Developer Q&A with Ion Hazzikostas

[Deleted]

This. This is retarded in my opinion.

I'm all for weapons staying class specific, but why the hell shouldn't a paladin who worked their arses off in legion be able to move forward and and transmog the ashrbinger on to a 2h healing mace or the artifact 2h mace to their ret spec?

Same goes with pretty much any casters with staffs. Does it really make a difference if an affliction warlock transmog the destro staff?



This also seems silly to me. How long have we had 50 character limits? If you're going to open up another 6 slots for allied races (and bring in more allied races in future) to me it would make sense to increase character slots.

And before I get bashed! I have 26 characters which I've invested time in, some are level 60, 70, 80, 85, 90 twinks, while others are leveling in progress, some are old mains on another server etc. No they aren't all active, but they are all character I've invested time in with a purpose. I also have another 12 characters which I use for for things like guild competitions or socials like scavenger hunts.

Then add the rest of my characters in (granted they are lowbies which I wouldn't mind deleting) my total count comes up to 46 characters. Now, my play time is restricted and so far in legion I've focused on a handful of characters, but if I can hit 38 upwards characters as side projects here and there over 11 years, then you can bet theres a fuck ton more players out there who have hit the cap and hit the cap with characters they've invested time in.

This no change won't effect me personally at the end of the day, but tbh it should be increased.

Well, I currently play 12 characters actively - 1 of each class - to collect class-specific things like artifact HS and challenge mode skins (done with class campaigns and mounts for some time already). I have 6 of RP and profession alts, which sit at 110 and don't do much except some WQs now and then and world bosses, with 4 in the range between 100 and 110 (will probably get to 110 by the end of the year). This is all Horde side. Then I have a dozen of Alliance characters at 100 which also will be leveled to 110, and one (my old Alliance main) will farm reputation in Argus to get access to the new Allied races in BfA. Then I have 5 characters between 60 and 100 to level (H&A) which I want to keep and level for various reasons, and about 10 level 1 alts which will be mostly sacrificed to get the new races (except that one draenei shaman I did not get to level yet and which cannot be remodeled as a LF draenei since these will not get shamans).

So, I have wiggle space of 10 characters left, which will be enough for now, though I am not happy about deleting characters at all except some RP projects which are totally done. If they keep expanding on the Allied Races theme though, then I will surely need more than 50 characters on my account.

[VooDsXo]

For years, the team has spent all of the art time on making sets for classes, then recolors for the rest of the loot table.
When you go into the new raid, the new sets will fill like they fit with the Troll, Titan, Corrupted vibe.

Heard this one in the TOC patch lol, come on now we already know what thematic armor is going to be like, trash.

[Explicit Teemo Nudes]

This doesn't make any sense whatsoever.

If you want it to be story driven rather than grinding driven, why is randomly grinding out the previous expansion's factions to exalted -- which takes over a week, and cannot really be rushed even then -- a requirement?

I don't personally have an issue with it, as getting exalted is not terribly difficult, but this statement just feels totally backwards.

Except it does make sense - because it is story driven. That's the story of how you have liberated their people from the Legions' grasp.
Doesn't matter if it is done in content in the previous expansion.

[Masternewt]

Hi there, Blizz. I know you don't read these things and never will, but I've been capped at 50 characters since Vanilla, and hate erasing them.

Yes. I play 50 characters with some frequency. I have a variety of RP characters with established backstories on RP servers, I play challenge series on PVP servers (like leveling an alt on a critically unbalanced server as a very rare race/class for the underdog), I have a few achievement characters who have done something insane in the game (I skipped outland pre-cata twice by doing ONLY pre-60 quest chains, once on alliance, once on Horde), I have Ironman characters. And I have two full servers of "main alts", one horde, one alliance, that I literally roll a d10 and see which one I play that day.

50 isn't enough. Thanks. It'll never be enough. And I hate that I end up having to delete characters I've enjoyed playing (and would play again!) simply because if I come up with a new RP character, I have to sacrifice someone else.

