Has Time Gating Been In WoW Since Vanilla? What is Time Gating Exactly?

[Aucald]

While this thread has been somewhat necro'd, it is still something of a current issue and so we'll allow it to remain open so the discussion can continue.

[Jujudrood]

Time gating has always been around.
It's the sheer amount of time gating that's changed.
Raids have always been gated behind the weekly lockout; we expect and accept that.
It's everything else that followed.

Most rep was free grind, just kill the things, run the dungeons, what have you.
Some gated behind raids, but that was only a few.
Today, all rep is gated behind WQs which are on a timer, so it's basically do a few, wait 8-12 hours, do a few more.
Reps don't even give much of anything outside of cosmetic things (toys/pets/mounts), so the fact that dungeons don't offer rep blows my mind, but that's a diff topic.

Covenants were heavily gated, which in turn gated soulbinds, conduits were gated by incremental drops, and even M+ got gated when valor was reintroduced and required KS achievements to get past certain points.
Then there was the covenant switching that required a questline and a week before you could switch, which directly affected player rotations and throughput.
It just seems like with every new feature they add, time gating gets heavily involved.

I get some gating for story elements, that's fine.
Let the passage of time be part of the story unfolding, makes sense.
But gating damn near everything, it's just trying to control play time and keep that carrot on a stick to get people to log in tomorrow.
It's a cheap tactic, but it is good business, so I guess kudos where they belong...

[Echo of Soul]

Time gating has always been around.
It's the sheer amount of time gating that's changed.

All time gates aren't created equal either. Daily quests gating you from that heroic raid quality loot from a exalted rep vendor makes a bit more sense for example.

[Soon-TM]

Timegating in its current incarnation had quite humble beginnings, i.e. the WoD facebook game mission table, where you couldn't advance your garrison without completing certain missions. But, like many other #@%&ty features of retail WoW, it was allowed to run amok in Legion, with Class Halls stories and the entirety of 7.2 being the most egregious examples.

And it only got worse from there, to the point that pretty much EVERYTHING in SL is timegated in some fashion, as @Jujudrood has just explained.

[MrLachyG]

Time gating has always been around.
It's the sheer amount of time gating that's changed.
Raids have always been gated behind the weekly lockout; we expect and accept that.
It's everything else that followed.

Most rep was free grind, just kill the things, run the dungeons, what have you.
Some gated behind raids, but that was only a few.
Today, all rep is gated behind WQs which are on a timer, so it's basically do a few, wait 8-12 hours, do a few more.
Reps don't even give much of anything outside of cosmetic things (toys/pets/mounts), so the fact that dungeons don't offer rep blows my mind, but that's a diff topic.

Covenants were heavily gated, which in turn gated soulbinds, conduits were gated by incremental drops, and even M+ got gated when valor was reintroduced and required KS achievements to get past certain points.
Then there was the covenant switching that required a questline and a week before you could switch, which directly affected player rotations and throughput.
It just seems like with every new feature they add, time gating gets heavily involved.

I get some gating for story elements, that's fine.
Let the passage of time be part of the story unfolding, makes sense.
But gating damn near everything, it's just trying to control play time and keep that carrot on a stick to get people to log in tomorrow.
It's a cheap tactic, but it is good business, so I guess kudos where they belong...

I mean there has always been an hourly instance lockout (can only run a few dungeons an hour) but yeah I do miss the days when dungeons gave rep. Quite a few reps could only be done via dailies though and they were just tedious. So the whole "world quest" grind is definitely not a new thing.

I agree with you on covenants being heavily timegated (at least if you were playing each week). Timegating storylines also don't really make sense especially when in week 3 of the expansion you get the raid opening and in week 6 you get a quest to go defeat Sire Denathrius - that should've been given week 3. I think you misspoke when you said M+ was timegated though because yeah it didn't... you had to get a certain score/achievement to upgrade your gear but you can just spam dungeons until you get that score/achievement so it's not really timegated because you can do it in a single day if you have enough time.

The main issue for me is Blizzard just don't get what keeps people coming back to their game. People play their game to raid, they play to do dungeons etc. Like if Barry McGee is only interested in raiding and clearing the raid with friends then they will continue to sub until they do exactly that. Don't need timegated stuff like renown which enables conduits because those conduits aren't going to make or break raid progress. I can say with some certainty that the bulk of the playerbase who only raid normal and heroic, and even those on mythic really, would take the same amount of time whether they had one conduit unlocked or all of them.

[cparle87]

This^

The problem with today's WoW players, it's all about rushing content as soon as its released.

