Live Developer Q&A with Game Director Ion Hazzikostas

[Puremallace]

Game is bleeding subs badly and they do not even hint at updates for 8.2......

[kubaje]

This Q&A was a joke. Stupid bingo questions, nothing else.

One good question about the game not feeling rewarding and they just keep acting as if it was a minor thing which they don't even mean to fix. GG Ion, that's it for me. There is actually no hope whatsoever that this shit will change in the future. What a joke.

[Eleccybubb]

Game is bleeding subs badly and they do not even hint at updates for 8.2......

Pretty much.

I wouldn't be surprised if it's hit the 1.2-1 mil mark now.

[Poppincaps]

And right into the RNG one.....

The team is actively trying to figure out how to lessen moments that feel bad without making everything a vendor.

JUST HAVE A VENDOR. Seriously stop with the arrogance already.

There are a lot more viable loot acquisitions in the game outside of raiding than in the past.

Such as? Unless half that other "viable" shit Titanforges which relies on RNG then no there's not.

Seems it's gonna be another pitiful Q and A where nothing of value gets answered or important questions get garbage tier answers.

There is a vendor for azerite already. Do you want everything on a vendor now? Besides that ties into the next point that Mythic + allows you to endlessly farm heroic quality loot with a near mythic piece of loot guaranteed every week as long as you're doing 10+. So... why do we want badge gear again? It's not like you were getting BiS from badge gear in the past anyways.

Seems like you just wanna rage at Blizzard instead of actually acknowledging that they're making fair points.

[Thetruth1400]

"Welcome to our talkshow where we make excuses for all the mistakes we make."

They're not excuses, they're "actively working on changes!"

Joking aside, yeah it's just another show where they talk in circles, say things will get better and tell a bunch of false stories of "Oh look how relatable I am!"

He actually said he sold a trinket for thousands of gold back in Vanilla WoW to someone he brought along to BWL. Thousands of gold for a trinket at a time when the majority of people barely managed a few hundred gold. Okay Ion, I believe you.

Also the whole:
- People tend to fixate on the Activitision investor lingo but this is not what the team focuses on when creating content.
Followed by:
- The team values how engaged the community is and how often they are logging in to do content.

Yeah Ion, it's called Monthly Active Users. In other words, how often people are, you know, subscribed and logging in. It is "investor lingo" but it also is an extremely important metric on the health of the game. It should also be something you focus on when creating content because content that can't keep the MAU stable is most likely boring, generic content.

[Darknessvamp]

I'd rather they keep away from a level squish until they're ready to do another old world revamp and have planned thoroughly on how they're going to jumble around the numbers. It's not like the levels are a problem as they have kept reducing the XP to next level and XP rewards totals since MoP and the stats squishes continue to throw the numbers all over the place until we end up back where we started. Not to mention the only reason they want to reduce the number of levels is to adjust when abilities/stat changes are given out whilst leveling from level one in order to make it "more rewarding" and will have barely any effect on a new expansion if they don't add any new abilities like the last two expansions (yes Legion had Artifact weapon abilities but we all knew they were temporary).

[Eleccybubb]

There is a vendor for azerite already. Do you want everything on a vendor now? Besides that ties into the next point that Mythic + allows you to endlessly farm heroic quality loot with a near mythic piece of loot guaranteed every week as long as you're doing 10+. So... why do we want badge gear again? It's not like you were getting BiS from badge gear in the past anyways.

Seems like you just wanna rage at Blizzard instead of actually acknowledging that they're making fair points.

I don't mind that badge gear wasn't BiS though.

That was the whole point of Vendor gear in the first damn place.

But sure pull the "you just wanna rage" card for their bad design. Please don't respond further if you aren't actually going to debate.

[Sigxy]

"The team has no incentive to create content that is not fun just to pad subscription numbers."

Imagine if they didn't gate questlines weekly and let people have fun and do things at their own pace... \o/

[Poppincaps]

They're not excuses, they're "actively working on changes!"

Joking aside, yeah it's just another show where they talk in circles, say things will get better and tell a bunch of false stories of "Oh look how relatable I am!"

He actually said he sold a trinket for thousands of gold back in Vanilla WoW to someone he brought along to BWL. Thousands of gold for a trinket at a time when the majority of people barely managed a few hundred gold. Okay Ion, I believe you.

You do realize people were buying Mythic Jaina mounts of gold cap? There are players with multiple gold capped characters even. There have always been people who have had a ridiculous amount of gold.

