Anyone else worried that Legion will just be a major time gated expansion?

[Deleted]

i have some concerns about the gating they are doing if i want to play an alt 3 months from now, but on my main i don't really care since i have enough time to keep up with the mainstream.

[Deleted]

Weird, I have the feeling that Legion ALREADY has more non-raid content now, than WoD had over it's entire course.

[Surfd]

I don't think you even played vanilla, you joined MMO-champion in... 2014. This site is generally the go-to for WoW stuff.

Content was fast and furious then

Really? What mystical magical imaginary version of Vanilla did you play? Yes, there was a lot of content, but it was slow as hell, it took you a long time to level, and most people actually RAN OUT OF QUESTS in the late 50s and had to grind entire levels by just killing mobs before they could get more. And lets not forget Silithus, an entire max level zone, that literally had nothing worth while in it for bloody ages. Hell, most of the mobs there didnt even have loot tables for the longest time....

Hell, Remember Heculars rod? Freaking bane of most horde characters. Pretty sure half my characters gained an entire level murdering shit in that goddamned cave hopeing the rod would drop. Yes, the good old days of single quests where you spent inordinate amounts of time mindlessly grinding mobs hoping for quest drops is definitely "fast and furious content".

If vanilla was "fast and furious content", then current stuff must look like a freaking coke addict hopped up on speed riding a jet engine given how fast it comes and goes.

Also, of course Vanilla had a lot of content. It was in development for probably 3 times as long as your average expantion, considering it was the foundational Base Game and was intended to last a LONG time before the first official expantion launched.

[Marston]

I personally do not believe that Legion will have more content than previous expansions, and I feel like the beginning of the xpac is very telling of the rest of it.

World quests are just dailies with some better rewards (for now, the rewards will become eh soon), heroic dungeons now have a weekly lockout (mythic = heroic, mythic + = mythic this expansion), drawn out garrison class quests (not that bad, but it's a major time gate, would have preferred "clear all dungeons" or something), and they've shown they are planning on releasing raids more spread out, but it's clear they aren't planning on doing "more" raiding content, just more spread out. It's like taking HFC, splitting the bosses into 3 groups, then releasing 1/3rd at a time every 2 months.

It's clever to keep people playing the game, but without MORE content, it will end up feeling exactly the same, perhaps even worse because we have less bosses to clear weekly.

Why can't Blizzard just make MORE content, rather than resorting to extreme levels of time gating to keep people subbed?

So what would you like to see instead? The class campaign instead of having missions that take X hours instead have a boss there that basically requires 840+ gear to even beat? Or better yet: Require a specific item that drops randomly from Mythic bosses.

Also, regarding the more content:
Ask a cook why he can't make more food in the same amount of time. Then say he could hire more people. In order for the food to taste good it still needs a specific amount of time to be made. Yes, more cooks are able to make more food. But at some point, the kitchen is full and there simply is no more room for people to stand and make food - or worse, people would hinder themself and it would actually take longer to make food than before.

[Surfd]

The baby analogy usually works better in this scenario:
It takes one woman 9 months to make a baby. It will never take 9 women 1 month to achieve the same result. Throwing more women at it will result in more babies at the end of the 9 months, but unless you want a half finished abomination of a project, you dont try to rush these things.

[Lixo]

There's already more content than WoD, you really sound like you have no idea what's going on with the game at all.

[Deleted]

[QUOTE=Semune;42356103]I personally do not believe that Legion will have more content than previous expansions, and I feel like the beginning of the xpac is very telling of the rest of it.

World quests are just dailies with some better rewards (for now, the rewards will become eh soon), heroic dungeons now have a weekly lockout (mythic = heroic, mythic + = mythic this expansion), drawn out garrison class quests (not that bad, but it's a major time gate, would have preferred "clear all dungeons" or something), and they've shown they are planning on releasing raids more spread out, but it's clear they aren't planning on doing "more" raiding content, just more spread out. It's like taking HFC, splitting the bosses into 3 groups, then releasing 1/3rd at a time every 2 months.

