To counter this. I’m actually on board with time gating, when it makes sense for story & immersion purposes.
Good Timegating
- To set the pace for a story
- To allow players to experience things at a set pace (Covenant Campaign)
- To set the pace for power progression (Renown)
Bad Timegating
- When the story is no longer relevant, yet the same restrictions are imposed (e.g. Requirements to complete Campaign before Korthia, or even the Covenant Campaign in 9.1)
- When the story does not wrap up nicely for the week (Broken Shore)
- When the entire story is irrelevant to the current world (Having to do BfA before Shadowlands as a new player.)
- When power progression can be bypassed by tedious grinding (Korthia, Maw, AP)
To use some examples from this expansion.
Example 1: After 9.0 the Covenant were somewhat unified, the stories had come to their conclusion and in 9.1 they worked together. The world of 9.1 is now different from the world of 9.0 however if you create a new character now, you have a mix of both stories and you cannot progress into the current world until you have hopped through what is essentially a time machine story.
MMOs evolve, yet our worlds only evolve when our characters have had the experiences.
Example 2: New players have to go through the BfA story before they can get into Shadowlands. The only part of the BfA story that is relevant to Shadowlands is the max level story of the Faction campaign, but that’s a max level story, not the levelling story. The new player experience would be enhanced if it was all shadowlands imo.