Developer Q&A with Ion Hazzikostas - Battle for Azeroth

[Onikaroshi]

Comparing major updates (Wrath, Cata and MoP) to an extremely minor patch (BfA pre-patch doesn't add anything, no area, no new item, no dungeon, no questline, NOT EVEN A FREAKING PRE-PATCH EVENT, nothing, only stat squish and talent reshuffling, aka your random 7.X.X.XXXX patch), done

Edit : to be completely fair, this patch looks more like a 7.3.6 than a BfA "pre-patch", as we don't have access to anything "BfA-esque". That's a joke. Pre-patch usually comes with Pre-patch features.

Uh... the ENTIRETY of what is currently BfA is patched in on the servers and the client. also the scenarios and questlines are there, they're just not active ATM. Legion invasions didn't start first week either.

[Scrysis]

Comparing major updates (Wrath, Cata and MoP) to an extremely minor patch (BfA pre-patch doesn't add anything, no area, no new item, no dungeon, no questline, NOT EVEN A FREAKING PRE-PATCH EVENT, nothing, only stat squish and talent reshuffling, aka your random 7.X.X.XXXX patch), done

Edit : to be completely fair, this patch looks more like a 7.3.6 than a BfA "pre-patch", as we don't have access to anything "BfA-esque". That's a joke. Pre-patch usually comes with Pre-patch features.

You seem kind of lost.

This patch DOES come with an entire pre-patch event and areas of complete phasing, along with an underlying core change to how groups are organized, a redo of talents, a COMPLETE change to how PVP is mechanically implemented across a world space. . . . This patch was fairly significant in terms of technical challenge.

Just because you don't see it, doesn't mean it isn't there. All of the pre-patch content (and yes, we do have pre-patch content), is pre-loaded with the latest patch. All they have to do is flip a switch and it will unlock on your home client. It's already on your computer. You just don't see it yet.

[Deleted]

Ion should be fired with an ion-cannon.

"There is a lot of depth with Azerite traits." What is this? So many lies, this kid has no empathy. Normal people don't lie into other people's face.

[Leih]

That was a pretty good Q&A, they actually touched on most of the issues that have cropped up on the forums in the past couple of days. It's a shame most of the people complaining aren't actually looking for answers and won't watch it :P

[Razion]

Seems like a good solution to Levels is Prestige Levels that go away at the end of each Expac.

[Ophenia]

You seem kind of lost.

This patch DOES come with an entire pre-patch event and areas of complete phasing, along with an underlying core change to how groups are organized, a redo of talents, a COMPLETE change to how PVP is mechanically implemented across a world space. . . . This patch was fairly significant in terms of technical challenge.

Just because you don't see it, doesn't mean it isn't there. All of the pre-patch content (and yes, we do have pre-patch content), is pre-loaded with the latest patch. All they have to do is flip a switch and it will unlock on your home client. It's already on your computer. You just don't see it yet.

Uh... the ENTIRETY of what is currently BfA is patched in on the servers and the client. also the scenarios and questlines are there, they're just not active ATM. Legion invasions didn't start first week either.

But nothing is playable, so we can't know for sure it isn't buggy. All the login issues, game crashes, stuff not working will all appear on launch, not on the pre-patch where everything exists but not available.
Stating that BfA is smooth because the pre-patch only had a few bugs, it's a bit anticipating the overall mess that there will be next month.

[Deleted]

Oh really? Maybe you could - I don't know - STOP OVERSTATTING ITEMS?

There's no reason we had a stat squish so soon after the last one. The last one was in 2014 - 10 years after original game launch. This one is happening 4 years later. We should NOT have gotten to this point again. FFS.

I'm starting to think a group of teenagers in their basement could manage a game better.

How many expansions we got squished back to? 2? In wod I had Cata HP. Now we have cata HP again. They did not roll back current xp back to vanilla, do you understand how low level would suck havin level 60 epic items with 5 stam and 5 int? Tier up 6/6 naxx tier 7/7? Every mob and skill/Mob/item would have to be manully edited. Go for that. We wont get any updates for 2 years, but hey, they will fix all the over the top numbers

[Onikaroshi]

But nothing is playable, so we can't know for sure it isn't buggy. All the login issues, game crashes, stuff not working will all appear on launch, not on the pre-patch where everything exists but not available.
Stating that BfA is smooth because the pre-patch only had a few bugs, it's a bit anticipating the overall mess that there will be next month.

Yes, there is a CHANCE that something could cause an issue, but it won't be a system issue on like the level of WoD, it'll be a bottleneck like... WoD. You probably won't see crashes, just bottlenecks.