Remember the realm first achievements? Realm first 80? Realm first maxed profs? There were reports of people keeling over and dying because they didn't stop playing trying to get some of these. That's part of why they were removed.

[Palapop]

Of course it has.
Just like RNG has always been a part of WoW.

People just like to bitch

Time gate behind certain patch or raid release =/= time gate behind renown/choreghast/assault/grateful offerings/conduits/soulbinds

RNG boss drop =/= rng M+ key, rng m+ chest, rng pvp chest, rng pvp reward, rng conduit, rng soulbind, rng legendary, daily calling... etc, etc, etc...

- - - Updated - - -

Remember the realm first achievements? Realm first 80? Realm first maxed profs? There were reports of people keeling over and dying because they didn't stop playing trying to get some of these. That's part of why they were removed.

So, just because of that mentality, they should remove mythic raids, arenas, rbgs, m+..........?

[cparle87]

Time gate behind certain patch or raid release =/= time gate behind renown/choreghast/assault/grateful offerings/conduits/soulbinds

RNG boss drop =/= rng M+ key, rng m+ chest, rng pvp chest, rng pvp reward, rng conduit, rng soulbind, rng legendary, daily calling... etc, etc, etc...

- - - Updated - - -



So, just because of that mentality, they should remove mythic raids, arenas, rbgs, m+..........?

I have no idea what your post has to do in any fashion with what myself or the person I was responding to said. You get my award for the 'wtf is this guy talking about' for the week.

[heldok]

No, it hasn't.

Timegating is when Blizzard creates a chunk of content, releases it in a patch, and then dripfeeds it to players over several weeks. LFR is timegated as another wing releases every couple of weeks. Questing campaigns are gated, have been for several expansions. A new chapter becomes available every week, so you do your 5-10 quests on reset day and then go back into hibernation, but still pay a sub for several months.

[Palapop]

I have no idea what your post has to do in any fashion with what myself or the person I was responding to said. You get my award for the 'wtf is this guy talking about' for the week.

So.....

Remember the realm first achievements? Realm first 80? Realm first maxed profs? There were reports of people keeling over and dying because they didn't stop playing trying to get some of these. That's part of why they were removed.

So, just because of that mentality, they should remove mythic raids, arenas, rbgs, m+..........?

English is not my first tongue.... But if this is unclear to you, then yeah.... they probably taught us different English or something....

[cparle87]

So.....







English is not my first tongue.... But if this is unclear to you, then yeah.... they probably taught us different English or something....

He says "Players consume content too fast."
I say "Remember when they rewarded people for consuming content too fast and it caused lots of problems?"
You say "So you want them to remove mythic raids, arenas, rbgs, etc."

How the actual hell did you come to that conclusion?

[MrLachyG]

He says "Players consume content too fast."
I say "Remember when they rewarded people for consuming content too fast and it caused lots of problems?"
You say "So you want them to remove mythic raids, arenas, rbgs, etc."

How the actual hell did you come to that conclusion?

if I had to guess, magic?

[WowIsDead64]

Sometimes time-gating is reasonable, but sometimes it isn't. It's not reasonable, when it serves as artificial content stretching. Devs justification for it - not to overwhelm players, because some players don't have self-control and can play 24/7, if they aren't restricted. But it's more about daily/weekly caps - not actual time-gating. Bad time gating - is when some content is held as hostage to make players play it longer, i.e. to artificially stretch it.

Here is two examples of time-gating:
1) Time-gating story. I.e. splitting content patch story into 1hr quest lines and releasing them once a week. Ask yourself simple question: why it's done this way? Because story-driven players should stay hooked. Problem - it's just shows, how small actual story is. And it just shows, that this game doesn't have anything interesting and enjoyable beyond story, because players usually unsub as soon, as story ends. Is it good? No.
2) Time-gating flying. Flying is needed to truly enjoy this game. I.e. overall no flying is something like playing incomplete game. That's why Blizzard not only time-gate flying, but also grind-gate it. Their justification - is that player should "master" content first. But it's complete BS. Because completing some artificial grind has nothing to do with "mastering" content itself. Flying is simply held as hostage to force players to complete 100% of that grind. This just shows, that content itself isn't enjoyable enough for players to desire to do it by themselves. Players have to be forced to complete this content. And it just shows, how bad it is.

[schwarzkopf]

Time gating is what people whinge about when they aren't whinging about lack of content.

People either do stuff all at once then whinge about lack of stuff to do, or the game imposes real time limits on how often things can be done - then people whinge about time gating.


