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

[Flurryfang]

Blizzard can't make content faster than people consume it, it's just impossible. It's like movies that take months or even years to produce and you watch them for 2 hours and are done with them, or books that take years to be written while you can read them in weeks time.

If they don't gate content, most people will just consume it within few weeks and then be left with nothing to do = unsubbing. Blizzard wants people to be subbed, so they would rather have you play for 3 months, 2 hours a day than for 10 hours a day for a week. They know their playerbase, and they know that if they don't gate content, players will just rush it, like they always did.

Pretty much this. Many players take time out of their normal day to play a new expansion, so if Blizz don't gate the content, people are gonna be done in a week or 2, since people will play 10-12 hours a day.

Some would say, that there are few people who do this, but its actually a huge part of the playerbase atm. So we need gating or else the game would simply become boring very quickly.

From what i can see from 7.1, they are putting in more content then they have ever done before, so if they fail with Legion, it is not because of the devs, but because the playerbase demands something impossible.

[Deleted]

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.

I agree with most of the things you say.
The only thing I kinda disagree is the more powerfull part.
A person doing more damage because of more playtime will probably rarley affect more casual players.
Most of these people try to find a guild or friends with compareable playstyle.
The ilvl is also not stopping that in anyway.
You already see well equiped people searching only 845+ for mythic.
You also already see people cry that some dungeons are mythic only which means they have to actually search and communicate with people instead of just pressing a button.
I just think the current content siuts the latter playertype more and I hope with release of more content there will be more to do for the first player type.
The rest of your post was pretty much spot on.

[Otimus]

It's totally a legitimate concern that instead of making more content, they'll find ways to artificially extend other content. It's totally something Blizzard would do.


That being said, be optimistic! At launch alone, Legion already has almost as much content as WoD had in it's entire 2 year lifespan, and that alone should at least be promising.

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You shouldn't be able to get the best gear by just buying it.

I just really have never agreed with this mentality.

IMHO, the best gear in the game should come from the hardest content in the game, and the SECOND best should come from the stuff players make, and it should be difficult and costly for them to make it. That's really how it should be. To not do that has forever sort of degraded professions to a point that's not really done in other games, IMHO, just to placate raiders or something.

[Grimnakh]

Alts seem like theyre going to be tough.

[Wingspan]

I think most players (at least ,most of the returning ones) have it backwards.


The beginning of a new expansion is the absolute WORST time to return to a game if you have been gone. Why? Because at the beginning, almost everything is built to hold you back, slow you down, gate you, whatever.


But if you were to wait a year or so, typically the whole momentum starts to shift into moving you forward rather than holding you back. And if you can actually hold out until the last few months of the expansion they you actually get PUSHED forward with almost nothing to stop you (and the expansion might even be free at that point). You just need to resist the temptation when that next expansion comes around.


Basically, if you are only going to play 3 or 4 months of an expansion anyway... it is probably going to be a lot more fun at the end.

[Wallmaker Yahzarah]

LOL this topic. It is hilarious that you see topics like this pop the same day a popular youtuber or streamer comments on it. Let me guess... OP is subbed to LazyPeon? lol

[clevin]

I personally do not believe ..

Your beliefs are irrelevant to reality.

Why not just see what they deliver? the expansion isn't even 3 weeks old and you're worrying about how much content we will have. We'll have what they deliver. AFTER than you can talk about the quantity of content. Not before when you don't know what's coming.

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Pretty much this. Many players take time out of their normal day to play a new expansion, so if Blizz don't gate the content, people are gonna be done in a week or 2, since people will play 10-12 hours a day.

Some would say, that there are few people who do this, but its actually a huge part of the playerbase atm.

Show evidence. Note, your opinion is not evidence.

[Fojos]

I was running a guild back in Vanilla raiding 6 days a week, had server firsts from ZG all the way up to Naxx.
It was gated to FUCK, there was no way in hell we could actually kill things in BWL without farming MC and Onyxia first.
Like I said, this game has been time gated since the first day it came out its just more obvious now as a lot of us have been playing for 12 years.