[h4rr0d]

2) Blizzard has just about crushed Lore's soul. He used to be so happy. He appears so broken now.

That's what can happen when you join a money hungry corporation that doesn't really care about anything but earning money. Some people just don't have skin thick enough to stomach it, and the people with soft skills (like CMs) are often the first to go.

That said, I must admit this is the first QA in which they didn't give answers that were completely disconnected from what I think the game should be. But that might be just, because they realized they really fucked up and didn't want to add any oil to the fire by spewing bullshit like that we have more control over loot now.

[Deleted]

Oh boy, okay Ion. We dont really need "more" stuff, we need more choice and just because we dont need more in Legion doesnt mean we need objectively less in BfA.

This neverending kneejerk reaction...
"Hey should we add a talent row in BfA?"
"Do we really need to add more?"
"You are right, we dont, so lets remove some abilities and gear choices and lets just not replace them."
"Yea, sounds cool."

The worst part is this rollercoaster of buffs, nerfs and pruning every single expansion from now on because of retarded power creep via one single item everyone gets and loses after expansion.

And that stat squish...they are doing it intentionally with insane power creep. It is not normal nor okay to get 10x power increase going from one end of expansion to the end of next one. Some 30-50k hp now? Brace yoursleves for 300-500k at the end of Bfa and Legion numbers in expansion after that. This clearly shows they do not plan ahead at all. How hard is it to set that this expansion is going to have 3 raid "tiers", first raid will start at ilvl 300, lets remove warforging/titanforging, lets remove normal/heroic and keep only one but with optional hard modes, lets remove gear from LFR (it exists mostly to show non-raiders endgame content). So normal gives 300 ilvl gear (305 from hard modes) and 310 from mythic. Next tier normal 310(315) and mythic 320. Last tier normal 320(325) and mythic 330. Cut the crap about "its not rewarding to get 1ilvl upgrade on an item"...it is IF you actually need it to defeat next boss. Im okay with double player power over the expansion, but 10x goes out of hand way too quickly.

[cparle87]

What about BC? The lag/crashing when everyone tried to go through the portal at practically the same time is the reason that Wrath had two starting points for each faction.

Isn't that why every xpac since that has had multiple starting zones? It wasn't just Wrath.

[deenman]

Well if you on blizzard is suprised of the ammmount of problems you now got whit the ilvl squish and you ddint expect any problems . i have to say your staff is very icompetent . The game right now is literlly unplayable... whitch sucks. I was hopeing to get my last char up to 110 before bfa but atm you can barely kill mobs whit fully herioloms and enchants.,.. you die to random stuff evrywhere for no reason at all. You dont get anyt xp for completing dungeons like i start to wonder why and what you are doing on your so called beta testing.. cuz i highly doubt all this issues have been undetected... The item level squish was a change in the fture to make the futre bether etc. it was not about nerfing a class thatss fullly geard so he cant evne solo a mythic 0 dungeon... Stats nerf yes that dont mean you gonna nerf classes to the ground in the current content we are in and gear we got...

wow,you literaly made my brain hurt from reading this nonsense,how is the game unplayable?since pre patch most of what I have done was lvl,did one from 101 to 110,did one from 1 to 40 ish and another from 54 to 83,had zero issues with killing mobs or dieing to ''random stuff'',some bosses in dungeons did an odd extra dmg but nothing unbeatable,and did you even listen to the Q&A?dungeon xp isnt given at the end anymore,its given by the end boss dieing,and related to the issues that happened,he literaly explained why and how some were missed,seriously did you even take more than 5 minutes of listening?

[eduwneso]

So funny how people that don't know how coding or developing something works. I did expect, even taking into account how big blizz is (and that is one of the problems), that all these changes in live would break a lot of the game, why? because the coding and doing of a team of dozens of people, it is imposible with just testing with few people in PTR (compared to live) to know everything. I want to see you guys trying to debug one problem of your own 2000 lines of code (being made with love and good structure) with some friends, now imagine millions of lines of code and dozens of people looking at it, and also quite a lot of that code made by somebody else. But of course you people know more about it than everyone.

[Spiren]

2 points:

1) WoW should have never got this far in first place. It was once an awesome game, but as it usually is with all the neverending things, creators will run out of ideas eventually and tend to scramble good old stuff with innovations and/or bloat it with additions of new things.

2) It's also a simple fact that if they keep raising the cap of everything just for sake of power progression, they will end up with immense numbers. Instead of partial scaling things back and forth, they should focus on EXPANDING the current game, not REPLACING it with newer content, effectively scrapping what they have done in previous xpac. But as I mentioned at the previous point, they will eventually run out of ideas, so the power progression (increased level cap and stats) feels necessary again.

