We need Ion hazzikostas THE PLAYER back not the Game Director to make WOW better

[munchimunchi]

am guessing he stopped playing the game and truly see what real gamers want from the game

[skannerz22]

did you see how excited he was for mage artifact weapon..

[Kalywien]

He's not here to please players, he's here to make money for Blizzard.

[Arainie]

He's 4/8M with <Elitist Jerks> and raids 3 days a week. I'd argue that still qualifies as a player, but what would I know considering I don't hate the game, right?

[bloomy]

he still raids with EJ... he's never been a top end raider/player but he has played the game for a long time, my guess is that he's either making the game exactly as he wants it and he's batshit crazy, or more likely he's getting pressured to make certain changes that people from activision want to see, and since they have no fucking idea how to make and mmo or why wow was so successful in it's early years it's not panning out.

a few more weeks and we'll see if classic is really classic or if it's some reskinned garbage that they "updated" even though there has been a firm "no changes" answer coming from the majority of the classic community. if they left it alone and only changed the things that obviously needed to be changed for this to work like bnet integration then they can continue screwing up retail all they want and i'll happily just play classic and wait for tbc.

[Deleted]

Couldn't you argue that those two are somewhat connected? I mean, a displeased player is less likely to play the game

lol exactly.

[Broken Fox]

Couldn't you argue that those two are somewhat connected? I mean, a displeased player is less likely to play the game

No. It's easy to get people addicted to time wasting games/waste money on dumb shit.

[Spiral Mage]

I don't think it's so much playing the game or not playing it.
It's how you view it when you play it.
Devs tend to view playing the game differently than players do.

Even just dabbling in game development as a hobby, my views on games have changed dramatically.
And now, even talking to some friends, my opinions are not always popular.

It's hard to explain but players just want to jump in, play and get a kick out of it. And there's nothing wrong with that, and that is absolutely the point of a game. But when you take development seriously, there's a lot more layers to that process and a lot more to consider.

A player can tell you that they don't enjoy doing something in a game. But when you ask them why, a lot of the time, they really aren't sure. A skilled dev can go in, analyze it and figure out why exactly they don't like it.

For me, I see Ion and the team well .. again, it's hard to explain exactly. But I see them making some decisions that I think are in opposition to the game being fun. And I don't understand why they make those decisions, even from my midway P.O.V. (I'd be able to handle that much better if I were speaking about a particular issue rather than just in general.)

I understand alot of decisions better than I used to. But I don't understand or agree with them all.

It might sound silly but if it was me? I'd dive back into the community. And find out from players, what really gets them excited and wanting to play. I'd love communication and want to constantly do it and I just don't see that coming from the dev team nearly enough.

A dev once said being a good dev is like being the captain of a luxury cruiser. You have fuel, manpower, and patrons on the boat. You need to listen to what the patrons want to do to and what would make the cruise the best experience possible for them but you also have to weigh those desires against the manpower and fuel you have to expend on accomplishing what your patrons want. Then you just have to go with it and hope it's enough.

I feel like there's a total disconnect at BLIZ from the above logic and the above is something they should take to heart. But from personal experience, interacting with them, I've learned that praise gets responses and criticism, no matter how respectful I try to be, gets ignored and goes without response. (I've even tested this several times and see the result to be fairly predictable.)

I don't agree with that at all. They may design and own the game. But we play the game. WoW is our game, too. It isn't just theirs.

[Nathanyel]

And how would another person not be changed by that job in a similar way? (Assuming you want a 'better' Game Director, and not literally just the player Ion back)

[Zapporius]

We actually don't need Ion. We need someone sensible/creative/charismatic instead.

[potis]

For me, I see Ion and the team well .. again, it's hard to explain exactly. But I see them making some decisions that I think are in opposition to the game being fun. And I don't understand why they make those decisions, even from my midway P.O.V.

They are making decisions based on making the expansion/patch hoppers sub for longer, this has been the case for awhile now, it doesnt take designer level studies or experience to see it.

It worked perfectly with Legion, its semi-working with BFA, but there are many factors/errors in and its not as easy as Legion.

My reality with WoW is that there is a good ~5-6m playerbase (counting Asian servers) that has WoW as their main game, they re-sub often, or rarely unsub, etc etc.

And there is the rest, i wont put a number cause you cant really know but they are the majority.

They will resub at some point of the expansion, consume the content and disappear till the next one, this completely varies for each period/patch/person.

If this majority resubs for a second or third month because they decided to grind something, or to see something, its where the lots of $$ comes from.

Their design and targeting, is those people, not the "We will sub either way!" 5-6mil players.

Hence all this time gating, it works better than people think.

[Kalywien]

Couldn't you argue that those two are somewhat connected? I mean, a displeased player is less likely to play the game

Yeah sure, that is true to a certain extend. Thing is, you can't please everyone, and as a company they will most likely make decisions that bring them cash.

The most obvious for me regarding BfA is gold income / generation, check WQs / missions rewards compared to Legion, it's a massive drop. Also, consumables components cost are significantly higher and harder to farm, making them pricey, how does all that please players ?

Moreover, look at the WoW Token price that as also dropped since Legion, meaning a lot of them have been sold in that time. That's a pretty straightforward correlation to me even if one could argue that it is often the case with expansion releases, I guess time will tell.