It's clever to keep people playing the game, but without MORE content, it will end up feeling exactly the same, perhaps even worse because we have less bosses to clear weekly.

World quests scale with your gear. You will always be rewarded.

I'm not even gonna argue posts like this. If you don't like time gating, think it's going to be boring, that in: scaled PVP where you can jump in, doing mythic+ content for higher levels, massive amount of free world content, raiding you can't find fun feel free to quit the game. It is simple as that. Press that unsubscribe button on your account. And find a new game witch is not time gated and have the things you enjoy.

Personaly i love it cause i can do so much meaningful content with friends instead of patroling my garrison.

[Factoral]

There is so much more content now than there has been at the start of any other expansion.

The time gating is needed, because people would rush through everything and complain that there is less content.

You need to wait a few days to do something? Go look at the other things that there are to do.

The dailies now are much more interesting and diversified compared to the old dailies.

It seems like Legion isn't for you. If you don't like it this much, do not play it. Like many others have done in the other expansions.

[Deleted]

The time gating only affects you if you play above the average time.
And the average time is low.
Blizzard is catering to the casual facebook generation because money.
You can keep up with everyone by just playing around 2 hours a day probably.
If you play more the gating will stop you from advancing till the rest catches up.
This will continue through the whole expansion.
If you don't like it, well tough luck you are probably not blizz target demographic anymore.
I hope mythic+ willl be a challenge at least.
But I see the offical forums filled with "Mythic+ is too hard" posts in the first week if it is.
Every mouth breather wants to have the very best or every pice of gear today.
God forbid it is locked behind a skill requirement.
LFR was created for a reason.

[Deleted]

The time gating only affects you if you play above the average time.
And the average time is low.
Blizzard is catering to the casual facebook generation because money.
You can keep up with everyone by just playing around 2 hours a day probably.
If you play more the gating will stop you from advancing till the rest catches up.
This will continue through the whole expansion.
If you don't like it, well tough luck you are probably not blizz target demographic anymore.
I hope mythic+ willl be a challenge at least.
But I see the offical forums filled with "Mythic+ is too hard" posts in the first week if it is.
Every mouth breather wants to have the very best or every pice of gear today.
God forbid it is locked behind a skill requirement.
LFR was created for a reason.

Take it slow m8, no need to get a stroke over this. While you're right on most things there's one thing you've got "wrong"(bolded). While time gating if done in a retarded way i.e. play 2h a day and keep up with people playing 5+ is an issue as there's no sense of something being rewarding but it's not really like that right now. There's a clear difference between people playing 2 & 5h in terms of artifact power and overall ilvl. Considering the way world quests and dungeons work i.e. drop AP them not being gated behind AK/time would be a bigger issue as it'd encourage an unhealthy amount of playtime (24/7). As it is right now you'll still be stronger than someone playing less than you unless you're looking at both players playing a large amount of hours i.e. 10h/day compared with 9h/day in which case those players will be pretty close. Compare 10h/day to 5h/day and you'll be seeing a significant difference. Compare 10h/day to 2h/day and you'll see someone who has the same gear you had the second day after you dinged 110.

[aziras]

Time gating can be annoyed for powergaming main-only-players. But most other playing styles tend to not really notice it.

As soon as you start wanting to progress several characters through content there is plenty to do.

In fact the legion alt-gating is pretty damn annoying. You cannot juggle alts as easily as in WoD, you have to actually play them.

I had more time to play during MoP and got one of each class maxed out. The bonus-rep account-wide was neat, but it just served as a speed-up to the daily chore rather than a real help. When I played during WoD, all those alts could complete the initial questline, get their garrison and 2-3 followers and then it took 5 minutes a day to "play" them. End result, you could snipe the quests that gave followers and do a bit of garrison campaign questing now and then on an alt, and voila they slowly cruised up the levels (even had a more or less full set of crafted gear and 610 item-tokens for when they hit 100).
In legion, the order hall resources are only obtained by playing the character. Which means your "alt-round" will be starved within days if you do not constantly juggle which one to play for a few hours/day.