That is not a game systems issue Blizzard can fix. That is a very specific personal issue you have that has some deeply seeded psychological deviations. There may be 5 people in the world who approach the game in that way and sacrificing talent and programming hours to satisfy this illusion of you enjoying over 50 chars - which I am going to guess it’s bullshit, since I doubt you even know the names for a third of them - seems like a colossal waste.

I’d sooner bellieve you just randomly kept making chars up to the cap and they became a problem to delete them cause you need to empty their mailbox.

[Grizzack]

"They really prune everything right. Now TierSets." What Ion was saying is that they will be outputting the same amount of armor sets, but the theme won't be tied to classes specifically. He mentioned the fact that all of the gear in Emerald Nightmare were just recolors of the tier pieces that would drop in Nighthold. With this new approach, it would be similar to if Emerald Nightmare, Trial of Valor and Nighthold had their own (Raid Tier Quality) armor sets that weren't tied to specific classes. In that instance, there would still be multiple armor sets per Armor Type, but they wouldn't be themed around a specific class.

I don't know where you read about there being multiple sets per armor type because everything I read days there will be 1 set per zone, per armor type. Meaning when the raid drops it will be like WoD LFR, which no one liked.

[Deleted]

That is not a game systems issue Blizzard can fix. That is a very specific personal issue you have that has some deeply seeded psychological deviations. There may be 5 people in the world who approach the game in that way and sacrificing talent and programming hours to satisfy this illusion of you enjoying over 50 chars - which I am going to guess it’s bullshit, since I doubt you even know the names for a third of them - seems like a colossal waste.

I’d sooner bellieve you just randomly kept making chars up to the cap and they became a problem to delete them cause you need to empty their mailbox.

No, you are wrong. This is not a "deviation". This is working as intended for an RPG game with such a long lifetime. Just because some people are not into the RPG element and see one character or a handful as sufficient, it does not mean that this is the norm. In an RPG, you have players - which corresponds to people with one or few characters - and you have gamemasters - which develop the plot and have many characters - and this corresponds to people with many characters.

Example: I am a guild master on an RP server with a RP guild of a specific concept. Every player there has a bunch of alts, and I have many characters to fill up the rooster of different positions in the guild. Since we have a very specific concept, and I view my characters to some degree as NPCs regarding the guild RP, to keep the tone of the setting on the spot of the guild concept, I need many character slots to achieve this. RP is also a reason why I have multiple characters of the same class in my guild. An undead priest is per definition a different breed than an BE priest or a Troll priest or a Tauren priest in the RP context. Sometime, gender also makes a difference. When you also take specs into account... you get a vast potential for variety on a single server / account.

Edit: I also play since the end of 2005, so I have a bunch of characters which are really old and have a high level and which I don't want to delete. And I already have deleted many characters which I really did not want to use anymore. Another characters got a gender or race change so I could play a different RP concept without losing character progress. But when you finally settle on one characer, then you will eventually run out of slots if you play this game as an RPG over such a long time.

We are already limited by the number of characters per server. And I see actually no problems in increasing the overall level regarding the logistics side of it. If there are not many people who are actually limited by 50 characters per account, and the system can detect that about 40 of these characters hit max level and others are in the leveling process, then they probably could unlock additional slots. Only few people will hit the limit, anyway, and I don't think that goldseller / bot accounts will profit much of the increase.

[Deleted]

Am I the only one that didn't hear something he didn't like?

[Deleted]

Currently the plan is for Artifacts to be spec restricted when it comes to transmog.

Haven't they said otherwise just recently?

[Sammonoske]

He means per zone, not continent. Read.

- - - Updated - - -

MMO-Champion, the saltiest forum under the sun.

One set per armor type per zone. Read. I still stand by my statement.

[dumkin]

A hard cap on Titanforging that kept it from going into the Mythic item level space would be very restrictive.

