time gating

[Amerissis]

Then lets compare.

Vanilla
A new Vanilla player would have to level to 60, which would certainly take 1-3 months. Once max leveled, a player starts doing dungeons for gear, which wasn't easy cause dungeons were much harder, and so was getting a group together. Besides the holy trio, you needed to get dps with CC capabilities. Once everyone arrives to the dungeon, you better hope the people you're with are good cause wipes cost gold, which was hard to come by in Vanilla.

After 3 months of dungeon farmings and what not, you're finally able to raid ZQ/MC. Not including the time it took to level, and good luck finding 39 other people to clear raids. This could take you a while.

Legion
Takes a week to max level a character, thanks to free level 90 and level 100 boost. Probably a few weeks to dungeon grind gear so you can LFR. Given all the raids are out, you can finish raiding in a week, and have no idea how to play your class. So in about 2 months, you finished the game, until next content patch. Given you have no interest in normal, Heroic, and Mythic raiding.

I'm not sure what point you try to make.

It was about time gating. Then you dragged skill into it. There was no more skill needed in Classic as there is now, just more tedious TIME GATED grinds (farming res gear = time gate, reaching dps mark = time gate). The number one reason why things took so long: the time it took you to find a group. Especially in raiding. So instead of having some content gated (and it really only is those few missions), you want to go back to being unable to play because you need to find 39 people willing and able to raid at the same time. No thanks.

Anyway. Your point?

[supertigerlamp]

I agree with the OP.

I also disagree with the notion that not liking these long missions means you consume content and then complain about lack of it. If they truly wanted to make these both interactive (i.e. Play our game!) but also lengthy they could add more sections like the Do 30 World Quests or Gather 15 Souls From Dungeon Bosses. Those are quests that would allow your character to continue to improve while you did them, but also allowed the player to have more control over the pace they decided to set for themselves rather than just clicking a button and waiting 1-36 (some of the Warrior quests take that long baseline) hours to click that same button and wait 1-36 hours and repeat the process.

Yes, you can start them at night while sleeping and at work. Yes, you can let them run while you do other things in game or out of it. But it's weak game design to make content that exists purely as text rather than allow us to go out and slaughter the Burning Legion to accomplish our goals, and the worst sin of all for a game: there's simply nothing fun about these class hall missions.

[Hexxidecimal]

So Im here in my class order hall afking, waiting for my 12 hour missions to complete so I can continue my class hall quest. Wish I could go farm reputations too but they are too time gated by world quests.. Any else feel super annoyed by these 2 facts? I cant even grind mobs to gain rep. Otherwise expansion has been super fun any thoughts?

Not trying to be insulting here, because I am the same, but time gating, believe it or not is kind of important to the longevity of the game and to keep people like you (and me) from consuming all there is to do, leaving us with absolutely nothing to do.

Granted it's a rather transparent ploy to that end. Granted it can be frustrating. But we are still waiting and playing aren't we? So goal accomplished, even if it isn't accomplished in the best way.

Time gating also serves the purpose of serving up the content in what I like to refer to nearly satisfying bites. The other two ways they could have approached it is removing the time gating but putting the content levels at such tiny intervals that it becomes far more tedious than the time gating mechanic. The other possibility was not time gating. In which case some people would literally have the order hall mission stuff done day 1 and most rep by day 2 or 3. Completely geared by the end of the first week or sooner. Then...they would twiddle their thumbs.

I am not saying that it's a perfect system, just that it's an effective one.

[Pull My Finger]

No, I don't feel annoyed by it.

[Deleted]

Not trying to be insulting here, because I am the same, but time gating, believe it or not is kind of important to the longevity of the game and to keep people like you (and me) from consuming all there is to do, leaving us with absolutely nothing to do.

Granted it's a rather transparent ploy to that end. Granted it can be frustrating. But we are still waiting and playing aren't we? So goal accomplished, even if it isn't accomplished in the best way.

Time gating also serves the purpose of serving up the content in what I like to refer to nearly satisfying bites. The other two ways they could have approached it is removing the time gating but putting the content levels at such tiny intervals that it becomes far more tedious than the time gating mechanic. The other possibility was not time gating. In which case some people would literally have the order hall mission stuff done day 1 and most rep by day 2 or 3. Completely geared by the end of the first week or sooner. Then...they would twiddle their thumbs.

