9.0 General Discussion

[Merryck]

Getting rid of Ion would be a good start

I doubt that.

[spleen1015]

Ion gets too much blame. He's not making decisions in a vacuum. Every major feature gets reviewed and approved by a dozen or more people. To think otherwise is just ignorant.

If they want to draw in new players, they have to change the level experience, ie. world revamp & level squish. It is smart business. They just have to do it right.

[Slowpoke is a Gamer]

Ion gets too much blame. He's not making decisions in a vacuum. Every major feature gets reviewed and approved by a dozen or more people. To think otherwise is just ignorant.

If they want to draw in new players, they have to change the level experience, ie. world revamp & level squish. It is smart business. They just have to do it right.

And Ion doesn't come up with every idea himself. A lot of them are brought to him by the various team leads.

[TheramoreIsTheBomb]

Getting rid of Ion would be a good start

Ion doesn't need to go anywhere. it's the people pulling his strings and everyone else at Blizzard who needs to go. a.c.t.i.v.i.s.i.o.n

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And Ion doesn't come up with every idea himself. A lot of them are brought to him by the various team leads.

And a lot of Ion's work has been positive. People forget he helped designed awesome raids like ToT and SoO and so much more. He practically saved PvE content from being theorically impossible to complete [C'thun before he worked for Blizz.]

[LorDC]

A level squish would be utterly meaningless and all it would bring with itself would be a ton of broken quests, requirements and bugs overall. So not only would it take time to implement it across so many expansions, it would also take a lot of time to fix all ensuing bugs and there'll surely be a myriad of them. All this time and resources could be put to good use elsewhere.

Seeing less levels and seemingly "getting more each time you level up" is meaningless when the time invested remains the same as it is now. All it does is play a trick with your mind about how you've achieved much having leveled up for one level, while you've actually achieved the same as you did before the squish when you would level up for ten levels within the same timeframe.

1) Pretty much every quest in the game already has flexible level. Character level scaling is well tested through timewalking mechanics. So everything required for level squish is already in game and right now it would be almost as easy as pushing a single button.
2) Presentation matters A LOT. As an example Stellaris had "empire sprawl" mechanics that increased tech cost with the size of your empire since launch, but UI didn't show it until recently. As soon as patch has gone live, official forums blew up with topics about how PDX killed the game with that awful mechanic. So, if level squish can increase sub numbers even by a couple of percents it already is worthwhile.

[Wangming]

Reading all this all I can think of is we really need a WoW 2. If the old code makes substantial changes impossible, it is time to slap the reset button.

[Blayze]

I'm pretty sure Stellaris's old Sprawl mechanic was based on your colonised systems, which the UI did display.

And for a level squish, how I'd do it is keep the current system, but just divide the number by five or whatever and show that to the player.

[Aeluron Lightsong]

Reading all this all I can think of is we really need a WoW 2. If the old code makes substantial changes impossible, it is time to slap the reset button.

Only they know how the code is doing, I can't even guess.

[plz delete account]

Getting rid of Ion would be a good start

Press X to doubt
X

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1) Pretty much every quest in the game already has flexible level. Character level scaling is well tested through timewalking mechanics. So everything required for level squish is already in game and right now it would be almost as easy as pushing a single button.
2) Presentation matters A LOT. As an example Stellaris had "empire sprawl" mechanics that increased tech cost with the size of your empire since launch, but UI didn't show it until recently. As soon as patch has gone live, official forums blew up with topics about how PDX killed the game with that awful mechanic. So, if level squish can increase sub numbers even by a couple of percents it already is worthwhile.

Hello someone's alt. Join date of Sep 2018 but only has one post?
Alt. alt. ALLLLLLT!

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Reading all this all I can think of is we really need a WoW 2. If the old code makes substantial changes impossible, it is time to slap the reset button.

Code changes aren't as impossible as people make it out to be.
Difficult? Maybe.
Impossible? No.

[Makorus]

Ion is in the same boat as Holinka was.

People blame him for all the problems because he is the scapegoat and the figurehead. He is the game director, sure, but he does not decide on everything that gets pushed to the game.

[Nyel]

Getting rid of Ion would be a good start

At least promoting him to another position he has less influence on the game overall but keeps influence where he’s great.

For 9.0 it might be too late though. Ion isn’t a good leader. He succeeded with Legion but failed horribly with BfA which is a shame yet proves his lack of discernment.