I like you Ion, but here you are simply wrong. This is the stupidest thing I have read. Just because you cant get BiS items from all difficulties does not restrict, it only enforces you to focus on the level of content you are supposed to work on. It can be compared to how you want high geared people to focus on high keystones in m+ instead of blasting through +2s all the time...

[Nyur]

"What would an Old God themed Paladin set even look like?"

Is this a serious question!? What a fucking cop out. Thats got to be one of the easiest themes ever to create, they're just using weak excuses now.

"When you go into the new raid, the new sets will fill like they fit with the Troll, Titan, Corrupted vibe."

Wasn't this always supposed to be the case? This isnt a new idea, you're already supposed to be doing that... ?? In fact you have been, only poorly.

[Lizardo221]

No, you are wrong. This is not a "deviation". This is working as intended for an RPG game with such a long lifetime. Just because some people are not into the RPG element and see one character or a handful as sufficient, it does not mean that this is the norm. In an RPG, you have players - which corresponds to people with one or few characters - and you have gamemasters - which develop the plot and have many characters - and this corresponds to people with many characters.

Example: I am a guild master on an RP server with a RP guild of a specific concept. Every player there has a bunch of alts, and I have many characters to fill up the rooster of different positions in the guild. Since we have a very specific concept, and I view my characters to some degree as NPCs regarding the guild RP, to keep the tone of the setting on the spot of the guild concept, I need many character slots to achieve this. RP is also a reason why I have multiple characters of the same class in my guild. An undead priest is per definition a different breed than an BE priest or a Troll priest or a Tauren priest in the RP context. Sometime, gender also makes a difference. When you also take specs into account... you get a vast potential for variety on a single server / account.

Edit: I also play since the end of 2005, so I have a bunch of characters which are really old and have a high level and which I don't want to delete. And I already have deleted many characters which I really did not want to use anymore. Another characters got a gender or race change so I could play a different RP concept without losing character progress. But when you finally settle on one characer, then you will eventually run out of slots if you play this game as an RPG over such a long time.

We are already limited by the number of characters per server. And I see actually no problems in increasing the overall level regarding the logistics side of it. If there are not many people who are actually limited by 50 characters per account, and the system can detect that about 40 of these characters hit max level and others are in the leveling process, then they probably could unlock additional slots. Only few people will hit the limit, anyway, and I don't think that goldseller / bot accounts will profit much of the increase.

Part of the problem with the character cap system is that it is derived from a game much different a decade ago than what we play today. Your RP concept of playing many roles did/does not fit with the pre BC model because back then leveling was an unbelievable grind, so having more than one character was rare (raiders with 2 max level characters was considered an achievement). You would have to gear and maintain them, something that was also a monumental task. Furthermore, the developers took very seriously that your character was your persona, and they frowned upon switching too much. This has been documented in interviews, and it manifested in things such as how hard it was to change specs and how few RP servers existed. Lastly, there is also many technical aspects to account sizes. Not only does it provide some level of security against bots, but it also keeps the data on the servers to a certain size - remember, file sizes on average were many, many times smaller a decade ago than what they are today.

With all that said, the game has evolved a lot since then. Leveling is easier, gearing is easier, respecing is easier, and games in general are built with stronger engines on much larger servers. Asking for the cap on the number of characters to be increased would probably be more easily doable now and fit with some of the mechanics of the game, but I think what stops the increase is the philosophy of the developers. They still believe that your character is your persona (less so than a decade ago), and try to encourage you to play that character over others to some degree. Put simply, your way of playing the game does not align well with the intended goals of the developers.

Keep in mind that I am not trying to belittle how you and your friends enjoy themselves, but you must understand that the game designers have an emotional attachment to their game and want it played in a certain way. If someone with a spoon is trying to cut a loaf of bread, the spoon-maker will shake his head in disappointment. You are free to keep trying with the spoon, but you also can't make the spoon-maker change his wears to fit your needs. What you need then is to either learn how to use a spoon or go find a bread knife/a different game - hold up! Before you virtue signal me to death, what I suggest you need to do next is what pre BC players did. You need to prove that a very large community of people want something, enough so that blizzard is convinced to act. However, based on the developers data of over a decade, that level of demand will never exist.

