Blizzard hiring an Associate Game Director

[rhorle]

Probably in order to pad some $&#@ty metric at the expense of my enjoyment of the game, YMMV.

If you think they didn't have metrics back when you enjoyed the game then you are fooling yourself.

[Soon-TM]

If you think they didn't have metrics back when you enjoyed the game then you are fooling yourself.

I never said they didn't have metrics back then, so try another strawman instead.

[rhorle]

I never said they didn't have metrics back then, so try another strawman instead.

That isn't a strawman. It is pointing out the silliness of your complaint. It isn't about the metrics now just like it wasn't back then. You enjoy the game less and are blaming metrics as a scapegoat. Lol.

[Soon-TM]

That isn't a strawman. It is pointing out the silliness of your complaint. It isn't about the metrics now just like it wasn't back then. You enjoy the game less and are blaming metrics as a scapegoat. Lol.

Hint: metrics in WotLK/Cata weren't the same as today's.

[rhorle]

Hint: metrics in WotLK/Cata weren't the same as today's.

So they weren't trying to reach those metrics back then? You keep trying to blame silly metrics for you reason of disliking the game. Why use a scapegoat? What are you afraid of acknowledging?

[Soon-TM]

So they weren't trying to reach those metrics back then? You keep trying to blame silly metrics for you reason of disliking the game. Why use a scapegoat? What are you afraid of acknowledging?

I am not afraid of anything lawl. I don't need any scapegoats, nor I need to explain some random Maggie Simpson on the internet why I deeply dislike the current concept behind retail. Maybe it is the metrics they are using, maybe not, who knows - in the end, the game is !@#$ for me, period.

[rhorle]

I am not afraid of anything lawl. I don't need any scapegoats, nor I need to explain some random Maggie Simpson on the internet why I deeply dislike the current concept behind retail. Maybe it is the metrics they are using, maybe not, who knows - in the end, the game is !@#$ for me, period.

So you don't even know if it is the metrics yet you just got done blaming the metrics? That is the biggest problem with people that hate on the game. They spew any random thing then get upset when people call them out on it and the real cherry on top is they can't even explain why

Using a simpsons character as an insult? Lol. Maggie is a great character including involved in the best mystery of the show. Who shot Mr. Burns.

[Relapses]

So you don't even know if it is the metrics yet you just got done blaming the metrics? That is the biggest problem with people that hate on the game. They spew any random thing then get upset when people call them out on it and the real cherry on top is they can't even explain why

Using a simpsons character as an insult? Lol.

"Old thing GOOD; new thing BAD! And don't you dare ask me to explain why I feel this way!" -posting in the WoW community in 2021

Oh, and if you dare suggest that Blizzard is doing something for any reason other than "because fuck you," you're a shill. What a great time to be a part of this community.

[uuuhname]

they will end up hiring more staff that hate the majority of the players who enjoy the game and speed up its destruction

watch activist types and people with agendas get hired

hiring staff who hate the players that support the game...

what is it with this bizarre group of reactionaries who on one hand seem to hate the game or at least the people who make it, and then on the other cry bloody murder and doom and gloom over.... nothing? nothing. literally nothing that will ever really affect them.

[Relapses]

what is it with this bizarre group of reactionaries who on one hand seem to hate the game or at least the people who make it, and then on the other cry bloody murder and doom and gloom over.... nothing? nothing. literally nothing that will ever really affect them.

The fact that people like that can post things like that and have other people quote them and go, "you go KING, keep preachin!" is exactly why such reactionaries exist.

[uuuhname]

The fact that people like that can post things like that and have other people quote them and go, "you go KING, keep preachin!" is exactly why such reactionaries exist.

yeah they're 69ing each other all day long.

[Soon-TM]

what is it with this bizarre group of reactionaries who on one hand seem to hate the game or at least the people who make it, and then on the other cry bloody murder and doom and gloom over.... nothing? nothing. literally nothing that will ever really affect them.

WTF does this even mean...? Could you quote at least a couple of these "doom and gloom" and "bloody murder" posts ITT? Or are you just making stuff up?

"Old thing GOOD; new thing BAD! And don't you dare ask me to explain why I feel this way!" -posting in the WoW community in 2021

Oh, and if you dare suggest that Blizzard is doing something for any reason other than "because fuck you," you're a shill. What a great time to be a part of this community.

