May 16 2025: “Understandably, players are accustomed to patch day being the day when everything drops,” Hazzikostas said. “We hear the feedback loud and clear. It’s quite possible we got the balance wrong this time, and that there’s too much that is being delayed and not enough that’s available up front.” - Ion https://www.pcgamer.com/games/world-of-warcraft/world-of-warcraft-game-director-on-the-woeful-patch-11-1-5-its-not-the-experience-our-players-are-expecting-or-deserve/
May 20 2025: Yo dawg I heard you like timegating, so we’re gonna timegate your timegated content so you can be timegated while timegated.
42 Likes
I mean…not to defend them or anything, but they did unlock the cosmetic rewards so people could grind them if they wanted. 
That said, I feel that this is how they should have been handled from the start.
5 Likes
I mean I’m going to get the cosmetics, even though I think they’re very subpar, but I’d like to play the game at my pace, not their perceived pace. I’d honestly rather they just say they’re doing this to milk sub money instead of pretending they’re doing this to not overwhelm players. Let’s be real, the total amount of content in horrific visions is not that much to do imo.
9 Likes
My favourite feature of the patch so far:
Yeaaaaa, lets gate some time boys and girls.
7 Likes
The way Ion worded the reasoning for the timegating is that it’s basically punishment for not being a slow casual player. If you’ve timed your 15 keys or cleared heroic you want to play fresh new content when a patch comes out.
But Ion doesn’t want to overwhelm the slow casual player who’s still progressing +5 keys and just dipped their feet in normal raiding. Worried that they can’t enjoy the new patch content because they’re not done with the old stuff yet.
2 Likes
ahem, it reads, “we know you don’t like waiting for content, we don’t care, its impossible for us to get the balance wrong. There is more than enough avaliable.”
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Awwwww, how sweet of him to care so much about me.
Too bad I do not believe a word he says.
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That doesn’t make any sense for content that has no expiration date. People use this justification a lot - they don’t want to feel like they have to compete with “no-lifers” who voraciously consume content and power, and they think it’s a good thing to have content spaced out so they don’t feel compelled to do everything within a certain time frame.
Problem with that is that with something like Horrific Visions, the time-gating creates exactly that issue. They could just release it all and leave it there for the rest of the season for everyone to complete as they will, but instead they implement it in a way that’s artificially limited to make players feel like they need to do it on a schedule.
For me, it just seems like a post-hoc justification for cutting a few hours worth of actual content into 30 minute weekly slices in order to spread it thin. If the content is good, people will do it. If it’s good enough ,they’ll even continue to do it after they’ve already finished and obtained the rewards. The only thing that should matter is whether the content is fun and whether there’s enough of it to justify paying next month’s subscription in order to keep playing.
When Blizzard makes decisions like this, it almost seems like a tacit admission on their part that they don’t have faith to that end, and that they’d rather just play the gambit of treating their players like lab animals in a skinner box just because they can get away with it.
11 Likes
Yeah give me all 3 expansions at once Blizzard! I want to play the game at my pace.
1 Like
We’re talking about filler content for the second half of a season, not a full expansion. Stop being dramatic.
8 Likes
Yes, wanting to be free of over-gating means wanting to play 3 expansions all at once. What good is words if people just decide to interpret it however they want.
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Oh i thought we were pulling victim cards, my bad Gs.
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As long as you understand your error, you’re forgiven.
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I want to get all the masks and be done with this content that we did before… But I have to wait for 3 weeks to unlock everything. And there is nothing special about the rewards. No uber powered things nor interesting cosmetics. + we did this before. We did this. It is nothing new. We did this before.
So there isnt a single reason for this timegating.
1 Like
Yea wanting to rush through content is a sign the content isn’t really enjoyed, and i think a lot of people are in that boat.
For people new to this im sure its a much fresher experience. The visions are unique, but having played them in BFA myself, we’ve had this.
Time gating this kind of content is bad. Raiding i get. We don’t want people raiding nonstop for months completely no lifing it, but this kind of filler content should nit be gated imo, or very limited gating.
4 Likes
As a long time player, I don’t understand the sudden outrage over time gating.
This game has always been time gated. Remember daily heroics and valor points? That’s a time gate.
So why the river of tears now?
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When they drop a patch and the season isn’t delayed by a week to a month, I’ll believe him. Until then he’s lying as usual.
3 Likes
After 15 years of it, people want more fredsom in their pace. Gating is also not what Blizz thinks it is, and poses more of a risk of losing subs than locking them in.
When you restrict and hold back like this, some will comply, but many will also feel too controlled and leave. So it’ll have the opposite effect that they want.
Its like they’re not confident enough in the game to naturally have subscribers.
3 Likes
A less cynical possibility would be that Blizzard’s operations staff is stretched thin and overwhelmed.
Everything they release will have to be supported by operations. Operations will have to “put out fires” so everything functions as intended.
The more the development team releases, the more “fires” operations has to handle at once.
It’s also harder to troubleshoot when you make a lot of changes all at once - any of those changes could be the reason behind a bug.
2 Likes