Developer Q&A - Ion Hazzikostas

[h4rr0d]

Can we track somehow the ratio of horde/alliance players in war mode? I bet it is around 90%:10% for the horde. I told this in alpha WPVP will be dead with this change.

Well, I think you misunderstood what war mode was all about. It's not to bring wpvp back, it's a 10% buff to rep gains for horde to counter the human racial, while giving them an Alliance player to kill every now and then

[Deleted]

If you have gone up 40 ilvl and the mobs health increases so they take the same amount of time, if not longer, that is the bullshit. The entire point of gearing up is to make things easier and faster.

That would be bullshit if its true, the numbers say something like, if you improve by 70%, the mobs improve by 10% (There are exact numbers on Reddit).
So there is improvement and i can confirm that on many toons i have. The problem is you WISH there would be more and faster improvement, but live is not what you wish for and there is still enough improvement overall.

It's not that they can't, it's the fact they know they're gonna be doing it over and over and over and over. Now add in alts. It gets tedious and without something to make it go as quick as possible people get burned out redoing content hundreds of times over years.

Again nobody is forcing you to level 10 alts and have every thing to be done every day. Doing things over and over again is the pure nature of MMORPGs and if you get burned out, relax and play something else.

To all those people bitching about people who wanna do their WQs as fast as possible (using addons):
Ofc. you can do them all solo without using any brainpower. But it takes time. Time is a precious commodity nowadays and I don't want to waste 4-5 hours a night on running around zones, doing the same 20-30 WQs over and over and over and over until I'm finally at a point where I don't need to do them anymore..

So don't do it? Or do like 5-10 a night!? You cant tell me you NEEED the last receipt to stay alive or that last 2% in DMG to kill the raidboss or whatever. Killing bosses depends 99% of the time on how to play the mechanics and how good you can play your class. If you match the GS recommendation you should be able to kill that boss/raid. If not you just have to get better in pressing buttons.

[Deleted]

Incase anyone reads this I just want to say that it’s not everyone on mmoc who degraded into being a salty basement dweller with no life. Som bod us still love wow and some of the new changes. This is just a very vocal group of social losers who literally live for this stuff. They have nothing else to spend their time on sadly

[Tarx]

I want the goblins and worgens upgreats now!

[Deleted]

Well, I think you misunderstood what war mode was all about. It's not to bring wpvp back, it's a 10% buff to rep gains for horde to counter the human racial, while giving them an Alliance player to kill every now and then

This is a whole new perspective. I like you.

[Galateacyc]

But... What about guys like me? Mob scaling makes perfect sense, as rewards go up too.

There are other ways to handle this they could have done which would be WAY better. For example, let the player decide how they want to do the quest and for what reward (a sort of normal/heroic/mythic) toggle in the UI which would set the mob difficulty and the ilv reward. This way gearing is not completely relegated to uselessness. A toggle for zone scaling would also solve the problems with "what's the point of leveling?" that people are rightfully complaining about. We were not consulted before the change, and alternate ideas were not accepted after - blizzard's way or the highway like usual.

Flying unlocking via achievements is more fun than pay x gold, if they added a short story quests directly involving flying it would be even better.

Please take a moment to realize that there has not been flying in current end game world content since MoP (yes MoP)! It has pretty much been removed. There are so many problems with pathfinder it's difficult to know where to start, but I'll give it a go:
- The 8 month waiting for a later patch nonsense is totally unacceptable. Getting an achievement is not the major issue, the time gating is. There is no possible valid excuse for this. If wpvp is an issue, disable flying in war mode in new content for all I care - let that be the trade off for the higher AP/exp and crate rewards and such.
- The content is exhausted by the time flying becomes available. Is flying supposed to be worthless for our mains (the daily quests we want to fly to get to will have been farmed to death by that point to get the rep we need to get flying thus obsoleting the content)? Are we not supposed to level alts for the first 8-10 months of and expansion?!?
- The requirements for pathfinder are stupid. What are rep grinds in the achievement at all? Give me one reason lore master, explorer, and maybe treasure hunter are not sufficient? Are PvP players not supposed to have flight? Are pet battlers efforts worth nothing? Some selection of activities to suit various play styles is needed. Having a one size PVE task list hurts a lot of players forcing them to do stuff they don't want to do.
- It should not be an achievement that grants flight - it should be an in game quest. Looking at achieves to find out your character can fly is stupid.
- Path finder caused the flight whistle. If you want to port around like a mad man, race change your MoP/WoD challenge mode character mage to dark-iron and pick up engineering! This "everyone porting everywhere all the time" nonsense has to stop!
- Flight paths cost money - no I'm not joking. They basically negate the measly quest reward pittance you're given after repairs. Thus all income for a toon is generated by those insipid lame time gated mission tables. With flying, questing would be little less unrewarding and more outdoor PVE content would be done. The table should be nerfed and quest rewards buffed. If you want cash, get out there and play the damn game - don't buy tok€n$, stop clicking on tables and logging onto alts to click on more tables, and get out there and do some questing dammit!

Progression via time passed and work input makes it good RPG?

