Ion Hazzikostas: Why do you like or dislike him as a game designer?

[Flurryfang]

He is an excellent speaker, first of all. That is a huge thing, when you have to present nearly everything about WoW, so making it sound good is a huge plus.

Furthermore, i like the way he talks about stuff. Many devs, both in WoW and other places, like to talk alot about the very good stuff, boosting their own ego and so on, yet Ion have does not do this. He has many times talked about things i did not think he wanted to talk about. He is the WoW dev who have said "Sorry" the most times and when it was needed. While i sometimes feel like i want to punsh guys like Alex Afrasiabi in the face, i never have had that with Ion.

I also think the Q&As with him have helped alot. He brings good news to me and it makes it easy to like him.

On the other hand, he is the guy who keeps approving bad designs for WoW and who allows this shitty story-arc to keep going without any improvements....But i can look past that, since i think it would be near impossible to make everything alright when you have to oversee one of the biggest games out there.

So i like him. I think he is a good guy for the job and i think that most other candidates would do much worse.

[Gimlix]

GC and Jeff Kaplan were some of the best the game has ever seen, especially Jeff.

I like Ion, but I definately think from a game design perspective GC and Jeff were the best, hands down.

Thats why the GC hate?
I can understand Kaplan, but GC not.

[derpkitteh]

as lead game designer, his vision for the game is what we get.

his vision for the game is his personal playground, all the things that he personally finds fun. he can't conceive of any other type of wow. he can't conceive that people don't like his vision for wow, and he must always get his way.

the mission table? abso-fucking-lutely the most hated feature of WoD, yet because he wants it, it stayed.

no flying? yet again, he must get his way despite massive disapproval, so in all of his spite we get pathfinder.

even down to shaman class design i believe. he plays a shaman and he likes more hardcore elements, that's why shaman are so squishy this expansion. he wants it to be harder on himself, and he doesn't care that everyone else is tormented by it.

he's a spiteful little prick, that's why i dislike him. he can never give in completely, he always has to win in the end. it's a bad attitude for a lead game designer. the only good thing that has come from him is this 77 day schedule.

[Lorgar Aurelian]

as lead game designer, his vision for the game is what we get.

his vision for the game is his personal playground, all the things that he personally finds fun. he can't conceive of any other type of wow. he can't conceive that people don't like his vision for wow, and he must always get his way.

the mission table? abso-fucking-lutely the most hated feature of WoD, yet because he wants it, it stayed.

no flying? yet again, he must get his way despite massive disapproval, so in all of his spite we get pathfinder.

even down to shaman class design i believe. he plays a shaman and he likes more hardcore elements, that's why shaman are so squishy this expansion. he wants it to be harder on himself, and he doesn't care that everyone else is tormented by it.

he's a spiteful little prick, that's why i dislike him. he can never give in completely, he always has to win in the end. it's a bad attitude for a lead game designer. the only good thing that has come from him is this 77 day schedule.

This all sounds a little far fetched, making a class weaker because he plays it and wants it to be harder that makes no sense.

[Aeluron Lightsong]

He'll do better then Chilton IMO. I prefer listening to him then Chilton. He's no Metzen though and that's fine. Trying to be Metzen is an impossible task.

[Swalload]

People need a scapegoat.
He is that scapegoat for now.
When he's gone, there will be another.

Exactly this.

Personally I don't mind him, he seems fine. I work in the game industry as well so I know that stuff is a team effort, his contribution is not as big as people think, so are his responsibility and same for the blame people put on him.

But we know how the world works right? Yell at people before informing yourself, ignorance is bliss.
By bliss I mean plague.

[derpkitteh]

This all sounds a little far fetched, making a class weaker because he plays it and wants it to be harder that makes no sense.

can you give me any legitimate reason that shaman takes as much damage as my arcane mage this expansion?

because in WoD, just before this expansion, i could almost tank shit i was so tough. i could take on loads and loads of mobs in tanaan without issue. if i do that today in argus, i'm fucked.

i see no reason for this change, no gameplay reason at all.

[Deleted]

He keeps funneling RNG on top of RNG on top of RNG from loot drops to class mechanics...

Also he's listening to community and then disregard everything we said because it contradicts with his vision of the game

I remember back in WoD when arms warriors were complaining that 1/3 of the time they haven't got a button to press and his words were: "And what's wrong about it?"
Same as he was beeing paranoid about water striders in beta (and HAD to cave in)

He's allways telling "we learned" but then comes another patch and they can go learning again...

[Lorgar Aurelian]

can you give me any legitimate reason that shaman takes as much damage as my arcane mage this expansion?

because in WoD, just before this expansion, i could almost tank shit i was so tough. i could take on loads and loads of mobs in tanaan without issue. if i do that today in argus, i'm fucked.

i see no reason for this change, no gameplay reason at all.

Can't say I have a reason but I do t think he wanted it harder so he nerfed his own class is legitimate. If I had to guess it would be that ele is a caster so he should be as weak as other casters. As for Enh not a clue I think it plays horribly this expan so I barely touched it when I was playing my shaman only really played ele.

[Deleted]

Jeff Kaplan? Really? Kaplan is doing okay on Overwatch but he has no business being anywhere near a modern MMO, he's way too far stuck in the past.

By modern mmo do you mean heap of garbage?

[Baza]

Very smart, knows how to talk, passionate about the game, understands his player base (for example, when discussing a new patch and talking about the new content he said "it's not new content, but we have a lot of class changes." If he hadn't said that, many players would complain that class changes are not really new content. Tom Chilton said that 6.1 (selfie patch) was a pig patch, that would never happen with Ion.) The new expansion is miles better than WoD, and one of the best ever, Ion deserves a praise just for making the outdoor content and dungeons relevant through the whole expansion. On every Q&A he says something that I haven't thought about before and gives me a new perspective (Lich King heroic fight was considered to have a reasonable difficulty, but what if Paragon didn't exist back then?) and also provides info that we didn't know before (the internal raid testing team is being buffed by 35% to compensate for the higher skills of world first guilds), for example. And he wears great t-shirts! So I like him a lot.