[Deleted]

he Problem with Players Like Ion Hazzikostas, or even players like Asmongold is: they are on the wrong end of the food chain to ask for advises to make the game for the majority. Do people really think that this game gains track (as in "regaining player popularity") when you listen to the smallest, the most dedicated and sometimes (more often than not) the most toxic players? Those so called "progamers" are a very good source to ask for feedback for class balance, ability tuning, and even finetuning the hardest dungeons and raids. But the y fail horribly when it comes to things "the average gamer" or the "majority of players" wants, better said needs to stay with the game. Over the years since WotLk we saw the power gap between "progamers" and "Casual gamers" spread wider and wider. For PvE it was mainly because of some loud minority "pro- and semiprogamers" started to wine about people getting the last seasons/last raid equip they "earned by working so hard" for badges. Blizz should have never listened to that. Simply because giving the best to dedicated progamers doesn't work when there is a gap of almost 2 or 3 stages in between this and what the average gamer gets. It is also a not really bright idea to think about mechanics you can push upon players in oder to make them sub longer, instead... you know, think about mechanics the players can enjoy, staying subbed longer in the process of enjoying.

Since WotLk we saw many many many mechanics being introduce that have the purpose of getting people to "learn" how to play more dedicated, to learn how to want "success" in the game. You can't force or trying to force a certain playstyle onto different types of players to fit the way "you think the game should be enjoyed". That doesn't work at all. Instead the devs should see what worked for the masses and improve that, not trying to regulate that even further. Mechanics nowa days are planned from the wrong end and it is only natural that they don't work all to good. Sure, WoW is an old game, but it could at least have double the playerbase that it actually has, easily. And it could easily surpass that number, becoming a very relevant product AND a good game loved by many again. The mechanics are there, just need minor tweakings..... and some not so minor tweakings.

I don't say those people are on the wrong spot (like Ion Hazzikostas). I just think that they need to step back (not from the job) and shift perspectives a lot, looking at mechanics from many totally different perspectives of player types. And there are many more playertypes between those "who always play, pushing the limits" and those "who want everything mailed to them without doing anything". Those two are just the most extreme ends of the spectrum of many many many different types of players. And there have always been those many types since 2004 and even before that.

[Dusty tome]

I don't think there is a going back for live wow. What we are seeing is the result of chasing phone gamers for half a decade. It's time to peacefully sunset live and move on to classic.

[Alphatorg]

he Problem with Players Like Ion Hazzikostas, or even players like Asmongold is: they are on the wrong end of the food chain to ask for advises to make the game for the majority. Do people really think that this game gains track (as in "regaining player popularity") when you listen to the smallest, the most dedicated and sometimes (more often than not) the most toxic players? Those so called "progamers" are a very good source to ask for feedback for class balance, ability tuning, and even finetuning the hardest dungeons and raids. But the y fail horribly when it comes to things "the average gamer" or the "majority of players" wants, better said needs to stay with the game. Over the years since WotLk we saw the power gap between "progamers" and "Casual gamers" spread wider and wider. For PvE it was mainly because of some loud minority "pro- and semiprogamers" started to wine about people getting the last seasons/last raid equip they "earned by working so hard" for badges. Blizz should have never listened to that. Simply because giving the best to dedicated progamers doesn't work when there is a gap of almost 2 or 3 stages in between this and what the average gamer gets. It is also a not really bright idea to think about mechanics you can push upon players in oder to make them sub longer, instead... you know, think about mechanics the players can enjoy, staying subbed longer in the process of enjoying.

Since WotLk we saw many many many mechanics being introduce that have the purpose of getting people to "learn" how to play more dedicated, to learn how to want "success" in the game. You can't force or trying to force a certain playstyle onto different types of players to fit the way "you think the game should be enjoyed". That doesn't work at all. Instead the devs should see what worked for the masses and improve that, not trying to regulate that even further. Mechanics nowa days are planned from the wrong end and it is only natural that they don't work all to good. Sure, WoW is an old game, but it could at least have double the playerbase that it actually has, easily. And it could easily surpass that number, becoming a very relevant product AND a good game loved by many again. The mechanics are there, just need minor tweakings..... and some not so minor tweakings.

I don't say those people are on the wrong spot (like Ion Hazzikostas). I just think that they need to step back (not from the job) and shift perspectives a lot, looking at mechanics from many totally different perspectives of player types. And there are many more playertypes between those "who always play, pushing the limits" and those "who want everything mailed to them without doing anything". Those two are just the most extreme ends of the spectrum of many many many different types of players. And there have always been those many types since 2004 and even before that.

Do you even play the game? Most changes that have been made since WOD aren't for "pro gamers"(LOL). They don't enjoy titanforge, they didn't enjoy the legendary lottery, they didn't enjoy being "forced" to do world quests, they didn't enjoy AP grinds or enforced personal loot. All these changes have been made for plebs. It has also never been this easy to have mythic raider ilvl, cosmetics without actually raiding mythic.

[Ashenhoof]

I don't think there is a going back for live wow. What we are seeing is the result of chasing phone gamers for half a decade. It's time to peacefully sunset live and move on to classic.

Sadly, you're probably right.

I really wish WoW would return to a more RPG oriented MMORPG instead of being action-oriented and chasing phone gamers and other casual folk.

[Jinzuru]

We actually don't need Ion. We need someone sensible/creative/charismatic instead.

I don't believe switching one person can do the trick, he also has people above him. A massive purge on all levels has to happen to see any change.

[CaptainV]

Ion is a lawyer whos fantastic at saying two things that make no sense:

"We dont want players to spend weeks respeccing to be optimised for content"

Followed by:

"Respeccing Azerite traits will cost more unless you wait a week which will reduce the cost so you've only got to wait."

............

This guy cant even make a consistant argument of his own content.

[skannerz22]

He's 4/8M with <Elitist Jerks> and raids 3 days a week. I'd argue that still qualifies as a player, but what would I know considering I don't hate the game, right?

wait i found it

[Dangg]

Is there any proof that's him in that video? Doubt that guy actuall every played WoW.