Venturebeat Interview with Ion Hazzikostas on WoW's Future

[Kralljin]

Finding your Niche Market is a core tenet of sales. It blows me away you can have a company this big that not only doesn't realize that, but looks to do the opposite and thinks they are still going to be successful.

It's about (virtue) signaling that you're trying to include everyone, rather than just "cater" to the sterotypical white male gamer type.

Which is probably not a niche group in the MMO audience, but i think "virtue" trumps reasons in that case.

[confety]

"Diversity makes a better game. They don't want WoW to be for a niche audience."

This is just not true. FF14 is in its prime and im pretty sure the vast majority of its team are japanese people, they dont seem to need to diversify (the team) to make a good game for any diverse (playerbase). And i dont see ANY movement regarding offensive things in game.

Its like saying that you need to be from a specific colour/sexuality to be able to make good content to said colour/sexuality.

Thats the literal most purest form of racism

[Lolites]

What?

"have to"?

Why?

i would assume he "have to" buy boosts bcs nobody wants him in group, if its due to low skill or terrible personality i cant tell

[Aggressive]

And there we go again. Just because someone enjoys the expansion, they're fanboys, shills, etc.

Torghast was fun, yep. Whilst completing it first, doing Endless Corridors first time, going on different alts for some op madness. I don't run it regularly now, i have no need for it, but it was far from "Choreghast".

Covenants? Again, no issues from me whatsoever. Played NF and swapped to Venth on 9.1, would have liked to have more liberty swapping around, and alas, here we are on 9.1.5 with the ability to do so freely.

Raiding and M+ are top notch.

So again, why does it shock you so much that people can actually enjoy the game?

Also, your signature is friggin ironic, i'll tell you that.

If only many shared your positive review. But don't be suprised if they don't.

And the signature signifies the sensitivity of dealing with people on these forums. If they don't like what you say or agree with your statement then they report you. And literally that is usually when I vomit on the so called great and wonderful WoW with it's excessive flaws and ass grabbing devs.

- - - Updated - - -

"Diversity makes a better game. They don't want WoW to be for a niche audience."

This is just not true. FF14 is in its prime and im pretty sure the vast majority of its team are japanese people, they dont seem to need to diversify (the team) to make a good game for any diverse (playerbase). And i dont see ANY movement regarding offensive things in game.

Its like saying that you need to be from a specific colour/sexuality to be able to make good content to said colour/sexuality.

Thats the literal most purest form of racism

You have to keep in mind that Blizzard is saying these things cause they are under heavy ass law suits. So they need to say the right words to look good, and, hell smell great to. If smurfs were real then they would need to hire them as well right now. All this is the consequence of having undercover ass grabbers in your business.

Not sure they will follow through with their words though.

[NineSpine]

"We want this to be an escape" "We want to bring politics into it to score brownie points with Twitter"


"We had to make these changes to be welcoming" "No one would have noticed if not for those pesky dataminers"


Oh well, can't win em all.

You are the one with the terminally online grievance disorder that makes you think that the changes are "political". Don't project.

[NineSpine]

So what would you call them? What would you call the "removal of jokes that we had to do to be more politically correct, but that no one would have actually noticed"?

You can't even ask the question without injecting "political correctness" into it. Everything is political to you so you think everything is political to everyone else. Just because you can't view the world through any other lens than this weird complex that spending too much time online has given you does not mean that that is how everyone else is.

If I have a photograph on my wall of a naked woman and I decide to take it down because it makes my wife uncomfortable and it makes some people iffy about having their kids over, I am not engaging in political action. That has nothing to do with "political correctness". That's just me respecting what makes other people comfortable. I can think their preferences are silly and unreasonable, but it has nothing to do with politics.

[NineSpine]

So...no answer, then? Got it.

I answered you very thoroughly. You just don't like that I reject your framing so now you want to ignore the substance of what I said.