"How should RP servers be played on then?" a very vague and hard question with no good answer. I personally would say that they were intended to be played like the other servers, but you RP as you go through the game. Instead of discussing how to min max your dps as you focus down the dragon, you tell your men to circle the beast as you put your life on the line to stop its breath from reaching them. You play the game as Blizzard being the DM and you are one of the players playing their campaign. You don't sit there with 50 character sheets pretending to be different people during the campaign, you have 49 friends who play with you, listening to the DM named Blizzard. Its just my opinion, nothing more, nothing less.

[Deleted]

Part of the problem with the character cap system is that it is derived from a game much different a decade ago than what we play today. Your RP concept of playing many roles did/does not fit with the pre BC model because back then leveling was an unbelievable grind, so having more than one character was rare (raiders with 2 max level characters was considered an achievement). You would have to gear and maintain them, something that was also a monumental task. Furthermore, the developers took very seriously that your character was your persona, and they frowned upon switching too much. This has been documented in interviews, and it manifested in things such as how hard it was to change specs and how few RP servers existed. Lastly, there is also many technical aspects to account sizes. Not only does it provide some level of security against bots, but it also keeps the data on the servers to a certain size - remember, file sizes on average were many, many times smaller a decade ago than what they are today.

With all that said, the game has evolved a lot since then. Leveling is easier, gearing is easier, respecing is easier, and games in general are built with stronger engines on much larger servers. Asking for the cap on the number of characters to be increased would probably be more easily doable now and fit with some of the mechanics of the game, but I think what stops the increase is the philosophy of the developers. They still believe that your character is your persona (less so than a decade ago), and try to encourage you to play that character over others to some degree. Put simply, your way of playing the game does not align well with the intended goals of the developers.

Keep in mind that I am not trying to belittle how you and your friends enjoy themselves, but you must understand that the game designers have an emotional attachment to their game and want it played in a certain way. If someone with a spoon is trying to cut a loaf of bread, the spoon-maker will shake his head in disappointment. You are free to keep trying with the spoon, but you also can't make the spoon-maker change his wears to fit your needs. What you need then is to either learn how to use a spoon or go find a bread knife/a different game - hold up! Before you virtue signal me to death, what I suggest you need to do next is what pre BC players did. You need to prove that a very large community of people want something, enough so that blizzard is convinced to act. However, based on the developers data of over a decade, that level of demand will never exist.

"How should RP servers be played on then?" a very vague and hard question with no good answer. I personally would say that they were intended to be played like the other servers, but you RP as you go through the game. Instead of discussing how to min max your dps as you focus down the dragon, you tell your men to circle the beast as you put your life on the line to stop its breath from reaching them. You play the game as Blizzard being the DM and you are one of the players playing their campaign. You don't sit there with 50 character sheets pretending to be different people during the campaign, you have 49 friends who play with you, listening to the DM named Blizzard. Its just my opinion, nothing more, nothing less.

OK you're right. In Classic, I only had 2 max level characters (mage and rogue), of which only one was raiding (my mage in MC, ZG, AQ20). But I also had a bunch of characters in the range of 20-60 which I also heavily used for RP beside questing and dungeons (holy priest, resto druid, holy paladin, BM hunter, affli warlock, for some time also a disc priest), Alliance only (had some Horde alts but they did not get far). Then, in TBC I had 3 Alliance max level characters (still only 1 raiding, others did WQs and heroics), and then I switched to Horde with a new mage main, followed by a rogue, then druid and priest, warlock, warrior etc. At the same time, I also played Alliance now and then, added some Draenei characters there. Wrath got me some more Horde characters, especially a DK and Paladin at max level and occasionally raiding, just like raiding mage (main) and disc priest. In Cata, I also made a Goblin and a Worgen character. MoP added some monks / a panda. WoD had not that much content for me, so I found myself with 32 level 100 characters transitioning to Legion, including a bunch of DH characters on H/A and different servers (three cheers for heirlooms).

