timegating isn't really that bad but i do think how blizz does it in wow is horrible. a timegate is really meant for one of two things, to build hype for a slowly approaching event (think sunwell boss releases) or to prevent burning out on new content. the problem is blizz just uses the sunwell method (which wasn't liked that much anyways) basically every time they think people need to be gated back a bit. they don't bother trying a fluid system like just limiting the amount of something you can do in a week but letting you do it at any point. people never complained about being time gated from raid instances because you could do those raid bosses at any point during the week.
i'm on the other fence where i've lost all my interest in wow because blizz gated 8.3 too much. visions made me feel the need to farm every daily quest and even though it only takes about an hour each day, it just starts to wear me down and i don't even care anymore that i find the visions fun. i don't get enough fun from the amount of work i need to put in for that system. so no, timegating isn't bad, it's just how blizz does it.
not even close to true, did you know icc took 2 months to open fully? they timegated the raid wings opening.
they also timegated AQ you needed to spend a super long time gathering resources before you could do the raid, wow.
they also timegated legendaries, you couldnt just do the raid, you needed to do it for many weeks to get drops, shadowfrost shards anyone?
Players on this forum: "I hate having to wait multiple weeks to be able to participate in content."
Also players on this forum: "The game was better was better when it took multiple weeks to get everybody in your raid attuned so they could participate in content."
The problem isn't time gating. The problem is that players have no fucking idea what they actually want.
Story based timegates: no
Rep based timegates: yes
If what doesn't kill you, makes you stronger. Then I should be a god by now.
that is impossible, to give you that many quests, would be impossible.
heres a practice, try to write a book faster then people can read it.
now keep it interesting, making sense, and without errors.
now do that forever.
see how long you can do that for, see how long it takes for someone to catch up to you, and then go "wow this book is over there is no more writing"
well guess what, the second you type 1 word people will already be ahead.
making content takes far, far longer then it does to consume it.
movies take thousands to tens of thouands of hours to make.
but are viewed in only 90 minutes.
This is exactly why time gating sucks. You need to grind everyday to stay relevant or if you play alt you need to wait ages to do something. They could just timegate by weeks but anything you haven't yet done should be able to be done in just one day. They should make weekly quests which would unlock on daily basis and you could do them all in one day if you haven't done them. Even emissaries could be 7 instead of 3. Let people enjoy the game and play whenever they want. Also reputation gains should be increased when you already finish them on one of the characters.
Devs are not dumb. They do this just to increase sub time. Even legendaries in legion. You really think it took them whole expansion just to make system where you could buy any legendary you wanted? It was obvious its system designed to keep you playing hooked up by rng to get what you want. Corruption is same shit. And nobody can fucking tell me that corruption is better than TF because it isnt. Corruption is way more rng.
They no longer design game to be fun, you could see that when they eradicated every single option to level faster than their designed ultra slow system.
So you mean to tell me that there aren't players who both dislike the current version of WoW but also prefer TBC's version of WoW? Because you really don't need to look further than any one of the thousands of "What's your favorite expansion?" threads for proof of this.
I stand by what I said. You ask 100 players what their favorite version of WoW is and you get 100 different responses. There is no universal answer. The question posed by the OP is intrinsic to a given player's emotional attachments to a period of time within the expansion they preferred. At the end of the day, though, time gates have existed in WoW since the beginning and won't be going anywhere. I just find it a pinch ironic that the same people who dislike the current iteration of time gating will point to previous expansions as examples of when it "wasn't as bad," when in reality... it was probably worse.
If time gating in WoW is a problem for you, then you shouldn't be playing a MMO.
I'm not suggesting that it's the same. For somebody who loves to use the word strawman to diminish an argument you should know better.
If it isn't clear: I'm suggesting that the time gating in TBC/Vanilla (specifically attunements) was far worse for the overall health of the game than any of the time gating that people bitch about today.
edit: Guess you edited that part out. /shrug
I've really enjoyed Suramar and never understood why people were against timegating this scenario.
But Suramar was good! And when they tried to do the same with the broken shore it was a horrible patch because there was no scenario, just a new stupid chore to do each week, and there the timegating made no sense
Timegates are like grinds and RNG. They are an important tool in an RPG to make content last longer and solve a lot of pacing problems when used in moderation.
But if you overuse them to hide the fact that you forgot to make unique content, your players will start to notice and will stop caring about your game.
If the game gives you a quest to kill 15 demons and then asks you to wait a week, you fucked up.
If the game only lets you farm 2000 valor per week, that is giving you a goal to aim for and limits the chance that you will burn out after a week because there is nothing to do.
Both are timegating, only the first one is bad.
"And all those exclamation marks, you notice? Five?
A sure sign of someone who wears his underpants on his head."
How is only one bad? Because you said it was bad... so it's bad? I agree that there are degrees of time gating which are less transparent than others but it's a bit overbearing to say one version of time gating is better or worse than another since no two people's opinions of how content is time gated will ever be the same. (ie, some people may prefer killing 15 demons then waiting a week because it feels more deterministic than filling a VP bar.)
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At the time, I was raiding in a Mythic guild and didn't have much of a choice. I would've had to have done the content if I wanted to play the game at the level I felt comfortable.
Now, you can point out that this was a me issue and not really a Blizzard issue and you'd be correct. But it still doesn't impact my opinion that Suramar was unfun content that I did not want to do again.
The only timegate I had a real problem with was the original battle for hyjal one in tbc, which required 25 kael and 25 vashj kills, at a minimum.
My favorite thing about this is that Blizzard eventually meme'd themselves about attunements.