Developer Q&A - Ion Hazzikostas

[Wolfman31]

Is Josh Allen trying to look like Judah Friedlander in that Q&A?

[Wnderful Weeknd]

Except it isn't asking him to be fired and losing his livelihood. If he's keeping his current wage and status within the company just in a different department/franchise how exactly is that him being "fired"? In most (if not all) other jobs if you constantly make unpopular decisions with customers or can't live up to expectations within the company in regards to quality you do tend to either get demoted or actually fired. Now maybe Blizzard is happy with this haphazard mess, just means if there's any fallout, they'll have to deal with it.

It's actually quite easy to say the game quality is going downhill. They make all the time gating more and more obvious, listen less to feedback in regards to class performance on alpha/beta forums (ele/spriest say hi), think mob filled dungeons are "fun", etc... Granted they do tend to do some things right, just seems to be fewer and farther apart these days. Also fwiw with your analogy, if the Chef has been making unpopular menu choices and making mistakes for the last 4+ years, it might be time to get a new Chef.

Right, except the echo chamber of WoW community forums can't seem to get it through their head that they are NOT the majority and are in fact a vocal minority. The simple fact of the matter is a large majority of the people that play this game, or any game, don't visit forums to voice their opinions and people that usually do only do so to voice discontent. You said it yourself, they do some things right yea? But there's basically never people who make forum threads to gush about how much they love the things they do right but there's always an angry customer making a thread about how unhappy they are.

MMOChampion and Reddit live in this bubble where they believe the entire playerbase hates 90% of the game because that's all they read about but that's not the case and if it was people would show that with their wallet. They did so with WoD's massive player drop and did it again with Legion/BFA selling great. You wanna know if people are into the game right now? Ignore all the bellyaching on the forums and check out sub numbers and the like. That's the only proof that matters.

[Galateacyc]

Wtf happend to Lore? He totally lost his passion for the game and community it seems.

Well, it isn't hard to figure out. He reads the forums, so he knows the discontent of the players.
From there, there are several possibilities, but they all largely end the same way:

- He hides the discontent from the developers (as it's "non-constructive" or some other BS excuse for "I don't agree"), the players see no improvements, grow more bitter, and are even more vocal about their discontent. An natural "us vs them" attitude happens, and he grows to hate the player base at large. A CM who hates the community he manages cannot possibly be happy. Thus taking questions from said community during a Q&A is not fun.

- He does not hide the discontent from the developers, but is largely ignored and unable to get answers or solutions from the developers. With nothing to report on the problems of the day, and no solutions forthcoming, it's natural he would feel powerless to represent the players while banging his head against a wall of silence that feels impenetrable. This is soul crushing, and cannot result in happiness. Thus sitting next to the person who ignores you 99% most of the time, and having to select meaningless questions which the devs will actually answer (one that won't create too many new firestorms in the forums) is not fun.

- He does not hide the discontent from the developers, and the developers tell him they like it and "screw the players". His job prevents him from passing along along their answers verbatim, and forces him to either craft bull crap excuses or ignore what he knows are legitimate problems exasperating the complaints. In either case, this is a very crappy position to be in, and also cannot result in happiness. Thus, a Q&A which is meaningless and does noting to address player concerns is stressful and also not fun.

Probably it's some combination of three. When you add to that the daily annoyances from spammers, and all kinds of vile posts imaginable, I really don't envy the CM's jobs.

Ultimately the blame falls on Ion in any case. Either he's ignorant of the players thoughts and thinks everything is fine (which he doesn't appear to be, but if it's true, he failed to do even rudimentary verification of the feedback he was given), or he knows and is putting the CMs into impossible situations with his continual destruction of the game (aka "savage vision" or whatever other buzzwords they're using for flushing the game down the toilet).

[morph4037]

Right, except the echo chamber of WoW community forums can't seem to get it through their head that they are NOT the majority and are in fact a vocal minority. The simple fact of the matter is a large majority of the people that play this game, or any game, don't visit forums to voice their opinions and people that usually do only do so to voice discontent. You said it yourself, they do some things right yea? But there's basically never people who make forum threads to gush about how much they love the things they do right but there's always an angry customer making a thread about how unhappy they are.

MMOChampion and Reddit live in this bubble where they believe the entire playerbase hates 90% of the game because that's all they read about but that's not the case and if it was people would show that with their wallet. They did so with WoD's massive player drop and did it again with Legion/BFA selling great. You wanna know if people are into the game right now? Ignore all the bellyaching on the forums and check out sub numbers and the like. That's the only proof that matters.

