Why did Blizzard's business model become time-gating and content removal?

[Wilfire]

From Vanilla and up until Cataclysm (which is, coincidentally, considered to be WoW's golden age), you could play very sporadically and still get to experience all of the content. You could play for a month or so, get bored, quit, come back a year later and then run through the content that you've missed and see the story / the encounters and all that.

Starting from Cataclysm, Blizzard began to remove content. If you missed a PvP season or didn't play your char seriously during that time, you'd end up never being able to obtain the elite recolor of the set. In MoP, Blizzard stepped up their content removal game and first deleted Battlefield:Barrens when SoO launched and later completely erased the legendary cloak questline and when WoD launched. If you want to experience MoP story right now, you just can't since most of the important post-launch story content was removed. This is on top of elite set removals.

WoD mostly had the same model of content removal as MoP but also added time-gating in the form of pathfinder achievements.

Now Legion retained all of the content removal and time-gating features of previous expansions but doubled down on them: artifact appearances are very likely to be removed when the next expansion launches and they aren't something that you can obtain in a day or two, you have to play the same character for months to collect all of them. Not to mention the insane AP and RNG treadmill that you have to keep running unless you want to fall behind and be locked out of current content.

So the question is, why does Blizzard insist on people continuing to play their mains to keep up with the pace of the game instead of quitting for a few months to cool off or play alts? The only thing this business model promotes is burnout.

[Normie]

I have no fucking clue what kind of content removal you are referring to.

If you are missing out on anniversary events then, like, make sure you're subscribed and playing during the events. "Yo Mom where's my birthday cake?" "Well, honey, you didn't show up that week, so everyone else ate it."

If you are missing out on things that only happened if you were playing during X period of time, then, in the future, make sure you are playing during Y period of time.

[Deleted]

When they realised it would be nigh impossible to provide content for both the casual buffet as well as the Elite 5 course meal eaters and please both.

It doesn't actually seem like they can please anyone these days going by the vocal minority but I guess at least they are trying.

[Imnick]

Don't forget the TBC introduction of elite arena mounts or the Wrath proto drakes that you could only obtain by being good at raiding Naxxramas.
Unless you conveniently want to ignore them to prove a point that isn't real, of course.


Artifact appearances also don't take "months" to acquire unless you are very bad at the game and it is extremely easy to catch up in gear and AP to be good enough to go into Normal or Heroic content. Mythic takes a while, but it should, because it's supposed to.

[Charge me Doctor]

From Vanilla and up until Cataclysm (which is, coincidentally, considered to be WoW's golden age), you could play very sporadically and still get to experience all of the content. You could play for a month or so, get bored, quit, come back a year later and then run through the content that you've missed and see the story / the encounters and all that.

Starting from Cataclysm, Blizzard began to remove content. If you missed a PvP season or didn't play your char seriously during that time, you'd end up never being able to obtain the elite recolor of the set. In MoP, Blizzard stepped up their content removal game and first deleted Battlefield:Barrens when SoO launched and later completely erased the legendary cloak questline and when WoD launched. If you want to experience MoP story right now, you just can't since most of the important post-launch story content was removed. This is on top of elite set removals.

WoD mostly had the same model of content removal as MoP but also added time-gating in the form of pathfinder achievements.

Now Legion retained all of the content removal and time-gating features of previous expansions but doubled down on them: artifact appearances are very likely to be removed when the next expansion launches and they aren't something that you can obtain in a day or two, you have to play the same character for months to collect all of them. Not to mention the insane AP and RNG treadmill that you have to keep running unless you want to fall behind and be locked out of current content.

So the question is, why does Blizzard insist on people continuing to play their mains to keep up with the pace of the game instead of quitting for a few months to cool off or play alts? The only thing this business model promotes is burnout.

Just bolding out things that are simply OP lying to us to make a compelling argument.

To simply answer your question - no, you made up this whole "Blizzard business model" argument by yourself, based it on your opinion and expect people to agree with you through your ridiculous logic jumps

[Kwyn]

I think you may have forgotten to take off the rose-colored glasses before you posted. The game changes over time. During Cata, which you mentioned as part of the "Golden Age", the entire world was changed forever. Been to Thousand Needles lately? I was there today and it sure didn't look the way I remembered. All that content from original WoW? Gone, almost in it's entirety.

Expac Launch events have *always* been temporary.

Remember this? http://www.wowhead.com/item=28788/ta...-the-protector

I got that when the dark portal opened. I still put it on from time to time and "flex" for the animation. Guess what? The amazing TBC launch content is gone. You can't get that tabard anymore. Know why? Because the Dark Portal has been open for over a decade. Last time I looked there are no scourge events running rampant across every zone either. Hmm? I guess it's because Arthas and the scourge were defeated. New players will never experience that.

