Why doesn't Blizzard trust me to play their game?

[Relapses]

It's called time gating, it's a method used for the "LONG" outdated MMO business model time syncing. This is the perfect example of the first baby step where Blizzard fails.

Time gating existed in Vanilla in the form of attunements and rep grinds. So unless you mean to say that WoW has been failing since it launched, there has been no "baby step," just ridiculous players who would rather their time gating not be so obviously labeled.

[Aggrophobic]

I level a character to max and it's a fun time, and when I hit max level I'm met with some world quest chores to meet my goals of unlocking flying, allied races, better gear, etc. Cool. But then I start doing those chores, and the game is like "that's all the progress/WoW you can play for today, come back tomorrow". Why doesn't Blizzard trust me to play their game more? Why do they put these weird parental control time gated progress walls everywhere? I feel like I'm playing a mobile phone game and I'm about to be asked to pay real money to bypass these time gated progress walls.

I'm a grown adult Blizzard, I can play your game for as long as I feel like it/have the time and still attend to my IRL responsibilities, you don't need to restrict my play time like this by putting everything behind a time gate. I'm not going to stop playing your game either because I've met my goals faster than you've intended me to, that's crazy. You still have so much more for me to do once I've unlocked flying, allied races, etc like making alts, collecting mounts/pets/transmogs and so much else, you do not need to heavily time gate everything like this to try to keep me playing for longer. All it does is just burn me out on the game and make me NOT want to play the game at all anymore because I'm so sick and frustrated with all these time gates everywhere.

Why do they do this?

They don't trust that you will pay for a subscription long enough if they do not restrict how you play.
It's as simple as that.

Now, that might not be true for you or for a lot of other people but having gated content obviously works on the average player. Thats why they have it. The main goal of a company of Blizzards size is it make the shareholders happy and if a system will do that it's going in the game.

If you want games with more passion and less focus on the business side you'll have to look at smaller, newer developers. The overall quality might not be the same of course. Money usually helps and all that.

[Varvara Spiros Gelashvili]

...yet you don't realize that this is not their official forum, so why do you address them personally as if it is?

Basically you come across as somebody ranting on a street corner on his soapbox towards the government. Also if timegating of things like flying is NOW your problem, you are kinda behind everything anyhow...at this point it isn't even a timegate anymore as you should have unlocked it weeks ago, even with their restrictions that annoy you so much.

But yeah...they don't do it to "protect" you from overindulging, they do it so you stay subbed and keep coming back. Stretch that time that you stay a customer.

As an adult, you surely figured that out yourself even before you wrote the thread.

They read these forums...

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Because if they arent locked people will endlessly bitch about being "forced" to do endless dailies, islands, etc.

Islands yes but daily quest gonna have to say nay. Once you reach exalted the vast majority of players have no reason to continue.

[Eupriestlol]

OP is 100 % correct. This is some of the worst bullshit Blizzard has pulled ever. It's so frustrating and shitty.

[rrayy]

Sad and true, but also, should Blizzard be listening to those people when it comes to game design decisions? You've said that's their reason for time gating stuff. Do you not now see why they shouldn't be listening to people like that and time gating everything?

So basically you are saying they shoiuld listen to you and nobody else. Sorry, they shouldln't be listening to you either. They should do what they feel is best for the game and not listen to entitled players which includes you.

[Greyvax]

They originally timegated stuff because people cried about having to "grind 24/7" to "stay competitive"

Then they noticed how much timegating boosted MAU's and tripled down on it.

[rrayy]

Now, that might not be true for you or for a lot of other people but having gated content obviously works on the average player. Thats why they have it. The main goal of a company of Blizzards size is it make the shareholders happy and if a system will do that it's going in the game.

If you want games with more passion and less focus on the business side you'll have to look at smaller, newer developers. The overall quality might not be the same of course. Money usually helps and all that.

This nonsense needs to stop. The game developers do not care one iota about the shareholders and shareholders don't care about game design decisions about a specific game. All shareholders care about is the health of the company as a whole. WOW is not the whole company. Not by a long shot. Also, WOW developers have just as much passion making their games as anyone. You insult theem by accusing them of having no passion.

[smityx]

Simple answer. To keep you playing/paying for just another month.

[rrayy]

They originally timegated stuff because people cried about having to "grind 24/7" to "stay competitive"

Then they noticed how much timegating boosted MAU's and tripled down on it.

There is no evidence that time gates in any way boost MAU's because the great majority of players were going to play the game regardless of time gated grinds or not. As it is, most of these time gated grinds can still be done within a month, so it would be paid for whether it took 2 days or 2 wqeeks. This player false narrative must also stop.

[Dhrizzle]

I level a character to max and it's a fun time, and when I hit max level I'm met with some world quest chores to meet my goals of unlocking flying, allied races, better gear, etc. Cool. But then I start doing those chores, and the game is like "that's all the progress/WoW you can play for today, come back tomorrow". Why doesn't Blizzard trust me to play their game more? Why do they put these weird parental control time gated progress walls everywhere? I feel like I'm playing a mobile phone game and I'm about to be asked to pay real money to bypass these time gated progress walls.

I'm a grown adult Blizzard, I can play your game for as long as I feel like it/have the time and still attend to my IRL responsibilities, you don't need to restrict my play time like this by putting everything behind a time gate. I'm not going to stop playing your game either because I've met my goals faster than you've intended me to, that's crazy. You still have so much more for me to do once I've unlocked flying, allied races, etc like making alts, collecting mounts/pets/transmogs and so much else, you do not need to heavily time gate everything like this to try to keep me playing for longer. All it does is just burn me out on the game and make me NOT want to play the game at all anymore because I'm so sick and frustrated with all these time gates everywhere.

