Ion Response - Mythic N'Zoth Rumor, Patch 8.3 HandyNotes Addon, Fan Art, DLC 714

Originally Posted by Camelboy

Ion should just tell the truth. The 2nd phase was supposed to hint at 8.3.5 storyline involving Bilgewater Harbor and the Lightforged Undead but since the patch got scrapped the had to remove the phase too.

It's Falathron all over again.

Wrathion was never supposed be in 8.3 but they just threw him in since having Arthas there would've been weird without the storyline in 8.3.5 that they scrapped.

N'zoth was supposed to reveal that everything since the fall of the Lich King has been a lie. Lich King killed everyone and made a pact with Jaina.

That's not only far too complex of a story for WoW, but would literally cause the biggest outlash since WoD.

And how do you honestly expect that to be true when they already revealed Shadowlands BEFORE the raid launched, and said a big part of why we're special there is our connection to Azeroth and that we're alive?

Wrathion was being built towards for a while now, since he saved Ebonhorn with his research.

This is just over the top of a claim that's easily shown to be faulty.

Originally Posted by Stardrift

Too much money. The millions of players paying $15 a month + multiple purchases of $20 packs of gold clearly does not keep Blizzard afloat. /sarcasm

It's a design philosophy and it's clearly not worked out. They wanted to try something new (which unless they cut wages didn't save them any money considering they hired more people) for BfA in Azerite Armor taking over the function of tier sets, and it turned out underwhelming.

Also, relevant, seems they are going back to class sets eventually in SL, good news for Demon Hunters especially!: https://blizzardwatch.com/2019/11/02...r-shadowlands/

Originally Posted by Jester Joe

That's not only far too complex of a story for WoW, but would literally cause the biggest outlash since WoD.

And how do you honestly expect that to be true when they already revealed Shadowlands BEFORE the raid launched, and said a big part of why we're special there is our connection to Azeroth and that we're alive?

Wrathion was being built towards for a while now, since he saved Ebonhorn with his research.

This is just over the top of a claim that's easily shown to be faulty.

It's just some jackass posting whatever gibberish came to one's mind and it flies beacuse, well, anything flies around here doesn't it?

Originally Posted by Camelboy

Ion should just tell the truth. The 2nd phase was supposed to hint at 8.3.5 storyline involving Bilgewater Harbor and the Lightforged Undead but since the patch got scrapped the had to remove the phase too.

It's Falathron all over again.

Wrathion was never supposed be in 8.3 but they just threw him in since having Arthas there would've been weird without the storyline in 8.3.5 that they scrapped.

N'zoth was supposed to reveal that everything since the fall of the Lich King has been a lie. Lich King killed everyone and made a pact with Jaina.

Lol I really hope this was sarcasm.

"Not sure where that theory got started"
All you need to know how detached Ion and his development team is from the players. Why should they know everyone expected more from the expansion end boss fight, from a literal old god?

Originally Posted by Stardrift

Too much money. The millions of players paying $15 a month + multiple purchases of $20 packs of gold clearly does not keep Blizzard afloat. /sarcasm

Nothing to do with money, as Blizzard themselves said it was an issue of creativity, trying to come up with 12 sets every tier for now going on 25 tiers is a LOT. Its natural that you run out of idea's and struggle more and more to come up with that new and interesting sets.

Making 4 sets instead of 12 based on the identity of the raid rather then the class simply leaves more room creativity.
Tho I will say there have been some unimpressive ones. They can do better.

That dude's art is fucking amazing!

That Vulpera armor looks sick! Blizzard, take notes from your fan artists... And also bring back class-specific sets!

Originally Posted by Gorsameth

Nothing to do with money, as Blizzard themselves said it was an issue of creativity, trying to come up with 12 sets every tier for now going on 25 tiers is a LOT. Its natural that you run out of idea's and struggle more and more to come up with that new and interesting sets.

Making 4 sets instead of 12 based on the identity of the raid rather then the class simply leaves more room creativity.
Tho I will say there have been some unimpressive ones. They can do better.

That's why I don't think it had anything to do with creativity. Blizzard has said many things, and don't the opposite.

But that's just speculation I guess. Still just doesn't add up though.

I'll take Ion words but somewhere deep inside on me i'm still convinced that a second secret phase starting at 25% should have happened but did not because of bugs and poor testing. I did not follow Azshara rwf but Jaina was way more fun (at least to see) than N'Zoth.

Originally Posted by Gorsameth

Nothing to do with money, as Blizzard themselves said it was an issue of creativity, trying to come up with 12 sets every tier for now going on 25 tiers is a LOT. Its natural that you run out of idea's and struggle more and more to come up with that new and interesting sets.

Making 4 sets instead of 12 based on the identity of the raid rather then the class simply leaves more room creativity.
Tho I will say there have been some unimpressive ones. They can do better.