Maybe they will add something like the garrison cache over time, just to trickle some resources on the alts, but in the current state, alts are shafted. Not even to get started on hybrid alts and artifacts...
The whole knowledge thing is designed to catch up off-specs. But it only becomes available at 110, requires massive amounts of resources to pursue, and makes all your "casual alt'ing" pointless as you are better off rushing each one to 110 to get the research going, then moving on to the next one and only returning when they are out of resources.

Of course it is personal preference, and they cannot make everyone happy. But for me, the whole concept of restpoints really works. I like the fact that I get a small catch-up bonus when I play other characters, or not play at all. It never competes with the efficiency of playing 24/7, but since I am not competing with those guys, and since they do not consider these catch-up mechanics any threat I believe they could apply them to more aspects than just xp.

[Anyael]

Time gating can be annoyed for powergaming main-only-players. But most other playing styles tend to not really notice it.

As soon as you start wanting to progress several characters through content there is plenty to do.

In fact the legion alt-gating is pretty damn annoying. You cannot juggle alts as easily as in WoD, you have to actually play them.

I had more time to play during MoP and got one of each class maxed out. The bonus-rep account-wide was neat, but it just served as a speed-up to the daily chore rather than a real help. When I played during WoD, all those alts could complete the initial questline, get their garrison and 2-3 followers and then it took 5 minutes a day to "play" them. End result, you could snipe the quests that gave followers and do a bit of garrison campaign questing now and then on an alt, and voila they slowly cruised up the levels (even had a more or less full set of crafted gear and 610 item-tokens for when they hit 100).
In legion, the order hall resources are only obtained by playing the character. Which means your "alt-round" will be starved within days if you do not constantly juggle which one to play for a few hours/day.

Maybe they will add something like the garrison cache over time, just to trickle some resources on the alts, but in the current state, alts are shafted. Not even to get started on hybrid alts and artifacts...
The whole knowledge thing is designed to catch up off-specs. But it only becomes available at 110, requires massive amounts of resources to pursue, and makes all your "casual alt'ing" pointless as you are better off rushing each one to 110 to get the research going, then moving on to the next one and only returning when they are out of resources.

Of course it is personal preference, and they cannot make everyone happy. But for me, the whole concept of restpoints really works. I like the fact that I get a small catch-up bonus when I play other characters, or not play at all. It never competes with the efficiency of playing 24/7, but since I am not competing with those guys, and since they do not consider these catch-up mechanics any threat I believe they could apply them to more aspects than just xp.

To be frank, good. You shouldn't really be receiving benefits for having multiple characters if you aren't willing to put in significant time to it, or everybody feels obligated to do so.

[Deleted]

Time gating can be annoyed for powergaming main-only-players. But most other playing styles tend to not really notice it.

As soon as you start wanting to progress several characters through content there is plenty to do.

In fact the legion alt-gating is pretty damn annoying. You cannot juggle alts as easily as in WoD, you have to actually play them.

I had more time to play during MoP and got one of each class maxed out. The bonus-rep account-wide was neat, but it just served as a speed-up to the daily chore rather than a real help. When I played during WoD, all those alts could complete the initial questline, get their garrison and 2-3 followers and then it took 5 minutes a day to "play" them. End result, you could snipe the quests that gave followers and do a bit of garrison campaign questing now and then on an alt, and voila they slowly cruised up the levels (even had a more or less full set of crafted gear and 610 item-tokens for when they hit 100).
In legion, the order hall resources are only obtained by playing the character. Which means your "alt-round" will be starved within days if you do not constantly juggle which one to play for a few hours/day.

