Forbes BfA Interview, Blizzcon Early Access Sale, Darkshore Warfront with Devs

[Gadzooks]

game director is not the one who decides the direction in which game is going.

its the people above him who take care of $$$$ do that to ensure its succesfull money wise.

people sometimes forget that "wow' is buisness tool nothing else - its not a frinkin charity that is supposed to bring happiness to world

"Direction" is literally in his fucking job title.

The board at ATVI don't have one fuck to give about gameplay, classes, or warfronts. All they care about is profits - how Ion and Brack do that? That's up to them.

Ion is the DIRECTOR of WoW. Thus, he's responsible for the direction of the game, regardless if the ideas are his, or the teams. The Board at ATVI is not sending him emails to not let raids go into warfronts as a group. Ion and his team decided that.

[dranlord]

"Direction" is literally in his fucking job title.

The board at ATVI don't have one fuck to give about gameplay, classes, or warfronts. All they care about is profits - how Ion and Brack do that? That's up to them.

Ion is the DIRECTOR of WoW. Thus, he's responsible for the direction of the game, regardless if the ideas are his, or the teams. The Board at ATVI is not sending him emails to not let raids go into warfronts as a group. Ion and his team decided that.

LOL dude u have 0 clue how a director job is actually, every decision he take need to be a probe no meter what.

[Renuts]

I never thought I could grow to despise someone the way that I despise Ion. I loathe everything that comes out of his mouth because of how clearly detrimental his thinking and actions are towards creating a video game that is actually fun to play. More and more people are finally beginning to see the damage he is causing to this game. The people who actually created World of Warcraft are all gone, and the people who are now being tasked with picking up the pieces would so clearly be better off creating mobile games instead.

That interview is a bunch of hot garbage, just like BFA.

For the last month I have literally only logged in on Mondays to play for a few hours just to do a few of the soon to expire weekly tasks, and only out of some kind of inherent obligation. This is in stark contrast to early on in Legion where I actually logged in more than once a week because I was playing out of enjoyment, and not out of the ingrained obligation that you develop from playing this type of game. The kind of learned behavior that makes you believe that you are somehow missing out if you don't do your weekly in-game tasks.

I lasted for about 10 months before losing interest in Legion, and now after just 2 months in BFA I'm basically already holding on by my fingernails. I love World of Warcraft for what it was, and what it could be, NOT for what it has become. I think I just don't want to accept that I have already quit for the foreseeable future, I just didn't know it yet.

I'm looking forward to picking up Divinity Original Sin 2 again for the definitive edition, and frankly there are so many great games out right now, and being released every month that are more worth your time than anything Ion and company would have the potential to create. World of Warcraft desperately needs some developers with true passion for creating FUN games.

[Gadzooks]

LOL dude u have 0 clue how a director job is actually, every decision he take need to be a probe no meter what.

My years in corporate America have given me an extensive knowledge of what directors do, kid.

[Al Gorefiend]

I never thought I could grow to despise someone the way that I despise Ion. I loathe everything that comes out of his mouth because of how clearly detrimental his thinking and actions are towards creating a video game that is actually fun to play. More and more people are finally beginning to see the damage he is causing to this game. The people who actually created World of Warcraft are all gone, and the people who are now being tasked with picking up the pieces would so clearly be better off creating mobile games instead.

That interview is a bunch of hot garbage, just like BFA.

For the last month I have literally only logged in on Mondays to play for a few hours just to do a few of the soon to expire weekly tasks, and only out of some kind of inherent obligation. This is in stark contrast to early on in Legion where I actually logged in more than once a week because I was playing out of enjoyment, and not out of the ingrained obligation that you develop from playing this type of game. The kind of learned behavior that makes you believe that you are somehow missing out if you don't do your weekly in-game tasks.

I lasted for about 10 months before losing interest in Legion, and now after just 2 months in BFA I'm basically already holding on by my fingernails. I love World of Warcraft for what it was, and what it could be, NOT for what it has become. I think I just don't want to accept that I have already quit for the foreseeable future, I just didn't know it yet.

I'm looking forward to picking up Divinity Original Sin 2 again for the definitive edition, and frankly there are so many great games out right now, and being released every month that are more worth your time than anything Ion and company would have the potential to create. World of Warcraft desperately needs some developers with true passion for creating FUN games.