There is more content in this game than ever before (duh). A new player could experience hundreds and hundreds of hours and not ever make it to 110 if they wanted to.

As Normie stated, I have no fucking clue what you are taking about. If this is just a thinly veiled rant about "I want everything all the time, right now, gimme my flying and my challenge skin" thread, then you might want to give it another shot!

[Woadnson]

A new business phrase for your vocabulary... limited time only.

[ComputerNerd]

WoD had no content gating through pathfinder.
Flying did not grant access to content, it only gave easier access to what was already there.

BiS is a goal that you always had to "keep running" to reach.
Stupid people making it seem like this is something new, that it was somehow trivial before.

[Requimortem]

Content has been removed throughout the game but why they do it is beyond me. I guess they want the no-lifers to feel special.

[Rathwirt]

Didn't get Hand of A'dal? Well, fuck you. You can't get it now. That was before Cata.

[cface]

I quited 2 or so months ago, and there is no chance for me to come back, even if I wanted to. I will be so far behind in AK and AP, and everything will just feel like an uphill battle. If I wanted to try another char this time around, I can just delete that thought.

Not sure if it's wise or not by Blizzard to do this. But I'm sure they know what they're doing when it comes to keeping their subs up.

[Rotted]

I have no fucking clue what kind of content removal you are referring to.

If you are missing out on anniversary events then, like, make sure you're subscribed and playing during the events. "Yo Mom where's my birthday cake?" "Well, honey, you didn't show up that week, so everyone else ate it."

If you are missing out on things that only happened if you were playing during X period of time, then, in the future, make sure you are playing during Y period of time.

I'm not disagreeing with your first point, its tough shit on anniversary stuff, its a specific thing for a specific time frame, you summed it up nicely with the birthday analogy to be fair

However, your second point is complete nonsense, theres a great deal of players who can't log on at some point to do something, take me for example, I had a heavy workload from 7.2 launch up until this Monday just gone and literally had 0 time to log on, typically, now I do have some free time my wireless card is busted and my connection cant support anything but online forums, let alone gaming. Two things that aren't my fault and I can't physically play, not from not wanting to but because its a impossibility. Oh another example of me, I was an avid Rep collector + mount collector, during cataclysm launch my computer died and I was too young and broke to get a new one, so I went the entire expac without playing until DS launch when I went to college and had the funds to replace it (Oh btw OP, I started in DS and had no issue catching up to raid or pvp)

People work, people fall ill, people are carers aka things happen which stop some people from coming online, sometimes short periods of time, sometimes long period of times. Removing some content is unfair on these people, for example the mop and wod legend lines, I really don't see an issue in keeping them around. But to say the solution is "Just make sure your online during that part" is rubbish

Artifact appearances also don't take "months" to acquire unless you are very bad at the game

That's not always the case. I re-rolled a DH in November? Up until 7.2 I did a few WQ's nearly every day in Suramar waiting for the universal Q item to drop for DH (It can drop from any WQ mob in Suramar) and it still hasn't. It's been months and thats completely out of my hands, completely a non reflection on my skill. I don't know if this kind of system is only for DH's or if other classes have some RNG involved.

And yes I have killed the bat from jumping from Highmountain down to it, didn't drop, it got fixed

[Requimortem]

I quited 2 or so months ago, and there is no chance for me to come back, even if I wanted to. I will be so far behind in AK and AP, and everything will just feel like an uphill battle. If I wanted to try another char this time around, I can just delete that thought.

Not sure if it's wise or not by Blizzard to do this. But I'm sure they know what they're doing when it comes to keeping their subs up.

It'll keep the diehards going but I've already lost interest. All I'm using World of Warcraft for now is those tokens so that I can put money on my account to buy other stuff--namely the Necromancer for Diablo III whenever that gets released.

[Rotted]

I quited 2 or so months ago, and there is no chance for me to come back, even if I wanted to. I will be so far behind in AK and AP, and everything will just feel like an uphill battle. If I wanted to try another char this time around, I can just delete that thought.

Not sure if it's wise or not by Blizzard to do this. But I'm sure they know what they're doing when it comes to keeping their subs up.

I made a brand new alt 2 weeks before 7.2 launched. Within a week she was 110, by the end of the 2nd week she was 870. The night before 7.2 she had her 35th trait, and that was from playing between 1-2 hours every night, bar one where I got 6 hours in.

