Why is Blizzard intent on putting free to play phone game mechanics in an MMO where we not only pay for a new box every two years but also 15 dollars a month roughly.
In 9.2 the research you have to do to get flying is very timegated.
There should absolutely not be timegating in a paid MMO like this. These are mechanics you find in free to play games like warframe and warpath as gimmicks to try and get people to spend money on time skips.
Why is this type of stuff in WoW? Why do you have to wait 18 hours for your research in Zereth Mortis to complete even though you already farmed the resources to complete the research?
Who is developing the game, and sees that get added, and think’s thats a good addition and is somehow fun for any players at all?
Again this is a PAID MMO, not a free to play phone game, please start developing this game as though it is the former not the latter as you have been.
Also, why all the hassle to get flying? It used to be you just bought flying at max level and nobody minded that.
They want to protect that income so they implement systems that take a month for you to establish then another month for you to get to the point where you can grind it then another 6 months to benefit from it.
They hired a bunch of Mobile developers because that’s where the money is and that’s what they want - money. They grossly miscalculated how badly this would be received. And since going to Business School doesn’t teach you anything about an industry, they’re clueless when it comes to building WoW mobile games that are completely separate from WoW.
No one cares if King developers Mobile games using Warcraft IP. And it would be an easy win. But rather than get WoW players to play mobile games, they want to make WoW mobile.
Timegating is okay to spread out some of the content. My biggest beef is the absurd amount of time gating. Everything in this game is now timegated to such an extreme amount that it hurts to play because it all feels like a chore.
Well, that is an interesting question. We have had gated crafting/research professions and other systems since Vanilla. For even more fun, some things require a specific location or mechanism in game. Mooncloth required first farming Fel cloth and then a pool and was on a 24 hour cooldown. So so many things are.
Why? Usually to make the material, discovery, or completion feel meaningful and “earned”, so to speak. It can also impact the economy, availability of gear, availability of people who raid, etc. Depending on what is behind the time gate.
Blizzard has been gating crafting/research for 17 years. Predating phone games. Pretty sure this is not some new nefarious plot.
Have you never done any of the crafting where you can only make one item per day or research one thing per day?
I did give an example already. Tailoring Mooncloth had a 24 hour cooldown. You could make one a day. Transmutes historically have a 24 hour cooldown. Profession research has a 24 hour cooldown. Legion Class hall research had a cooldown.
We have had cooldowns forever. It is not related to mobile games.
Now you can speculate about it being related to the game having a subscription and them wanting people to have a reason to log in each day - which extends play time. You can speculate that it makes those higher end gated activities feel more worthwhile and “earned”.
Phones though? No. They have been doing this since before most people even had mobile phones, much less phones that could play games.
as a casual player i want to be able to spend 18 hours straight grinding rep, complaining the whole time about how i’m “forced” to do it asap so i “don’t fall behind”, then complain that there’s nothing to do
So, if they were to remove the time gates people like yourself would no life all the content. After about two weeks you’d be in here screaming that a content drought in a paid game is unacceptable.
Time gating is there to simply pace the rate of consumption with the development time for new content.
The overall game gets worse when one group no-life’s everything and most players play at a more measured pace. This destroys the multiplayer part of the mmo.
…… or you could just be cynical and believe it’s done to pad a metric like “time played”
One of the biggest reasons people unsub is they feel they’ve completed their character.
Although I think Blizzard is flirting with another reason which is arbitrary but blatant mechanism to keep players from feeling they’ve completed their character.
In short, they can’t get content out quick enough.
So it’s always one big game of hide the progress gate to keep them subbed one extra month.
This type of thing has existed since Warlords. It has nothing to do with going free to play. Old Republic is free to play and doesn’t have research times on systems.
But I find it odd there are some players calling out timegating now with 9.2
Shadowlands was plagued with various forms of it, but only when it hinders your ability to get flying “quickly” does it become a problem.
Timegating has been in WoW since… forever. Timegating due to Blizzards apparent inability to make OPTIONAL content. For players to do on the side. They are forced essentially to drag the progression of all players to a halt. Because if they didn’t players would run out of content in a week.
So, you have things like…
World Quests taking longer, very few kill 1 rare mob ones anymore.
The Oribos flight path, and or any flight path from one area to another
The segmentation of Conduit and Soulbind when the expansion first launched
Pathfinder in general
and I’m sure a few others that I’m forgetting, but all of those, with the exception of pathfinder is changes done in Shadowlands to slow the progression of players, to increase play time stats. Thus timegating.
I’m still wildly confused after all of Shadowlands, anyone is surprised that there will be a ridiculous grind that will slow any hopes of getting flying quickly in 9.2. Blizzard will be blizzard even after losing majority of their playerbase.
Gotta keep the remaining players on as long as possible! /s