[Deleted]

If you played beta you know they are far behind. They f*cked up because they didn't want to invest money into the game and hire more workers. This will be WoD 2.0 and you cannot say I didn't warn you.
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Warfront = Ashran without horde players, Island exp. = MoP scenarios, WQs are worse than the Legion ones (and no more grouping... in an MMO), Dungeons have more trash, longer, and boring. Gears from the raid look like trash. PVP will hit itslowest point. Warmode option will be fun for the campers, haha they can camp eachother LOL. M+ "bring the class not the player" mentality will make it worse.

Delaying gearing by personal loot is just a phatetic way to keep people's sub. The more you raid the less chance you have to get useful gear because you can get the same one again and again... I did LFR for 7 weeks I got the same back 5 times.

[caervek]

We may not have seen the last of Hati

Would be more meaningful if it wasn't coming from the devs who said they also liked Gladiator spec for warriors and would be looking to bring it back post Legion xD

- - - Updated - - -

Island exp. = MoP scenarios

Dungeons have more trash, longer

Both of these are good things if you enjoy scenarios or dungeons.

[Deleted]

In retrospect, Ghostcrawler wasnt so bad, eh?

[Delano]

The game is 14 years old and by one of the most powerful game developers in the world. Saying "we'll do better next time" as the same failures happen for the nth time in a row? Not cutting it.

[Gadzooks]

So funny how people that don't know how coding or developing something works. I did expect, even taking into account how big blizz is (and that is one of the problems), that all these changes in live would break a lot of the game, why? because the coding and doing of a team of dozens of people, it is imposible with just testing with few people in PTR (compared to live) to know everything. I want to see you guys trying to debug one problem of your own 2000 lines of code (being made with love and good structure) with some friends, now imagine millions of lines of code and dozens of people looking at it, and also quite a lot of that code made by somebody else. But of course you people know more about it than everyone.

C'mon, this is a lame cop out and you know it. I don't have to know more. I'm not paid to program, and it's not a requirement to play a video game. If I buy a refrigerator from GE, and it doesn't work when it's delivered, I don't go "Oh, well, you know, fridges are hard to design, so we'll just keep our food in coolers until they figure it out." - or claim that I know how to design a fridge to know it's not working.

If they don't have enough people to properly test an expansion, which they've been working on for two years, with an extensive (and free) beta server and PTR, with volumes of feedback, then they need to hire more people, and/or replace people. In corporate terms, 15 years is a long time, for them not to have their collective shit together, and to have a multi-million dollar, two year project brought to it's knees over a new guild feature? That doesn't cut it. It's hard? So what? They're paid to work on hard stuff. We're not. (Well, those who buy it, I'm not one of them anymore). If they're releasing code that doesn't work, then it's on them, regardless of difficulty, and Ion's apology makes a mockery of your comments.

Granted, I agree with a lot of people, this isn't that bad, compared to the past - but it shouldn't be happening at all. This is an AAA+ game studio. They're better than this. And if they're not, they need to make some changes.

[eduwneso]

C'mon, this is a lame cop out and you know it. I don't have to know more. I'm not paid to program, and it's not a requirement to play a video game. If I buy a refrigerator from GE, and it doesn't work when it's delivered, I don't go "Oh, well, you know, fridges are hard to design, so we'll just keep our food in coolers until they figure it out." - or claim that I know how to design a fridge to know it's not working.

If they don't have enough people to properly test an expansion, which they've been working on for two years, with an extensive (and free) beta server and PTR, with volumes of feedback, then they need to hire more people, and/or replace people. In corporate terms, 15 years is a long time, for them not to have their collective shit together, and to have a multi-million dollar, two year project brought to it's knees over a new guild feature? That doesn't cut it. It's hard? So what? They're paid to work on hard stuff. We're not. (Well, those who buy it, I'm not one of them anymore). If they're releasing code that doesn't work, then it's on them, regardless of difficulty, and Ion's apology makes a mockery of your comments.

Granted, I agree with a lot of people, this isn't that bad, compared to the past - but it shouldn't be happening at all. This is an AAA+ game studio. They're better than this. And if they're not, they need to make some changes.

I agree with you that they are better than this, and that this should not have been this "bad", but bugs can still happen and a major problem because of coding, believe me, can still happen. There is not enough testing in the world they can do that can compare to what millions of players with different things they want to do could prepare them for every bug/problem, and not trying to be mean, but you can't possibly compare the making of a refrigerator with this :S.