On the other hand we have people "Blizzard GOOD, criticism BAD" on every single thread. Because Blizzard is apparently our friend, and everything they do is for our own sake. Gotta luv'em

yeah they're 69ing each other all day long.

Projecting much?

[uuuhname]

Projecting much?

uuuuh I'm not one of these people that is shitting their pants over whoever they hire to work on WoW? like I really don't care? I'll wait and see the results of their work? like, what vibe do you think I have brought to these discussions to get this sort of response? other than this being a case of who smelt it dealt it?

I literally quoted Daish with his doom and gloom... holy crap read a bit harder next time.

[Soon-TM]

uuuuh I'm not one of these people that is shitting their pants over whoever they hire to work on WoW? like I really don't care? I'll wait and see the results of their work? like, what vibe do you think I have brought to these discussions to get this sort of response? other than this being a case of who smelt it dealt it?

I literally quoted Daish with his doom and gloom... holy crap read a bit harder next time.

No one is shitting their pants, calm down. Also what @Daish says is hardly doom and gloom, even if I strongly disagree with that post lolz.

[uuuhname]

No one is shitting their pants, calm down. Also what @Daish says is hardly doom and gloom, even if I strongly disagree with that post lolz.

except the person who I initially quoted. like, you don't need to be offended on other people's behalf, you know? unless of course you feel like it's somehow aimed at you. which as it was pointed out earlier, is projection.

[Niwes]

I never see Blizzard hiring a game director from out-of-house. It's not their way unless it was someone with a long history there who would be coming back. That option seems to be precluded at this point because of the other stuff going on. That means that promoting people into that position is always going to be a crap shoot.

Personally, I don't think Ion is so much to blame as Blizzard's consensus management culture. It insures that getting a dozen managers on board with certain decisions is always going to bias towards safe, low risk. It's true that Ion signs off on the final design but from everything we've read about how they work he's signing off on design decisions that many others have made and that everyone important has signed off on first. It's a hard gig, designing WoW, they're making decisions about design now that won't see the light of day for 18-24 months. I don't know that you can predict what will be accepted and what won't. Counter to that, I have personally felt for a long time that while change is needed from expansion to expansion, they change too much which leads to confusing classes and abandoned temporary systems.

I have a lot of problem with the overly-engineered approach that is taken to some pieces of the design and I think it's true that some of the higher-ups at EJ were hired and are working in the design teams now. Somewhere on the internets is a history of EJ that mentions that a few of the big shots there went to Blizzard and have been on the design team for some years now.

But in the end, consensus management is how they do things and that likely means that what Hazzikostas really does most of the time is sit in meetings, make sure that people agree with the direction that everyone has agreed to, set schedules from the producers and oversees that. This idea that Ion sits at his desk and sketches out everything in an expansion and then hands out assignments is certainly false.

yep, thats exactly what normally happens. at least in my experience.

as you said, the influence Ion has, is not that huge of an impact. normally positions like Ions sit in many many meetings, just saying yes or no to all the different things showed up by all the lead designer, lead technical xyz… in the end of the day its just Ions jobs to have some good overview over everything and keep all the things together.

that said: but the general direction it all goes, is directed by him. he tells the lead xyz what the „vision“ is, where the route should go, when planing and creating an xpac. most of the time this isnt something xpac related. its not „we wanna have some dark style“ (this is product management). its also not (we wanna design m+ that way). its more about the financial and moneymaking things, that Ion tries to hit, what he get out of meetings with JAB, from shareholders and Bobby. Its things like „we need to make x% profit more out of the smart cash grab systems, how can we achieve that“. Ion takes care that i.E. the lead xyz gets the message that their game design shall support token selling. like VP or PvP item rating, that supports boost grps, what support token selling. lead xyz come to Ion and says „look we have that idea doing this game design“ and Ion says, if this overall is accurate enough for the game and if this hits his vision of doing what he has to make sure. thats what Ion has to take care of.

thats the reason why i said in my post, company wise, from a Blizz perspective, Ion is doing fine. he has to hit a thin line between max monetizing of wow and prevent ppl leaving wow. its simple the thin line between „its 2021 and not 1999, therefore not just the best product customerwise is making the most profit. but shitty things like smart cash grab systems etc. making most profit. but on the same time you have to keep up a substantial number of subs/customers rotating through that system.“ not loosing too much players, but not just making all the profit by subs themselfs… thats the big deal here and thats what Ion try to make sure that the overall product falls exactly into this thin line.

