Developer Q&A - Ion Hazzikostas
Ion Hazzikostas answered questions today about Patch 7.2. Next month there will be a Patch 7.2.5 Q&A.



Tomb of Sargeras
  • Tomb will release sometime in mid to late June.

Artifact Challenges
  • Gear mattering is the default in WoW.
  • Timewalking is there to normalize people of all levels so that they can do content together.
  • The challenges not scaling means that they will become accessible over time to the entire audience.
  • Green fire started off being challenging and eventually became easier.
  • The challenges aren't made for a few percent of players. Over the long run more people will be able to enjoy them.
  • Early on there is a lot of prestige being able to complete the challenge so early.
  • There will be a large number of people that won't be able to do it with Tomb or Argus gear.
  • The team didn't have the capacity to make 36 challenges, so they are happy with the ones they created.

Broken Isles Pathfinder
  • Overall the team is pretty satisfied with how things worked out.
  • The team would have wanted to add another couple light requirements to Part 2, such as donate to buildings or kill elites, something that you would have gotten over time.
  • Anyone who you see flying right now has done the outdoor content of Legion. Now you can enjoy the perks of flight.

Invasions
  • The team doesn't have any plans to turn off the invasions right now, even way down the road.
  • It is content for people to do, there isn't really any reason to turn it off.
  • The team isn't thinking about changing the frequency of invasions.
  • Unlike the pre-expansion patch invasions, these are taking place in zones players are actively using, shutting down other activity in that zone.
  • The invasion achievement being required for flying would have been annoying, no one wants to get up at 3 AM for an invasion.
  • Timewalking being up all of the time would result in people always or never wanting to do it.

Broken Shore Buildings
  • Contribution rates haven't declined so far. The team was expecting them to, but it hasn't happened yet.
  • If contribution rates decline, the team will adjust the amount of supplies needed for the buildings.

Time Gating
  • Part of the reason is storytelling. The team is trying to create a global narrative, the forces of the Alliance, Horde, Legionfall, all building towards an event.
  • Tomb will open when it opens for gameplay reasons. It was far too early to open it when Patch 7.2 released.
  • The world story builds up towards Tomb opening.
  • One option is everyone playing through the content leading up to Tomb opening in a few days, followed by a long wait with nothing.
  • The other option is some weekly steps, alternating between meaty quests and filler. The team is aware they are giving us filler as a pacing step.
  • Eventually the team realized (late in the PTR cycle) that the zone felt pretty empty with not a lot to do. They accelerated the release of the weekly steps, only leaving filler for the rest of progression.
  • They didn't plan out the release of content as well as they should have.
  • There are Artifact unlock challenge lines, class mount quests, artifact challenges, which took lots development resources. If you are only playing one character, you may only see 1/12th of the content.
  • The team learned from this and will improve in the future.

Patch 7.2 Content Size
  • In terms of the number of quests, creatures, text, and other things added, Patch 7.2 was a very big patch.
  • More VO lines were recorded for Patch 7.2 than any previous expansion.
  • The team completed a massive amount of content, but that doesn't mean anything to players if they feel like they don't have anything to do.
  • What more would you like to see?
  • If there were more traditional things like Isle of Thunder story questing, that would only add a few more hours of content. Is that enough?
  • What do you expect in a big named patch?
  • The right thing for you to do in Patch 7.2 was to go to Broken Shore and do the Artifact things.
  • If you log in and see an invasion of a zone, you might want to go there first. The more things there are for you to do on Day 1, the less clear it is what you should do.
  • The team could have done a better job of communicating how the content rollout was going to work.
  • The class specific content probably won't continue going forward to Patch 7.3.

Tomb Raid Testing
  • More raid testing will take place over the coming weeks: LFR, Heroic, and Mythic.

Class Mounts
  • Originally the requirement to unlock your class mount was Exalted with Armies of Legionfall, but that requirement has been removed.
  • As soon as you complete the Legionfall campaign, you can unlock your class mount!
  • It is easier to remove requirements later than it is to add additional requirements.

Patch Release
  • Patch 7.2 is what was announced at BlizzCon. It is a patch with a dungeon, zone, raid, PvP brawls, assaults, and more.
  • Patch 7.2.5 is micro-holidays, a Timewalking raid, and new legendary items.

Mythic+
  • The plan is similar to what happened when Mythic Nighthold opened.
  • Week 2 the Mythic Keystone loot cap will go to 15, end of run loot Heroic, end of week Mythic.