I am not saying that it's a perfect system, just that it's an effective one.

It is also a needed one.
No game developer on the planet can keep creating content in the speed the players can consume it, some quest chains took weeks to create by multiple people and I just finished it in a matter of 2 hours.

[Nzete]

Professions? Gathering alt(s)?

[Hexxidecimal]

It is also a needed one.
No game developer on the planet can keep creating content in the speed the players can consume it, some quest chains took weeks to create by multiple people and I just finished it in a matter of 2 hours.

Well gating of some sort at any rate is needed. Time gating specifically is a bit too transparent for my liking. I don't have a good alternative mind you.

[ShiyoKozuki]

Yep, this for sure.

Also, you don't have to AFK, you can just... leave the basement and use the phone app to collect/resend missions. Or level an alt. Tons of shit to do.

Leveling an alt is not, and will never be content.

[ItachiZaku]

Leveling an alt is not, and will never be content.

Not in legion, no. Not at all. Unless you use it for old school loremaster or whatever the hell was needed for WoD flying.

[Deleted]

People keep saying this and I don't get the reasoning behind this. People don't like to wait for things, so Blizzard puts timers. People hate timers and want to finish their objective.

This wasn't a problem back in Vanilla, and you know why? Cause it took skill to progress through the game. It also took more content, but the game was difficult. Want to do a dungeon in Vanilla? You need to CC each pull. Want to raid MC? Gotta farm fire resist gear, and have your dungeon set. What do you need to progress in Legion? A pulse.

Having played since Vanilla and done all the content when it was current I can simply tell you that you are horribly wrong. The game took less skill then if anything. If you think casting polymorph on the pull is somehow the pinnacle of skill then I don't know what to say. Yes, there was more content, because it had been in the making for 4 freaking years. You want that time lapse between expansions?

Also, farm fire resist gear didn't require skill, it was just a grind, or timegate if you will. Not that you needed much fire resist unless you were a tank anyway. You also didn't have your dungeon set in MC unless you were absolutely awful shit-tier at the game since the dungeon set was inferior compared to other gear for every single class and spec. Then again maybe you were one of those people who went and got the "awesome" tier 0.5 dungeon set?

It's a joke romanticizing about how Vanilla compares to legion, the real major difference is that vanilla's gating consisted of "kill 12000 mobs for rep" and "re-run this instance 17 times until you have the key", whereas Legion's very limited gating consists of Suramar rep that you could unlock within the first week anyway with less played time and some timed missions that were hardly mandatory at this point to begin with.

[Dreamluck]

I also disagree with the notion that not liking these long missions means you consume content and then complain about lack of it. If they truly wanted to make these both interactive (i.e. Play our game!) but also lengthy they could add more sections like the Do 30 World Quests or Gather 15 Souls From Dungeon Bosses.

This is obviously the content I didn't know I wanted. Another "Complete 30 world quests" weekly.

[Deleted]

I did the exact same as you, I waited until the hordes trampled the server and only even tried to log on 2 or 3 days after launch. Furthermore I did my leveling casually, I took time to read the quest texts and understand the story.

It made the whole experience more enjoyable by understanding whats going on in the broken isles instead of just rushing after quest completions.

Am I behind? Yes, I am behind on ilvl and artifact power / artifact knowledge / follower lvl/ilvl. Is it relevant? No.

#1. Everyone is max capped (theoretically) to 850, when raids open that gear gap will vanish
#2. AP increases exponentially so even if others started gathering sooner/harder eventually everyone will converge to the same artifact level (since the gap to the next one will be several million AP)

So, stop complaining. Enjoy life. Go outside or stay inside and do something else. Accept the fact that WoW (and MMOs) in general are supposed to be played over a long period of time, they are not supposed to be "finished" in a single sitting/night.

Since I know people (yes hardcore nerds) who are done with their 3rd toons order hall campaign already (3rd relic slot w/e), I can safely say that even people who decided to wait a week before getting legion should have ample time to catch up before the raids hit, since everyone is capped at 850 right now anyway. You honestly didn't lose anything by not starting right away, except feeling behind for a few days. I have to say though, the legion launch was extremely smooth in EU, there weren't queues, there weren't mass disconnects and everything just worked. Everyone I've spoken with who experienced it say it was the by far smoothest launch Blizzard have ever done and my personal take on it is that it couldn't have been done better. They've certainly learned.