If it's an issue with creativity then they should hire this guy - https://www.deviantart.com/handclaw/gallery

His work speaks for itself.

Originally Posted by Nymrohd

I mean, it's more underwhelming that that WAS all of it. Sure it looked hard and tightly tuned but exciting? Nope

It looks boring because when this whole shabang was in the board room, they probably had the last 2 fights be one fight.

Then they realised it was doing to take at least 20 minutes (if they wanted to make each phase last a decent amount of time) and Azshara's ability bloat was no doubt in their mind when making him too, so they just chopped it in half like they did with Deathwing.

The problem, of course, is that if you chop a fight in half, you get half a fight, which is exactly what both those bosses feel like

The annoying part is, if you basically took the madness of deathwing fight and made that the N'zoth fight, it would've felt amazing. If they had've replaced the 'maw of gorma' area with nothing, then had him rise out of the earth there after we cleared the surrounding bosses, we'd of had this massive platform, with the full sized N'Zoth right in the middle.

But instead we get babby n'zoth, like the other old gods.

Old Gods in the lore = mountains of flesh

Old Gods in the game = about the size of a sea giant

How is it that a single freelance artist can come up with infinitely better armor sets than the art team at Blizzard? And not just one set, but one for each class. The Shaman and Rogue are amazing and the Mage is awesome. I would say Blizz hire this guy but then he'd probably be buried under their increasingly corporate culture and never be heard from again.

Class specific armor is definitely something I miss a lot. Always checking wowhead or the front page of MMOC to see all of the sets and comparing them, seeing people debate on which looks better, etc. BfAs armor sets have been pretty dull overall and it doesn’t feel like we got a good replacement to class sets at all, so I hope they return to class sets as soon as they can.

Originally Posted by Dellis0991

That dude's art is fucking amazing!

He has class sets for every race... His work is great

https://www.artstation.com/handclaw/albums/all

Just imagine a class set designed specifically for every race, like a heritage Race/Class set :P

I love his Dark Irons

This is precisely why I can't take that disingenuous gray parsing lawyer seriously. He knows EXACTLY where/why this supposed rumor got started, but can't just own up and say "Yeah guys we had much grander plans for this encounter but crunch time came and there were some bugs that slipped through as a result."
The fight was entirely underwhelming as a penultimate boss of an expansion, and the way the bugs manifested themselves (gate reappearing, etc) combined with the Mythic phase so far only having a trash-tier faceless add to fight, it is perfectly reasonable to suspect that there was *supposed* to be more to it than that.
In summary, Ion can't ride off into the sunset fast enough, and the WoW community will be better for it.

Originally Posted by Budong

How is it that a single freelance artist can come up with infinitely better armor sets than the art team at Blizzard? And not just one set, but one for each class. The Shaman and Rogue are amazing and the Mage is awesome. I would say Blizz hire this guy but then he'd probably be buried under their increasingly corporate culture and never be heard from again.

It's a lot easier to draw armor sets than it is to realize them in-game -- especially from only one angle, on only one race. The unfortunate reality is that there is a limit to how many assets they can create. Concept art is easy, but modeling and texturing everything takes way, way more time.

Look at the Artstation accounts for official Blizzard artists (many of whom started as fan artists), and you'll see they not only produce a ton of concept artwork, but that a lot of sets which don't look great in-game look excellent in their artwork.

Originally Posted by Carnivale

In summary, Ion can't ride off into the sunset fast enough, and the WoW community will be better for it.

I like how people constantly say this when they said the same thing about Ghostcrawler and the ones before him.

Originally Posted by Gorsameth

Nothing to do with money, as Blizzard themselves said it was an issue of creativity, trying to come up with 12 sets every tier for now going on 25 tiers is a LOT. Its natural that you run out of idea's and struggle more and more to come up with that new and interesting sets.

Making 4 sets instead of 12 based on the identity of the raid rather then the class simply leaves more room creativity.
Tho I will say there have been some unimpressive ones. They can do better.

I get that, but maybe that means they need some new perspectives to offer creative input. Like Arthur here, the guy clearly has some talent. I'm not saying the art team is losing it, despite BFA sets really lacking, I still appreciate the work the art team does in all other aspects of the game.

There's probably some legal corporate mumbo jumbo that makes it difficult/impossible, I don't know, but I think they should pay him and just straight up put his models in the game with his name somewhere on the tooltip.

I imagine if Blizz offered up the tools for creating armor/weapon models, I'm sure people would jump all over that and submit work without even needing to be payed. Especially if there was a possibility of it ending up in the game. Either way, I love seeing this guy's art, it's rad as hell

"We're not lying, we're just incompetent!" is a strange defense but you do you, Ion.