Maybe they will add something like the garrison cache over time, just to trickle some resources on the alts, but in the current state, alts are shafted. Not even to get started on hybrid alts and artifacts...
The whole knowledge thing is designed to catch up off-specs. But it only becomes available at 110, requires massive amounts of resources to pursue, and makes all your "casual alt'ing" pointless as you are better off rushing each one to 110 to get the research going, then moving on to the next one and only returning when they are out of resources.

Of course it is personal preference, and they cannot make everyone happy. But for me, the whole concept of restpoints really works. I like the fact that I get a small catch-up bonus when I play other characters, or not play at all. It never competes with the efficiency of playing 24/7, but since I am not competing with those guys, and since they do not consider these catch-up mechanics any threat I believe they could apply them to more aspects than just xp.

Just a quick thing to add.
I play around 4 hours a night for 4 nights a week at the moment (which is more then a normally play) and a few hours at the weekends if I have time.
I am juggling my main and 1 alt, both of them are 840+ but it took me a fuck ton of hours to get there (took 1st week of launch off for example).
As soon as you get over the first hurdle and get your char's into mythic dungeons its only a matter of doing the "important WQ's" and finishing up your mythic runs for the week. Everything else is optional really .

[Deleted]

Take it slow m8, no need to get a stroke over this. While you're right on most things there's one thing you've got "wrong"(bolded). While time gating if done in a retarded way i.e. play 2h a day and keep up with people playing 5+ is an issue as there's no sense of something being rewarding but it's not really like that right now. There's a clear difference between people playing 2 & 5h in terms of artifact power and overall ilvl. Considering the way world quests and dungeons work i.e. drop AP them not being gated behind AK/time would be a bigger issue as it'd encourage an unhealthy amount of playtime (24/7). As it is right now you'll still be stronger than someone playing less than you unless you're looking at both players playing a large amount of hours i.e. 10h/day compared with 9h/day in which case those players will be pretty close. Compare 10h/day to 5h/day and you'll be seeing a significant difference. Compare 10h/day to 2h/day and you'll see someone who has the same gear you had the second day after you dinged 110.

I can asure you that I am not having a stroke over it, just saying as it is.
There is not really a big difference in item level between players because there is only so much you can do.
If you are really lazy and have too much money you can just sell tokens and equip yourself via auction house.
Its easy and fast to get an ilvl of 840+. (not talking about stat optimizing)
Also the difference in AP gained and AP needed just gets too big.
Just keep your research going and you probably only will be 3 to 5 points behind someone who farmed 24/7 and you will catch up to this fast thanks to AK.
Will you be stronger ?
Sure.
By a large or significant amount ?
Not really.
There won't be any significant differences between a 2 or 5 hours a day player.
"Unhealthy" amount of playtime is also something, everyone can decide for himself.
If someone wants to put in 10 hours a day it's their decision.
I remember times where you saw people in high end gear and you knew he put time effort and skill into it because most people who only played 2 hours a day could only dream about getting it.
I am not saying that it was ideal.
But you can't deny that with the current system blizz is pandering to the casual demographic.
There currently is nothing that would encourage a hardcore playstyle cause the time and reward for it is just not worth it.
Maybe Mythic+ will change that.
The expansion is young and I give blizz the benefit of the doubt.

[Sapphire35]

Why can't you just stop making stupid posts would be the better question.

You can't ever make enough content as a game designer, things that took you 2 months to design, build and get into the game can be rushed trough by the player base in a matter of a day. A good example would be Surumar, that place might have taken the team months to design but I finished the story line in a matter of hours before I had to wait for the next part.
If you don't time gate anything in an MMO the player base will rush trough the content you created in a matter of weeks instead of years which it took them to create it.

And before you say "well, they should hire more people then, they make enough money". It doesn't matter how many people they put on it.

