WoW Dragonflight: The upcoming expansion also relies on timegating

The entire WoW expansion Shadowlands was packed from front to back with all sorts of features and systems. Some of them worked great (for example, the Threads of Fate), while others won only a few friends (for example, the Shards of Domination). With the upcoming WoW expansion Dragonflight, developers are now throwing the unpopular things overboard and keeping and improving the positively received features. However, there is one major exception where developers do not (yet) agree with the loud voices from the community - the issue of timegating.

Hiding various content and features of a patch behind time lock and key until it is eventually unlocked is a common thread throughout WoW Shadowlands. From Pact campaigns to Catch-Up features, unlocking dual Legendaries or the Creation Catalyst, many things required us to wait a while before we could get access. And that's exactly what many players didn't really like. Bad news for all opponents of timegating - not much will change in Dragonflight.

Blizzard likes timegating

In one of the many interviews surrounding the presentation of WoW (buy now )

Among other things, timegating in the current raid, Mausoleum of the First, was cited as an example. But also things like the creation catalyst, which allows you to craft your own tier set items, was clearly designed with this in mind. This way, the developers wanted to prevent players from feeling forced to grind again in order to gain a gameplay advantage.

On the other hand, there will still be various content that is linked to the progression of the players and where you can earn a small time advantage with massive effort - like the Ciphers of the First in Patch 9.2. With the Pact campaign, it was a bit annoying to always have to wait a week. Source: Blizzard

Majority or just loud voices?

If we look around our editorial team, most of them are actually quite satisfied with the use of timegating, as it was used in Shadowlands. Others, on the other hand, don't think very highly of it. Of course, it's understandable if you want to play through the Pact campaign in one piece, for example, and don't want to wait a week each time to see what happens next.

But it was the elimination of grind for features like double Legendaries that found many fans among us. As an alternative, without grind and timegating, you could of course have unlocked everything directly. But that would have devalued a lot of things, which in our eyes wouldn't have been the best thing either.

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We therefore ask ourselves whether it is really the majority of players who have a problem with the principle system of timegating - or whether it is just a loudly shouting minority. Maybe one or the other understands timegating in a completely different way than we and the developers do. Feel free to tell us what you think about it in the comments.

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