Look how well it worked and how many people quit because they got bored of not getting upgrades.
It’s already been confirmed that it’s time gated.
People are going to complain about it taking a long while. Personally, I don’t care.
There are quite a few threads on this topic already. Lots of people are against it.
Except I can pull up dozens and dozens of youtube videos about it and all the excitement around it. Videos from top WoW youtubers.
They could find other ways to work in bonuses, sure. As for the traditional 2/3/4/5/6/7/X piece bonues, I doubt they will come back. They were too rigid and forced players.
Your progression isn’t guaranteed if you can’t beat an enrage or soft-enrage. That, by definitely, is a timer. You just won’t have a sanity timer ticking down while you afk between pulls.
If a boss has a tight five minute berserk timer, then yeah, it’s a clock-race. Not in the same fashion as a mythic+, but definitely similar.
EDIT: Oh and since we are claiming people aren’t reading or listening to the news: “If he reaches the end of the level or kills all the players in the level, your run ends and you are thrown out of Torghast.”
Yeah, that’s a timer alright… He’s basically nemesis. You can’t kill him, but you can stop him for a short time. I imagine the time he’s stopped for gets shorter and shorter each time you do so. “The Tarragrue cannot be defeated, but there are whispers that it is possible to slow him—if only for a moment.”
Basically, you’ll be able to do the easy levels of it, like doing the starting areas of a HV. You won’t be able to easily push the harder levels until you have more upgrades. That’s where your real rewards are going to come from. You will die working on progression, Tarragrue will spawn and you’ll be limited on time to progress through the content. This will keep you from cheesing your way to the top by pulling a pack, nuking one, dying, coming back, killing a second mob, dying, etc etc.