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

[Tradu]

I don't question he's a good guy but I do question his social skills in a leading dev/director role. He does not come off as a people person and more as an embodiment of the Peter principle. You need to be able to clearly communicate in a leading role and I don't think he's qualified for the job he currently has.

Pretty much this. He got promoted for being very good at his old job(lead raid designer) into a position that he doesn't really fit into, and both his old area as well as the game overall has suffered because of it(in my opinion)

[Flurryfang]

Where does all this "excellent speaker" stuff coming from? He looked awkard as fuck at gamescon stage.

I think legion is great. I love how they shut down the fact when all the hardcore raiders felt obligated to do stuff and said it was blizzards fault. Though one thing I really hate is how they ramped up the mythic difficulty so much in nighthold and tos. Instead of having 5% of players kill the last mythic boss it turned out to be 2-3%. Great stuff.

He maybe did at gamescon, but at the last 2 Blizzcons he did a pretty good job at the panels where he was solo.

[Tradu]

Did you even listen to what he said in that video?

"So we've tried to make as many of the unlocks as possible on Argus, in terms of content unlocks, account wide. [...] World Quests as a whole, yes, [but] there's some specific world quests that won't or can't be, because until your character has completed some story event to advance the phase you're in the world quest doesn't make sense, or clashes with what's going on there."

That's 100% accurate to what we got. Most of the content and features on Argus are unlocked account wide but some of the WQs don't open up until you've triggered certain story events to change the phase in the zone and open them up.

Yeah, and the reasoning for locking the last WQs is bullshit, seeing as we can do the "WQ version" of plenty of levelling quests in Broken Shore before we do the levelling version. It's also not "some specific WQs", it's the vast majority of them. And it took way too long for invasion points to be account wide as well.

[Flurryfang]

Class Q&A.

Q: What do you intend to do about Shaman extremely poor defensive options? All we have is Astral Shift?"

A: Well you can choose Astral Shift plus many other(?????) options. Plus you can heal yourself! Shaman have great defensives!"


^That was his actual answer. "Knows what's going on inside the game?". HAHAHAHAHAHA. He literally just repeats the 1 option the player asking already listed as their ONE defensive. This is just one example.

Most other classes only have 1 defensive colddown, so i don't think Shamans has poor defensive options compared to other classes.

Just because he does not say what you want to hear, does not mean he is not right in some of what he says. When it comes to defensive, movement abiltieis and stuns are also calculated into much of that.

[theburned]

He seems somewhat levelheaded and knowledgeable, particularly one case where he responded to m+ raids, he came off as he knew that most top guilds wants a few weeks of break between tiers, albeit not too long (12-14 months) currently the 22 weeks would not suffer a lot from being 24-28, this is still well within what we got in the past even.

Something I dislike a bit is that content seems a tad bit rushed, even though a lot gets done within the timeline I don't think it would hurt to try to keep the same schedule, and add another 1-2 weeks for a bit of extra finesse.

Very stubborn on what he wants for the game, and doesn't want.
Mostly aiming at reforging here, but there has been other cases. The biggest downsides of it was removed, while the new gearing system with TF, demands some kind of stat regulation to make ilvl the king. Even speccs with stat balance well within reasonable amounts this is something I keep longing for, but more so for speccs where one or 2 stats are atrociously bad.
Yet they keep claiming they dont want to use a bandaid solution to a stat balancing issue (which for some speccs really hasn't been an issue, yet it solves problems for them.)
Could bring up some points here on legacy servers aswell, but its not really something I would like to dwell on as im not the target group.

[GhostShaman]

I absolutely hate the guy. I hate his decisions, I hate his direction/vision, I hate his "designs". I dont care what GC did prior to him, and he is no scapegoat believe me. Ever since he has taken over the role as lead (which I thought he was vacating) he has made the worst freaking decisions for this game. Anyone that knows me can find the various reasons I hate him on social media and the wow forums. The day he is forcibly removed from his role, the better. Maybe he can go back to practicing law...

[SirCowdog]

I don't like the direction that Ion has taken the game, but I can't deny that the quality has improved from WoD's alltime low. Was Ion also responsible for the trainwreck of WoD? I don't actually know, since I'm not on the inside of Blizzard watching the internal workings. I suspect that between him and Afrasiabi, however, that the game has shifted it's focus from being the best game it can be, to being the best profit it can be.

That's a subtle difference, but one that has ramifications for every aspect of the game, and I can't support it. There are too many other excellent games that don't try to milk you for extra money, or cut corners to increase profits, like WoW does right now.

[Taeldorian]

Ah yes playing hardcore. Like playing wow with his tablet ... hardcore for shure.

Wrong guy. Get your shit straight if you plan on being condescending.

Ion has mythic raided at a fairly high level for a while now (obviously used to be heroic). He was also a guide writer at elitistjerks back in the day which was comprised of hardcore players.

[Jinpachi]

I dunno, but that curly headed fucker needs to cut his fucking mop. I can't stand to look at it.

[Dnusha]

Ion Hazzikostas best game designer nuff said

[Radaney]

I love Ion, clear passion for the game. Has an experienced raiding background which aligns with my own interests in the game. Conveys and understands the game clearly and puts information across decisively.