It is the way of the world, back in Vanilla things were time gated more subtly (time to walk, materials shortages, gold etc etc). These days it is more overt - with cool downs, or delays in days etc.

[WowIsDead64]

Time gating is what people whinge about when they aren't whinging about lack of content.

People either do stuff all at once then whinge about lack of stuff to do, or the game imposes real time limits on how often things can be done - then people whinge about time gating.


It is the way of the world, back in Vanilla things were time gated more subtly (time to walk, materials shortages, gold etc etc). These days it is more overt - with cool downs, or delays in days etc.

It's core problem of all MMOs. They wouldn't be more profitable, than solo games, if content would be developed at the same rate. I.e. despite of charging 420$ for two years of content, that should be worth 7 solo AAA games, they don't produce such amount of content. Therefore content have to be: repeatable, time-gated, grind-gated, RNG-gated, etc. in order to be artificially stretched. Problem is - trivial gating, like just forcing players to kill 100500 boars to complete some quest, no longer works in 2022.

[schwarzkopf]

It's core problem of all MMOs.

It is not a problem with MMOs - it is fine, the reaction of the whinging minority - there is the problem.

[WowIsDead64]

It is not a problem with MMOs - it is fine, the reaction of the whinging minority - there is the problem.

If it wouldn't be ok, nobody would play MMOs in a first place. So, yeah, it's ok. To some degree. Time gating just shouldn't be so obvious. I.e. it shouldn't gate mandatory things, making game temporary incomplete. Because it's major reason, why players rush through content, instead of enjoying it at their own pace.

It's very bad design, when devs design game about having some feature (let's say legendary), so game feels incomplete without it, and then gate it behind "completing content", so when you finally reach complete game - you have nothing else to do there. That's why players constantly ask to remove gating. Not because they want to just skip content.

[Raven]

Yes it has, and i would say that it was actually even more time gating back then, with the requirement for some bosses to have nature res gear, some dungeon actually require keys to be able to enter and attunements for raids like Molten core, and reputation for the Create Aqual Quintessence to extinguish molten core fires to be able to summon Majordomo.

[Palapop]

He says "Players consume content too fast."
I say "Remember when they rewarded people for consuming content too fast and it caused lots of problems?"
You say "So you want them to remove mythic raids, arenas, rbgs, etc."

How the actual hell did you come to that conclusion?

Because people tend to consume that content too fast as well? By raiding for 10-12 hrs/day? Or playing 100s arena games/day?

[Jujudrood]

I mean there has always been an hourly instance lockout (can only run a few dungeons an hour) but yeah I do miss the days when dungeons gave rep. Quite a few reps could only be done via dailies though and they were just tedious. So the whole "world quest" grind is definitely not a new thing.

I agree with you on covenants being heavily timegated (at least if you were playing each week). Timegating storylines also don't really make sense especially when in week 3 of the expansion you get the raid opening and in week 6 you get a quest to go defeat Sire Denathrius - that should've been given week 3. I think you misspoke when you said M+ was timegated though because yeah it didn't... you had to get a certain score/achievement to upgrade your gear but you can just spam dungeons until you get that score/achievement so it's not really timegated because you can do it in a single day if you have enough time.

The main issue for me is Blizzard just don't get what keeps people coming back to their game. People play their game to raid, they play to do dungeons etc. Like if Barry McGee is only interested in raiding and clearing the raid with friends then they will continue to sub until they do exactly that. Don't need timegated stuff like renown which enables conduits because those conduits aren't going to make or break raid progress. I can say with some certainty that the bulk of the playerbase who only raid normal and heroic, and even those on mythic really, would take the same amount of time whether they had one conduit unlocked or all of them.

Yeah I agree.
Also, about M+, that was typed while working, jumping back and forth from other stuff, so yeah, not sure where I was going with mythic+ as far as timegating, but just gating in general; I sidetracked myself on the quality of loot for content that isn't "hard" (when you don't have to time it for the loot, but you do need time for the KS chieves). Just cruising through a 15 mists at a non-timed pace getting you mythic levels of loot is weird when you can't upgrade your 226 because you haven't timed plaguefall or whatever. Just different gating for a different convo my brain decided to use.

I think the point is there's just so much more gating everywhere now, of varying degrees, such as conduits, that some of the gating makes no sense/has no real effect on impeding progress, whereas some other forms are a direct impediment due to how the affects on player power are balanced, such as legendaries.
It's not the daily progress bar that drives many of us, or the anticipation of "4 more days and I can do X"; many people play because they enjoy the content portion they do, and when you are halted in that area prematurely, it feels bad.