And before you say "they did it in vanilla". No they diden't. They made the leveling EXTREMLY slow which is also a form of gating and we were all new to the experience, I still stopped and smelled the roses, I stood in IF and talk to people for 3 hours while riding around in circles. Most of us don't do these things anymore. If they gated the leveling now their would be an uproar, I would uninstall right away. People have been playing this game for 12 years, you can't really make things "new and exciting" as we already seen everything in one form or another and even if its "new" it takes us less time to experience it as we have been playing for so long.

Posts like this are really tiring at this stage, its like this is all being typed up by a 12 year old with no experience in any business or just in Life for that matter.

Edit:
Also from what we got in WoD to what we are being handed in Legion id say that is a big step up already, maybe actually look at the positives for once instead of taking a dump on everything the whole time.

Nailed it. Thank you for writing this.

[Maudib]

Anyone else worried that Legion will just be a major time gated expansion?


I'm not worried at all... it already is a time gated, nasty multi-grind. It hasn't been WoW for a long time.

- - - Updated - - -

And before you say "they did it in vanilla". No they didn't. They made the leveling EXTREMLY slow which is also a form of gating and we were all new to the experience, I still stopped and smelled the roses, I stood in IF and talk to people for 3 hours while riding around in circles. Most of us don't do these things anymore. If they gated the leveling now their would be an uproar, I would uninstall right away. People have been playing this game for 12 years, you can't really make things "new and exciting" as we already seen everything in one form or another and even if its "new" it takes us less time to experience it as we have been playing for so long.

Longer time leveling worked in WoW because it gave the feeling of progression... you were able to add points every level or so to your skill tree and become more powerful.

Now, in 10 hours you can go from 100-110... and get absolutely NO new skills. And the zones scale so the only thing that changes are the numbers on the gear... there is no feeling of progression.

8 hours? 8?

What a fucking joke.

[melodramocracy]

World quests are just dailies with some better rewards (for now, the rewards will become eh soon),

The rewards of AP, which is likely the main focus, isn't going to be a well that most players run dry anytime soon. Gear rewards also scale to a point with your own general ilvl, from what's been observed.

heroic dungeons now have a weekly lockout (mythic = heroic, mythic + = mythic this expansion),

No, heroics are the new heroics, as they've always been. Heroics are on the LFD, and give a daily reward for completion. Mythics will continue being a step above that.

[Deleted]

I can asure you that I am not having a stroke over it, just saying as it is.
There is not really a big difference in item level between players because there is only so much you can do.
If you are really lazy and have too much money you can just sell tokens and equip yourself via auction house.
Its easy and fast to get an ilvl of 840+. (not talking about stat optimizing)
Also the difference in AP gained and AP needed just gets too big.
Just keep your research going and you probably only will be 3 to 5 points behind someone who farmed 24/7 and you will catch up to this fast thanks to AK.
Will you be stronger ?
Sure.
By a large or significant amount ?
Not really.
There won't be any significant differences between a 2 or 5 hours a day player.
"Unhealthy" amount of playtime is also something, everyone can decide for himself.
If someone wants to put in 10 hours a day it's their decision.
I remember times where you saw people in high end gear and you knew he put time effort and skill into it because most people who only played 2 hours a day could only dream about getting it.
I am not saying that it was ideal.
But you can't deny that with the current system blizz is pandering to the casual demographic.
There currently is nothing that would encourage a hardcore playstyle cause the time and reward for it is just not worth it.
Maybe Mythic+ will change that.
The expansion is young and I give blizz the benefit of the doubt.

Currently yes, there's only so much you can do but on average the people who play more will have better gear simply because they will have more chances to get WF items.

True and it's a (small) problem at least right now. You shouldn't be able to get the best gear by just buying it. Making it so that obliterum only went to like 840 would still leave some space so that even if you went the "buy all the gear" route there'd still be something to do. That being said there aren't a lot of people who do that which is why i said it's a small problem. Assuming you wanted 8 items to 850 you'd end up paying , assuming a 6k per obliterum cost and small gear cost, 350k or so. Not a lot of people are willing to pay that much, let alone use tokens for that.

