Venturebeat Interview with Ion Hazzikostas on WoW's Future

[Kralljin]

Great it's also a creative decision by a team we have no real inside information on beyond occasional tweets

They literally said that it's been done at the behest of the team itself and what they consider offensive / inappropriate / not inclusive.

Please, don't make a fool out of yourself and deny the obvious connection between their political stance and those changes.

the same team that has been killing the game with useless content since they added heroics, lfr, lfg, adding ten man, killing ten man, adding flex, reduced the 40man down. Made the game too casual, too elitist, too pc, too many catchup mechanics, too few buttons, too many buttons, too little to do, too much to do.

Terribly analogy.

All those things are elements WoW Players disagree on because they are WoW Players, not because of their political views.
I am fairly certain that in regards to those recent changes, the lines among players between being in favor and in opposition are pretty damn close to the line between those that consider themselves "PC" / "Woke" and those that are in opposition to that.

Disagreeing with someone on a specific design decisions within WoW is not the same as disagreeing with someone on specific changes based on political views.

Discussing design decisions of the game is naturally part of a WoW Forum, however when people start calling eachother based on their political views, the discussion has departed the realm of the game and entered real world politics.

It's ridiculous to throw a tantrum every time the needle doesn't tick towards your belief. To me demon hunters and WoD were tired appeals to rock and roll and edginess, but that was the team direction at the time.

WoD in large was a direct answer to MoP, which was generally seen as a huge departure from Warcraft's core theme and in itself a reference to Warcraft 2: Beyond the Dark Portal.

Demon Hunters have been a staple part of Warcraft lore since Warcraft 3.

Both elements in their themes predate WoW itself, if you think those themes do not fit Warcraft...okay, then that's your opinion i guess, just not a great one because it ignores the roots of the franchise.

Don quixote is just the new "ripcord" "morally gray" or whatever the meme complaint is the day is

I have no idea what this means but if you want to tell me that Maximillian of Northshire quest in Un'goro is not a Don quixote reference, then please say so, because i don't want to waste more time arguing with people that deny reality.

[Merin]

"There has been a lot of work towards allowing more open communication and feedback within the team about things going into the game."

Anyone with any history in this game has heard this exact line at least a half dozen times.

This would be exciting if it wasn't likely a lie. It would also be exciting if I believed the development team had the talent to pull of meaningful content anymore regardless of systems or QoL.

[GratsDing45]

At this point, your characters are heroes and there is no way that they can go back to being anonymous adventurers, but the team also wants to go back to simple core fantasy and not so much more escalating cosmic adventures.

YES, this is exactly what the game needs.

Same here. Though Kul Tiras felt very traditional at times and a mix of some Eastern Kingdoms. Boralus was such good hub.
I remember being a dwarf in Drustvar killing yetis and bears in the snow and it feeling so right.
This was BFA, the expansion everyone hates

[Kuntantee]

9.1.5 was born out of the team being allowed to pitch ideas and try out things that they think will make the game more fun.

I thought those changes were not WoW development team's idea but demands from the community since beta?

[Steelangel]

I encourage you to read Herbert Marcuse, the grand wizard of contemporary progressive culture, if you want to know why what is happening at Blizzard lines up perfectly with progressive (far-left) ideology. Socialism indeed does deny material reality, where material reality = what is plainly visible and the consequences thereof. The hint comes from the relentless drumbeat of the ambiguously defined "diversity". It is always desired, never attained, much like a Utopian Socialist vision.

In the past 20 years. "progressive" politics has taken on more and more of a religious flair, from the Bernie Bro to the modern Woke zealots, they're not beating the drum of anything resembling an intelligent left---it's more like a chthonic echo chamber where each repetition becomes more and more mindless and farther away from the original meanings.

Take CRT as an example. If you read books and papers by Bell, Delgado et al., it's a relatively straightforward way of centering race as a consideration in understanding disparate impact. Now, I believe that particular lens is way too narrow and ignores (as Americans do) any arguments about class, but it is definitely not something scary. But the repetition of the theme over the following decades since its inception in the 1970's has led to what could be considered the spiritual successor of the scientific racism of the 1920's---where immutable identity is the only deciding factor in people's worth. This is not what Bell would have wanted... Delgado, I'm not so sure about.

But this is, as you say, Marcusian in the sense that he rejected the working class as the vanguard of the left and believed that the true revoutionaries would be intellectuals and the "marginalized". However, I would strongly deny that Marcuse's work is "of the left" per se. By rejecting the working class in favor of the gentry (radical intellectuals) leading a subset of the masses, he rejects Marx in favor of Mao.

[Postmasters]

In the past 20 years. "progressive" politics has taken on more and more of a religious flair, from the Bernie Bro to the modern Woke zealots, they're not beating the drum of anything resembling an intelligent left---it's more like a chthonic echo chamber where each repetition becomes more and more mindless and farther away from the original meanings.

Take CRT as an example. If you read books and papers by Bell, Delgado et al., it's a relatively straightforward way of centering race as a consideration in understanding disparate impact. Now, I believe that particular lens is way too narrow and ignores (as Americans do) any arguments about class, but it is definitely not something scary. But the repetition of the theme over the following decades since its inception in the 1970's has led to what could be considered the spiritual successor of the scientific racism of the 1920's---where immutable identity is the only deciding factor in people's worth. This is not what Bell would have wanted... Delgado, I'm not so sure about.