[Vash The Stampede]

I'm not sure what point you try to make.

It was about time gating. Then you dragged skill into it.

Cause time = difficulty to game designers, as Egoraptor here will explain. The reason time gating exists is to give the illusion of difficulty. After you wait so many hours the player is suppose to feel accomplished. This makes sense since Blizzard has moved the game towards casual gamers. So the illusion of difficulty still gives them that accomplishment, without losing the player as a paying monthly subscriber.

There was no more skill needed in Classic as there is now, just more tedious TIME GATED grinds (farming res gear = time gate, reaching dps mark = time gate).

The problem with this is that players are in control, and players are pretty smart. A theme you'll notice throughout WoW is that Blizzard has been taking control away from players to prevent this. Of course when grinds take so long, players leave the game. Smart players will find more efficient ways to grind, like why farm materials for gold when you could clear Onyxia's Layer with less time for more gold? So there needs to be a balance and a lot of times Blizzard sets a very high bar for grinds. It obviously isn't working. There's no substitution for good difficult content.

Realistically there shouldn't be a grind. The word 'grind' is not a positive word. Developers make something grindy when they're lazy about making quality content. Vanilla WoW had you grind mobs in the world. But we've moved on from that to daily quests to just gated content.

The number one reason why things took so long: the time it took you to find a group. Especially in raiding. So instead of having some content gated (and it really only is those few missions), you want to go back to being unable to play because you need to find 39 people willing and able to raid at the same time. No thanks.

That's for raiding, the rest of the game was also hard. Also Vanilla WoW had 1 raid difficulty, not 4 like day. So you either git gud or don't raid, and a lot of bad players attempted to raid.

Again, Blizzard wants to cater to casuals so 4 difficulties were made, but in doing so a person could see the content within a week. Unless that person wants to raid beyond LFR, then they could stick around. But once you finish LFR, why move onto normal? There's no good incentive. Person cancels subscription cause games finished.

Anyway. Your point?

Still stands. You choose to see a disconnect from difficulty and time, but the reality is that's how the game designers addressed lack of content. They could make the game more difficult, but they're afraid to lose subscribers. They could produce more quality content, but nobody ain't got time for that. So their solution is to gate it. This isn't new, as Blizzard likes the idea of the player coming back everyday to play the game for a short time. Enough to keep you paying your monthly fee, but not long enough that you will burn through the content too quickly.

[Amerissis]

That's for raiding, the rest of the game was also hard. Also Vanilla WoW had 1 raid difficulty, not 4 like day. So you either git gud or don't raid, and a lot of bad players attempted to raid.

Again, Blizzard wants to cater to casuals so 4 difficulties were made, but in doing so a person could see the content within a week. Unless that person wants to raid beyond LFR, then they could stick around. But once you finish LFR, why move onto normal? There's no good incentive. Person cancels subscription cause games finished.

You mix up two things. Bad players do not equal casual players.

The players now doing LFR have never raided and would have never raided if it wasn't for LFR (even Blizzard said so). They'd have quit instead. Now they stick around longer. Problem?

[Vash The Stampede]

You mix up two things. Bad players do not equal casual players.

Yes they are. How do I know this? Cause hardcore raiders aren't big fans of wasting time. If you're trying to be server first, you're literally going to be one of the first people to finish a raid. May not be the first guild to do so, but close enough.

Assuming you have players that are competent, maybe in a month you'll have the raid on farm. Mythic farm, not LFR farm. Some guilds take a break, while some players leave to take a break and leave someone in charge to run raids. When a new content patch is out, those new players get benched for the elites that come back. Some of those players if they still play the game will level alts. Either for fun, or cause the guild could use a backup tank/healer/dps.

A casual player can't do this. If you can't do this, then you're bad. You can tell yourself otherwise, but that's how hardcore raiding guilds work. If you tried to accomplish what these people do, you will spend 10x more time to achieve what they do, if not more. They make efficient use of their time.

The players now doing LFR have never raided and would have never raided if it wasn't for LFR (even Blizzard said so). They'd have quit instead. Now they stick around longer. Problem?