Also Lore was a guide writer for Tankspot which was the primary guide channel way before Fatboss existed. Ion is currently 6/9 Mythic. Like you can say that they're out of touch, and maybe they are, but they're definitely not lying to you about their experiences.

[monteiro]

The team has no incentive to create content that is not fun just to pad subscription numbers.

Is it April Fools already?

[crakerjack]

I liked the part where he said they don't plan on changing how players can earn gold. That we should be fine with how much gold we're making by simply playing the game. Well Ion, I didn't do emissaries back in Legion and I still managed to make 400k+ gold before BFA released. Now doing the same ol' stuff that I've been doing, I'm at 80k gold. I hate that smug look on his face when you can tell he's lying and knows they're bleeding the playerbase just so he can say "Well you can just buy a WoW token and make gold that way."

[Poppincaps]

I don't mind that badge gear wasn't BiS though.

That was the whole point of Vendor gear in the first damn place.

But sure pull the "you just wanna rage" card for their bad design. Please don't respond further if you aren't actually going to debate.

You're the one not debating. Why do you need badge gear when you can endlessly farm gear that would be badge gear ilvl equivalent? The only piece of gear that is really important to have on a vendor is on a vendor. What more do you want? Badge gear wouldn't solve anything really.

[McNeil]

I wonder how a leveling squish can work with the leveling boost. Because of this I'm not expecting them to change leveling any time soon.

[Traveler Voltin]

if they did a level squish i would quit for good.

[Thetruth1400]

You do realize people were buying Mythic Jaina mounts of gold cap? There are players with multiple gold capped characters even. There have always been people who have had a ridiculous amount of gold.

Also Lore was a guide writer for Tankspot which was the primary guide channel way before Fatboss existed. Ion is currently 6/9 Mythic. Like you can say that they're out of touch, and maybe they are, but they're definitely not lying to you about their experiences.

Vanilla WoW isn't today's WoW. Back then we didn't have WoD and Legion handing out gold on a table for NPCs to do for you.

That has absolutely nothing to do with today's people being gold capped; having a single character, let along multiple characters gold capped wasn't really a thing back in Vanilla.

[zox2]

Level squish would fix the shallow level issue, but like stats squish, the issue will come back after 2-3 expansion.

I'd like to see a similar system to what they did with professions.

[AwkwardSquirtle]

Hm. I have thoughts on some of these.

Gear reset by gaining 15 ilvls is fine. Gear reset of 15 ilvls over the current mythic gear is not. I think the OP in the Preach thread nailed down a tiered system that would solve this, where say LFR progresses from 350>365>380>395 over an expansion, while mythic would go 380>395>410>435. Everyone gets meaningful progression each tier, but you aren't getting upgrades from content that's trivial to you barring titanforges.

Level squish gets a yes from me. Really solid point made that's often overlooked in the "levelling isn't rewarding" discussion that they can't give you 120 meaningful things. Call it elite levels, new chars are elite by default. We're elite mobs after taking down a titan.

The rep argument is weak. World quests are limited, albeit less so than dailies. They're functionally the same for most players, who if anything will just clear their emissaries. If you no-life it of course you'll get more but you were more able to no-life dungeons than you are world quests. More importantly, you can cap dungeon rep too. Just grant it for the first clear in a week.

Finally, give me Thal'kiel, he was as good a friend to me as Hati was to hunters, he at least talked. I miss him.

[Poppincaps]

I wonder how a leveling squish can work with the leveling boost. Because of this I'm not expecting them to change leveling any time soon.

Leveling would likely take the same amount of time, because each level would take longer. The benefit of the system would be 1. Potentially new players wouldn't see the level 120 cap and be intimidated and more importantly 2. You'd get either a new talent or ability every level as opposed to now where you go vast stretches of levels with nothing new to play with.

[zox2]

if they did a level squish i would quit for good.

why though? (I'm really asking)

[Poppincaps]

Vanilla WoW isn't today's WoW. Back then we didn't have WoD and Legion handing out gold on a table for NPCs to do for you.

That has absolutely nothing to do with today's people being gold capped; having a single character, let along multiple characters gold capped wasn't really a thing back in Vanilla.

Yes, because some mages weren't making bank aoe grinding in Tyr's Hand. Just because you didn't have a lot of gold during vanilla, doesn't mean that other people didn't either.