If MC/BWL/AQ came out today they would be done in a matter of days - All fights are mostly Tank & Spank and tactics are really fucking easy compared to what we have now.

If they didn't have the bugs / forced gating they had back then all of the raids would be cleared in hours today.

[Zeek Daniels]

From what i have seen World Quests are just dailies. The issue with dailies has always been the rewards and the rep grind. I didnt play MoP or WoD so i cant speak on them. But in TBC, Wrath, and Cata dailies only gave gold and rep. And once you max rep they only give gold. You didnt get gear unless you reached exalted and then its just a 1 time thing for each faction that would have cool gear at the end.

Now Dailies have way better rewards. Some are still Meh but the Gear is very good. I dont need to get a faction to exalted to get upgrades. Everyday i have a chance at gear above my item level. That is rewarding! You can also get offspec stuff without having to run dungeons for it. Also artifact power is very important and getting that everyday is a chore but a rewarding chore.

Now as for class hall quests. The OP makes it seem like your time gated by it. I finished that in less than 2 weeks. And it looks like every patch they add more story so might add more class hall quests as well. It really doesnt take long to do at all. each quest line takes a few hours to complete followed by a few days of misssions followed by another few hour long quest line. Suck it up. It will take another few weeks if they add more.

I dont understand why people hate time gating. Your in such a hurry to finish so you can what? Complain about no content for 6 months because you did it all in the first 2 weeks?

[Dominus89]

If you didnt notice, world quests scale with your item level.

You also seemed to miss that patch 7.1 is already on the PTR, that will add more world quests, more quests in Suramar aswell as a small raid in between Emerald Nightmare and The Nighthold.
Aswell as a whole new dungeon.

[Kaiede]

I was running a guild back in Vanilla raiding 6 days a week, had server firsts from ZG all the way up to Naxx.
It was gated to FUCK, there was no way in hell we could actually kill things in BWL without farming MC and Onyxia first.
Like I said, this game has been time gated since the first day it came out its just more obvious now as a lot of us have been playing for 12 years.

If MC/BWL/AQ came out today they would be done in a matter of days - All fights are mostly Tank & Spank and tactics are really fucking easy compared to what we have now.

I'm just remembering the opening of AQ event. The one that required the entire server to contribute so a few guilds could go raid it. That's a freakin' time gate, when you are gated on your entire server's grindfest for materials until the imaginary bar is full. But I think it's more obvious now because the imaginary bars are a little less imaginary, and there's forced stopping points where the game basically says "come back tomorrow". A result of changing the mentality away from: "If someone were to farm this reputation for X hours a day, it'd take them a minimum of Y days to complete, goal achieved." Now it's more: "We tuned this to take Y days, but it only requires their attention for X minutes a day and they can do something else, goal achieved."

And yes, I don't miss the old boss encounter design philosophy at all.

[Zandalarian Paladin]

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.

There was a great analogy that I've read about time managers, I don't remember the source (sadly) but it went as this:

A time manager is someone who believe that grouping nine women in a team will result with a baby delivered in one month.

The same goes for players and content. Hiring more artists/GD/Programmers will not make your development faster when tasks cannot be split. If an artist work on a specific part of suramar, lets say architecture, he's going to take the whole task because it's so complex to craft that having multiple people on it would take much longer and be much more complex to organize.

When I was in a AAA game studio, this is how it went: several artists had big overlying tasks. Each of these artists would then focus on said task ranging from days to months. When one finished his task, he would then either be assigned something new, at debugging or at support for another artist closing his task. There was little overlap between each others' jobs.

I know that my specific tasks couldn't have been handled by several artists for the single reason that it was connected to every other teams in the game - game design, level design, prog. What I did impacted these people, so I needed to stay on top.

In any case, just a little rant to say that OP is wrong.

[Molis]

Maybe I am some ass backwards MMO player.