Define longer. Back in Vanilla, different players had different reasons to raid or not to raid. A PvPer would never raid, no matter what. Some people would never raid cause of time, and this is where LFR comes in to fix this. Some people hate raiding cause of the people, which LFR kinda makes worse as the people in LFR are toxic.

Assuming all raid content is released for LFR, a person could clear it all in a week. If they wanted to farm for gear, it could take them 2 months of LFR. That's assuming the player is unaware of tokens and doesn't consistently do all LFR each week. Vanilla casual players would spend their time in dungeons as that was their main source of entertainment. Those same players would also consider doing dungeons today, but now they have LFR to mess with.

Did LFR keep casual players around longer? Hard to say considering how many players had left the game. So far the evidence points to no. Speaking of gating and raids, why not change raid locks out to twice a week. Isn't that what Korea and China have? Imagine how much faster players would gear up and finish the game.

[Deleted]

Might be that secondary traits are randomized so that you have a chance to not get blizzard at all? Seems odd in that case since afaik you can't reroll them. Either way it's not that bad to have to wait a few days for the last relic slot. Game is barely out and people want to have completed everything already....

No they are not not atleast for my Hunter champions
Gathed content isnt a big issue if there isnt the raid.I have around 4-5 hours free after work and barely can deal with my main stuff ...

[Deleted]

Don't kid yourself, FF14 has less content than pac-man.

Sure. So why is s a content patch comming out in two weeks with as much content as Legion? Oh maybe because that is the norm over there. I think you are the one kidding yourself. But that is to be expected. Out of the wow players I know the only ones who play wow are the ones who never tred any other MMO in their entire lives.

[ShiyoKozuki]

Sure. So why is s a content patch comming out in two weeks with as much content as Legion? Oh maybe because that is the norm over there. I think you are the one kidding yourself. But that is to be expected. Out of the wow players I know the only ones who play wow are the ones who never tred any other MMO in their entire lives.

It's not. You're just flat out wrong or confused, sorry.
I've played FF14 since 1.0 and tried over a dozen mmos in the past 10 years. Try responding without baseless insults.

[shonist]

Then lets compare.

Vanilla

A new Vanilla player would have to level to 60, which would certainly take 1-3 months. Once max leveled, a player starts doing dungeons for gear, which wasn't easy cause dungeons were much harder, and so was getting a group together. Besides the holy trio, you needed to get dps with CC capabilities. Once everyone arrives to the dungeon, you better hope the people you're with are good cause wipes cost gold, which was hard to come by in Vanilla.

After 3 months of dungeon farmings and what not, you're finally able to raid ZQ/MC. Not including the time it took to level, and good luck finding 39 other people to clear raids. This could take you a while.

Legion

Takes a week to max level a character, thanks to free level 90 and level 100 boost. Probably a few weeks to dungeon grind gear so you can LFR. Given all the raids are out, you can finish raiding in a week, and have no idea how to play your class. So in about 2 months, you finished the game, until next content patch. Given you have no interest in normal, Heroic, and Mythic raiding.

what the hell have you just said.

- - - Updated - - -

Sure. So why is s a content patch comming out in two weeks with as much content as Legion? Oh maybe because that is the norm over there. I think you are the one kidding yourself. But that is to be expected. Out of the wow players I know the only ones who play wow are the ones who never tred any other MMO in their entire lives.

oh boy you are so, sooo, sooo wrong. WoW its the last mmo i tried in my life, i played them ALL,
it was routine to go to mmohut. com and download any mmo that was out there.
played wow as a child and never liked it because i tought it was only leveling stuff.

Now im pretty sure i will play wow until an mmo release without clunky movements like all otehrs, played FF14 too, i hate those mmo where your character stand in the palce to perform an action.

im very sad for getting to the party late i missed aswesome expansions.

[Vash The Stampede]

what the hell have you just said.

The fall of WoW, essentially. It's already failing, but you get the idea. I thought Blizzard would remove subscriptions in WoD, but they somehow kept the game alive with the ability to buy subscription time with gold. Kinda knew Legion would be not much different, since they haven't addressed the core issues from WoD. One of which is lack of game difficulty, which used to be a speed bump for WoW players. But since casuals are a thing today, we have easy content that needs to be gated to slow players down.

My prediction for Legion is that at some point Blizzard will have to remove subscriptions. Gotta happen, unless something remarkable happens.