If you are using the recent 'survivor' poll on 9th level spells as a bellwether, I think you might be reading too much into it. There were people voting for Weird in that poll, for pete's sake! That said, I agree that the potency of Gate is somewhat dependent on the DM, and the caster having knowledge of the name of a specific creature (probably not the same as a True Name, but the spell makes a big deal out of it not being a pseudonym and such). It is just that there are other, worse 9th level spells.