I like the gates
I like the grind
I like the carrots

I need a end goal to keep me interested.

I can only raid casual now but like @woozie21 said Vanilla and TBC were massively gated by gear or attunements.

[Flurryfang]

Your beliefs are irrelevant to reality.

Why not just see what they deliver? the expansion isn't even 3 weeks old and you're worrying about how much content we will have. We'll have what they deliver. AFTER than you can talk about the quantity of content. Not before when you don't know what's coming.

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Show evidence. Note, your opinion is not evidence.

Find the number of lvl 110 in the first 2-3 days. I saw +25 in my guild and it was very crowded in Suramar after 32 hours of Legion on 2 servers i played on.

[MoanaLisa]

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.

I personally believe that you're wrong but patch content over the next year will tell the tale and that's really all there is to say about it.

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, same with TBC. I can assure you that before WoD and pandaland the content was much better... well, and cata, you joined at a time where you didn't really get to experience the game when it had a ton of content. You can argue that there would be more bugs, but I don't mind bugs if it means more things to do. Didn't mind it in Vanilla/BC.

Vanilla was created over several years and you might find it quite surprising that a significant piece of BC was developed either for vanilla or prior to vanilla's launch. That's how you develop MMO's. You put a ton of stuff in the pipeline that carries you for a while and after that it slows down. Just look at the history of WoW's competitors over the years. Rift: fast start, lots of content the first year, slows down. Same with SW-TOR and even Final Fantasy took the opportunity of their downtime reworking the catastrophic version of the game they released and had to apologize for by putting a great deal of stuff into the pipeline. That's Professional MMO Development 101. The Holy Grail of MMO development has been to figure out how to release content every three months or so without making the patches trivial and then keeping that up for several years. No one has managed it although I'll be the first to put out there that the jury is still out on FFXIV. They're doing very nicely with respect to that.

Lastly, I would advise you to not be telling people when they joined up with the game. Especially based on the date when they signed up here. That will not end well for you or the thread.

[Lochton]

It wasn't back then. Think the first "major" websites where Allakhazam and Thottbot.

Ah, Thottbot... the uses and horrors..

[Pantalaimon]

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, same with TBC. I can assure you that before WoD and pandaland the content was much better... well, and cata, you joined at a time where you didn't really get to experience the game when it had a ton of content. You can argue that there would be more bugs, but I don't mind bugs if it means more things to do. Didn't mind it in Vanilla/BC.

Oh yeah, spending 2+ hours in trade to get people for a heroic was so fast paced. Not to mention grinding out reps to get keys just to get the chance to run many heroic dungeon to get the chance to maybe get that 5% trinket or dungeon set drop. It happened so fast I couldn't even tell that I was grinding mobs, grinding dailies, and grinding dungeon runs for ages.

As for comparing Vanilla to Legion in this regard of content & pacing it is a pretty moot point. As someone has already mentioned, Vanilla WoW was the base foundation of WoW and by its very nature was mean to deliver more content than any expansion. Expansions are usually not meant to deliver as much content as the base game. Vanilla WoW first delivered two massive continents that would roughly equate to being the size of the two standard continents delivered in an expansion, if not larger. Not a single expansion has delivered sheer continent & gross zone sizes that Vanilla first delivered (excluding such arbitrary things as unscaleable mountain sides such as those found in Storm Peaks or High Mountain). The base game can't draw equal comparisons to expansions in many regards because the expansions are merely 10 levels worth of content, not 60 levels reproduced after the initial game.

[MyndZero]

Time gating is APART of an MMORPG experience. WoW has gone away from this the past few years, and as such, the playerbase has gone significantly down. I'm more than happy for it to go back to the way it was.

[ShiyoKozuki]

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.

This is just a flat out lie. FFXI and EQ had limitless amounts of content, you could NOT finish it faster than devs designed it.

The problem is the instant gratification/accessability of content making it consumed faster than it's created.

[Doomaz]

wait, i have to fit in into this nonsence thread.... i like gating