It's absolute bollocks when people say they can't come back, they can't re roll

[Deleted]

Just bolding out things that are simply OP lying to us to make a compelling argument.

To simply answer your question - no, you made up this whole "Blizzard business model" argument by yourself, based it on your opinion and expect people to agree with you through your ridiculous logic jumps

He did not lie. You just refused to think and maliciously minintepreted his post so you could feign being offended.

- - - Updated - - -

I have no fucking clue what kind of content removal you are referring to.

If you are missing out on anniversary events then, like, make sure you're subscribed and playing during the events. "Yo Mom where's my birthday cake?" "Well, honey, you didn't show up that week, so everyone else ate it."

If you are missing out on things that only happened if you were playing during X period of time, then, in the future, make sure you are playing during Y period of time.

He outlined very clearly what he meant. You have to, you know, read his post.

[WowIsDead64]

From Vanilla and up until Cataclysm (which is, coincidentally, considered to be WoW's golden age), you could play very sporadically and still get to experience all of the content. You could play for a month or so, get bored, quit, come back a year later and then run through the content that you've missed and see the story / the encounters and all that.

Starting from Cataclysm, Blizzard began to remove content. If you missed a PvP season or didn't play your char seriously during that time, you'd end up never being able to obtain the elite recolor of the set. In MoP, Blizzard stepped up their content removal game and first deleted Battlefield:Barrens when SoO launched and later completely erased the legendary cloak questline and when WoD launched. If you want to experience MoP story right now, you just can't since most of the important post-launch story content was removed. This is on top of elite set removals.

WoD mostly had the same model of content removal as MoP but also added time-gating in the form of pathfinder achievements.

Now Legion retained all of the content removal and time-gating features of previous expansions but doubled down on them: artifact appearances are very likely to be removed when the next expansion launches and they aren't something that you can obtain in a day or two, you have to play the same character for months to collect all of them. Not to mention the insane AP and RNG treadmill that you have to keep running unless you want to fall behind and be locked out of current content.

So the question is, why does Blizzard insist on people continuing to play their mains to keep up with the pace of the game instead of quitting for a few months to cool off or play alts? The only thing this business model promotes is burnout.

It's so called "Limited time offer". This kind of model is very wide spread in F2P games. P2P sub model is in agony and Blizzard try to prolong it's life for as long, as possible. In the past Blizzard has casual-friendly model. This model was "It's better for us, if you will log in as seldom, as possible, but pay exactly the same $15, 24/7-no-lifers pay". But with time quality of content started to drop and large amount of competition with F2P games appeared - so this model tuned into "Why should I pay same money, if I don't play the game as much, as 24/7-no-lifers play?". So. Current model is - "You get rewards for staying constantly subbed only" time/RNG/grind-gated model.

[Deleted]

Limited and Exclusive.

Two terms that businesses love. Welcome to the world of business.

[Requimortem]

I made a brand new alt 2 weeks before 7.2 launched. Within a week she was 110, by the end of the 2nd week she was 870. The night before 7.2 she had her 35th trait, and that was from playing between 1-2 hours every night, bar one where I got 6 hours in.

It's absolute bollocks when people say they can't come back, they can't re roll

Great. You managed to achieve the bare minimum with an alternate character who most likely had access to the Artifact Knowledge tomes. Have you managed to get all your reputations to Exalted? Have you managed to get all the Artifact Weapon appearances and the alternate colors? Have you maxed out your various professions and gotten all the ranks for them?

[ls-]

I quited 2 or so months ago, and there is no chance for me to come back, even if I wanted to. I will be so far behind in AK and AP, and everything will just feel like an uphill battle. If I wanted to try another char this time around, I can just delete that thought.

Not sure if it's wise or not by Blizzard to do this. But I'm sure they know what they're doing when it comes to keeping their subs up.

TBF, it's quite easy to come back to WoW, so far they only thing that you defo missed is WF kill, anything else can be obtained within 1-2 weeks or so...

[Deleted]

The problem is that some content isnt really content anymore after a couple patches, but just a faceroll experience wi basically free rewards. And people who play for the rewards wouldnt even bother doing the artifact challenges now if they knew they could just get them without any efford next expac.


Also, the aspect of prestige still holds some value, alhtough greatly diminished since cata: seeing a prot pally with the 7.2 appearance right now is way more impressive then seeing that next year.

I wouldnt have a problem with content and their rewards being available forever if it didnt get easier as well. Thats why I think its a great idea from blizzard to not remove any content involved with the artifact appearances, but only those who did them during legion can transmog them on other weapons.
If it wouldnt be for things like this I wouldnt be playing right now.