A thought on solving the content gating issue. Long read, pls bare with me.

[Havenae]

The content gating 'issue' is not an 'issue' at all, it's just spoiled people who think that the subscription they're paying entitles them to have everything immediately, without any bit of work.

Actually it isn't right now. But it will be. As time rolls on and more expansions come, they can't expect fresh players to go through every bit of content from 2.0 on. Otherwise they should just expect to not get new customers.

Imagine, if you will, that today you just started an older MMO like wow or even Everquest, because you saw they had a cool new expansions out and you wanted to experience it. Now imagine if those games required you follow the main story from level 1 before you got to that expansion content. You're talking a decade or more of regular content. You'd likely reach it just before they were wrapping it up and everyone else who had been playing g was long past running it.

It's just not conducive to pulling in new customers. Right now it's not too bad although I'll grant you I've heard plenty of complaints already from new and returning players. They won't be able to pull this off again I the next one.

They at the very least need to remove some of the bloat quests from the main story.