in the end its just Ions job to make sure that general route is understood by all leads, for the next xpac, when planning. after that, when the machine is running, he just says yes or no to different things and watch how the thing grows. often he had not that great of a choice. look at covenants: everyone realized the covenant problems at beta. but when Ion talk with his lead game designer, they look at things like „is this offering enough time frames when switching? keeps it ppls playing? can we balance it to a degree its not „that bad“ ? and so on. and what will Ion say? shall he say: scrap that development, when halfway through? he simply can not. so often its not huge of an impact Ion has. he can just try to keep all things running and keeping together while steadily forcing time shedules and telling ppl that things have to be made faster, because its never fast enough.

so, yes. Ions range of descission while an xpac making is running, is not that huge. in the end he is just the face marked as responsible and his most prominent role is in next xpac planing, when he translates the wishes of management to all the teams and form a route for the next xpac. after that he can just finegranulate a bit what all the teams do and try to keep things together and steadily remembering ppl about time shedule. thats it.

[MoanaLisa]

so, yes. Ions range of descission while an xpac making is running, is not that huge. in the end he is just the face marked as responsible and his most prominent role is in next xpac planing, when he translates the wishes of management to all the teams and form a route for the next xpac. after that he can just finegranulate a bit what all the teams do and try to keep things together and steadily remembering ppl about time shedule. thats it.

As an aside: The many, many posts about how he's terrible because he's the Game Director are amusing because when Ghostcrawler was taking nearly universal hate and blame for the game being terrible the Game Director was Chilton (who rarely had anything at all to say publicly outside of Blizzcon interviews).

People want to go after the messenger. I suppose that's one reason why community managers now stay more or less out of the fray for responding to feedback for the devs. Zarhym and others took brutal verbal beatings from people who imagined they had more say about the game than they ever did.

I'm about 99.99% certain that if someone else were speaking for WoW and Hazzikostas never said anything that all of this would switch over to that person. That's how it was with Chilton and I don't think that the community has changed.

That said, I'd love to see them be more forthcoming about what they're thinking. They could go back to something like blog or Facebook posts and send them out under a fictional name. That would be hilarious to watch people fume about someone who didn't really exist.

[Revamp Man]

As an aside: The many, many posts about how he's terrible because he's the Game Director are amusing because when Ghostcrawler was taking nearly universal hate and blame for the game being terrible the Game Director was Chilton (who rarely had anything at all to say publicly outside of Blizzcon interviews).

People want to go after the messenger. I suppose that's one reason why community managers now stay more or less out of the fray for responding to feedback for the devs. Zarhym and others took brutal verbal beatings from people who imagined they had more say about the game than they ever did.

I'm about 99.99% certain that if someone else were speaking for WoW and Hazzikostas never said anything that all of this would switch over to that person. That's how it was with Chilton and I don't think that the community has changed.

That said, I'd love to see them be more forthcoming about what they're thinking. They could go back to something like blog or Facebook posts and send them out under a fictional name. That would be hilarious to watch people fume about someone who didn't really exist.

Ion is the boogeyman that people blame for everything bad

Meanwhile
Celestalon treated players like garbage in theorycrafting chats and called them the peanut gallery while they explained how the class he designed actually worked

There was a blue that had a similar attitude towards players who didn’t like titanforging and explained why but they were told “you are just selfish” after 50 pages of back and forth

You have Jeff Hamilton “if you fire everyone in systems you’ll never get another item” calling players dumb and focusing on the 1% of feedback from Reddit that says “you all need fired” ignoring the 99% with solutions and waiting months to fix them with community ideas.

But Ion who’s biggest crime is forced personal loot (a systems team creation) is the boogeyman

[Soon-TM]

But Ion who’s biggest crime is forced personal loot (a systems team creation) is the boogeyman

That's what you get when you are the Game Director, I guess. Even if your personal involvement with feature x, y or z is minimal or even inexistent.

[Revamp Man]

That's what you get when you are the Game Director, I guess. Even if your personal involvement with feature x, y or z is minimal or even inexistent.

Nah it’s what you get when you put your face out there

GC wasn’t the game director when he caught shit