Can agree to the first bit. Second bit I always thought MMOC and Reddit were polar opposites. MMOC hates wow, Reddit loves it considering how heavily moderated it is and how criticism posts usually disappeared rather quickly. Then again I haven't been to the Reddit since before the 7.3.5 patch hit live.

Tbh I would love to see the sub numbers however I doubt we ever will since the flying debacle and the switch to reporting "success" in their reports via "MAU(DAU?)" metrics.

[Deleted]

The amount of salt in this thread. Might be worst I’ve seen on here ever. You guys definitely need to move on. Some of you sound like you are on the verge of mentally collapsing from this. Have som self respect?

[kamuimac]

Well, it isn't hard to figure out. He reads the forums, so he knows the discontent of the players.
From there, there are several possibilities, but they all largely end the same way:

- He hides the discontent from the developers (as it's "non-constructive" or some other BS excuse for "I don't agree"), the players see no improvements, grow more bitter, and are even more vocal about their discontent. An natural "us vs them" attitude happens, and he grows to hate the player base at large. A CM who hates the community he manages cannot possibly be happy. Thus taking questions from said community during a Q&A is not fun.

- He does not hide the discontent from the developers, but is largely ignored and unable to get answers or solutions from the developers. With nothing to report on the problems of the day, and no solutions forthcoming, it's natural he would feel powerless to represent the players while banging his head against a wall of silence that feels impenetrable. This is soul crushing, and cannot result in happiness. Thus sitting next to the person who ignores you 99% most of the time, and having to select meaningless questions which the devs will actually answer (one that won't create too many new firestorms in the forums) is not fun.

- He does not hide the discontent from the developers, and the developers tell him they like it and "screw the players". His job prevents him from passing along along their answers verbatim, and forces him to either craft bull crap excuses or ignore what he knows are legitimate problems exasperating the complaints. In either case, this is a very crappy position to be in, and also cannot result in happiness. Thus, a Q&A which is meaningless and does noting to address player concerns is stressful and also not fun.

Probably it's some combination of three. When you add to that the daily annoyances from spammers, and all kinds of vile posts imaginable, I really don't envy the CM's jobs.

Ultimately the blame falls on Ion in any case. Either he's ignorant of the players thoughts and thinks everything is fine (which he doesn't appear to be, but if it's true, he failed to do even rudimentary verification of the feedback he was given), or he knows and is putting the CMs into impossible situations with his continual destruction of the game (aka "savage vision" or whatever other buzzwords they're using for flushing the game down the toilet).

ofc he desnt give a single fuck

we are talking about the "you think you do but you dont guy"

all he wants is good MAU resoults since this is what pays his salary and bonuses.

and this is why game went to garbage this expansion

[Lagmonster]

Well, it isn't hard to figure out. He reads the forums, so he knows the discontent of the players.
From there, there are several possibilities, but they all largely end the same way:

- He hides the discontent from the developers (as it's "non-constructive" or some other BS excuse for "I don't agree"), the players see no improvements, grow more bitter, and are even more vocal about their discontent. An natural "us vs them" attitude happens, and he grows to hate the player base at large. A CM who hates the community he manages cannot possibly be happy. Thus taking questions from said community during a Q&A is not fun.

- He does not hide the discontent from the developers, but is largely ignored and unable to get answers or solutions from the developers. With nothing to report on the problems of the day, and no solutions forthcoming, it's natural he would feel powerless to represent the players while banging his head against a wall of silence that feels impenetrable. This is soul crushing, and cannot result in happiness. Thus sitting next to the person who ignores you 99% most of the time, and having to select meaningless questions which the devs will actually answer (one that won't create too many new firestorms in the forums) is not fun.

- He does not hide the discontent from the developers, and the developers tell him they like it and "screw the players". His job prevents him from passing along along their answers verbatim, and forces him to either craft bull crap excuses or ignore what he knows are legitimate problems exasperating the complaints. In either case, this is a very crappy position to be in, and also cannot result in happiness. Thus, a Q&A which is meaningless and does noting to address player concerns is stressful and also not fun.

Probably it's some combination of three. When you add to that the daily annoyances from spammers, and all kinds of vile posts imaginable, I really don't envy the CM's jobs.

Ultimately the blame falls on Ion in any case. Either he's ignorant of the players thoughts and thinks everything is fine (which he doesn't appear to be, but if it's true, he failed to do even rudimentary verification of the feedback he was given), or he knows and is putting the CMs into impossible situations with his continual destruction of the game (aka "savage vision" or whatever other buzzwords they're using for flushing the game down the toilet).