Please stop thinking you're accomplishing something by being present or doing trivial content. If you want something to brag about there's plenty to do: high rank pvp, mythic raiding, brawlers guild, mage towers, etc. Do any of those and flaunt your rewards.

Obediently doing blizzard's tasklist of meaningless chores to get back something they steal every xpac is not a meaningful achievement - it's a needless nuisance, and it becomes pointless after an xpac has run its course (there is no reason for players starting now not to straight up buy wod or legion flying rather than grind out time gated reps in outdated content). I for one much prefer grinding rep when I feel like it (usually in the later half of the xpac), for their own sake for little or no reward (some crafting recipe/pet or something), not have to grind them early to get something I need in order to make doing things I would much rather prefer to be doing (gearing, dailies, etc) more fun.

[Confucius]

quality Q&A, as always. No mention at all of the Wanted quests on the horde side not giving rep. It's not like they gated a mythic only dungeon behind rep or anything like that

[Deleted]

quality Q&A, as always. No mention at all of the Wanted quests on the horde side not giving rep. It's not like they gated a mythic only dungeon behind rep or anything like that

They did mention it! Watch the Q&A

[Temis]

If Blizzard didnt go crazy with handing out tons of gear that results in a massive jump in item level and player power once you hit level cap maybe the world wouldn't need to be scaled because people wouldnt be able to out gear the content in a week. And If people where not gaining an expansions worth of power in one raid tier Blizzard wouldnt need to do a item level squish and number squish every other expansion. If everything about the way that Blizzard is doing loot wasnt broken and massively flawed they wouldnt need to try and come up with all these lame systems/mechanics in game to artificially limit player power in different scenarios and over all hurt the player experience. Blizzard adding numerous systems in to the game to try and fix a problem is just making the game more complicated while not actually fixing the problem and its creating new problems!

[Micronetic]

Looks like BfA is a pretty good expansion (glad that my sub runs out soon, won't come back lol).

[SkyTides]

I feel like they completely missed the point on island expeditions. There are 28 pet, 5 mounts, 9 toys, 85 weapon cosmetics, 3 captains hats, 4 shoulder pieces, and 23 armor sets with 8 pieces each. This is 318 individual cosmetic rewards that can drop from each completion. I have personally filled my azerite bar and then some for 2 weeks now and not seen my or either of my two friends get a single piece of any of this loot. At 318 pieces, we should be getting a guarantee of 1 item at least per win, maybe even loss. Rare drop rates for the mounts would be acceptable. Other than the bug where people were getting zero azerite, no one cares about the amount of azerite given.

This is really interesting..and worrying!.the cosmetic rewards are the main goal for me but I've not delved into the island expeditions yet. Are they locked behind a certain difficulty/pvp mode I wonder?

[lockybalboa]

More lawyer speak as usual, and always cherrypicking nonsensical questions to answer and dodging of more critical issues. Nice.

[Flurryfang]

...Wow... I really don't get where all this hate is coming from.

First of all, the interview was pretty good. All but 2 questions/answers were targeted to real problems and he pretty much went right ahead and adressed them, either with confirming the problem and a proberble solution on the way or answering why things are as they are and why they will not change.

[Deleted]

There are other ways to handle this they could have done which would be WAY better. For example, let the player decide how they want to do the quest and for what reward (a sort of normal/heroic/mythic) toggle in the UI which would set the mob difficulty and the ilv reward. This way gearing is not completely relegated to uselessness. A toggle for zone scaling would also solve the problems with "what's the point of leveling?" that people are rightfully complaining about. We were not consulted before the change, and alternate ideas were not accepted after - blizzard's way or the highway like usual.



Please take a moment to realize that there has not been flying in current end game world content since MoP (yes MoP)! It has pretty much been removed. There are so many problems with pathfinder it's difficult to know where to start, but I'll give it a go:
- The 8 month waiting for a later patch nonsense is totally unacceptable. Getting an achievement is not the major issue, the time gating is. There is no possible valid excuse for this. If wpvp is an issue, disable flying in war mode in new content for all I care - let that be the trade off for the higher AP/exp and crate rewards and such.
- The content is exhausted by the time flying becomes available. Is flying supposed to be worthless for our mains (the daily quests we want to fly to get to will have been farmed to death by that point to get the rep we need to get flying thus obsoleting the content)? Are we not supposed to level alts for the first 8-10 months of and expansion?!?
- The requirements for pathfinder are stupid. What are rep grinds in the achievement at all? Give me one reason lore master, explorer, and maybe treasure hunter are not sufficient? Are PvP players not supposed to have flight? Are pet battlers efforts worth nothing? Some selection of activities to suit various play styles is needed. Having a one size PVE task list hurts a lot of players forcing them to do stuff they don't want to do.
- It should not be an achievement that grants flight - it should be an in game quest. Looking at achieves to find out your character can fly is stupid.
- Path finder caused the flight whistle. If you want to port around like a mad man, race change your MoP/WoD challenge mode character mage to dark-iron and pick up engineering! This "everyone porting everywhere all the time" nonsense has to stop!
- Flight paths cost money - no I'm not joking. They basically negate the measly quest reward pittance you're given after repairs. Thus all income for a toon is generated by those insipid lame time gated mission tables. With flying, questing would be little less unrewarding and more outdoor PVE content would be done. The table should be nerfed and quest rewards buffed. If you want cash, get out there and play the damn game - don't buy tok€n$, stop clicking on tables and logging onto alts to click on more tables, and get out there and do some questing dammit!



