World of Warcraft: Is the lockout a cop out?

World of Warcraft has felt dim of late, since the majority of the original development team left the project for Blizzard's new, secret MMORPG. With only two of the original developers left, as a player it is quite clear that the quality of content is evaporating faster than water in sunlight.

I was thoroughly disappointed with Trial of the Crusader, a raid instance based around a small fighting arena with only 5 bosses, the minimal effort put into the instance was highly evident. Instead of giving us a more inviting instance with a higher number of ugly monsters to bludgeon to our hearts content, we received the same instance with 4 different difficulty settings. Oh. Joy.

One thing I am thankful for is that the instance was free from "trash" mobs getting in your way when you really wanted to just murder a boss.

Although this instance brought us tiered gear, the rest of the available items were once again disappointing, shameless, re-coloured models of older gear designs. The bad aspects outweighed the good, so it must have some saving grace, right?

Well, I thought that grace would be Icecrown, the ultimatum to the current expansion pack, exploring the richest and most interesting story in the Warcraft universe, that of the Lich King and Arthas.

Unfortunately, I was wrong in this assumption. In Icecrown, we have to wait 28 days before each stage is unlocked. This means we only get to experience 4 bosses per month, with 4 tiers to battle our way through.

With the next expansion Cataclysm awaiting a release date, is locking playable areas just a shameless attempt to drag out the final piece of content?