Where is Ion ?

[lockybalboa]

He knows he has screwed up big time and is taking cover in his basement

[Tojara]

Well, to be fair, i do recall tons of Q&A Livestreams with Lore during Legion and even BfA.

Tons? I mean there was just more patches in BFA too. Not seeing Ion as often when there is a huge gap in patches isn't really surprising to me. Some of the past interviews weren't just with Ion either, but with other devs IIRC

[Gadzooks]

Well, to be fair, i do recall tons of Q&A Livestreams with Lore during Legion and even BfA.

Ah, the salad days of the BfA era, with Lore and Ion slouched in chairs in front of a webcam, with no production values to be seen, with Ion telling us we just don't get how big a brain he is, and how we just aren't playing the game right, and Lore repeating "Right, sounds good!" and regaling us with tales of glory and adventure with his shaman.

[Advent]

There's some heavy projection and bias going on in here. Yup, sounds like MMO-C to me.

[Lorgar Aurelian]

Let me just add to this fine post what I posted in another thread:

If we look at Acti-Blizz' finances then each of the 3 quarters (2021) so far show the highest revenue and net income compared to all other previous quarters ever.
https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/c...izzard/revenue

Not liking the game and the company is a matter of opinion, but from a financial perspective, which after all is the only thing that counts in our capitalistic society, Blizzard is no way in a "downfall".


How should Blizzard's, Acti-Blizz'', MS leadership measure Ion's merits? His "reputation" on various on-line fora or the company's financial results?

Added:
The above is for Acti-Blizz.
So far Blizzard is doing better than in 2014,2015,2019 and 2020, but worse than in 2016, 2017 and 2018.
Blizzard's numbers if anyone is interested:
https://www.mmo-champion.com/threads...1#post53562022

Another important thing to note on the wow front is that as of the last quarter wow subs are actually higher then the same time into most modern explains so even on just the wow front they are doing well and out pacing other expans/years.

Source for any one curious, it’s stated in the wow section.
https://investor.activision.com/stat...e-8bdf66c8bb32

[gamerFor33]

Thanks for the answer

[TBCCLOL]

Because we are a historic 425 days into the expansion with 9.2 still being months away from release, and it's going to take at least another 300+ days after 9.2 for 10.0 to release. 10.0 is coming Spring 2023 at the earliest.

10 in spring 2023 = wow will be already dead if 9.2 isnt some titjob+blowjob lvl quality

[shise]

10.0 is not coming out this year ... Not a chance.

If beta starts with June.. who knows. Could be, as far as we know, they are more than done with Shadowlands development anyway.

Rather have a lackluster end of it and a proper 10.0 than them wasting time to save what can not be saved.

[TBCCLOL]

9.2 22 Feb or 1st March

June 10. Alpha/Beta

3 months of testing like blizzard do and we have 10 before 2022 and before FF Lost Ark ESO etc etc leech the last 16 players remaining

[Doffen]

Ion was visible a lot in Legion because we had content update every 2-3 months, so it was always something on live/ptr to talk about. In BfA it was longer between, and in SL its so long between that he doesn't really have something to talk about that often.

But who knows. Maybe he just use his invisible cloak a lot.

[Lolites]

He's completely uninterested in anything that does not pertain to raiding, and it trickles down to all aspects of the game

under Ion we got M+ (which is so far ONLY alternative pve progresion to raiding), megadungeons, and quite a lot more "outside" content than previously (remember the "good old" days of wrath when we got raid and that was it for patch?)

but sure, game under him is too focused on raiding...
people are soo quick in jumping to blame him for everything they dont even stop to check if their opinion agree with REALITY...
you can say a lot of bad shit about his leadership, but focus only on raids is PROVABLE BULLSHIT

[Santandame]

-10.0 should be, at least going by rumors, a lot different than previous expansions (meaning they have to do things differently, which is usually not as efficient)
-The team hasn't delivered a single expansion without at least 10month content drought in over decade
-Patch 9.2 is unlikely to come out until mid to late Feb
-Blizzard will not launch a new expansion in mid / late december
-Simply because MS acquires Activsion Blizzard in 2023, doesn't mean every internal issue has vanished over night

One cannot outrule it, but the odds are absolutely against it.

That is unlikely for the reason that 10.0 will storywise be likely dependant on what is happening at the end of 9.2, which isn't out yet.
I doubt they're going to announce another expansion before they even announced the launch of 9.2.

If there's any WoW related news, it's the launch of 9.2, the only titles that could receive an official announcement are
Diablo Immortal
WoW Patch 9.2
Any other mobile game (which are supposedly in the work for years now as well)
Classic Wotlk (altough it would be quite soon, considering they've announced TBC when Classic was effectively done)

The last two expansion announcements disagree with you.

The ending of Legion led into BfA.

Patch 8.2.5 led into Shadowlands. 8.3 however was unrelated.

Both announced before the prior expansions story concluded.