Cross-Realm Zones
  • The lag and latency issues are on the team's radar and they want to fix it.
  • In Legion, sharding tech was added. This is why the release was so smooth.
  • There are some addons that are causing behaviors that don't play well with sharding tech.
  • The team doesn't want to break up groups, having people that can't see each other in a group
  • The team wants to minimize the number of times you move from one shard to another. In previous expansions you would switch around when filling up a group, which felt bad.
  • Addons that are automatically creating groups are causing performance issues.

Heirloom Upgrades
  • Heirloom upgrades are planned for Patch 7.2.5.
  • You will see upgrades in an upcoming build.

Legendary Items
  • In Patch 7.2.5, if you have all of the legendary items for a spec and a legendary drops, it will randomly be for one of your off specs.
  • You can still change your loot spec if you want to target a specific spec.

Class Q&A
  • If the team answers questions about one spec or class, they are answering a question that isn't relevant to 11/12 players watching.
  • Getting class information out there is something the team wants to do, maybe AMAs on the WoW subreddit would work.

Class Identity
  • Specs feeling like different classes with baseline abilities changing per spec.
  • There was a lot of focus on spec identity at the cost of some class identity.
  • Having a Fire mage never cast a frost spell might be too much, they are still a mage.
  • In some places the team went too far towards spec identity at the cost of class identity.

Upcoming Raids
  • Tomb isn't the last raid in Legion. Patch 7.3 takes us to Argus with a new raid zone.

External Buffs
  • It doesn't feel great when you need an external buff to be effective or viable.
  • Making Disc priests less Innervate reliant is important.
  • Some of the classes are still hybrids, with a history and identity that is rooted in offering support to others. There is some value in recognizing this.
  • The team wants you to look at your raid composition and be happy that there is a certain class there. There are only a couple of examples of this right now, but the team could add some more.
  • If you want to work as a team to maximize effectiveness, this is a nice way to do it. If you goal is to top the meter that is probably less important to you.
  • If you are looking to fill a PuG, it would be awesome if you wanted to look for a specific class rather than just grabbing the highest item level player.
  • The team may have gone too far with bring the player, not the class. Sunwell was a long time ago and a different world. Not being viable without multiple group buffs is bad, but we are in a different place now.
  • The team would rather you take a slightly less geared Warlock rather than a third Hunter.

Artifact Challenges
  • The team would like to make these challenges something you can go back and do again if you want.

Mythic+ Dungeon Balance
  • The team has nerfed the new ones a lot. They are keeping an eye on statistics, completion rates, times, chest count.
  • Things are mostly in a good space right now when it comes to balance.
  • Any time a new dungeon is introduced, you are learning a new dungeon. You have already been running the old dungeons many times and know them well, so they are easier even if the new ones are balanced well.
  • The new affixes are comparable in difficulty to the old affixes and the team is happy with them.

Mythic Nighthold
  • Overall the team is happy with the difficulty of Mythic Nighthold.
  • There is pretty smooth progression through Nighthold.
  • Gul'dan and Elisande might be the targets of a few nerfs.

Legion Assaults
  • There are no plans to add Armies of Legionfall reputation to the invasions.
  • If you don't enjoy them, don't do them.
  • The team doesn't want to give every activity every reward.
  • Invasions give Nethershards, Artifact Power, emissary credit, and reputation. They are already rewarding.

Order Hall Resources
  • There isn't anything planned for spending your excess Order Hall Resources on.
  • Bonus Rolls are a big sink for resources.
  • The team may offer something to spend them on in the future.
  • They don't want players to regret not earning more if they add a substantial thing to spend them on in the future.
  • Some players are always running low on Order Hall Resources

Legendary Item Upgrades
  • When Tomb unlocks, the item level ceiling on everything shifts up by 30.
  • New legendary items will drop at 970, and there will be a quest to upgrade again.
  • Legendary upgrade items will drop right away, you won't need to pick up the quest.
  • Once all of your legendary items are upgraded, hopefully the team will be able to hide the quest.
  • The upgrade item will take you from 910 to 970 if you haven't upgraded yet.

Black Temple Timewalking
  • This will be tied to the Burning Crusade timewalking event.
  • In the future the team would love to have a timewalking raid for every event.
  • What raid would you like to see for each expansion's timewalking event.

Paragon Emissary Chests
  • These chests still mostly reward the same thing, which is underwhelming. The team will discuss this.

