Developer Q&A with Ion Hazzikostas

[morph4037]

The team has adjusted the amount of resources needed to rebuild the buildings, so the rate buildings are rebuilt is about the same as it always has been.

I don't remember it ever taking close to a week to build one building or to have a few days with no active building up.

The buildings should always remain reasonably functional, they won't make it take months to rebuild the buildings in a future expansion.

Why should anyone care about these buildings in a future expansion? You are removing the Mage Tower appearances...

[siskha]

Why should anyone care about these buildings in a future expansion? You are removing the Mage Tower appearances...

broken shore world bosses drop pieces of gear for lookalike sets, nothing else comes to mind

[Twilight Cultist]

"The difference between survivability when your active mitigation is up and when it isn't shouldn't be huge."

Yea... when my shield block is up, I'm literaly a god, when it's down I'm a punching bag

Exact same things with Prot Paladins and Vengeance Demon Hunters...

It ALMOST seems like he doesn't even play the game

You misunderstood the quote. He isn't saying that is not the case. He is saying that, philosophically, should not be the case, expressing that as something that should be changed.

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This isn't setting a precedent for future zones post-release, it just has to do with how Argus was built.

I'm gonna go out on a limb and say this is a lie. A decision was made before they started building it, that there would be no flying. Why lie, Ion? Just say it - post release zones won't include flying. Just fucking say it. Now there will be expectations of flying in new zones in the future, when you damned well know you're not going to design for it. You haven't for 3 expansions now. You couldn't in MOP and the Timeless Isle, you couldn't in WOD, and now Legion. It's your intent - fucking stand by it. This was a lame ass statement, and it's GOING to bite you in the ass next expansion.

Except this isn't true. You could fly in Tanaan Jungle and the Broken Shore.

[Doffen]

Most would disagree with you. Randomness is not fun or rewarding. Grinding the same WQ every day is not fun. Timegated content is not fun. Many enjoy alts but this is the most alt unfriendly xpac ever. Good luck trying to switch mains this expansion because if you don't have bis legendaries on your alt then you're dead weight.

Me does not mean the same as we. Get a grip.

[morph4037]

broken shore world bosses drop pieces of gear for lookalike sets, nothing else comes to mind

Ahh good point, I kinda forgot about those since they are few and far between now.

[chaud]

Clarified the quote about internal data. Still giving the recap a polish pass.

[Szeth]

The team doesn't want you to go back and do old raids only for the hope of a legendary item.

Thank you for acknowledging that! I would be fine with getting a legendary every 2 weeks if I didn't have to do this.

[BobAwesome]

On an alt paladin, im ilvl 917, with not bis legendaries and im pulling 1m+ dps sustained. So yeah, you are dead wrong. 1m+ is enough to start clearing stuff in mythic tomb.

Any other false assumptions?

Strange, https://www.warcraftlogs.com/character/us/korgath/flaks states otherwise.

[papajohn4]

I played TBC and forced to play Holy because Ret dps were shit (it was towards Sunwell that started to scale really nice with Seal of Blood). TBC wasn't too extreme like vanilla but still there were severe disregard towards many specs. Spriest survive the cut because of its passive healing which added to spiritual attunement gave the holy paladins eternal mana. Which was something that was really broken thus fixed in Wotlk giving SA only to prot Paladins and nerfing Illumination. I'm too old to remember the Vampiric Embrace changes over time.

Wotlk was a fine place I would say, even when a lot of class uniqueness were loss with the shared buffs.


Damage it's what kills the bosses and will always be what matters the most. I don't want to live in that world again when I wasn't able to play my favourite spec to do the content I want to do which is the highest difficult raiding.

Honestly, Retri Paladin might have been the only spec that did "suffer" in TBC. Still I remember bringing 1 retri paladin for the extra buff that did matter a lot. Yes damage is what kills the boss, but in a raid group, tota ldamage matters more than personal damage. If that was the case, all TBC guilds would just stack rogues for the most damage but they didnt.

I agree that you didnt had a total freedom.. if you just cared for DPS and you did want to play shadow priest for example, you were feeling that you dont do much. I got it that not all people care about support classes.. I personally love support classes. I want to know I help the group to increase the potential, by either CC, buff or debuff the enemy.

The 3% spell crit and spell Hit from Elemental shaman was a very good boost for the raid, as it was the windfury totem from Enh. It didnt need to be top damage. There were also very interesting raid compositions, you couldnt go and raid with anything...

Anyway, thats personal taste I guess... I will always favor unique classes vs "jack of all trades".

[SilenceRedo]

Honestly, Retri Paladin might have been the only spec that did "suffer" in TBC. Still I remember bringing 1 retri paladin for the extra buff that did matter a lot. Yes damage is what kills the boss, but in a raid group, tota ldamage matters more than personal damage. If that was the case, all TBC guilds would just stack rogues for the most damage but they didnt.