[Onikaroshi]

Can't say I have a reason but I do t think he wanted it harder so he nerfed his own class is legitimate. If I had to guess it would be that ele is a caster so he should be as weak as other casters. As for Enh not a clue I think it plays horribly this expan so I barely touched it when I was playing my shaman only really played ele.

Yea, shamans are doing pretty damn good right now, don't know when damage taken was a factor in how good a dps class is...

[Al Gorefiend]

This seems personal towards him. He's a guy doing his job. "What do you like or dislike about the game currently?" Is better phrasing.

[dacoolist]

WB JLOCK! @Warlucia - it's YO BWOYYYYY

OT: I think he'd be a great guy to pin alllllll of the blame on #ripmetzen #ripripripinpeaceGHOSTCRAWLER

[Animalhouse]

Depending on when it was said it's right or wrong, if it were to be said now it would basically be true.


as for ion as a whole, he actually plays the game which is a huge plus (and not casually just at work type thing) but more then anything, he's just a scapegoat for people's worries and complaints, if people don't like a dev choice they just take it out on him (or celestalon, or sigma, or the two CMs that post a lot)

I agree with you there. I remember the rage Ghostcrawler got all the time.
I am sure Ion has done some good and cares for the game but when he made that comment (around patch 7.1 or 7.1.5) it just infuriated me.
Even now, ya I can get on an alt and get to 915 in 2-3 days but with the new relic system, multiple points in concordance and LOL crucial legendaries, there is just no way I am going to focus much time on an alt other than get them ready for the next expansion. I was keeping 2 toons heroic raid/mythic 10+ ready but now only have time for my main.
I think for me it is the arrogance of Ion. Much like that of WoW devs for years. They plot their course, ignore glaring issues, deny the issues exist and then admit them in the next expansion saying things like "in hindsight", "we should have approached that differently", or "maybe it wasn't the best decision"...never "we screwed up and arrogantly ignored all your concerns because we did not care enough to devote the resources".

[Caolela]

as for ion as a whole, he actually plays the game which is a huge plus ...

A "huge plus"? Jesus, he plays on a fucking Wacom tablet with a pen not a mouse last I knew. Awesome kekage right there, eh?

What does that tell you about the dumbing down of the game that's happened on his watch?

Then as others have said here he has an arrogant air about him and a "my way or the highway" outlook about the game. He's a goddamned lawyer, not a game developer - fully on board with his bean-counting masters at the top that see WoW just as something to be drained for max profit and pleasing shareholders, which is a far cry from the days of Blizzard North.

Legion of RNG Hamster Wheel has proven that.

[Onikaroshi]

I agree with you there. I remember the rage Ghostcrawler got all the time.
I am sure Ion has done some good and cares for the game but when he made that comment (around patch 7.1 or 7.1.5) it just infuriated me.
Even now, ya I can get on an alt and get to 915 in 2-3 days but with the new relic system, multiple points in concordance and LOL crucial legendaries, there is just no way I am going to focus much time on an alt other than get them ready for the next expansion. I was keeping 2 toons heroic raid/mythic 10+ ready but now only have time for my main.
I think for me it is the arrogance of Ion. Much like that of WoW devs for years. They plot their course, ignore glaring issues, deny the issues exist and then admit them in the next expansion saying things like "in hindsight", "we should have approached that differently", or "maybe it wasn't the best decision"...never "we screwed up and arrogantly ignored all your concerns because we did not care enough to devote the resources".

Alts are just alts though, they're not meant to have as good of gear as your main, their not meant to be your main focus. Honestly I just can't see the issue, I play multiple characters but am in no way neglecting my main.

Other than that, yea, if he said that back then it would be more wrong than now, and 7.0 was VERY alt unfriendly.

As for arrogance, idk, I think they just have a vision of how you are supposed to use something, or do something, like the NC and AP in 7.0, but the community takes at different direction, well, mostly the vocal minority of the community. Honestly I see right what they were trying to do with the NC, turning a bad relic into an ok one, but you'll always have the min/maxers gaming every system so the devs job isn't easy. I think they just gave up trying to deal with the 1% at some point.

[kary]

IMO Ion is an arrogant POS. I changed my opinion of him when I watched an interview and he blew off all the complaints about legion being alt unfriendly and rather than acknowledge the obvious issues, he actually said "I think Legion is the MOST alt-friendly expansions". He lost all credibility and I hated him from this moment on.

But he was right.
Please don't be autistic.
He's not arrogant, you just want to be pandered to.

OT: He's doing a fine job, don't care either way. He's made some questionable changes but so has everyone.

[Onikaroshi]

A "huge plus"? Jesus, he plays on a fucking Wacom tablet with a pen not a mouse last I knew. Awesome kekage right there, eh?

If you're going to un-rightfully lambast someone at least get it right, it was Celestalon who talked about the wacom tablet, Ion is a mythic raiding resto shaman.

[Siglius]

Depending on when it was said it's right or wrong, if it were to be said now it would basically be true.


as for ion as a whole, he actually plays the game which is a huge plus (and not casually just at work type thing) but more then anything, he's just a scapegoat for people's worries and complaints, if people don't like a dev choice they just take it out on him (or celestalon, or sigma, or the two CMs that post a lot)

Afaik Ion was arguing that even though alt were hard to maintain, there was a lot on unique content for each class and in that sense it was alt-friendly, what I rememeber from the top of my head atleast.