Venturebeat Interview with Ion Hazzikostas on WoW's Future

[LordKharon]

Also...

"The team wants to keep expanding on ways to better use what they have built over the years into the game, but it's not quite there yet."

Wth does this even mean??

more scaling.... scale all raids/dungeons to max level and have them available all the time.

[DarkAmbient]

Diversity of ideas makes a better game. What the fuck does skin color, genitalia, religion, etc. have to do with making a goddamn video game?

Nothing at all, but identity politics and the politicisation of everything is all the rage these days.

[Super Kami Dende]

I can live with the bigots being rooted out of the game - so yes - diversifying does indeed make a better game.

So the Millions of People that have left since the game went to shit over the last few expansions were just Bigots? Do you People even think before you speak?

- - - Updated - - -

...which it has trouble doing in 2021. Years ago....now.....it's different.

The point being it isn't "diversity" that gave them a huge Audience years ago. It was simply making a good game. Good games don't require a separation of diversity and niche. It's just more buzzword bullshit.

[Lolites]

It will all depend on how 9.2 (or an eventual 9.3) work out. It's not how it starts, it's how it ends.

this, legion had a lot of issues and complaints in the begining, yet ended up being seen as one of (if not "the") best expansion by shitloads of people

[Super Kami Dende]

God, i always love those reasonings, especially because political discussions are now more present in the discourse of WoW than ever.

Exactly, most of the changes to WoW and the tiresome bullshit their team constantly brings up, IS the shit People want to escape from.

[Haniel]

Might as well give players free race/class combinations now, if they really wanna get in touch with "Diversity makes a better game."

[Drakonskyr]

I love how he dumps on WoWhead multiple times, lmao. But yeah. He might as well be talking about his next album dropping for all I care. We've heard this all before so I'm not taking anything here at face value.

[Sinured]

stopped reading after the first point.
if someones offended, because something aged "poorly" they deserve mental hospital.
No wonder this game is shit, half their team are blue haired garbage humans with "zim/zem" in their twitter bio.

[crusadernero]

"We want this to be an escape" "We want to bring politics into it to score brownie points with Twitter"


"We had to make these changes to be welcoming" "No one would have noticed if not for those pesky dataminers"


Oh well, can't win em all.

Would be interesting if someone did research about twitter/social media/internet outrage compared up to society overall. There tends to be a bit of a echchamber on the internet, especially when most people mostly like to interact with somewhat likeminded people.

These days the loudest screams/complaints probably comes from the internet and its various platforms. Over a long enough time with these outrages I bet alot of people think "this is what most people think" or "this is how most people are".

So when you glare at it, it can look like a HUGE outrage, when in reality its just a small % angry people on a social media platform and not the general publics opinion.

We see this all the time in sports. Active social media people go mental about many things, when in reality, fans have a more calm & reflective attitude towards an issue.

[Xilurm]

In the end, the team wants WoW to be a positive place to escape the trials and tribulations of the world.

For themselves maybe. To me it does the complete opposite which is why I haven't been playing this game for ages.

[Reasonman]

Would be interesting if someone did research about twitter/social media/internet outrage compared up to society overall. There tends to be a bit of a echchamber on the internet, especially when most people mostly like to interact with somewhat likeminded people.

These days the loudest screams/complaints probably comes from the internet and its various platforms. Over a long enough time with these outrages I bet alot of people think "this is what most people think" or "this is how most people are".

So when you glare at it, it can look like a HUGE outrage, when in reality its just a small % angry people on a social media platform and not the general publics opinion.

Someone really needs to get a poll on the general population's opinions on things. At least we have something to toss at the echochamber.

[PixelFox]

The game would have a much brighter future without Ion and the rest of the senior developers in it.

If you always do what you've always done, then you'll always get what you've always got.

[Tang0]

I would like some clarification from the mod, that deleted my post in this thread

[crusadernero]

For themselves maybe. To me it does the complete opposite which is why I haven't been playing this game for ages.

To be honest, the game itself has no apparent issues even though Blizzard believes so by removing so much stuff(Like joke/flirt etc). I think a bigger issue that they should try to solve is how players engange with eachother ingame - why they do it, how they do it and in general make the game more welcoming and open for group/player interaction.

If we are completly honest with ourself, the wow community overall is probably alot more toxic than any NPC name, joke, flirt or painting ever has been in the game.

These thing was never the issue. How the game is managed at endgame is a major issue.

[huehuehue]

In the end, the team wants WoW to be a positive place to escape the trials and tribulations of the world.

fixed a 12 year old 'your mother' joke, but still go commit genocide on these ogres ayylmao

[crusadernero]

Someone really needs to get a poll on the general population's opinions on things. At least we have something to toss at the echochamber.

Im just saying everyone(Blizzard and us) should probably take a step back and realise most people dont give two flying fucks about talking about the game on twitter or any other site on the internet. Most people play the game if they enjoy it and move on, playing it or not.

next - most people dont go on angry rants or engage in twitter interaction with Blizzard employees or try to push whatever agenda they have. I can understand Blizzard panics and do whatever they can to do "damage control" by changing alot of things ingame, but I bet ALOT of wow players have no idea WTF is going on or why.

[Toby451]

For themselves maybe. To me it does the complete opposite which is why I haven't been playing this game for ages.

Thats even more pathetic then. Why are you wasting your life reading about a game you havnt played "for ages". lol.... <insert random excuse here>

[OokOok]

"ppl still unhappy, so we're going to turn up the *pretend we care* meter" damage is done, let wow burn to the ground

[SinR]

these changes did not take away from development time and would likely have gone unnoticed if they weren't spotlighted from datamining.

cough cough bullshit cough cough.

[Redzonetode]

I get the lure of cross-faction raiding for ease of forming groups. But it's not a coincidence that when wow started it's descent was when Blizzard started trashing faction identity. Unfortunately most of the folks (both designers and players) that understand that are long gone. It's just a difference in strategy. Ion has leaned more towards making things easier, vs. the glory days of Metzen and For the Horde when faction choice was interesting and relevant. It started with being able to roll toons of different factions on the same server, again out of easy accessibility, it just came at the cost of destroying wpvp. Flying in Azeroth to make things easier finished wpvp off. Doing away with different questlines for each faction since it's easier to just make them the same. They might as well go all the way and go cross-faction raid since faction choice has been sadly crushed into irrelevance for quite some time. The fun days of massive pre-raid wpvp battles outside raid summoning stones are long gone.

If there's something to be fixed with a reboot, it's making factions relevant again, not going the other direction. But Blizzard's direction is like a big ship that's once it's going in a direction is not easy to turn.

Ah yes, the classic "actually the problem isnt a problem at all, it's a solution."

No, splitting the playerbase in two isn't a good thing.