Legion Developer Q&A - Ion Hazzikostas

[Jibjub]

They need an open world, glider experience like ArcheAge. Just accept it, Blizzard. Embrace the freedom!

[ZedtheDead]

I did a mythic dungeon the other night with a demo lock and they had an 840 item level and they were tearing up the charts. They were a bit weaker on trash but on boss fights they were about even with the other dps in the group. Maybe the warlocks who are crying are undergeared and underskilled. They seem fine to me.

The main complaints with warlocks are not number based for the most part other than the randomness of destro mastery. The problems are mechanical as in the rotations of all 3 specs feel clunky, slow, and unrewarding, especially demonology.

[MatadorMedia]

Warlocks were addressed because the forums were spammed with over 1000 posts crying about the state of the class; they couldn't ignore that amount of negative feedback. Even though Warlocks are in a great place right now imo; they are fun, survivable, and good DPS. People will always complain.

[ElDoorO]

I did a mythic dungeon the other night with a demo lock and they had an 840 item level and they were tearing up the charts. They were a bit weaker on trash but on boss fights they were about even with the other dps in the group. Maybe the warlocks who are crying are undergeared and underskilled. They seem fine to me.

This is certainly possible. Let's examine this though.

You have an unusually high amount of people complaining -- an amount not normal consistent with something being wrong. Something. We don't know what. It could be a bug, it could be stats, it could be gear, it could be the player sucks, it could be anything.

You mentioned two parts: Undergeared and underskilled. Let's ignore the other possibilities and talk about these two.

How is one supposed to know if they are undergeared? What mechanism in the game tells you "hey, you really have a shit trinket and that weapon isn't progressed very far and those relics, buddy, are shit -- this is going to suck to be you" -- there isn't one. That's not cool. Should a warlock need to be 840 when my havoc DH needs to be 830? How can a player know it's their gear?

Underskilled: How does a player know they aren't playing right? Let's use demo as an example. Without going to Icy Veins, Noxxic, or any other third party website beyond Blizzard's forums and the game itself -- how do you know what you're supposed to do?

Yes, I know Noxxic is shit -- but too many people don't know that and Blizzard doesn't endorse any of them. So how will Jim Bob know he should use IV instead of Noxxic? Or even be aware IV exists at all? Or even Noxxic?

None of those tell you about interrupts either. My Vengeance DH has three methods of silencing folks plus one AoE fear. How many DH's think to use the belf ability or Sigil of Misery to buy their healer some time? I say all this to really mean: The WoW dev team is complete and utter shit and explaining to players how they are supposed to play their character "properly". For players just coming back and giving WoW another shot -- that's kind of a big deal.

Why is it so hard for Blizzard to articulate how a class is supposed to be played?

[Binko]

What an smug and self-serving ass this guy is. He says that people were unhappy for different and conflicting reasons so he just couldn't figure out the problems and therefore they did nothing. What a crock. If a huge swath of the community is unhappy for a bunch of different reasons then you have a big problem you have to start working to solve, starting with some back and forth communication. This guy should never be allowed to communicate with the press or public.

[elvor0]

I asked the guy how he was liking it so far and he said it was fun. I mentioned all the forum tears and he lol'd. I would've liked to pick his brain more but alas, I didn't get the chance.

That's just one person though. There's also a few people that like new ret, but the general consensus(shared by myself) is that it's spammy, unrewarding and too simplistic.

[smaktat]

The slowfall toy nerf was bullcrap.

nigga buy a glider or make your own game damn

[Deleted]

* random whinning *

[Shadocat]

Unbelieveable.
Instead of all this BS he just could have said that they are done with Warlocks.
Three shards will not change that they tore apart Destruction for no reason.

[Adi91]

TBH, I hate the reputation requirement on Arcway and CoS... :/

[Zephre]

In the past current content was only players from your realm, but in Legion merging and splitting happen in the entire world.

What the hell is this? It sounds like he's implying CRZ will show up in current content at some point. Warcraftdevs recently confirmed CRZ isn't intentional in the world and order halls. I can only speak for myself but I'm done if they neglect low pop realms in favour of shoving CRZ down our throats in current content.

[Farabee]

TBH, I hate the reputation requirement on Arcway and CoS... :/

This feedback on the glacial pace of Nightfallen rep was given to Ion in beta and he stubbornly trudged ahead with it. His comments here clearly show that he doesn't even play the game he helps create at this point.

The amount of time you spend actually doing the Suramar storyline pales in comparison to the amount of time you spend waiting on World Quests to pop, or praying you get that extra Withered Army training so you can push that bar forward just a bit more. I very much doubt most players are even going to bother going further than Revered once raids are out, and the casuals aren't even going to bother with that since they'll have LFR as a gear source. I'd venture to say the majority of the playerbase as it is, is never going to run either dungeon or finish that questline.

It's a real shame because it is one of the best storylines Blizzard have come up with in recent years.

