging and we have a couple of other systems that we haven’t shown yet that help with that. The goal is for you to not really miss them. </blue>
===Travel Alternatives===
Since there are no more town portals for players to useWhile Town Portals were out of the game, the [[D3 Team]] has added stressed that the more frequent [[waypoint]]s would prove an adequate substitution. Though TPs are back, in some other options for speedy returns limited form, there's no indication that waypoints are going to townbe any less common.
There are more [[Waypoint]]s than there were in Diablo II. There are also various conveniences Besides Waypoints allowing players to make it less necessary travel to return and from town (or to town. These include other waypoints all throughout the [[Scroll of Wealth]], the [[salvage cube]] and various conveniences game) there are ways for players to sell items directly from the merchant [[dungeons (via some NPCs]] , or by other unspecified methods). There is also a way for players to travel instantly one-way from town to join up with others in the [[Caravan]]dungeon.
Jay Wilson commented on this during an interview at Gamescom 2010: <ref> {{cite web | url = [http://diablo.incgamers.com/blog/comments/jay-wilson-interview-gamona/ | title = Jay Wilson Interview @ Gamescom | accessdate = 2010-08-20 | quote = We’ve put in several things to offset the lack of Town Portals. }}</ref>]
::'''''<blue><font color="#FFFFFF">Gamona.de: '''There are no town portals in Diablo 3. What’s the alternative for easy travel?''</font><br>::'''Jay Wilson: '''We’ve put in several things to offset the lack of Town Portals. The most obvious are more frequent Waypoints. These give players more opportunities to return to go back to town. We’ve also added salvaging to let players break items down into small parts that stack up in your inventory. We’ve also added a Scroll of Wealth that allows you to sell items right on location.</blue>