The entire point of a reward is that it’s going to be denied from you until you achieve something.
From the on, the intersubjective value of a reward is determined mostly be three factors:
How challenging it is to earn
How rare it is among the playerbase
How interesting the reward is
All three of these factors are important. For example, if you overcome a very difficult challenge that only 2% of the playerbase has managed to beat, and all you get for it is an achievement, then the reward is very lame.
Similarly, if you obtain a very cool piece of armor by beating a difficult challenge, but this challenge remains in the game forever, this means that during certain seasons, it will be significantly easier to obtain - which will cheapen the value of your reward.
As a result, the most valuable reward in the game right now are Gladiator mounts:
They’re extremely difficult to obtain.
They are time limited and exclusive to their respective season.
They look cool. Except in The War Within, those are very lame.
This isn’t my personal opinion, by the way.
Gladiator mounts are the most expensive service you can purchase on boosting websites for a reason. See the notion of intersubjective value mentioned earlier.
Conclusion
Gatekeeping is good. There is value in rarity.
Mists of Pandaria Challenge Mode appearances, Mage Tower weapons and old Elite PvP sets should never be brought back.
Instead, new time limited rewards should be created, and locked behind equally difficult challenges.
We rarely have the same viewpoints Slapface, but on this I agree.
Content being released at a specific rate is for specific reasons.
Blizzard can set the narative at the pace they want to allow for meaningful story beats.
If it’s all available on day 1, it will be completed on day 1, then the playerbase complains of no content.
I think a big point of wanting those sets is that people see really really cool sets then they learn that they can’t ever have them wich is a bummer but then they look at what they can get and see that it’s not nearly as good and cool.
And then they get a bit frustrated and demand the good stuff
At least that’s what the people said that I asked why they want the stuff
Gatekeeping is necessary for the health of an MMO… otherwise people would just rush stuff then stop, and then queues and group activities would drop significantly after a few weeks. Then people will be spamming the forums about lack of players, takes forever to do stuff, queues are long, etc etc etc.
You might want to recheck that. At the moment (at least in one of the servers I can check) gladiator boost from 0-2400 in 2v2 arenas is between 7-8M gold, while mythic Ansurek is 13m, with 8/8m being 19m.
Generally I would agree, but I think I have some issues with number 2. Rarity also has to do with how many players played at that time, and how accessible the content was, for example:
The mage tower was challenging but pretty accessible. The fact that you could almost always give it a try as a solo player made it so that a pretty big portion of the playerbase went for it.
Challenge mode dungeons on the other hand were pretty easy to complete, but because they needed a full group, many players were discouraged to try them (and thus being way rarer than mage tower).
At the end, I wouldn’t consider rarity to be of any particular value, since it does not impact my own experience of the game. On the other hand I am ok with rewards being designed and obtainable in a certain timeframe (CE, gladiator, etc.) just because blizzard does not want that reward to be invalidated by the way easier difficulty.
Litterally everything has been timegated in TWW and we still have people complaining on the forums that ques take ages and theres not enough players. Only difference now is that people are leaving Mid goals because it often takes weeks/months to do something that was only interesting for 2 days. Timegating doesnt keep people around, fun gameplay does.
Its like throwing a party and after youve chained people the the walls saying “must have been a fun party, people stayed all night”
Probably why both the Anniversary event grounds and Siren Isle are empty now. Players cry about gatekeeping from day one, and Blizzard give in, and everyone burn through content intended for weeks or months, within a couple of days.
No no siren island would be dead either way.
You get your weeklies complete them. And wait for next week.
Or as it is now. Weeklies then citrines then wait for next week
Which is why, in my conclusion, I say it’s important to keep adding equally amazing rewards.
I’m also not opposed adding recolors of previous rewards. You can’t have the real thing though.
Yes but we’re not going to change the entire human psyche here on the WoW forums, so we might as well consider a path that takes into consideration how people actually work.
For example - I prefer staggered content so I have no impulse/incentive to spam boring quests nonstop until done. I prefer when they release a chapter a week or something so it’s not just… boring, you know? I get it - people want EVERYTHING ALL AT ONCE. But it’s lame?
As for limited time rewards - they are fine, Idc if I missed out on something. Too bad - move on. Giving it as freebies later is bad too.
Well anything that is FOMO is just rubbish to me. Also, you have the achievement to say you earnt it in the time it was hard to wave around and feel special with so why does it matter? By the time other people get whatever reward it was, the people who originally got it won’t be using it anyway. I find it silly.
Having the top raiders/M+/PvPers get something special is fine… though I really wish I could PvP for those set recolours and mounts. However, if you can get those 5 years later via marks or something, does it matter?