Why do they do this?

Don't take it personally Blizzard aren't targetting you specifically, they're barely aware that you exist. Blizz put in these systems to best serve their vision of the game and the majority of the player-base.

[Aggrophobic]

This nonsense needsd to stop. The game developeres do not care one iota about the shareholders and shareholders don't care about game design decisions about a specifici game. All shareholders care about is the health of hte company as a whole. WOW is not the whole company. Not by a long shot. Also, WOW developers have just as much passion making their games as anyone. You insult theem by accusing them of having no passion.

This is actually what old devs said themsleves.
But as a developer or at least the managers do care or rather have to care. You bow down to your stakeholders or they will make you or rather remove you.
Keeping players subscribed for longer is most likely one of Blizzards KPI's and gating makes that happen. Nice green bars keep your main stakeholders happy. Thats the main goal of a WoW dev.

Now, customer satisfaction is most likely important as well but not as important as making sure you pay.

You'll learn, in time.

[Luxeley]

Time gating existed in Vanilla in the form of attunements and rep grinds. So unless you mean to say that WoW has been failing since it launched, there has been no "baby step," just ridiculous players who would rather their time gating not be so obviously labeled.

Time gating worked back during Vanilla and probably even up and until Cata. But then, the MMO genre changed and WOW didn't.

[Sangfoudre]

You're not gated though, you can go run some mythic dungeons, m+, raid, organized PvP, random PvP. You can level another alt.

WQ's are some of the most boring end game content this game has to offer IMO, yet here you are complaining about not having enough of them. You are unique.

It's an opinion, not a fact.
I like them actually, they admirably replace dailies.

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OP is 100 % correct. This is some of the worst bullshit Blizzard has pulled ever. It's so frustrating and shitty.

It was more or less the same with dailies.

[lockybalboa]

Nope. You are supposed to play the game the way Papa Blizzard wants you to.

[Marrilaife]

The content that frustrated me the most was honestly being able to make a new character of a different race.

Out of 10 allied races, only 2 of them were "time gated" by the definition you couldn't unlock them the day they came out. These were dark iron dwarves and mag'har orcs that were released with bfa but required a brand new rep to be grinded for each. Every other allied race was a freebie for someone who is already playing the game, not ignoring major patch features and reps, and not unsubbing for a year and then coming back surprised.

Being able to play a Nightborne, Void Elf, Zandalari or soon Vulpera immediately on the release after a fairly short questline is a form of "thank you for being subbed during content droughts" from Blizzard. Subs are money. And it's easy to get people to play at expac launches, or even major patch launches, but harder to keep them from unsubbing in between.

Having people sub back 1 month before 8.3 so they can grind up the rep for Vulpera is obviously bigger profit than having these people skip that sub, come 8.3 and being able to insta pick a Vulpera.

Also, any MMO, F2P or pay, lives or dies by new blood. If they're not bringing in new blood, they're dying. They are going to lose old players, no matter how 'good' or 'bad' the expansions are.

The problem starts when you do so much to ease it up for new / returning players that you convince your current players it's "stupid" to stay subbed during content droughts so instead of staying subbed all year round they just cherry pick the content-packed periods then leave. So then you have to make it up by stretching content or giving some open or veiled "loyalty rewards", otherwise instead of 12 subs a year from players you're gonna get about 3 at best.

Since you have to make it easy to catch up on levelling and gearing up, because you rely on stream of new blood joining the mainstream of content and filling up the groups, it's an MMO after all, the only "loyalty rewards" that are safe to be given for long time investment are cosmetics and things that don't impact the long term viability of your main character.

So yeah, they can nerf levelling, or grinding ap, or obtaining essences, but they don't need to nerf pathfinder or allied race rep. They did nerf legion rep grind for those allied races a bit though.

[bullseyed]

Because if they arent locked people will endlessly bitch about being "forced" to do endless dailies, islands, etc.

Just in 8.3 people whined about paragon neck grinding so they time-gated it behind killing N'zoth weekly and moved it to the cloak.

Basically all time-gating was not part of Blizzard's design but put in to stop the casual-bads from whining and using slurs like "no lifers" and "elitists".

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i think he did figure it very well in fact and maybe just wanted to share/talk to other people about it,you know like you do on forums.

Most forums posting any kind of 'dear Blizzard' bullshit is a bannable offense.

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But that's silly - restricting millions to precent one person with no self control... eh.

Right, which is why all limitations on guns and alcohol should be removed.

Driver licenses too. Let anyone drive.

[clevin]

Right, which is why all limitations on guns and alcohol should be removed.

Driver licenses too. Let anyone drive.

This comment is so stupid I'm only going to reply once....

Playing WoW for so long that it hurts the player only hurts that player. Removing restrictions on the things you mention potentially can hurt *other people*.


Try to think before you type next time. Not that I'lll read more of your posts.

[Dracullus]

You're grown adult and don't understand how subscription based game works?

[bullseyed]

Uhh what? I can definitely still post on the official forums, I'm not sure what you're talking about. I just chose to post here instead. My bad, next time I want to discuss World of Warcraft I won't come to the WoW section of MMO Champion I guess lol.

You weren't looking to discuss world of warcraft. You posted a letter addressed to Blizzard, who isn't here.

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This comment is so stupid I'm only going to reply once....

Playing WoW for so long that it hurts the player only hurts that player. Removing restrictions on the things you mention potentially can hurt *other people*.


Try to think before you type next time. Not that I'lll read more of your posts.

So you're saying you act like this so often that even your family no longer cares if you die. Nice.

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Do every single wq every day, fully max out zones, do emissaries and assaults.

Crazy right.

With a contract on.

[Justpassing]

Try growing up some more, Mr. Adult.