Please stop thinking you're accomplishing something by being present or doing trivial content. If you want something to brag about there's plenty to do: high rank pvp, mythic raiding, brawlers guild, mage towers, etc. Do any of those and flaunt your rewards.

Obediently doing blizzard's tasklist of meaningless chores to get back something they steal every xpac is not a meaningful achievement - it's a needless nuisance, and it becomes pointless after an xpac has run its course (there is no reason for players starting now not to straight up buy wod or legion flying rather than grind out time gated reps in outdated content). I for one much prefer grinding rep when I feel like it (usually in the later half of the xpac), for their own sake for little or no reward (some crafting recipe/pet or something), not have to grind them early to get something I need in order to make doing things I would much rather prefer to be doing (gearing, dailies, etc) more fun.

I do agree that flying could be aquired differently and that it should be a reward from a questline.

Timegating/grind "useless chores... I have been doing it since for ever in any rpg? Rep/time gated raids and dungeons for ever in this game. Nothing has changed and it still is an RPG element. It was really cool to enter arcway in legion for the first time after doing my chores. People caught up later ofc. But it does not affect me anyhow lol. It just felt rewarding to access it at the time and after it become trivial I don't really care if someone can access it without grind. Same as I don't care about people seeing LFR. I was the one who did it when it was cool.

If I qant different game than you, that does not makes us wrong, it just shows, that well, there will.always be someone upset. That is what you get for having 4milion players lol. Every single player has their own vision for game elements or even lore.

[Flurryfang]

RIght... that's why taking off gear leads to the mobs dying faster... oh wait that is the opposite and you are full of it

- - - Updated - - -



If you have gone up 40 ilvl and the mobs health increases so they take the same amount of time, if not longer, that is the bullshit. The entire point of gearing up is to make things easier and faster.

As Ion said, the mobs health increase, but your dmg increases more. I am a tank on my main, currently 341 and i am killing bosses much after then when i just dinged 120 and did my first round of world quests. Now, most of my bonuses are focused on tanking/survivability, so being a 341 dps should increase the speed of killing even more.

You are getting stronger, you are having things become easier and faster, you are just not smashing things to the ground. Yet as Ion said, you are also getting better rewards at item lvl 341 than at 289, so it is only fair the fights follows to give you a bigger challenge to match the reward.

- - - Updated - - -

Ion has to go. This guy is making the same mistakes previous devs made. I want Ghostcrawler back.

Also, there is a huge disconnect from the game and the player base at this point.

Ohh hell no. Ion is one of the best things that has happend to this game. His entire point of communicating and actually talking about stuff instead of hiding behind pages of text, is amazing. Compared to so many other dev teams and just project leaders in general, his willingness to meet the community head on like this, is brilliant.

[Deleted]

quality Q&A, as always. No mention at all of the Wanted quests on the horde side not giving rep. It's not like they gated a mythic only dungeon behind rep or anything like that

Have you unlocked all extra hubs with extra wanted quests? I did not. I can see you did not too. How do you know those quests don't give rep? They said some do, some dont. Until all are done, we can't be sure

[Flurryfang]

To all those people bitching about people who wanna do their WQs as fast as possible (using addons):
Ofc. you can do them all solo without using any brainpower. But it takes time. Time is a precious commodity nowadays and I don't want to waste 4-5 hours a night on running around zones, doing the same 20-30 WQs over and over and over and over until I'm finally at a point where I don't need to do them anymore..

Than you either need to take things slower, accept that you need to spread your game time over longer periods of time, or you simply do not have time to play the game at the level you want.

It is okay to take decisions on that basis. I myself can't play competative anymore with my Dota group because my time is not there to train for it. Its simply a thing of growing older and having more things compete for your time.

You are afterall asking the game to cater down to you, have the devs lower the percieve quality of the game in their eyes, just so you can spend less and less time on the upkeep of the game.

[Deleted]

There are no plans to lessen the amount of trash mobs in certain dungeons.

Which is precisely why I'll continue avoiding the motherlode. That place is just unbearable.

[FelPlague]

Well, that settles it, Going back to FFXIV.

Have fun, see you next month.

- - - Updated - - -

Which is precisely why I'll continue avoiding the motherlode. That place is just unbearable.

I mean
literally
5 pulls
4 pulls
4 pulls
4 pulls

literally nothing compared to some vanilla tbc or even wrath dungeons.

[Eleccybubb]

Which is precisely why I'll continue avoiding the motherlode. That place is just unbearable.

I avoid it because it has shit gear for the most part for my Rogue. But yeah in terms of trash it's an awful dungeon.