[TheramoreIsTheBomb]

Ion is in the same boat as Holinka was.

People blame him for all the problems because he is the scapegoat and the figurehead. He is the game director, sure, but he does not decide on everything that gets pushed to the game.

Holinka is ignorant though and has shot back at the playerbase. However if anyone needs to go it’s Josh Allen Lore. He’s a rude and disrespectful individual and shouldn’t represent his company in such a disgusting manner. Especially his appearance. Jeff Kaplan and former Chris Metzen represent the best in Blizzard.

[Wangming]

Holinka is ignorant though and has shot back at the playerbase. However if anyone needs to go it’s Josh Allen Lore. He’s a rude and disrespectful individual and shouldn’t represent his company in such a disgusting manner. Especially his appearance. Jeff Kaplan and former Chris Metzen represent the best in Blizzard.

Chris Metzen was the ultimate showman. He could hype up literally any expansion.

[Makorus]

Holinka is ignorant though and has shot back at the playerbase. However if anyone needs to go it’s Josh Allen Lore. He’s a rude and disrespectful individual and shouldn’t represent his company in such a disgusting manner. Especially his appearance. Jeff Kaplan and former Chris Metzen represent the best in Blizzard.

I dont think is disrespectful at all.

I assume you are referring to the Pathfinder thing where he called out the guy who said "I dont wanna earn Pathfinder"? He was not rude or disrespectful at all during that interaction tho.

[zlygork]

I dont think is disrespectful at all.

I assume you are referring to the Pathfinder thing where he called out the guy who said "I dont wanna earn Pathfinder"? He was not rude or disrespectful at all during that interaction tho.

There was a scandal where he went on his "personal" twitter and started insulting the wow fanbase, and acter like it was ok simply because it's not his work twitter, like that's how public image works for any other professional on this planet.

[Makorus]

There was a scandal where he went on his "personal" twitter and started insulting the wow fanbase, and acter like it was ok simply because it's not his work twitter, like that's how public image works for any other professional on this planet.

What, you are talking about this? I feel like the only people who feel attacked by the are the anonymous dickbags.

[plz delete account]

The Warcraft 3 Megathread has something interesting for 9.0.
We have images of a Night-Elf Dark Ranger that were posted to the official WC3 website, only to be taken down soon after.
Dark Rangers coming to WoW?

[zlygork]

What, you are talking about this? I feel like the only people who feel attacked by the are the anonymous dickbags.

Don't get me wrong, I 100% agree with the opinion expressed but it is nonetheless a very unprofessional behavior. Many of us would see our positions compromised very quickly if we were caught behaving similarly.

[Slowpoke is a Gamer]

Reading all this all I can think of is we really need a WoW 2. If the old code makes substantial changes impossible, it is time to slap the reset button.

I think it's possible for them to un-spaghetti the code. Problem is it'd likely be the main focus of an expansion so that means no shiny new feature like Islands, or Artifacts, or Garrisons. Not that I think the playerbase left after those fiascos would mind.

Would people mind if Blizz got up on stage and rattled off the 9.0 features and like 75% of them are behind the scenes fixes while 25% are pertaining to leveling and 0% to endgame (outside of the usual zones, raids, etc.)

Holinka is ignorant though and has shot back at the playerbase. However if anyone needs to go it’s Josh Allen Lore. He’s a rude and disrespectful individual and shouldn’t represent his company in such a disgusting manner. Especially his appearance. Jeff Kaplan and former Chris Metzen represent the best in Blizzard.

Lore gets a bad rep same as Ion honestly. Their Q&A format is awkward, the duo don't have chemistry, it rarely does what players want it to do (which is announce new stuff), and they're put out as the public face of WoW which always ends badly (just ask Ghostcrawler).

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The Warcraft 3 Megathread has something interesting for 9.0.
We have images of a Night-Elf Dark Ranger that were posted to the official WC3 website, only to be taken down soon after.
Dark Rangers coming to WoW?

Unless that Dark Ranger was in WoW, no.

[Fawkess]

The Warcraft 3 Megathread has something interesting for 9.0.
We have images of a Night-Elf Dark Ranger that were posted to the official WC3 website, only to be taken down soon after.
Dark Rangers coming to WoW?

I think it was probably just an error by who ever made the image, It was supposed to be for the night elves but had the neutral dark ranger hero in it instead

And the dark ranger is not a night elf it's a high elf in Warcraft 3