MMOs and Gating content

Kanter at Zouchin Village, Kun Lai Summit

After my last post, since I didn't get any suggestions on zones, I did what most people would do and searched on the web.  MMO champion had a poll about just this question.  Four zone scored close to the same, Jade Forest, Valley of the Four Winds, Kun Lai Summit and Dread Wastes.  I had already completed the Jade Forest quests, had decided to Krasarang Wilds with Kanter to make it easier for him to visit Pagle for fishing and left Valley of the Four Winds unfinished for Kantra my priest.

So I decided that I'd just get the flight path to Kun Lai Summit and head to the Dread Wastes leaving Kun Lai Summit to Kantra.  I went back to the internet to search for the path or quests that gets you to the Dread Wastes and found that you had to have a quest and you can only get the quest at level 89.

To me, this is patronizing and totally unnecessary.  I remember in vanilla WoW the excitement of going through both Wetlands and Feralas well under level, knowing that if I was attacked, there was a good chance I was going to die.  Wetlands allowed me to get to  Darnasus and Feralas was necessary at the time to get higher level alchemy recipes.  Feralas is still my favorite WoW zone, partially because of that trip.

Now, I guess because they want you to see things in order, when they think you are ready, they put zones behind barriers where you have to complete a quest at a certain level.  I believe I should be able to decide when I want to go to an area almost all the time.

I do remember a few cases where I like gates to content.  Finishing the quest to open the gate to Searing Gorge was exciting, particularly after seeing it when flying between Ironforge and Stormwind.  Raid gates for Onyxia and Karazhan were exciting to work through and I felt like I was worthy when I completed them.

However, gates just to enter a zone don't make any sense at all to me.  It reminds me a little of what I don't like about Apple.  They seem to think that they know better how you should use their products.  I'm the player, I'm the customer, I should get to decide how I want to play the game (or use their product).

At least I enjoyed the 'Thunder King' part of Kun Lai Summit.  I may going ahead and complete the zone although I'm almost level 89 now.  Kantra may just get to experience Townlong Steppes instead (one of the least favorite zones in the MMO champion poll).