Developer Q&A with Ion Hazzikostas - Battle for Azeroth

[fishoa]

The team has considered doing a level squish. A brand new player might be deterred by seeing such a high level they need to attain to play the endgame.
Sometimes you go too many levels before you get a new ability, which would be solved by a level squish.
If you thought things were broken in the past few days, the risks are far greater for everything breaking with a level squish.
It also might feel bad to log in and be level 70 again.
If someone has been away for a few years and hears about a new expansion with a level cap of 80, that would be confusing.
The time spent doing a level squish is probably better spent making new content.

Those are some of the dumbest reasons to not do a Level Squish.

"Hurr, a player might be confused". Wow, how hard it is to put on that in-game popup that we just had a level squish and a link to an article explaining everything? This is a multibillion company and they can't think of that?

"Hurr, it might feel bad". Oh, so just like a stat squish feels now? And how will it feel bad when max level is still max level? Jesus.

"Hurr, time is better spend elsewhere". I'm eager to know where BfA time was spend then, because this is looking like a dumpster fire so far. Just be honest with us and tell us you won't do it because it takes too much work and you can't sell it as a new feature for the next expansion.

[Helltribute]

Guys, come on give them some slack. They havent been doing this for a long time. Theyre pretty new and just starting out. Give them a chance. They need experience to learn from their previous mistakes in the past... Coz you know, a decade hasnt taught em anything, at all -_-

That's the point people don't understand. It doesn't matter if WOW "had worse before", it's more than a decade working on it, stat squish isn't something new, plenty of bugs reported several months ago and they still fail miserably. This needs to be pointed out. It will always has bugs but the proportions are pretty meaningful at this point and people has the right to complain.

[Onikaroshi]

Could you elaborate on why? This seems to be a very bizarre reason to quit.

Between stat squishes, spell removal, progression removal (things like the artifacts dying), its all regression regression regression, we don't progress permanently in this game anymore, level is the LAST thing we have left expansion to expansion, they remove that at it just kills what an MMORPG is supposed to be, permanent, sustained, character progression.

[Sabinn]

hmm so legion won't be legacy, WoD was an exception .

Well , after years looking for It we have finally found the wow killer. It's Ion Hazzikostas.

[Grimalkin of Old]

After Legion?

Especially after Legion.

[Jasper Kazai]

I'm so glad Blizzard is able to step in and "HELP" us with loot by forcing personal. I was so pressured to submit to master loot before now! Hopefully one day they can fix the problem of being forced to play in a guild we don't want to be in. Because obviously, if they had to step in and fix loot, then there's no way that we could ever have chosen a guild with a loot system we want. That was clearly impossible.

[Schizoide]

hmm so legion won't be legacy, WoD was an exception .

Well , after years looking for It we have finally found the wow killer. It's Ion Hazzikostas.

Yeah, also MoP was an exception, cleared all of it during WoD.

Incidentally, Cataclysm was an exception too. I cleared it in MoP.

Oh, and WOTLK was an exception. Cleared it in Cataclysm.

Gosh, ten years of exceptions!

[Constellation]

They are even picking irrelevant questions to answer and even then they are dodging it by talking about everything else. What's the point of that QA then?

This has been a problem since they ever started with the Q&A. At most times the questions in these Q&A's are trivial questions. I wish they had a more specific Q&A where they would get in touch with prominent people in the PvE, PvP and other communities and picked questions that had the highest likes or upvotes depending on the media they picked it from.

It is mildly infuriating when they take 5 minutes to answer a "Where is my horde pride?!"

[ramayana1423]

The reasoning for not being able to trade Azerite armor is some of the biggest bullshit I've ever heard.

[Constellation]

Between stat squishes, spell removal, progression removal (things like the artifacts dying), its all regression regression regression, we don't progress permanently in this game anymore, level is the LAST thing we have left expansion to expansion, they remove that at it just kills what an MMORPG is supposed to be, permanent, sustained, character progression.

