What has Ion done well as Game Director?

[Dracullus]

Sekiro was game of the year and that's activision. This is entirely on the WoW team and their philosophy / data metric driven game design. Stop scapegoating. The failures are on blizzard themselves.

I would say that things like forcing in-game shop to make up for subs, rushing BfA release it's either Activision or upper Blizzard fault. Screw ups like Azerite armor, this or that spec not working properly is on Ion&devs team.

Overall, if there is a confict between them, Acti-Blizz is always "right", but they don't care how game works, they just want money and constant growing (which is impossible).

[Jester Joe]

Sekiro was game of the year and that's activision. This is entirely on the WoW team and their philosophy / data metric driven game design. Stop scapegoating. The failures are on blizzard themselves.

Published by Activision.

Developed by FromSoftware, who's parent company isn't Activision Blizzard.


Not exactly the right way to go about proving anything, as it's different business relationships/situations. As much as I disagree with making Activision seem like some sort of boogeyman.

[GreenJesus]

Published by Activision.

Developed by FromSoftware, who's parent company isn't Activision Blizzard.


Not exactly the right way to go about proving anything, as it's different business relationships/situations. As much as I disagree with making Activision seem like some sort of boogeyman.

The point is that the game is bad because of their game design philosophies and how they design the game. Islands / Warfronts / azerite armor / class design / tier set removal / master loot removal / GCD changes etc etc etc. All of those weren't activision.

[Tyrannica]

The issue is not that Ion is a bad game director. Because he is not one. He is great. The issue is not blizzard devs. It is the fact that their hands are tired behind activision.

However what i think he has done well would be him backing classic wow.

How does this even make sense? He is the game director and allowed under his very direction THIS class design or lack of in BfA, he allowed azerite gear to happen and he is justifying rng systems and no account bound essences for alts.

He allowed PvE to completely kill PvP, every R1 gladiator is now full decked in PvE gear.

Thats not a good game director.

He might be a good raid and dungeon designer.

[RoKPaNda]

Ion has been very good at understanding that Blizzard cannot just cater to players like himself, or me, or any other Mythic raider, you have to appeal to the casuals. It's nice that he's able to get the game going in a direction that's appealing for both. If they cater to us, the casuals leave in massive numbers, and that's bad business. He's been able to cater to them and keep our endgame sufficiently satisfying thanks to his raider background, which is nice.

[Declaron]

Well, I started WoW in 3.1 and played until 7.3.5 release.

In my personal experience and opinion, the game was excellent in Wrath, kinda fell over a bit in Cata (although I think Cata gets a lot more stick than it deserves, for example Tier 11 was awesome), and I think Mists started off badly, got really good then ultimately ended up quite badly, then Ion comes in I believe in the transition between Mists and WoD?

If thats the case then WoD was outstanding for raiding and bad for everything else, (Does the "Game Director" have a say in the lore direction?) then Legion fixed a lot of stuff and provided a pretty damn good game, but ultimately fell stale to me, I dont know if thats because I got bored of the game or if the game got worse, one thing I do know for a fact is the class design went from being amazing to bloody awful (Cata>Legion).

I have never played BfA so I cannot comment.

Overall then I would say Ions done an "ok" job, Id rate him 6.5/10.

Just my 2c.

[Jester Joe]

The point is that the game is bad because of their game design philosophies and how they design the game. Islands / Warfronts / azerite armor / class design / tier set removal / master loot removal / GCD changes etc etc etc. All of those weren't activision.

Well, that's what I mean by disagreeing with some Activision Boogeyman. It's pretty safe to say anything like that was genuinely Blizzard's ideas, and honestly it's kinda funny to see some people praising Legion (which admittedly I loved too), but then acting as if Activision screwed up BfA when it's not like Activision just started to exist after Legion was done.


I could see some arguments maybe for blaming Activision for the more alt unfriendliness or prolonging some grinds to look for ways to keep the playerbase playing, but honestly that's rather minor compared to glaring gameplay flaws.

[Kralljin]

Sometimes i just ask myself whether the guy tries to design Vanilla 2.0 in the weirdest fashion.

Flying? No real debate over it from TBC to MoP, but since WoD, we need to jump through hoops to get flying.
Alt friendliness? Every Expansion since Wotlk made playing alts easier, rolling back on that since Legion.
"Mandatory" World Content? Had to Farm stuff in Classic, then nothing from Cata to WoD, back since Legion.
No PvP stat? Yep, only Vanilla, Legion and BfA did not have a PvP stat.
No Badge / Point gear? Yeah, that's gone as well since Legion (though one could argue over Benthic being "badge" gear technically).
"meaningful choices"? It was a commitment to play a certain spec (such as Tank) in Vanilla because any Dps gear was closed off for you, the game made switching from spec A to B easier since TBC, but Artifacts, Legendaries and Azerite are extremely unfriendly on that front.