Long story short: Each addon added some more of characters to my account. Leveling from last max level to new max level is relatively easy, and while I don't play these characters in high end content (which is not my focus anymore), I do have them, and I would like to keep them. I could probably racechange some, but I don't know if this would fit in the case of Allied Races, especially if you need to level at least one character to get the transmog armour set. For RP purposes, you don't need to be decked out in BIS items, technically max level is enough to be able to transmog most things, and to get to all places. Though my most important characters are at item level 900 and up to 936 on my main (again, without any organised raid content and almost no mythic+ activity). The rest got Argus 880 gear tokens and a favorite transmog and is "done" for RP purposes.

Anecdotal thing: Back in Classic, I was part of an RP raid which met weekly in Zul Gurub. We never got far, usually only the couple of the first bosses, but it was awesome. Unfortunately, I don't have time for such an extensive activity anymore, so I focus on RP with my guild.

[Mhyroth]

One day they'll introduce buyable character slots.
25€ for 5 slots ! Buy 10 get 1 for free.

[Hellrime]

The titanforging system would honestly be fixed with a restriction that the previous tier, i.e. LFR --> Normal --> Heroic --> Mythic cannot exceed the item level of the following tier. I say this as a person who has not been able to raid Mythic this expansion as well. There are people who are busting their ass in Mythic that fully deserve to have the highest item level in the game. It honestly would cut down the complaints from the Mythic raiders, which by all tense and purposes are right to complain about individual that only do tourist mode having a greater throughput floor.

[Ozzyorcborne]

Relics and Weapons
The plan is to go back to weapon drops. Compared to the old days, there are so many more sources of loot, so it isn't as hard as it used to be to get a weapon.

Unless they allow weapons to Titanforge, then you're royally fucked praying to RNGsus for a TF weapon. I never had any sort of luck with weapon drops prior to Legion so I found the artifact system very helpful in that respect. I wonder if procced based weapons are making a comeback as well.

[FurryRedVixen]

Did they just back peddle on old world scaling there? Thought t hey said old content would scale.

[Menz]

Yea, sounds a lot like yet another filler expansion........ I was hoping they sustain Legion content train, but nope....

[epLe]

Relics and Weapons
The plan is to go back to weapon drops. Compared to the old days, there are so many more sources of loot, so it isn't as hard as it used to be to get a weapon.

Unless they allow weapons to Titanforge, then you're royally fucked praying to RNGsus for a TF weapon. I never had any sort of luck with weapon drops prior to Legion so I found the artifact system very helpful in that respect. I wonder if procced based weapons are making a comeback as well.

Most likely just as it was in WoD, still get the (titanforged) BiS weapon or "bad" weapons problem.

i.e : How many sources or options like m+ is quite irrelevant when the weekly loot pinata "BiS" arcanocrystal exist.

For melee(and hunters) weapons has always been very important upgrade for character progress.
(wpn speed or Base dmg doesnt mean shait for casters)

[mootygrimes]

Here's a hot take on the TF argument:

I work 50 hours a week and other commitments that prevent me from being able to raid, even though I'm skilled enough on an individual and leadership level.

I play DPS and Prot warrior. In the past there was *no way* I would invited to higher level 5-man content (or even some heroic PUGs) with any degree of consistency while DPS spec due to my iLVL being too low.

Now, due to M+ (loot + chest) and TF I am *so much closer* to those guys that raid Mythic and I'm actually able to compete. Guess what, I smash 99% of them in this environment.

So the argument that "casuals do not deserve this gear" is a fallacy. There are plenty of deserving players who cannot commit the time to an organized raid who deserve loot equal to their ability. M+ and TF provide that opportunity.