To get to 840 you pretty much need to do your class campaign for the weapon ilvl, and a lot of heroics. I have around 5days played time at max level and i'm 845(highest, not equiped) after a lot of heroic spam and doing the mythics for 2 weeks. Seeing as there's ~15days since the expansion came out that's a decent amount of time played per day to get there. Not by any means huge but it's something. The reason why it takes this much to make it to this ilvl for people who play a decent amount is because the raids release in a bit. By the time the raid comes out most people who are interested in the raid will be 840+ which makes sense(i'd prefer a lower ilvl before raid seeing as NM is 850 but that's just me).

Also, this is where we'll disagree. Player power scaling linearly with time investment is not a good idea. As for the difference between people who played 24/7 and those who don't - i'll use a guy in the guild who has 10d played compared to my 5. He has double my kills on HC things and the difference between us(ilvl wise) is ~10ilvls. In terms of artifact traits there's a difference of i think 4 traits between us(both of us have the same AK so it'll be more for people who are catching up un that as well). You say that it's not a lot and you're right. It doesn't need to be that big in order for it to make a difference. Keep in mind that this is for people who have more or less hit the soft limit of AP gains. If you compare people at the same ratio i.e. one plays twice as much you'll notice the difference in artifact traits is bigger.

I do agree that if people want to play 10h a day it's their decision and that's fine by me. It's also normal if people who play more are more powerful but if that difference is something that can't be somewhat closed it leads to an unhealthy game where time played is just more important than skill(see diablo paragon & the difference between seasonal/non-seasonal characters). It's fine if someone who played twice as much as you is doing idk, 20%(number out of my arse) more damage and everything compared to you. When that person simply does double everything you do the game starts turning into a "you need 15d played to join the group" rather than an ilvl requirement. As for the skill part of your argument i agree and that's still going to be a thing. People who will be clearing harder content(mythic + , mythic raids) will have obviously better gear than those who don't. Sure, the RNG of titanforged is an annoying thing but as blizz mentioned it's not going to make a significant difference in the quality of gear of someone who for example only does NM. For PvP it's kind of shit right now as ilvl has so little of an impact but IMO as far as PvE goes things seem to be in a good spot.

Also, they are pandering to the casual demographic but not to an extent where skill doesn't matter anymore. If you ask me linear scaling of player power with respects to time played would make the game far more casual than the current chance to get a upgrade & artifact progression gating behind AK.

[ldev]

The baby analogy usually works better in this scenario:
It takes one woman 9 months to make a baby. It will never take 9 women 1 month to achieve the same result. Throwing more women at it will result in more babies at the end of the 9 months, but unless you want a half finished abomination of a project, you dont try to rush these things.

omfg... are you retarded?

9 women would yield 9 babies in 9 months, so from wod last raid to legion launch we would have content for patch 7.9.

Raid design is really really parallelizable...

This software development example is used for one problem, if you have 9 problems that do not block each other - throwing nine times the people will make work go 9 times faster (+-, yada yada).

gtfo

[Deleted]

Anyone else worried that Legion will just be a major time gated expansion?


I'm not worried at all... it already is a time gated, nasty multi-grind. It hasn't been WoW for a long time.

- - - Updated - - -



Longer time leveling worked in WoW because it gave the feeling of progression... you were able to add points every level or so to your skill tree and become more powerful.

Now, in 10 hours you can go from 100-110... and get absolutely NO new skills. And the zones scale so the only thing that changes are the numbers on the gear... there is no feeling of progression.

8 hours? 8?

What a fucking joke.

It worked back then, it won't work now.
Like I said, its a form of gating and if they would do that in this day and age I would unsub and uninstall in a matter of seconds.
I already done the hardcore 12 hour a day farm & raid & farm shit.
I have no interest in doing that anymore.

The form of gating in place at the moment is a lot more friendly.