I just hate how powerless players are when devs do the shit Ion is doing.

Any other job on the planet requires some form of passion and decent public relations. That dude who got caught on camera spitting on a customers pizza got fired immediately. Yet here Ion is, spitting on the game we all pay $100s a year on, with this smug look on his face like "I know better than you millions of people do".

And he still has his job! It's incredible, just mind-blowing. How he has such a leading position within the WoW team yet doesn't at all want to make it fun.

[Gadzooks]

I just hate how powerless players are when devs do the shit Ion is doing.

Any other job on the planet requires some form of passion and decent public relations. That dude who got caught on camera spitting on a customers pizza got fired immediately. Yet here Ion is, spitting on the game we all pay $100s a year on, with this smug look on his face like "I know better than you millions of people do".

And he still has his job! It's incredible, just mind-blowing.

I honestly wonder if the rest of the team below him sit there and cringe when he speaks publically, and if there are private discords and chat conversations with them going "What the fuck did he just say? Did he really tell them we knew the expansion wasn't done? What the fuck?"

Or, are they all brainwashed drones like Lore?

[oathy]

Each interview he gives. More convinced now he wont be there in 2019.
the line about beta feedback is just awful. No people kept saying the same thing
over and over and not ranting. It was constructive and detailed.
when there was a reply "its still beta"..

trouble was nothing changed as it went to the actual expansion.
so they havent learned anything from WOD.

[THEORACLE64]

He’s awful honestly. I’ve never liked him tbh, and he just keeps getting worse.

[Naiattavain]

a good question forbes should of asked Ion is why does your rogue suck and any plans to fix the experience?

[oathy]

He’s awful honestly. I’ve never liked him tbh, and he just keeps getting worse.

BFA really has put a torch on him and the team.
If we can see clear failings other people can in blizzard.
the way he's talking its like sorting out the mid term lull all expansions have
not just a few months into a new one

[Kithelle]

he's right though, there WAS a lot of feedback and there WAS a lot of BS-feedback as well. I can imagine that if you have no one who filters out the good from the bad, that it's impossible to find useful information.

A lot of feedback is also not useful. Statements like "remove the GCD change, it's garbage" isn't useful since it doesn't adress the reason why they implemented it in the first place. I've seen no thread where someone who doesn't like it mentioned the problem Ion talked about above.

And? They practically ignore all feedback that is given because they "know* better....you wonder why they cause people to get so toxic.

He is one of the few smug assholes who I'd really say has a punchable face, him along with Ajit Pai I just want to take a swing at smug douchebags like them.

[Kallisto]

Unfortunatelly they're doing it for the rewards.

They're not minor pve rewards. Extra XP, rep (and of course honor, which is 0 from pve), azerite, dmg and healing (both fro the kill buff and from the powerful pvp skills) for faster WQ completion and gear drops (the chests).

At launch, just the extra XP and damage was enough. While I was still at 111 with WM off, all my friends and guildies with WM on where already 113 and when we had the power drop from disabled legendaries, they were still doing high damage to mobs while I was suffering from the bad mob power scaling at 117-120. And those bonuses in a expansion where each side plays on it's own map...

In the end I just turned WM on and enjoyed a much faster leveling and less problems with mob scaling. Turned it off again at 120 for WQs, but can still see how far ahead others are in azerite, rep and gear... while doing the same activities. When I turn it on for some specific activity (like the WM achievements or making it easier to find groups for Arathi rares), I can see so many players trying to avoid wpvp with WM on, because of the unecessary bonuses, instead of just turning it off.

Players just standing there, still (or trying to run away), because they don't want to do it, they're doing that only for the damn bonuses.

People should be playing with WM on because they like it, just like when they decided to play on pvp realms. Not because they'll receive plenty of pve rewards and faster progression for doing so while the others receive 0.

Then people need to learn this little thing.

Just because something is slightly more rewarding doesn't mean they are forced to do it even if they are super mythic and can choose not to.

[Utigarde]

That's about right on the mark.

And "millions of people" playing? Who is he kidding? Didn't they stop tracking subs when they went below 500k? (or something, I don't remember the exact #)

Ion is completely full of shit.