Well when he's streaming on twitch he seems happy nowadays. And just a month or two ago he basically said on stream that if he could get the sub numbers he would go back to streaming full time. And knowing his history and passion from following him years before blizzard, that was a really telling thing when he said that. Because I know he truly believed he could help make a difference when he left to go work for Blizzard.

[Infinitiz]

His "3-4% increase on mob health" statistic is shit. Mobs that had 40k health when I hit 120 now have 50k health after getting myself gear.

Must've come from the same guy that said only 5% of players were affected by server issues during the launch.

This is annoying me.

It clearly says after dungeon gear. Meaning we won't see the '3-4%' yet. Hes saying when we're item level 400 or 500 or 600 we will definitely feel more powerful.

Why people are nit picking 2 weeks after launch is bloody stupid.

[Galateacyc]

ofc he desnt give a single fuck

we are talking about the "you think you do but you dont guy"

all he wants is good MAU resoults since this is what pays his salary and bonuses.

and this is why game went to garbage this expansion

While I agree that I think he knows, and whether he gives a fuck or not does it anyways not withstanding (I have my own theories on why he acts as he does which does not involve MAUs), I do have the nitpick a little: the "you think you do but you don't guy" was actually Brack I think, not Ion. (in no way does this invalidate your point though)

[Deleted]

Ion maybe reads the battle.net forums but remember their mods are constantly removing negative opinions about their game so he can only see the insane positive fan base's opinion. I bet that is why the whole dev team lives in this delirium that everything they do is perfect for the players.

I got an instant perma-ban because I talked about making Vanilla servers to lure back real MMO players way back.

Can we track somehow the ratio of horde/alliance players in war mode? I bet it is around 90%:10% for the horde. I told this in alpha WPVP will be dead with this change.

At this point I think Vanilla servers will only go up when the WoW sub number will hit its absolute lowest so they can counter the bad numbers in the quarter report. It makes me sad.

[DesoPL]

Ion pls GTFO from WoW.

[MarkTheMadMad]

Yeah guys! He has a Ph.D. in MMO Game Design and spent at least 20 years in college earning it! He's a PROFESSIONAL people!

Didnt he have a degree in law before he went on to do games development? ..
Im sure he was just a subscriber like the rest of us

[Hulari]

So they introduce scaling to counteract item level jumps but you can't feel the progression of item level jumps because of scaling?

The easier solution is to stop huge ilevel jumps and remove scaling.

SO MUCH THIS.

What on earth are they doing? Oh we need big ilvl jumps to make you feel that upgrades are worthwhile and you feel like you're getting stronger! But we're scaling everything up with you so that you don't feel too strong.. wait a minute.

[FelPlague]

Uh, no. The WQ gold quests were not fast nor the best. If you had a lot of alts, the table was. I went up 500k in 2 month with just 2 alts fully maxed out getting 4k+ each a day on average from those gold quests. If you had all 12 fully maxed characters bringing in 4k a day you could easily clear
45k a day. I had multiple guild members who went up from a few thousand to Millions, just from those tables. They were insane when each quest could give you 2k-3k a pop.

and when world quests gave 100-300 and i could do 10 in an hour.
while those missions you sent them out then you just did nothing as they took a day or two to finish.

- - - Updated - - -

1) Instead of taking the means away to instant group up, implement some kind of contribution requirement instead.
2) So?
3) People play MMOs for a number of reasons. May it be to progress through PvP, PVE (instances, raids) or to experience leveling and unique quests. Dailies are literally repeating the same exact mundane quests daily or you fall behind on grind necessary to access other portions of the game. I don't understand how you can compare raids and daily quests. People who want to raid, raid. People who don't, don't. But by your logic, players have to raid to access things like and AP. They don't.

1. if they add a contribution requirement then just no one will join the groups because then you still have to do the same amount of work, meaning that why even join a group.
2. a game should not complete for you by just afking.
3. we are not even 2 weeks through and I am literally only a day or 2 from being able to drop world quests.

- - - Updated - - -

Everquest doesn't reset every xpac. I still play it actively. They don't invalidate their content every patch like wow does.

- - - Updated - - -



I never said it didnt? It was just more noticable in the past few xpacs. I remember wearing naxx gear in kara so your point is moot.

and then you replaced all that gear in kara.

[Deleted]

Ion maybe reads the battle.net forums but remember their mods are constantly removing negative opinions about their game so he can only see the insane positive fan base's opinion. I bet that is why the whole dev team lives in this delirium that everything they do is perfect for the players.

I got an instant perma-ban because I talked about making Vanilla servers to lure back real MMO players way back.

