Tom Chilton Switching Projects, Ion Hazzikostas now Game Director

[McNeil]

Not sure what to think of this, but the game needs to shake up already. I was hoping that it'd be better than WoD, but its slowly looking the same or even worse.

[Raetary]

doomsayers all over the place i see.

[Jotunhammer]

And another rat leaves the ship. It is quiero obvious that WoW is sinking. They are all leaving for other positions and there is none with greater ideas left behind, they leave behind ppl that got about as much ideas os my mouse. This will be a crash, when they said they would be more frequent with expansions etc, they now instead everyone leaves. So yeah, there might be expansions life before, change the color of the mob slightly, copy dungeons and locations and not a brilliant idea anywhere.

[tripl3x]

blizz drones grasping for straws all over the place I see

[Deleted]

I don't mind Ion at all. His people skills may not be the best, but these are developers and designers, not PR people. This may be a good change for WoW.

You do realize that Ion wasn't a designer or a developer before he came to WoW? He has been a lawyer when Blizzard hired him, which is pretty much closer to a PR-guy that should know how and what to say than a developer or designer.

Just... food for thought.

[Deleted]

I've discussed it online (in different places) and offline about the chance of still seeing an Overwatch MMO.

If Titan was well into development chances are that they have taken a chunk of it, grabbed the most prominent characters and slapped them all into a "smaller" game to not only generate initial hype but also establish Lore. Just like they did with Warcraft to start off with.

Curiously enough that thought has retreated to the back of my mind until today... Actually woke up thinking about it again and have spent the whole day thinking about it and now... I read these news. Awesome coincidence.

(Keep in mind that these are just my thoughts. Not here pretending I'm giving concrete information. haha )

Not happening, they dodged a bullet with Titan, which was MMO Overwatch. Overwatch is fun, for about 20 minutes, like all of those fps arena games. No depth.

[Super Kami Dende]

Ion is an awesome dude, I look forward to what WoW has to come with him at the Helm.

Also, with David Brevik and Tom Chilton both being in unnamed projects at Blizzard I can only hope something amazing is in the works.

[Sam the Wiser]

Meh, it can only get worse at this point.

[Granyala]

Personally I hate to see Chilton leaving. He's got so much experience with WoW, that you can't replace that easily. I mean come on we're talking 12 years. You most certainly cannot replace it with a guy who was originally a "blood sucking lawyer" before coming to Blizzard. (Ion Hazzikostas - NOT a fan of his)

You do realize that Chilton is still there, right? Ion can ask him for advice anytime he needs to.

[Gadzooks]

I kind of figured Chilton was going to take Brack's spot, or move on to another game, when Ion got bumped up to assistant game director last year or the year before that.

Will be interesting to see what comes of this. I think a lot of problems with the game are from a lack of leadership and vision, but I don't see Ion as a leader-type. Losing Stockton and Metzen is a pretty big blow to the game - there's no debating that. But the game was going to get new blood eventually, and that time is here.

I wonder who's getting Ion's slot?

[Kellorion]

I like both, and hope Tom goes to work on HotS. Not like fucking Dead Eyes Holinka is in charge now.

[Goron24]

At least its not holinka, hate that guy

[Gadzooks]

I've discussed it online (in different places) and offline about the chance of still seeing an Overwatch MMO.

If Titan was well into development chances are that they have taken a chunk of it, grabbed the most prominent characters and slapped them all into a "smaller" game to not only generate initial hype but also establish Lore. Just like they did with Warcraft to start off with.

Curiously enough that thought has retreated to the back of my mind until today... Actually woke up thinking about it again and have spent the whole day thinking about it and now... I read these news. Awesome coincidence.

(Keep in mind that these are just my thoughts. Not here pretending I'm giving concrete information. haha )

You'd see a hiring pattern for a project that big. Which could still happen, but until it happens, it's more likely he's going over to the unannounced Diablo project, or they're repurposing the Starcraft team into something else. I highly doubt that they'd want to run two MMOs at the same time.

Granted, his new project could be in the initial planning stages, and years from release, so there's a small possibility it could be a new MMO, and WoW is going to slowly go into maintenance mode over the next couple of years.

Watch, tho - the legacy server crowd is going to insist he's leaving to work on legacy servers.

[Cazmosis]

No you aren't...

Yes I am...


See how easy this is?

[Gadzooks]

- Kalgan was originally leading Titan before it got scrapped (when I suspect it was an MMO), and now he's leaving to run another new project (return of the next Blizzard MMO)

Kalgan, or Chilton, had nothing to do with Titan. He has worked on WoW since it was in alpha. Jeff Kaplan (Tigole) was working on Titan, he moved over to Overwatch with Metzen when they killed the project.

