PCGamer Interview with Ion Hazzikostas on Patch 8.2

Flying is a good example. They had one extreme of getting it early for gold, the other of not having it at all, and ultimately settled on a method that they feel is a nice middle ground.

The team sometimes makes changes that seem less fun because they've been burned in the past and are worried about some consequence three years down the line.

Oh boo hoo Ion playing the victim card yet again.....

The team has to find a middle ground between many different play styles.

ARE YOU KIDDING? You are bringing fucking play styles in over a matter of simple convenience?

Yes I'm sure this portal being taken away impacts my play style of how I raid or PvP.... No it just means I have to spend more time getting somewhere. Simple as that.


Flying is a good example. They had one extreme of getting it early for gold, the other of not having it at all, and ultimately settled on a method that they feel is a nice middle ground.

"Extreme". Jesus this dev team is 100% out of touch with it's community. It's actually pitiful now. It's funny how FF14 simply just has you explore the zone and do the MSQ to be able to fly in that zone basically and yet ActiBlizz can't find a simple middle ground for a convenience feature?

Originally Posted by korijenkins

"The team has learned"

No, we've been hearing this for 3 expansions. Clearly the team is full of fucking idiots and never learns anything, or doesn't care.

Unless you're the WoW Classic team, the only team the community is happy with right now because they at least are listening to feedback. Which is just bonkers. You'd think they weren't the same company. lol.

Failings of the Legion Artifact? WTF? The legion Artifact was amazing and it was good it was frontloaded. A person doing well was based on their ability to play their class. Now, its based on the gear combos they have, which is garbage.

Originally Posted by MaximusPM

NO NO NOOOOOO. We DON'T need active traits.

eh, yes.

we do want active traits.
as long as they are fun that is.

I'm ready for this expansion to be over. The premise itself is garbage, more Horde internal conflict, more tacked on systems, more of the same. I'm just ready to move on.

Originally Posted by Shampro

I'm ready for this expansion to be over. The premise itself is garbage, more Horde internal conflict, more tacked on systems, more of the same. I'm just ready to move on.

You realise next xpac will just be the same RNG, tacked on system in a way and timegating among yet another boring story right?

Typical interview formula. They are applying it to literally every interview.

- the next patch is going to be great, so much unique content
- we want players to have fun
- we learned a lot from X


They have yet to fufill at least one of the above. So far the expansion is a big rehashed mess, with time-gated grind, and the only things they learned from previous expansions were the bad ones.

Originally Posted by Arafal

eh, yes.

we do want active traits.
as long as they are fun that is.

And who is going to be the person determining what "fun" is, because if it's Ion we are all in trouble

Originally Posted by Truefacts

LMAO. Taking away something from people wanting to use it, because people who didnt want to use it would rather bitch about it than stop using it, is now a middle ground. I guess the rich milking most of the money from the poor is a middle ground too. We have one extreme of rich having all the money in the world, or the other one of taking all the money from the rich and giving it to the poor. But we, geniuses, thought about the middle ground: let have the rich own only 90% of the money, that way both sides will be happy right?

Originally Posted by Cyram

HOLD ON.
Nazjatar is end-game?

yes.

Max lvl content is referred to as "end game" and has been for the last 15 years.

Originally Posted by Sentynel

Originally Posted by justjm

Flying is a good example. They had one extreme of getting it early for gold, the other of not having it at all, and ultimately settled on a method that they feel is a nice middle ground. <--- Bad e.g. The method you settled in effectively achieved what you wanted. Making it such a long grind, that a sizable no of players would not bother getting it, and rather quit the game. This is not a middle ground at all.

What part of Pathfinder is grinding? All I see is Loremaster, Explorer, and reputation shit. All of this can be completed in a few weeks of playing normally.