I agree that you didnt had a total freedom.. if you just cared for DPS and you did want to play shadow priest for example, you were feeling that you dont do much. I got it that not all people care about support classes.. I personally love support classes. I want to know I help the group to increase the potential, by either CC, buff or debuff the enemy.

The 3% spell crit and spell Hit from Elemental shaman was a very good boost for the raid, as it was the windfury totem from Enh. It didnt need to be top damage. There were also very interesting raid compositions, you couldnt go and raid with anything...

Anyway, thats personal taste I guess... I will always favor unique classes vs "jack of all trades".

No, I stand the opposite, I can bring utility without doing low damage. I love to top the metters (without tunneling) as Ret because we always run from behind other classes, it's a great feeling for me. But no, I would probably quit the game if that old system is back because I would have no place in a cutting edge aiming guild.

You can have distinct classes and diverse utility without guttering damage. Since raid buffs are a thing of the past they have to come up with something new.

My main role was and always be a melee dps, it's what brings me the greatest enjoy in the game. And while I have and really enjoy my rogue, there's no way I'm rerolling to it, it's not as niche and spectacular as the Ret paladin was always to me.

[boz0]

I'm personally not that fussed about the RNG nature of loot these days, albeit I am not raiding mythic at all. I get the frustration of getting bad legendaries, but for most people given the content they are doing it doesn't really matter.

I'd say this. I'd rather have access to a lot of potential sources for upgrades over things like 40 man raids dropping 2 piece of loot as was the case in some of the Vanilla raids, iirc.

Sure, you can have solid dps w/o your bis legs, but on my frost DK, the chest alone is worth about 10% total dps, and it's one of the two I'm still missing, so I can't help but feel gimped ...

If the legendary balance was really good, and all were within 20% of each other, he'd have a point. As it is, some legs are head and shoulders above the rest.

[Justpassing]

Strange, https://www.warcraftlogs.com/character/us/korgath/flaks states otherwise.

Busted cold.

[Fleckens]

Pretty good Q&A, I really like how honest Ion is with his answers and how he's generally not afraid of admitting when they made mistakes and it's interesting to see things from his point of view. Even if you may not agree with all the decisions it's clear that they have put a lot of thought into their decisions.

Also personally I kind of agree with him on the rng situation, outside of legendaries I don't really think titanforging is a massive issue, perhaps it should be slightly limited to not have extreme cases and to prevent old raid items from continuing to be bis but it is nice that as someone who's mostly full mythic geared I can run a heroic and get lucky and get an upgrade.

[Musta]

Main problem is legendaries, Ion admitted that. "If we could go back a year and half, we wouldnt have done this"

[Jaylock]

Strange, https://www.warcraftlogs.com/character/us/korgath/flaks states otherwise.

I said ALT paladin. That is my main. Plus I main holy. Good try though.

[Eleccybubb]

Strange, https://www.warcraftlogs.com/character/us/korgath/flaks states otherwise.

Strange. Jay said ALT.

Flaks is his main.

Really grasping at straws there to try and claim the Paladin he linked is his alt when he has stated many times it's his main.

[pyrostorm9001]

Straight up. If next xpac has the legendary system I'm out. Most frustrating thing in this game ever.

[Grimalkin of Old]

Whoa, all that RNG nonsense talk ...

[papajohn4]

No, I stand the opposite, I can bring utility without doing low damage. I love to top the metters (without tunneling) as Ret because we always run from behind other classes, it's a great feeling for me. But no, I would probably quit the game if that old system is back because I would have no place in a cutting edge aiming guild.

You can have distinct classes and diverse utility without guttering damage. Since raid buffs are a thing of the past they have to come up with something new.

My main role was and always be a melee dps, it's what brings me the greatest enjoy in the game. And while I have and really enjoy my rogue, there's no way I'm rerolling to it, it's not as niche and spectacular as the Ret paladin was always to me.

Thing is that if DPS is the only thing that matters there will always be specs on top and always be specs on bottom... what if in the next patch your Retri Paladin goes to bottom of the logs? Imagine if your best class was warlock, how would you feel this expansion... On the other hand, if you chose a class based on the utility / support it brings to the group, you will never feel neglected.

You want Tank/DPS/Healer.. I want Single target tank/ AoE tank/ DPS / Debuffer / CC / Buffer / Tank healer / Raid Healer :P

I am not saying I am right and you are wrong, just my preference.. honestly I dont see wow go back to old design / mechanics, so you have not to worry about it :P The only thing you ll have to worry is that Paladin wont be the Legion Warlock on next expansion...

[Deleted]

"Randomness has always been at the core of World of Warcraft. It has been part of most games, going back to pen and paper games."

Well yeah i guess for every lucker who gets the best 2 legendaries as his first 2 there's a looser who gets them as his last 2, so the average looks ok. And again for titanforging, some get TF on useful items, some on items that they won't even use. Oh well. This is the future of WoW, here to stay.