I don't know why you put spoiler tags on all of that - it's complete nonsense with no factual backing whatsoever.

- - - Updated - - -

he was hired as a lawyer for Blizzard towards the end of WotLK so he didnt have influence on raid design until much later.

Um....nope.

[turboether]

Quite a promotion, gg Ion.

[Shullski]

Honestly - this is the best news I have seen for the game in a while. People who say otherwise are doomsdayers. I just saw no spirit in Tom Chilton. Dont get me wrong - Im sure it was there, but he never really got across any philosophy for what they did. He didnt seem to stand for anything at all.

Ion has been at the spearhead of this post WoD movement that Legion has came with ....with unprecedented community communication and a movement back toward some classic elements and difficulty. Listening to him in podcasts, I really think he wants the game to be what many of us do. He seems to be able to be a player first very easily. Look forward to this era

[Deleted]

mmmm so his moving to a new project and not just saying his going to overwatch of diablo mmmmm. It could mean nothing or something is in the works like alot have said a new mmo ? With all of Tom exp from wow it would make sense to have him on the planning stage of a new mmo so they could learn from wows passed mistakes.

The thing that throws a spanner in that idea is if bliz knew they wanted to make a new mmo why would they let so many devs from wow leave the company in the passed couple of month ? ALot of them stating they wanted to do something new after working on wow for so long. I think they wouldnt of left if given the chance to work on a new project and if it was an mmo there exp would of been very valuable.

[Schmoyan89]

Did I miss a joke? The best I can come up with is that you actually think Reddit is so vastly and obviously superior to other forums, that to even suggest otherwise is... funny? Again, bizarre forum elitism.



Perhaps I'm failing to understand, but I don't even understand what topic you're accusing me of failing to understand. Did I fail to understand that Kalgan is leaving? No. Or are we still discussing the perceived superiority of Reddit? If Reddit was truly that superior, why are you here? Do you feel unworthy to post in the glowing gold-gilt halls of /r/?



Jump the bandwagon...? The bandwagon that formed in the last 4 pages since Kalgan quit? What bandwagon, and where is it going? Further, you jump on a bandwagon, to jump the bandwagon would be to like... identify a popular trend of opinion, and then leap clear over it to an even more extreme interpretation - like if someone said the Earth was round, and then most people agreed - and then you vaulted over that bandwagon and suggested that the Earth is a perfect mathematical sphere - but the bandwagon drives right past you as they all shake their head - you went too far. Whether it's just a missed word, or you don't know the analogy you are using - it's still an interesting thought - may need to use that in the future.

In any case, what am I failing to achieve by boarding the ...Kalgan leaving theory bandwagon? In what way is that lazy/unintelligent?



Witty people don't try to be witty, it's our natural state - though I don't even know what it is you think was particularly witty? Iz mah vocabz too bige?

What's actually pretty hilarious is that out of anything you took from the post you chose to become worked up over Reddit. Furthermore, you can't go on a full rant about extreme interpretations when you're literally doing the same thing yourself. You talk about a business model like you are an expert on the topic but you do not show off having any actual experience with it. All you do is make noise. The bottom line was: your knowledge of WoW lore is lacking, your knowledge of running a business is lacking. Your particular breed of forum-rats is an annoyance at best. And no amount of becoming triggered severely out of context will change that.

[arcaneshot]

Honestly - this is the best news I have seen for the game in a while. People who say otherwise are doomsdayers. I just saw no spirit in Tom Chilton. Dont get me wrong - Im sure it was there, but he never really got across any philosophy for what they did. He didnt seem to stand for anything at all.

Ion has been at the spearhead of this post WoD movement that Legion has came with ....with unprecedented community communication and a movement back toward some classic elements and difficulty. Listening to him in podcasts, I really think he wants the game to be what many of us do. He seems to be able to be a player first very easily. Look forward to this era

I think people tend to forget that Ion was a player first and not only that he lead a raid guild. And even further, he admitted he STILL raids even though he's no longer a raid leader. So it's easy to overlook that as someone who plays his own game sabotaging it is probably one of the last things he wants to do.

Ion "We'd Rather You Didn't Play Demonology" Hazzikostas is now the game director for World of Warcraft....

Well you realize Demonology is nothing like how it was during WoD don't you? Most glaringly because all the Demon Hunter-related stuff was removed from it.