I think the pathfinder system is pretty good for current expansions. Once we transition to a new expansion though I think they should bring back a gold cost option. Say someone started playing in Legion and wanted to go do some WoD dungeons for transmog, they could have the option of investing time into unlocking flying to make the dungeons easier to visit or they could throw a big chunk of gold at a vendor. They could even incentivise going back for old pathfinder achieves more by making the vendor flying character specific so you'd either be buying flying for each character or just doing pathfinder to unlock it for all your characters.

For current expansion, pathfinder is super easy to do with normal play. I've never had a problem with it. I've had a good number of guildies who needed to get rides places because we were doing a fun run somewhere old and they weren't playing when that content was current for one reason or another. I say once it's old content the necessity for the barrier goes away.

Originally Posted by korijenkins

"The team has learned"

No, we've been hearing this for since Vanilla. Clearly the team is full of fucking idiots and never learns anything, or doesn't care.

Fix'd that for ya there bud.

Originally Posted by GrinnersGrin

Basically a big "We fucked up" in lawyer speak.

8.2 could be promising then.

Or, Ion is overhyping it as his job requires?

Originally Posted by Bindanda

And who is going to be the person determining what "fun" is, because if it's Ion we are all in trouble

To be honest, no one really.
Fun is subjective and even if half the playerbase likes it the other won't.


Anyways, there will be multiple traits that you can choose from, if you dont like one just choose another that you find fun.

Originally Posted by MaximusPM

"The Heart of Azeroth will continue to use Azerite Power for a progression path on the Heart itself that consists of both passive and active traits.
Active abilities will be actual new spells that are placed on the hotbar and have a meaningful change to your combat rotation immediately."

NO NO NOOOOOO. I DON'T need active traits.

Fixed that for you, not everyone shares the same opinion as you.

Personally i'm excited for this.

Originally Posted by Arafal

eh, yes.

we do want active traits.
as long as they are fun that is.

That really depends. If you go back to artifact weapons, there was basically one added active ability trait, the rest were pretty much passives/procs. That's not to say it's bad, as some of those traits really did change your rotation or how you played or made certain spells more impactful/eaningful. I find that fun, and some Azerite traits did allow this. If Blizz is going to start adding a bunch of extra buttons to push, they run the risk of adding too many buttons to press just to have buttons to press... as well as the potential balancing nightmare that would ensue. Even if everyone had the same generic buttons to press, their effects and power would still vary greatly among classes depending upon their interactions.

What I'd really hope for is either adding one active ability with a bunch of supporting passives/procs that either tie into said ability or baseline spec abilities (Legion artifact model), or to only be able to choose one active ability out of a few depending upon what you want. I'd be willing to let Blizz put more than 5 seconds of thought into this like I have and wow me (excuse the pun) with a new, innovative, and fun system.

Slight aside, anyone else notice we're doing Legion in reverse here? Relic traits are basically was Azerite armor is, and this new HoA system appears like it'll be similar to the Legion artifact weapons.

this is ridicoulous, EVERY expansion we get the same exuse, "the team feels, or the team learned" i mean like wtf?? and everytim they make matters worse, i mean like they are literally in control of what systems they craft and then they act surprised when it doesnt work, its like oh they are surprised 1+1 is actually not 3, but 2, like some shit is so apparent its like how the fk do u manage to still fk up

Now they're tripling down on their ridiculous 'compromise' of flying. These guys are just utterly clueless.

Originally Posted by Eleccybubb

Flying is a good example. They had one extreme of getting it early for gold, the other of not having it at all, and ultimately settled on a method that they feel is a nice middle ground.

"Extreme". Jesus this dev team is 100% out of touch with it's community. It's actually pitiful now. It's funny how FF14 simply just has you explore the zone and do the MSQ to be able to fly in that zone basically and yet ActiBlizz can't find a simple middle ground for a convenience feature?

Seems like a clear extreme to me, 1 was zero effort buying it with minuscule amounts of gold. The other was not at all.

Personally though i'd prob care more about getting flying faster in the absence of the flight whistle, decent FPS & spud, pretty easy to get around.