Travel Times

Hi,

In the interests of not doing stupid stuff with Captain Reynard and his world-spanning-merchant-escapades, are there any published guidelines that, as a community, we stick to with respect to how long it takes to get around Azeroth?  Specifically by ship.  I know you uber-mages can teleport and every other guild has a portal somewhere, but for us <-ahem-> honest merchant captains, I need to know how long it would take me to sail from, say, Stormwind to Gilneas for example.

TIA!

Generally a few months between continents i think. Back during a Barrens Campaign I remember we used a "ship shaman" to put wind in the sails so the voyage would be quicker. Very few people enjoy ship rp for a prolonged time. Especially when it comes to months(or even anything over 3 days) in my experience at least.

Thanks - and OUCH!  

That could seriously hamper any sensible RP involving travelling around the world as a merchant sailor then...

To Northrend it would take considerably less though if you're going to Howling Fjord, due to it being closer than Kalimdor but I recommend a timeskip to make it at all sensible and workable. For example, there was one time when Seb, Azapha and I rped for 12 hours straight. During that time several weeks had been rped but we cut down on parts of the traveling that was uninteresting(skipped).

I suggest gearing your crew towards making things go quick as possible, while on ship skip uninteresting parts and then have a timeskip(that remains sensible). Obviously it's going to get a bit awkward when you talk to other members of the community. I haven't really got a real workaround for that other than not talking about the month of travel you had yesterday.

Hmmm.  I think it's important to balance the realism of sensible travel times by ship with the same thing with horse/walking.

It takes a few minutes in-game to ride across Elwynn Forest.  How long does it take in-character?   Let's say it's a day.  I don't think anyone would suggest that if you were going from Stormwind to Eastvale and back that you should not return to the city IC for a few days - i.e. you have to avoid RPing for a few days because you are "travelling".

Equally, if I go to Kalimdore and back from Stormwind, I'm not likely to want to park my RP toon for 6 months real time because he's travelling.

The disconnect is that time in WoW is equal to time IRL. It takes an hour IRL for the SW clock to go from 8 bells to 9 bells.  And we use the daily RL calendar for our toons - reporting events that happen today as happening in Azeroth on the 24th November, for example.   But as soon as you travel "long distances" in WoW game, the distances v time equation breaks.

I can walk from Stormwind to Ironforge in an hour or so in game time (and therefore in Game-World-Clock-Time), even at proper walking pace.  But I would assume such a trek in character would take days and days.   There is no way to resolve this disconnect.

My example comes from the fact that Reynard last night agreed with Kelinn to go and pick up some Gilnean beverages to be sold in the Recluse.  So how long do I take to achieve this?  I feel like turning up this evening with the drinks would be too quick.  Would turning up next Wednesday (a week later) be acceptable? Even if that is so, for a relatively quick trip in my ship I'm effectively having to stop RPing Reynard for a week as he's travelling. This feels like a harsh hit on my toon and the time I can RP him.

Lastly - does anyone care?!?!?  

Wednesday sounds fair. I don't think people would care much so long you take care for some measurement of time. We're here for fun afterall and not for uber realism. If that was the case rp would be even more of a fringe activity than it already is. Nobody will want to spend entire months out of the circle because their character is travelling. So people will understand.

I have been part of a few ship-using guilds myself, and other guilds who travel a lot.

I personally chose to utterly ignore any timescale. Travel will take just as long as the plot demands. Can be a week, or less than a day.

I'll lay down a few examples.

During the era of Wild Tempest, the trip from SW to Darnassus took by ship 1 day. We did RP 1 day on the Ship. Then, we spent multiple day RPing in Darnassus, then moved to mainland, took multiple days worth of events to reach the southern part of Darkshore, travelling > stopping on camps, going for objectives alongside the way. Then we finally reached Ashenvale. A lot had happen on this trip. The trip was again slow, as we took upon missions upon every inch of the travel, while slowly moving forward to Stonetalon Mountains. Again, more events, more RP, more things, then to Barrens. Repeat. Then after over a month we moved to South Coast of Durotar.

On the flipside, there have been times when we simply mounted up from Stormwind and rode through the entire continent, all the way to Arathi Highlands, in 40 minutes or so.

Since the in-game scale does not reflect to the lore-wise size of the place, I won't go either by the lore-wise timescales, since I want to spend my time roleplaying, not travelling for the sake of travel.

Of course, I know a few Private RP Servers in where there is a timescale for traveling. That is fine, and I find that cool, but on an open-world server with people coming and going it will honestly be impossible to enforce.

So, if you want to RP about travel, do it. Nobody is preventing you from following a timescale you set personally, but do not expect others to follow the same timescale as you do.

Okay great. I think I can take from these answers that I'll just "make it up as I go along" and also, use what feels fun. Seems like a good plan.

Thanks for the replies and help!