[Szeeshan]

This feedback on the glacial pace of Nightfallen rep was given to Ion in beta and he stubbornly trudged ahead with it. His comments here clearly show that he doesn't even play the game he helps create at this point.

The amount of time you spend actually doing the Suramar storyline pales in comparison to the amount of time you spend waiting on World Quests to pop, or praying you get that extra Withered Army training so you can push that bar forward just a bit more. I very much doubt most players are even going to bother going further than Revered once raids are out, and the casuals aren't even going to bother with that since they'll have LFR as a gear source. I'd venture to say the majority of the playerbase as it is, is never going to run either dungeon or finish that questline.

It's a real shame because it is one of the best storylines Blizzard have come up with in recent years.

I don't mind it too much really. It really isn't too bad if you think about it. I unlocked it the other day, a little over a week after launch, and I didn't do anything special. I just did the world quests in Suramar when they popped up, and the scenario when it showed up every few days (which I messed up pretty hard once).

People are just making the grind look harder than it actually is.

[Gorsameth]

A nice section for Warlocks

and nothing about Shadow Priests having 0 use in dungeons...

qq.

[Szeeshan]

This feedback on the glacial pace of Nightfallen rep was given to Ion in beta and he stubbornly trudged ahead with it. His comments here clearly show that he doesn't even play the game he helps create at this point.

The amount of time you spend actually doing the Suramar storyline pales in comparison to the amount of time you spend waiting on World Quests to pop, or praying you get that extra Withered Army training so you can push that bar forward just a bit more. I very much doubt most players are even going to bother going further than Revered once raids are out, and the casuals aren't even going to bother with that since they'll have LFR as a gear source. I'd venture to say the majority of the playerbase as it is, is never going to run either dungeon or finish that questline.

It's a real shame because it is one of the best storylines Blizzard have come up with in recent years.

I agree 100%. It was bad enough they had to throw CRZ into the older zones, making it hard to get anything done rarewise, but now they're going to try to force CRZ on us in the new content? It's bullshit. It also makes the Hungering questline so much harder, orb 6 is near impossible right now, between the people griefing it. I'm interested in seeing what they do with the multitap orb, if it'll have a period of time where everyone can use it, but the easiest fix would be to just disable CRZ in that area.

[Radaney]

This feedback on the glacial pace of Nightfallen rep was given to Ion in beta and he stubbornly trudged ahead with it. His comments here clearly show that he doesn't even play the game he helps create at this point.

The amount of time you spend actually doing the Suramar storyline pales in comparison to the amount of time you spend waiting on World Quests to pop, or praying you get that extra Withered Army training so you can push that bar forward just a bit more. I very much doubt most players are even going to bother going further than Revered once raids are out, and the casuals aren't even going to bother with that since they'll have LFR as a gear source. I'd venture to say the majority of the playerbase as it is, is never going to run either dungeon or finish that questline.

It's a real shame because it is one of the best storylines Blizzard have come up with in recent years.

Here is Ions character; http://us.battle.net/wow/en/characte...rgthock/simple

But yeh. "He doesn't play the game".

Rofl.

And people will complete the entire storyline as it is borderline required for leveling your artifact.

[moredred1811]

Warlocks were addressed because the forums were spammed with over 1000 posts crying about the state of the class; they couldn't ignore that amount of negative feedback. Even though Warlocks are in a great place right now imo; they are fun, survivable, and good DPS. People will always complain.

If that was true they would have done something to ret's boring rotation.

[jk1895]

Can i fly in Legion at maximum level? No? Then keep this shit expansion away of me.

[MatadorMedia]

If that was true they would have done something to ret's boring rotation.

This is the first expansion I've ever enjoyed Ret Pally. Try adjusting your talents for a different rotation?

[Deleted]

Already unsubbed from this expansion, everything is great and better than before if you exclude the dungeons, but man the dungeons killed any enthusiasm i had.

Got 15 alts (lvl 100), leveled 3 to 110 then the quests became boring, geared 2 of those to around ilvl 825, then on both (dps classes) hit a brick wall doing HC's, not kidding did 10 HC's in a row, 1 single item dropped which had the worst possible stats, and was a lower ilvl item than what i had, there is just zero nada zilch bad luck protection it seems. (No i dont expect gear to be thrown everywhere, but i do expect at least something useful to drop in 10 HC's), and at the same time seeing guildmembers getting drops non stop, most of them being warforged etc, just killed any my mood completely.

Both guildmembers and PUGs are demanding 835-840 ilvl to get in to mythics, so that's not viable.

Add on top of that, that every clear of the new dungs are taking significantly longer than in wod (30-45min on my server), and the fact that i don't really enjoy any of the new dungeons at all, it's just not fun anymore, so can't really see myself ever doing them again on whatever difficulty.

Yeah there is WQ which are dropping current ilvl-5 for all of them, so you need even more luck getting it to proc warforged, and yeah there is the class hall pieces with sub optimal stats on 3/4 pieces.

Will probably get back when the raids release, hopefully they will be better, as the loot progression at least is somewhat determistic (as in stuff _will_ drop).