Artifact Challenge CC
  • There is a ruleset for some creatures that uses a PvP style CC rule, with diminishing returns.
  • You shouldn't be able to CC some of these mobs endlessly, as this would make content trivial.
  • Diminishing returns and limited duration are both used to accomplish this.
  • Cripple being a four second duration is something the team looked at, but Affliction Warlocks found other ways to do the challenge, even without a specific legendary item.

Horde Story
  • Vol'jin is dead, what update do you want?
  • Stories are told in a way that makes sense for the narrative.
  • This felt like the right time to finish the Alliance story arc.
  • The team doesn't want to force symmetry and tell a story where it doesn't feel right.
  • Going back to the initial Broken Shore experience, the Horde did have an extra cinematic.

Weapon Illusions
  • You won't be able to use weapon illusions on your Artifacts.
  • This was an artistic decision made early on.
  • Visual effects have to attach to certain places on weapons, which would constrain their design.
  • Most of the weapons aren't designed to have weapon enchant visuals attached.


US Realms - World Boss - Si'vash
Si'vash is up now, so you can head to the Broken Shore for a chance at item level 900 loot, a Frost Relic, or Storm Relic.



US Realms - Nether Disruptor
The Nether Disruptor is active on US realms!

Nether Disruptor
This article was originally published in forum thread: Developer Q&A - Ion Hazzikostas, Si'vash, Nether Disruptor started by chaud View original post
Comments 118 Comments
  1. Touch of Anarchy's Avatar
    • The team learned from this and will improve in the future.
    I'm honest to god so sick of seeing that line in virtually every developer update or interview they give us.
  1. Mhyroth's Avatar
    Time Gating

    "Part of the reason is storytelling. The team is trying to create a global narrative, the forces of the Alliance, Horde, Legionfall, all building towards an event."

    Might be me, but from my point of view it's more like "It's to keep you subbed so we give you little things every week to keep you going".
    Not saying I'd like everything at once or none at all, but they didn't get the middle ground and frustrated quite some people (not using numbers since I know people with throw their pitchforks at me for doing so).

    And what @Touch of Anarchy said, the line he quoted became their standard "to answer" line to shut down any feedback.
  1. Jaylock's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Touch of Anarchy View Post
    I'm honest to god so sick of seeing that line in virtually every developer update or interview they give us.
    Oh so its not okay for developers to make mistakes in their job now? Do you NEVER make mistakes in your job.

    Get off your high horse.
  1. dvaz's Avatar
    Are they dodging the mobs scaling with ilvl questions?
  1. Dawnseven's Avatar
    Originally Posted by Blizzard Entertainment
    Class Mounts
    Originally the requirement to unlock your class mount was Exalted with Armies of Legionfall, but that requirement has been removed.
    As soon as you complete the Legionfall campaign, you can unlock your class mount!
    /happy dance

    I've been trying to grind with 12. This thrills me.
  1. BannedForViews's Avatar
    My Concern with updating legendaries. When NH came out I believe I had 5. Now I have 11, and by the time the patch comes out I will probably have at least 13 or 14. It is a bit lame that people getting new legendary drops won't have to perform a task, but I may have to perform one up to 14 times. I am not asking for a free upgrade to all my legendaries, but I hope it isn't gated basically a week at a time like it was with this first round up legendary upgrades. It'd be a bit ridiculous if i had to wait 14 weeks to get all my legendaries to a maxed level where it would feel more rewarding to swap them around for different game play.
  1. Dakirokor's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Jaylock View Post
    Oh so its not okay for developers to make mistakes in their job now? Do you NEVER make mistakes in your job.

    Get off your high horse.
    Everyone makes some mistakes but eventually when the mistakes keep piling up you get fired. At this point that line has been in every communication from the dev team for years and people are wondering when they will actually learn.
  1. mmocc0aff4a74d's Avatar
    Tomb of Sargeras
    Tomb will release sometime in mid to late June.
    What a wonderful time to release new content.... NOT!!1
    It's gonna be almost impossible to gather 20 people in the summer months.
  1. Dakirokor's Avatar
    "The team didn't have the capacity to make 36 challenges, so they are happy with the ones they created."

