Time gated content (sucks)

[Vyk]

Personally, I just don't have time for MMOs anymore, so that model really turns me off.

Yeah, I can't make a game part of my everyday life for more than a week or two. And it'd have to have some pretty stellar pacing and content for even that and MMOs aren't set up that way. The only MMO that's ever really interested me is The Old Republic, because I've heard it has a great one-player story, can be enjoyed without being forced to join a guild, or do raids, or whatever else MMOs force you to do. I can enjoy my game, my story, my pace, blow through it if I want, and be done. Respect to BioWare for that one

[Scotty_ffgamer]

I will say for The Old Republic (if I remember from the bit I played), you still had dungeons to do to continue the story. These required multiple people to do, and it's really no more solo friendly than something like XIV (which also focuses a good bit on story). The community I played with in The Old Republic were pretty jerkish too. I tried to do a few of the low level dungeons for the first time (and I'd say it was my first time too), and I'd immediately get kicked from groups because I was watching the cutscenes in the dungeon to play for the story. Every time. XIV so far seems to have a much nicer community for that.

Not that that matters for this thread. I do hate the time gating thing that exists in a lot of free to play models. I generally don't play free to play games though. I've got XIV and then I have mostly more old school rpgs that I'm going through.

[Skyblade]

Personally, I just don't have time for MMOs anymore, so that model really turns me off.

Yeah, I can't make a game part of my everyday life for more than a week or two. And it'd have to have some pretty stellar pacing and content for even that and MMOs aren't set up that way. The only MMO that's ever really interested me is The Old Republic, because I've heard it has a great one-player story, can be enjoyed without being forced to join a guild, or do raids, or whatever else MMOs force you to do. I can enjoy my game, my story, my pace, blow through it if I want, and be done. Respect to BioWare for that one

This is true, and it does make The Old Republic my favorite MMO.

Unfortunately for the game itself, it does mean that it lacks staying power. Once you've completed the story (or several stories, since each character class has a different, personalized one which is well worth playing), there isn't a lot of incentive to keep going back. The expansion stories aren't as personalized, and are way shorter, and the daily grind is then all that remains.

Still, WELL worth playing for the class stories, especially since it's available as a Free-To-Play.

[Loony BoB]

Time gated content is a sadly necessary evil in MMOs for pre-mentioned reasons. I don't like time gated content outside of MMOs, though. For an MMO to get around time gates, they would need to give enough content to keep everyone interested for much longer times, and that would probably require a massive sub cost and/or be incredibly buggy and/or have an awful economy and terrible stability of population.

[Denmark]

Pokemon Gold/Silver kind of had time gating for not-super-important events not directly related to the main plot. Like certain Pokemon only appearing at certain times of day, different events available on different days of the week, that kind of thing. But none of it was required to advance the plot, so that was one instance where time gating was done well, imo.