Obviously, there are a ton of differences between Classic and BfA, but there are certain aspects where i can't help but wonder whether they take inspiration from classic and just botch it so completely because modern WoW is not Classic and thus you can't apply the same design principles.

[Elias01]

The point is that the game is bad because of their game design philosophies and how they design the game. Islands / Warfronts / azerite armor / class design / tier set removal / master loot removal / GCD changes etc etc etc. All of those weren't activision.

And they are designed way they are becouse of demands from activision. You cant really make engaging and fun warfront if that content has to be acessible by everyone. And Activusion wants as many maus possible which means Blizz have to desing wow content to be doable by 6y okd kid to 80y grandma = content cannot be challengig only time consuming = content isnt engaging or fun. To fix this they have to stop making game for masses and simply accept fact that some people do not deserve to see 100% of wow content.

[GreenJesus]

And they are designed way they are becouse of demands from activision. You cant really make engaging and fun warfront if that content has to be acessible by everyone. And Activusion wants as many maus possible which means Blizz have to desing wow content to be doable by 6y okd kid to 80y grandma = content cannot be challengig only time consuming = content isnt engaging or fun. To fix this they have to stop making game for masses and simply accept fact that some people do not deserve to see 100% of wow content.

The question is: is "highly accessible to everyone" a Blizzard and/or an Activision goal? Again, blizzard is not just some victim of big mean old uncle Activision. Blizzard just doesnt have the same people that they used to have.

[froschhure]

can we skip this? i allready have infractions and bans regarding my opinion about ... voldemort

[Fetus Rex]

He managed to become quite a meme.

[Eggroll]

Well, he's good at acting like a condescending asshole, I'll give him that.

He's good at being a dickhead, too.

Let's not be cheap with the praise. He sucks at everything else, though.

[Aleksej89]

Have u not noticed all the gambling and rng mechanics?
Also all the classes being neutered n overpruned to hell?
Not to mention the worst story telling and character progression systems?

Good mister ion approves all of those great decisions.

[FelPlague]

Ion Hazzikostas is now in his 4th year as Game Director of WoW. In an attempt to keep things positive, what would you say have been the things that he has done well in his tenure thus far?

I think that he has been able to articulate the concerns of the raiding community well. He seems to at least understand the issues that exist in the raiding scene. I have confidence that he will continue to do so in the future.

we dont really know, we dont work at blizzard, we cant tell if its him behind the good or bad, or if its the devs.
we dont know if him leading is good or bad, cause we dont work there.
that is his job, to lead the game in a good direction.
we can say its not doing that, but is that his fault, or the workers faults for not doing it right?


its hard to tell without insider information if something is bad guys the people did it bad, or they were directly poorly.

[Kallisto]

He is a raider and his focus has been on raiding...he does what he wants for the game.

So what has Ion done? He has selfishly lead the game in the direction he wants it to go in...

And yet Legion and BFA might be according to some the least friendly the game as been for raiders with all their crying about how they "HAVE" to do XYZ or they won't get their orange parses and shove epeens down everyone. Or their unreasonable raid leader will bench them or some other made up excuse.

[Eggroll]

its hard to tell without insider information if something is bad guys the people did it bad, or they were directly poorly.

When in doubt the fish always stinks from the head. If you are the leader, you bear the responsibility for your employees work, period.

[McNeil]

He knows how to cash in the money for Blizzard, even if the game is bleeding subs.

[Azmoden]

He has done wonders for FFXIV's sub numbers.

Does that count?

[Vakash]

I just feel like ever since the WOTLK golden era died, and metzen left, the game at least used to have passion in it and excitement. I think blizzard legitimately struggled and made a advertising mistep with pandaland only to regret it as well.. the idea was stupid imo, but the execution and world and dungeons and gameplay retroactively was great. I foolishly threw away and unsubbed during cata bored of the grind but not looking forward to telling people or playing a game with friends with fat bootleg pandas. (Yet, i know, Sam did pandaren as a easter egg and personal character before pandaren came out, but you can see obvious changes and designs he made from more leaner, samurai style oriental more sleeping giant dad bod at worst bears than the Kung fu dialed to 300% iteration we got. Making them more round to ludricris points where they looked 2-3x as obese as po which was slapstick, wow was serious and giant fat pandas with [bouncy] and [loves food] racials just kinda felt like a easy to make mistep for me, but the mechanics were great.

Meanwhile later i came back to WOD, where the idea sounded great, everyone was hyped for launch, and then it turned out with the underfunding and drought from MoP and decreased revenue it was just a downhill spiral and it's really hard to know if it's less money for talent in the game or just unpopular, hated decisions stubbornly being forced in to lose half the pop (like no flying> )