    If that is the case I would rather they just didn't make the challenges we got then. The whole reason everyone loved green fire was that it made you use all your abilities, including ones that most people forgot they had, to solve different mechanics and you couldn't just dps race down the boss. Instead we got generic and poorly balanced universal challenges that clearly took development time away from the rest of the Broken Isle. The end result being that Blizz spread themselves too thin, making both the challenges and the Broken Isle lacking in content and not living up to what they were marketed as.
  1. mmoc59b5827c7e's Avatar
    Horde Story
    Vol'jin is dead, what update do you want?
    Stories are told in a way that makes sense for the narrative.
    This felt like the right time to finish the Alliance story arc.
    The team doesn't want to force symmetry and tell a story where it doesn't feel right.
    Going back to the initial Broken Shore experience, the Horde did have an extra cinematic.
    Sylvanas x Halya story? Totally forgotten.
  1. Granyala's Avatar
    Originally Posted by Blizzard Entertainment
    Tomb will release sometime in mid to late June.
    Quote Originally Posted by N0xos View Post
    What a wonderful time to release new content.... NOT!!1
    It's gonna be almost impossible to gather 20 people in the summer months.
    June 20th = release of the Final Fantasy-XIV Stormblood Expansion. Naturally, Blizzard want to have a response ready.
  1. Leyre's Avatar
    The correct date for the release of the ToS is either June 19 or 20, source? http://na.finalfantasyxiv.com/stormblood/
  1. kamuimac's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Leyre View Post
    The correct date for the release of the ToS is either June 19 or 20, source? http://na.finalfantasyxiv.com/stormblood/
    i hope nobody expected anything different - it was painfully obvious the moment they gated broken shore in such retarded fashion
  1. mmoc59b5827c7e's Avatar
    I dont know if its the writing of MMO-Champion, but Ion Hazzikostas answers seem very aggressive this time around. Probably this job is too hard for him.
  1. perasite's Avatar
    The fact that they are happy with the Pathfinder system they used in this expansion in which you only get flight after you've done everything that you'd want flight for and then they intend to take it away again in a few short months when they take us to Argus says everything I need to know about their ability to keep me playing. They gated out this patch so long that it's clearly only to keep subs paying forever with little to no actual "new" stuff to do. I'm done. I've kept coming back, hoping it would get better, but it doesn't. They keep saying they've learned, but they haven't. Please don't give me the standard line about them being in business to make money. Because that's wrong. They are in the business to make games that their customers enjoy. And THAT will lead to them making money. The current WoW devs just don't get that anymore. Now it's all about the bottom line and not about letting people have fun anymore.
  1. Dequanacus's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Dakirokor View Post
    Everyone makes some mistakes but eventually when the mistakes keep piling up you get fired. At this point that line has been in every communication from the dev team for years and people are wondering when they will actually learn.
    You speak as if all they are making is mistakes. Far too much goes into a patch to point at one portion and saying that it spoiled the whole thing.

    - - - Updated - - -

    Quote Originally Posted by perasite View Post
    The fact that they are happy with the Pathfinder system they used in this expansion in which you only get flight after you've done everything that you'd want flight for and then they intend to take it away again in a few short months when they take us to Argus says everything I need to know about their ability to keep me playing.
    You mean the concept of it they had since the beginning and that they stated in clear terms several times over the years? Yeah, if this is only news to you now, you probably shouldn't be playing video games. They said that was their intent the first time they implemented achievement based flying, they said they were happy with it, they said they were going to continue with it, and in Legion they said again that they wanted it to be available only after you've done the content that would be trivialized by it. You can only be so mad at Blizzard for your own stupidity.
  1. Shadowbane36's Avatar
    What raid would you like to see for each expansion's timewalking event.
    Would love to see Ulduar for the WotLK timewalking, Firelands for Cata (cause first tier was bad and DS was poorly executed), and none of the MoP raids because they were all boring.
  1. mmocbfa8dc246d's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by UcanDoSht View Post
    I dont know if its the writing of MMO-Champion, but Ion Hazzikostas answers seem very aggressive this time around. Probably this job is too hard for him.
    Maybe dealing with angry virgin fucktard all day makes people angry

    If you don't enjoy them, don't do them.
    Best Answer Ever.

    Don't like it? don't do it.

    If only mmo cancerlord and GD tardlord could understand this
  1. Mhyroth's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Jaylock View Post
    Oh so its not okay for developers to make mistakes in their job now? Do you NEVER make mistakes in your job.

    Get off your high horse.
    When I keep making mistakes or things the customers dislike I get fired/called for by my boss.
    Good to know you've never worked or know how companies work.
    Keep baiting, it'll only get you more love on the forums.
  1. mmoc59b5827c7e's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Shad View Post
    Maybe dealing with angry virgin fucktard all day makes people angry



    Best Answer Ever.

    Don't like it? don't do it.

    If only mmo cancerlord and GD tardlord could understand this
    Thats his job. He basically sold his sold for $200 more each month.

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