[Exkrementor]

Why? Do you miss blaming him for each and every gameplay related problem WoW has?

I dont like people blaming one person for all the problems either but he is the game director. Its kinda his responsibility.

[Arai]

You have little idea how stressful his life is as game director and all the covid stuff going on. You should be thankful for his work and contribution. A friend of mine knows Ion quite well and he sometimes meets up with him. He is a great baker as he makes his own bread and sandwiches at home, he knows what hes doing no matter what field hes working in. Lawyer? Cook? You bet he knows whats going on at WoW too. Remember that he doesn't design the game solo, there are many rules he has to oblige. Soon you will find what he is truly capable of when he is no longer bound to Bobby.
He is rather the force that stood between total disaster and what we have now. He is obliged to follow metrics and data in order to make decisions for the game. The story however he has little to no influence which is also the reason why we have this catastrophe Danuser all around making the story part a complete and utter disaster.

He told my friend that he would fire Danuser on the spot if possible and get Metzen back (i can say this here as a random post on mmo-c will obviously not be believed or get traction).

I cannot say if 10.0 will already show Ions true powers since Bobbys fingers were still in the bowl for development but im certain that 11.0 latest 12.0 will be the glory you have been seeking. Trust Ion he is a good man and has many great skills you will see.

[Kralljin]

Patch 8.2.5 led into Shadowlands. 8.3 however was unrelated.

You have a point on Legion, but on BfA i said it already: 8.2.5. came out before Blizzcon and as you said, 8.3 had nothing to do with Shadowlands.

Soon you will find what he is truly capable of when he is no longer bound to Bobby.

I find statement like these so fucking hilarious when you also have ex devs that literally say that they haven't felt the influence of Activision once.
While you can argue that Ion might have protected the devs from this, then i have to ask how managed to keep this knowledge from the devs, but still had them implement these systems to push engagement.

Disregarding that there is still a ton of other dumb shit that has been implemented under his watch that makes your head scratch.

Who told him that Corruption was a good idea?
Who went onto multiple interviews to fight for covenant restrictions? Conduit energy?
PvP Scaling? Remember that one?
Who has players jumping through hoops for flying since WoD?
I don't think Bobby told to not implement flying into Draenor, then rework the continent to make it compatible with flying.

It also goes against what we've been hearing about how Blizzard has had a Firewall to protect their devs from the business side in order to keep their identity.

I am not going to paint a picture of the devs being responsible for virtually everything wrong with WoW and Blizzard, but that doesn't mean they can somehow hand off every bad decision of the last ~6 years towards management, some of these fuckups are so damn specific in their implementation that no Execs who has no clue of game design would ever come up with.

He told my friend that he would fire Danuser on the spot if possible and get Metzen back (i can say this here as a random post on mmo-c will obviously not be believed or get traction).

Considering they even released a Sylvanas plush right when SoD cinematic came out, i'm not going to buy that Danuser (who by looks, really pushes for Sylvanas) faces any serious opposition within the team.
Completely disregarding that the Sylvanas fight in itself is a subtle Sylvanas wankfest - as strictly speaking, the player doesn't defeat Sylvanas, it just ends at 50% (or 45%).

[Miffinat0r]

And therein lies the problem. He's completely uninterested in anything that does not pertain to raiding, and it trickles down to all aspects of the game. I wish they had someone else who could take his position so he can move back to what he actually likes to do.

While I've made this argument before, I've become more nuanced with it. I don't believe Ion is malicious with his development at all. But I do believe Ion has next to no connection of the playerbase who is not in the high-end of M+ or Mythic Raiding.

[MoanaLisa]

I dont like people blaming one person for all the problems either but he is the game director. Its kinda his responsibility.

That doesn't explain why Ghostcrawler took all the crap when he was the communication person for WoW when Tom Chilton was game director. Who the community turns on is pretty much purely a function of savaging the person that talks to us. I can remember when people would go on and on and on about Bashiok and Zarhym and they weren't developers at all, just community managers.

The fact is that the community loudly demands communication and then promptly shits on whoever it is that does that. No one gave two fucks about who Lore was once he got a job at Blizzard and what he did until he started reading questions out to Ion at Q&A sessions.

There are certainly issues with Ion who several years ago said the quiet part out loud that the only important things in the game were raiding and PVP. That was before Warlords which, I'm pretty sure, changed a lot of minds about what's important; the primary one being that non-raiders shouldn't run out of things to do. I'm not a fan of how they've gone about solving that problem but it's pretty clear that they want to provide a game in which there's always something you can do (whether you like it or not).

[Hotmail]

Preparing a cameo for the next Ace Attorney game

[klaps_05]

After the recent confirmation that it was Afrasiabi's personal agenda to destroy the lore before leaivng, this explains a bit more Ion and his goals with the game currently.

[darklogrus]

He will show up with 9.2 pat himself on the back, proclaim himself smarter then everyone else and then disappear again just as the 9.2 train derails..