But you realize that level is always the first thing for the new players and people who cannot afford to boost characters left and right? We've come to a point that looking at the required levels just to be relevant and even consider progression in the present state is daunting as hell.

How they could approach a level squish, I dont know, but I am certain there is a way that would still make you feel that you are progressing.

[Onikaroshi]

But you realize that level is always the first thing for the new players and people who cannot afford to boost characters left and right? We've come to a point that looking at the required levels just to be relevant and even consider progression in the present state is daunting as hell.

How they could approach a level squish, I dont know, but I am certain there is a way that would still make you feel that you are progressing.

They would leave time to level the same, it would change nothing. People don't seem to understand that, they would squish 120 down to 60 but the time to level 1-60 would be the SAME as 1-120, if anything that makes it WORSE for new people. This is blizzard we're talking about, they just increased time to level, they're not going to squish and lose their MAUs.

They would be better off doing expansions here and there without levels than something as ill conceived as a level squish, that's just how you piss off long term players.

[felrager]

Except in Legion we got way more powerful than in MoP when we needed the original stat squish which is the problem. End of MoP people were around 500k health, some tanks approaching / reaching 1 million with cooldowns. https://d1u5p3l4wpay3k.cloudfront.ne...tem_squish.jpg

And in Legion DPS players not even 100% mythic / heroic geared were around 4 million health.

So no, it doesn't make sense we got to that level nor does it make sense needing a stat squish because the numbers got so ridiculous in such a short time. That is Blizzard error 100%.

We were literally fighting gods using the most powerful weapons in existence. It made sense to be doing massive amounts of damage from even an RP stand point. The shit we were (mostly) fighting were ridiculously powerful. Now we're not fighting gods and it makes sense our numbers are smaller even from an RP standpoint.

[Deleted]

They would leave time to level the same, it would change nothing. People don't seem to understand that, they would squish 120 down to 60 but the time to level 1-60 would be the SAME as 1-120, if anything that makes it WORSE for new people. This is blizzard we're talking about, they just increased time to level, they're not going to squish and lose their MAUs.

They would be better off doing expansions here and there without levels than something as ill conceived as a level squish, that's just how you piss off long term players.

So you are against a level squish but would be okay with expansions not giving you a new level?

[Sabinn]

But you realize that level is always the first thing for the new players and people who cannot afford to boost characters left and right? We've come to a point that looking at the required levels just to be relevant and even consider progression in the present state is daunting as hell.

How they could approach a level squish, I dont know, but I am certain there is a way that would still make you feel that you are progressing.

Funny you mention that, I told a friend about wow who asked how many levels were there. I told him it will be 120 levels in the future and he said no way in hell is is leveling that many levels.

The number is starting to scare new players.

[Schizoide]

You can't talk about abstract damage numbers and RP in the same breath. That just does not compute.

[beelgers]

I'm so glad Blizzard is able to step in and "HELP" us with loot by forcing personal. I was so pressured to submit to master loot before now! Hopefully one day they can fix the problem of being forced to play in a guild we don't want to be in. Because obviously, if they had to step in and fix loot, then there's no way that we could ever have chosen a guild with a loot system we want. That was clearly impossible.

Hopefully, they'll soon keep us from joining/creating groups manually as well. Group leaders can be so unfair in the way they create groups. Randomly grouped groups are clearly the only way to go to make sure everyone has the same experience.

[Dracullus]

Especially after Legion.

Of course you may dislike or even hate Legion (for example mythic raiders have many reasons to do it), but if you think most people don't see this as one of better (if not the best) expansion you are seriously detached from reality.

[Toppy]

Ion: There is a lot of depth with Azerite traits.

Bull, fucking, shit.

What a bold faced lie.

[Onikaroshi]

So you are against a level squish but would be okay with expansions not giving you a new level?

There's ways to do permanent character progression without physical levels

[Weeps]

Of course you may dislike or even hate Legion (for example mythic raiders have many reasons to do it), but if you think most people don't see this as one of better (if not the best) expansion you are seriously detached from reality.

I think it is the best expansion in WoW. Easily plowing over WotLK.