Ion was responsible for the best and the two worst expansions. That’s a 1:2. And the two worst happened back to back, so I am not sure if I want to give him a 4th try to recreate the Legion-feeling yet again.
Ion was responsible for the best and the two worst expansions. That’s a 1:2. And the two worst happened back to back, so I am not sure if I want to give him a 4th try to recreate the Legion-feeling yet again.
MAGA - Make Alliance Great Again
Players: "Please communicate more with us."
Blizzard: "OK. The Game Director will be the face of WoW and do communication."
Players: "Fire that fucker's ass right away since he's responsible for everything. FUCKING MESSENGERS MUST GO DOWN!"
Thus as it is with Ion. Thus as it was with Ghostcrawler. Chilton, the former game director, avoided all of this by not communicating with customers and keeping his mouth shut, especially during Cataclysm. Not a fucking peep essentially about Chilton (Game Director) during Cataclysm. A whole lot of fucking peeps about GhostCrawler.
Who looks smart now?
As for the rumor: No one here knows anything for certain. The one thing that seems certain is that consensus design will continue on the game no matter what the Game Director's name is and not much will actually change.
In fact: I wouldn't mind seeing Ion stepping down or being promoted to lead producer (Brack's old position). I don't think it will solve anything but putting theory crafters in charge of the game at multiple levels has been a losing proposition creatively.
Last edited by MoanaLisa; 2021-10-31 at 08:52 PM.
"...money's most powerful ability is to allow bad people to continue doing bad things at the expense of those who don't have it."
This isn’t how any thing works just being put in the director roll of the game doesn’t mean Ion has the power to deal with HR problems he likely can’t even fire/hire people without approval from those above him like how JAB was the one to fire Alex.
And there’s no way ion was involved in any harassment and we wouldn’t have heard about it.
All I ever wanted was the truth. Remember those words as you read the ones that follow. I never set out to topple my father's kingdom of lies from a sense of misplaced pride. I never wanted to bleed the species to its marrow, reaving half the galaxy clean of human life in this bitter crusade. I never desired any of this, though I know the reasons for which it must be done. But all I ever wanted was the truth.
"There is a pervasive myth that making content hard will induce players to rise to the occasion. We find the opposite. " -- Ghostcrawler
"The bit about hardcore players not always caring about the long term interests of the game is spot on." -- Ghostcrawler
"Do you want a game with no casuals so about 500 players?"
Yeah, I kinda remember how everybody hated Ghostcrawler and now he is viewed as some paragon of game developing.
People just need a face they can vent on, if it's not Ghostcrawler or Ion, then they will blame whoever takes his position just the same. Such is the way of sheep.
yep, i think a lot of ppl dont think about that.
also ppl not get, that not Ion per se is the problem. its the management, that give or give not budgets and financees forcing specific monetization goals (token supporting game design etc) and a whole team. its not that Ion can do what he wants and go like „hmm, today we can do a bit treadmill game design for fun“.
so ppl should realize, that Blizzard as a company is the problem. not a single face, steadily falling between the chairs in his (somewhat fucked up) position.
People used this same excuse with Bioware and they claimed EA was the one behind all its problems. Turns out that no bioware is just a crappy studio that is long past its prime.
Blizzard still has the talent to put out smash hits, it’s just the current WoW team that sucks. Bobby needs to fire ion and the rest of the lead devs and reboot the WoW team
I'm not sure who would replace him: They put Holinka on whatever needs the most work (Legion, then on to Diablo 4, then Shadowlands, but now I think hes back on Diablo 4) Dansuer, maybe: But then we still have the problem where he's not a programmer: We need an actual programmer who actual has higher raid & PVP experience. Why is that so hard to find in this company?
It's because it got worse. Ghostcrawler wasn't viewed as the best but when Ion came along, it was a fucking nightmare. Ghostcrawler at least had the eye of design to realize that not everything should be perfectly balanced.
Its like people saying Cataclysm is the worst expansion and then WoD came along. Cataclysm is viewed better because WoD dropped it to another level of bad.
They don't pay CM's enough to take the job of communicating with this crowd. Tseric, Bashiok, Zarhym were simply meatshields for the developers when they were CM's. The community pretty much broke Tseric. Bashiok (Micah Whipple) was doxed. Zarhym was abused every time he posted anything as were the rest of them. I'd quit in a heartbeat if that was my job and they dropped all of that back in my lap.
Now: if they want to hire a PR person whose only job it is is to keep in touch with players and not have to do the other stuff that CM's do (forum watching and actual communication with players is only a small piece of it) that might be OK. That person could be shielded somewhat and would very definitely not be watching forums to see how many ways players suggest that he should kill him/herself.
Frankly, I'd be down with Blizzard saying "We've had enough. We'll put out anonymous blog posts when we have something to say. We have better things to do than to respond to or worry about trolls." Given how the 21st century has now evolved to where death threats have become common over trivial things across large swathes of society I wouldn't blame them.
Last edited by MoanaLisa; 2021-10-31 at 09:26 PM.
"...money's most powerful ability is to allow bad people to continue doing bad things at the expense of those who don't have it."
Considerations about lack of balance are the most common, and recurring criticism thrown at Blizzard. What are you on about?
Whether its class balance, number of faction cities, or even the amount of mailboxes on each city, anything not balanced is cause of criticism, and very vocal one.
I just want someone new.
Ion being replaced won't have any effect on the game. People here tinning that are.. well. Special.
It's like the morons who thinks firing the manager of a football team and getting some other guy in will magically change anything. Shit players are still shit.
Hi