[Eurhetemec]

That's a subtle difference, but one that has ramifications for every aspect of the game, and I can't support it. There are too many other excellent games that don't try to milk you for extra money, or cut corners to increase profits, like WoW does right now.

What the heck are you talking about? I can't think of a single major MMO on the market that is less money-grab-y, less monetized, less-corner-cut-y than WoW. Don't you dare suggest it's FFXIV, if you were thinking of doing that, that is considerably worse than WoW in this regard. Fuck's sake they just sent me an email about how I could buy a costume for RL money which would give me +30% XP gain.

Perhaps you could list the "less cash grab-y" MMOs out there? Every major MMO I can think of is a horrible offender next to WoW. GW2 is just horrible in cash-grab-y-ness, like appalling. ESO is about 80% as bad as GW2. SWTOR is even worse still. Even with a sub, it's worse than WoW. FFXIV is pretty awful and cheesy here. BDO hahahahaha do I even have to talk about BDO?

So what are the games you mean? Single-player ones maybe? I could see that.

Re: Ion, I like him. I think he's doing a good job and he seems straightforward and relatively honest in how he outlines where he wants the game to go, and what he wants to achieve and so on. He's also not as emotional as, say, GC, who was continually recoiling in pain from negative responses. I mean, one thing SirCowdog is right about - Ion understands he's running a business, not some sort of special snowflake farm. I don't think GC ever quite got that. Tigole definitely never did - he thought he was running Tigole's Tigole-Pleasing-Shop, and was outraged whenever he discovered anyone didn't love his novelty dildos.

[Sanguinerd]

He seems like a really good guy and has passion for the game, he plays the game and it shows but that's also what I don't like about him.

He's a raider and it shows and for a game that should be offering more it hardly does.

[Gwiez]

I get the impression that when he gets an idea that he thinks is brilliant, criticism of it, even constructive criticism, leads him to double down. And when those ideas are bad, they have to crash and burn for him to admit it. I've seen it happen a few times. Because of that, I don't listen to anything he says.

[RoKPaNda]

By modern mmo do you mean heap of garbage?

By modern MMO I mean one that's for people other than no-lifers. Kaplan's mindset is, most of the time, stuck somewhere in early WoW where leveling took forever, 20 minute respawns on trash placed in the most obnoxious way possible, and WoW's even less casual predecessors where every basic thing was an absolute chore. Kaplan also lied about raid participation in Vanilla WoW in one of his first Blizzcon talks, and later Blizzard themselves revealed how few of us actually raided endgame in WoW. When WoW was released the MMO market was very very niche, people that played EverCrack were considered weirdos by other gamers, and now MMOs are much more mainstream. Kaplan never changed, and if he were to be working on WoW today, it would be a tragedy. Worse than WoD.

[Hey There Guys its Metro]

I don't know anything about what he does so I have no reason to like or dislike him. He is a great actual communicator though, even though he is so pale he looks dead.

[Musta]

His view about RNG bothers me. But the guy itself its kinda good.

[Magnagarde]

I get the impression that when he gets an idea that he thinks is brilliant, criticism of it, even constructive criticism, leads him to double down. And when those ideas are bad, they have to crash and burn for him to admit it. I've seen it happen a few times. Because of that, I don't listen to anything he says.

I felt the same way at first, but then again all the things that recieved valid criticism were things that were impossible the change in the middle of an expansion or after you base you whole expansion around them.

It is like the complaints about the garrisons; they were designed as the focal point of the expansion and if players didn't like them, then they had to wait out till that feature is out of the way in a new expansion.

[SirCowdog]

What the heck are you talking about? I can't think of a single major MMO

So what are the games you mean? Single-player ones maybe? I could see that.

You are correct. I never said "MMO" specifically. I said "games". Unlike many WoW players, I'm completely open to many different types of gaming. Singleplayer. Multiplayer. Tabletop pen and paper(I play in a Starfinder game once a week). Hell, I even get out of my basement and go outside(shocking, I know).

Re: Ion, I like him. I think he's doing a good job and he seems straightforward and relatively honest in how he outlines where he wants the game to go, and what he wants to achieve and so on. He's also not as emotional as, say, GC, who was continually recoiling in pain from negative responses. I mean, one thing SirCowdog is right about - Ion understands he's running a business, not some sort of special snowflake farm. I don't think GC ever quite got that.

I just feel like WoW has sold its soul for better profits, and Ion is the head guy responsible for that. It's not that WoW isn't a good game currently. It's just that it seems like it could be better if it wasn't so overburdened with attempts to squeeze every extra minute out of players for the chance at another month of sub.

I get it. I really do! WoW is an MMO and there's going to be some amount of treadmill. But FFS Legion takes it to the next level and crosses a line, IMO. If the next expansion is more of the same, I'll just be that much more glad I stopped feeding money into the game.

[SirCowdog]

I felt the same way at first, but then again all the things that recieved valid criticism were things that were impossible the change in the middle of an expansion or after you base you whole expansion around them.

It is like the complaints about the garrisons; they were designed as the focal point of the expansion and if players didn't like them, then they had to wait out till that feature is out of the way in a new expansion.

Except they doubled down with the Shipyard, so where does that leave your theory? Are you telling me they couldn't change that despite having almost the entire expansion worth of negative feedback on it? Come on now. It's a perfect illustration of EXACTLY what Gwiez said.