You are asking me a "When did you stop beating your wife?" question. It's silly and childish. You are asking me what I would call the "removal of jokes that we had to do to be more politically correct, but that no one would have actually noticed". Since I reject that framing outright and don't think anything like that happened, why would I call it anything?

[Edgysan]

>Diversity makes a better game. They don't want WoW to be for a niche audience.

can I see a single proof that this is based on anything but twitter crybabies?

[Log Cabin]

>Diversity makes a better game. They don't want WoW to be for a niche audience.

can I see a single proof that this is based on anything but twitter crybabies?

It is a type of madness gripping the world at the moment. Making a product targeted at its ideal audience is seen as passé. The new trend is to market your product towards people who hate the concept of your product.

Its a bold new approach lets see if it pays off.

[Parmas]

So the Alliance and the Horde stop fighting with each other in the future ?

[Naxxramas91]

"Diversity is good for the game" lmao. Not good when it comes off so forced that it's disingenuous. They don't give a shit about diversity. They only care about how PC they can be to save their image. Kind of like when every company put BLM all over their shit for a week and forgot about it after that. And they say WoW should be a place where you can escape the real world issues, but then they censor every little thing in the game, and have increasingly restricted player freedom over the years. The fact that they refuse to ever go down the path of letting us go back to the roots of WoW where we are simple adventurers shows how out of touch Ion/Blizz is with what people want. Get rid of these stupid fking Legionesque systems, dogshit lore direction, cheesy fking storylines and constant fear of offending sensitive btchs. Make WoW great again.

[Swnem]

So... 9.3 back on the menu? 10.0 back to Azeroth, Dragon Isles (core WoW fantasy)?

If so, we won't see the next expansion until 2023 and shadowlands will be the longest expansion ever

:x

[Mic_128]

"9.1.5 was born out of the team being allowed to pitch ideas and try out things that they think will make the game more fun."
Who the fuck are these people lol

Gonna guess that's stuff like the new customisation

[Tarba]

9.1.5 was born out of the team being allowed to pitch ideas and try out things that they think will make the game more fun.
Ion acknowledges that they should have reacted to player feedback earlier about conduit energy, and knows that they can do better about communicating not only that we are being heard, but why things are not necessarily implemented or changed right

That's a lie. So the rest are probably lies too.
9.1.5 was planned from the start in their retarded plan to target stupid people.
9.1.5 is the patch they do to remove obvious stupid chronophage ideas that are put in the game to bring back players who were pissed of by it while saying "we heard you guys, come back it's great now".

Therefor that guy is a piece of shit and the interviewer a retard.

[Kageaki]

That's a lie. So the rest are probably lies too.
9.1.5 was planned from the start in their retarded plan to target stupid people.
9.1.5 is the patch they do to remove obvious stupid chronophage ideas that are put in the game to bring back players who were pissed of by it while saying "we heard you guys, come back it's great now".

Therefor that guy is a piece of shit and the interviewer a retard.

You sound like a fucking tool

Infracted for flaming.

[Tarba]

You sound like a fucking tool

The tool would be someone who still not saw that they did the exact same thing during the last expansions.

[orney]

It's fine if you like WoW and keep playing it, it's fine if you dislike WoW and don't play it.
But if you still sincerely believe in Ion's buzzwords, well... you are stupid.

[edw]

Cross faction raiding ... the ultimate band aid to a tumor, how pathetic this company has become.
Right now they have just one more card to play, the wotlk server .. and thats it, they clearly can't make new games or keep the games they have relevant.
Blizz just go quietly in the night please

[Tsarez]

In the end, the team wants WoW to be a positive place to escape the trials and tribulations of the world.

Game is called World of WARcraft and is literally based on a story about killing, injustice, war, atrocities... Oh lol

[Kiwijello]

Seeing Ion's smug face now is like watching gay porn on pronhub and the ads are all big breasted women trying to look sexy. It's just annoying!!!