WoW's lowest recorded point was 5.6 million. The last two expansions there have been devs commenting separate from earnings reports talking about having over 10 million at the start of Legion and BfA. Millions is the correct term to use.

[Exkrementor]

"The "we told you our issues during beta" criticism is always tricky because there are many different people with many different opinions and play styles doing a variety of different content. It is impossible to please everyone, but they are always listening."

-Since day 1 Alpha nearly everybody told them that there were major issues with azerite gear, secondary stats and class design. They started adressing these issues a month before launch so only a few classes could get fixed and then they said they didnt had enough time. Bullshit.

"The team makes sure that the core systems of the expansion are polished and ready to go, but realize that they can't delay an entire expansion for millions of players if a specific class or spec is not perfect."

-Then maybe dont launch that unfinished game a month earlier. Nobody would have minded another month or two of argus.

"The team also recognizes that they should have explained the changes to the amount of loot rewarded from your weekly cache before BfA went live."

-That is a total lie and you know it. Blizzard changed it last second and said that it always was supposed to be this way. We know it, Ion knows it, everybody knows it. Its like he is spitting in our face at this point.

"The main source of pride for this expansion is the art team and the world that they created."

-Yeah bacause everything else sucks or is totally broken.

"Gameplay hasn't necessarily slowed down so much as whenever a new expansion launches stats have to be brought down as a character levels in order to stop characters from getting ridiculous stat percentages."

They changed the math on secondary stats so that you just dont get as much. So this statement ist totally wrong and he knows that.



Its sad to see the game director throwing such obvious lies in our faces. Bring Ghostcrawler back I say!

[Zaganite]

"The "we told you our issues during beta" criticism is always tricky because there are many different people with many different opinions and play styles doing a variety of different content. It is impossible to please everyone, but they are always listening."

-Since day 1 Alpha nearly everybody told them that there were major issues with azerite gear, secondary stats and class design. They started adressing these issues a month before launch so only a few classes could get fixed and then they said they didnt had enough time. Bullshit.

"The team makes sure that the core systems of the expansion are polished and ready to go, but realize that they can't delay an entire expansion for millions of players if a specific class or spec is not perfect."

-Then maybe dont launch that unfinished game a month earlier. Nobody would have minded another month or two of argus.

"The team also recognizes that they should have explained the changes to the amount of loot rewarded from your weekly cache before BfA went live."

-That is a total lie and you know it. Blizzard changed it last second and said that it always was supposed to be this way. We know it, Ion knows it, everybody knows it. Its like he is spitting in our face at this point.

"The main source of pride for this expansion is the art team and the world that they created."

-Yeah bacause everything else sucks or is totally broken.

"Gameplay hasn't necessarily slowed down so much as whenever a new expansion launches stats have to be brought down as a character levels in order to stop characters from getting ridiculous stat percentages."

They changed the math on secondary stats so that you just dont get as much. So this statement ist totally wrong and he knows that.



Its sad to see the game director throwing such obvious lies in our faces. Bring Ghostcrawler back I say!

I also like how he keeps pushing Azerite gear and traits in everyones face during any interview or Q&A! Its to late to try and fix it and they should have listened to the feedback. Its complete BS - I remember in Legion when we were told no more carrying around a pile of gear because everything goes to your spec and it was a god send! Now I have bags full of stuff again and its ridicolous! they did all these changes including the GCD change to make everything slower to give them more time to fix everything. I much prefer WoD to this

[ElDoorO]

Ion never said that the classes were not complete in the Q & A in which he said certain specs needed to wait for a patch to get adjustments, just that some of them needed to be adjusted and looked at still.
The truth of the matter is that classes are never complete in WoW and are always being adjusted and iterated. Often times changes in beta require other unforeseen additional changes in live.

He should become a lawyer. He's desperate now.

I'm pretty sure during Legion they said they had new tools to help "tweak" and "adjust" classes so they could easily fine tune them in situations like this...
Or did they throw it away? They seem to throw a lot of good things away.

[Enan1981]

So thats why they were doing the 6 month promo... Trying to pad the numbers for this interview? *Smirk* XD

[lockybalboa]

More lawyer talk and lies!

[Alopex Major]

They're happy with War Mode? Oh right, the devs play Horde, of course they are.

[OPLIX]

It's like reading a first grader's book report.