Can we track somehow the ratio of horde/alliance players in war mode? I bet it is around 90%:10% for the horde. I told this in alpha WPVP will be dead with this change.

At this point I think Vanilla servers will only go up when the WoW sub number will hit its absolute lowest so they can counter the bad numbers in the quarter report. It makes me sad.

But... What about guys like me? Mob scaling makes perfect sense, as rewards go up too.
Flying unlocking via achievements is more fun than pay x gold, if they added a short story quests directly involving flying it would be even better.
Progression via time passed and work input makes it good RPG?
I think what we have now is way better than what was out there for years..
It has it's flaws like not giving anything for going up 10 levels or that I have to level alliance to see another half of the story (which makes sense logically, I just don't have alliance character)
I am being called out for being Blizz D*ck sucker lol Guys here are worse than blizzard, if what you say is truth and they delete criticism, unable to accept other sides arguments. Also *I got banned/punished for JUST x reason* guys.. well there is usually other side of the coin for a story like that

[Alkizon]

Not sure if they clueless/ignorant or just over-stubborn, but also don't feel that this worries anyone else

[Kathranis]

Didnt he have a degree in law before he went on to do games development? ..
Im sure he was just a subscriber like the rest of us

He got hired to work on WoW because he was the GM of Elitist Jerks, which was one of the earliest guilds / websites to focus on theorycrafting and min/maxing.



This is a video he narrated back in BC explaining how to speedrun ZA.

This is his main: https://worldofwarcraft.com/en-us/ch...anis/gurgthock

[Deleted]

If you have gone up 40 ilvl and the mobs health increases so they take the same amount of time, if not longer, that is the bullshit. The entire point of gearing up is to make things easier and faster.

That would be bullshit if its true, the numbers say something like, if you improve by 70%, the mobs improve by 10% (There are exact numbers on Reddit).
So there is improvement and i can confirm that on many toons i have. The problem is you WISH there would be more and faster improvement, but live is not what you wish for and there is still enough improvement overall.

It's not that they can't, it's the fact they know they're gonna be doing it over and over and over and over. Now add in alts. It gets tedious and without something to make it go as quick as possible people get burned out redoing content hundreds of times over years.

Again nobody is forcing you to level 10 alts and have every thing to be done every day. Doing things over and over again is the pure nature of MMORPGs and if you get burned out, relax and play something else.

To all those people bitching about people who wanna do their WQs as fast as possible (using addons):
Ofc. you can do them all solo without using any brainpower. But it takes time. Time is a precious commodity nowadays and I don't want to waste 4-5 hours a night on running around zones, doing the same 20-30 WQs over and over and over and over until I'm finally at a point where I don't need to do them anymore..

So don't do it? Or do like 5-10 a night!? You cant tell me you NEEED the last receipt to stay alive or that last 2% in DMG to kill the raidboss or whatever. Killing bosses depends 99% of the time on how to play the mechanics and how good you can play your class. If you match the GS recommendation you should be able to kill that boss/raid. If not you just have to get better in pressing buttons.

[Deleted]

If you have gone up 40 ilvl and the mobs health increases so they take the same amount of time, if not longer, that is the bullshit. The entire point of gearing up is to make things easier and faster.

That would be bullshit if its true, the numbers say something like, if you improve by 70%, the mobs improve by 10% (There are exact numbers on Reddit).
So there is improvement and i can confirm that on many toons i have. The problem is you WISH there would be more and faster improvement, but live is not what you wish for and there is still enough improvement overall.

It's not that they can't, it's the fact they know they're gonna be doing it over and over and over and over. Now add in alts. It gets tedious and without something to make it go as quick as possible people get burned out redoing content hundreds of times over years.

Again nobody is forcing you to level 10 alts and have every thing to be done every day. Doing things over and over again is the pure nature of MMORPGs and if you get burned out, relax and play something else.

To all those people bitching about people who wanna do their WQs as fast as possible (using addons):
Ofc. you can do them all solo without using any brainpower. But it takes time. Time is a precious commodity nowadays and I don't want to waste 4-5 hours a night on running around zones, doing the same 20-30 WQs over and over and over and over until I'm finally at a point where I don't need to do them anymore..

So don't do it? Or do like 5-10 a night!? You cant tell me you NEEED the last receipt to stay alive or that last 2% in DMG to kill the raidboss or whatever. Killing bosses depends 99% of the time on how to play the mechanics and how good you can play your class. If you match the GS recommendation you should be able to kill that boss/raid. If not you just have to get better in pressing buttons.

[Deleted]

Feels like people are just bad at this game when they complain about scaling. I feel way strong now at 330 ilvl then I did when I got to level 120.