Hearthstone Cooldown Reduced

Lately, the hearthstone was the subject of a few changes coming in patch 3.1. The other day, it was revealed that the practice of “ghetto hearthing” will be obsolete when the patch goes live. Ghetto hearthing is the term given to the practice of taking advantage of a mechanic where if you leave your group while inside a dungeon, you will be teleported to your hearth location even if your hearthstone cooldown isn’t up yet. In the next patch, doing so will instead teleport you to the nearest graveyard.

A lot of were complaining about this change since a lot of people took advantage of ghetto hearthing whenever they could. In fact a lot of people complained hard enough that when CM Eyonix brought the issue to the devs, he came back with the announcement that the hearthstone cooldown will be reduced to 30 minutes in the next patch instead of the current one hour.

I’ve got to say that while the change is definitely welcome, I certainly see the point Eyonix was making in his posts in the thread in the forum. First of all, ghetto hearthing was yet another one of those mechanics that was abused yet unintended. As he says, that’s what the fast mounts, mage portals, and all these things are for. If it’s a matter of getting to a place where you can get the rested status, there’s an inn in every zone. If you’re in such a hurry to log off, an inn shouldn’t be so far away to make the removal of ghetto hearthing a big problem, especially in zones with several inns like Dragonblight. If it’s Dalaran you want to get to, take the necessary boat/flight paths like everyone else. Don’t be lazy! This game was designed so that you’d have to travel so if you can’t handle this, you’re playing the wrong game. Now that the hearthstone cooldown was reduced, this should make getting around even easier but I’d bet a lot of whiners will still be complaining about not being able to ghetto hearth anymore.