But this is, as you say, Marcusian in the sense that he rejected the working class as the vanguard of the left and believed that the true revoutionaries would be intellectuals and the "marginalized". However, I would strongly deny that Marcuse's work is "of the left" per se. By rejecting the working class in favor of the gentry (radical intellectuals) leading a subset of the masses, he rejects Marx in favor of Mao.

Possibly though I feel that the bulk of humanity needs a higher power in order to function. With the fall of religion in the western world many just turn to themselves and worship vague moral ideals.

You will never be able to reason or negotiate with this group. They are zealots nothing more.

[Kralljin]

it's a political stance putting it in in the first place, WoDs marketing and conception was an appeal to the heavy metal culture

You do realize that one of the artists, whose style entire Warcraft is based on, also drew albums for Heavy metal bands, Samwise Didier?

Echoing one specific example of a change you don't like, that you know others don't like, is trying to score political points.

It's really not, it highlights how much detached from reality these people are as the word "damsel" is used in a context that clearly does not demean women but rather plays on Don quixote novel, which evolves around a character that has read way too many stories about chivalrous knights going on quests to save damsels in distress.

If you have an issue with the word "Damsel" in this context, then you are just plain wrong.

[GratsDing45]

Can we go back to the Samwise heavy metal influence? Or is heavy metal too frat boy for twitter

[Soon-TM]

Same here. Though Kul Tiras felt very traditional at times and a mix of some Eastern Kingdoms. Boralus was such good hub.
I remember being a dwarf in Drustvar killing yetis and bears in the snow and it feeling so right.
This was BFA, the expansion everyone hates

BfA wasn't hated because of Drustvar yetis or bears. In fact, Drustvar is a veritable jewel in the dirt of an expansion that was BfA overall.

[Dzonathan]

Note how he only acknowledged conduit energy. Nothing else. These people are incapable of learning, legit. Almost hilarious. What is it with western companies and refusal to stop being so blatantly arrogant... everyone sees it for what it is.

A certain toxic mindset that goes like this:
"If I admit to being wrong then people wont let me live it down"

It's better in their mindset to never acknowledge being wrong, ignore the situation and fix it later when it doesn't matter and no one cares anymore.
This way you can pretend it was okay from the get go, there was nothing wrong with it and all those whiners were just being toxic.

It would've been funny if it wasn't so sleazy.

[Khaza-R]

At this point, your characters are heroes and there is no way that they can go back to being anonymous adventurers, but the team also wants to go back to simple core fantasy and not so much more escalating cosmic adventures.

Probably the only promising and surprising statement in that interview.

I hope when he says they no longer want to appeal to just a niche audience he means appeal to more than just sweaty types.

[Dzonathan]

Possibly like how FF14 does it. Large chunks of the world still feel relevant even an expansion or two later. They keep them part of the story and add new or 'what happened later' version of dungeons to them further on. The roulette system also keeps older content relevant with scaling used.

Its a rather big contrast to wow where old zones pretty much go in the 'nastalgia farm only' zone once the next expansion rolls around.

Also it keeps the story tight and focused
There's always three things to deal with in each expansion: Primals, Garlemald and the Ascians. And all 3 are connected.
Each expansion is more about dealing with all 3 in a different land with different tools.

- - - Updated - - -

Cross faction raiding is impossible we're putting the WAR in WARcraft, faction war is literally a core fantasy of the game
*Literally one expansion later*

Faction conflict may make sense for regular characters in Azeroth but not for our playable characters.
We seen too much, We have been to too many places, We have dealt with forces beyond Azeroth scope and the stakes are now universal.

It's like expecting a grown man who travelled the world to still hold a grudge toward Chad for what he did to you in high school.

[Grimbold21]

Ahhh corporate just had to have him squeeze the "diversity" bullet points in there

Which is ironic, since WoW had, what 12, 13 million players from all over the world. Doesn't get any more diverse than that.

In the end, the team wants WoW to be a positive place to escape the trials and tribulations of the world. - I think some of your team members are doing the opposite of that, bud.

Diversity makes a better game. They don't want WoW to be for a niche audience. - Again, Ion, that's what some of your colleagues are aiming for.

[Kralljin]

"We are not changing anything everything is fine" is a political statement.

No, it's not.
There is a line between the game and real world, changing anything besides the references to actual real people is just inserting your agenda into the game for the sake some of sort weird moral purity.
Even in the context of certain elements having a "backstory", you could still alter them while leaving the general portrayal of the content the same.

As if the name "Twin Consorts" was somehow a political statement about the role of women in society, please.

- Reaction to hidden context or actions by staff members we don't know of. Maybe someone overplayed this joke, or used it against someone internally and it wasn't worth saving. Possibly as a string of transgressions.

Considering it's a reference to Don Quixote, i'd find that a pretty hilarious reaction as if anything that now involves a Don Quixote reference is somehow now toxic to those people.

I mean, nothing else about was altered, i so find unlikely that specific word in solely in that context of this quest was somehow "abused".

- Someone CTRL+F'd the entire text base for damsel but only changed one or two examples.

I strongly doubt that, considering Blizzard now had ample opportunity to change it back.
Disregarding that the word damsel has been rarely used in WoW.

[starstationprofm]

In case of emergency, deploy cross-faction raiding.

As much as I hate it from an immersion/story POV, it would fix a lot of issues if you could guild up and group up cross faction.

Roleplaying, PvE and PvP communities would all benefit a lot from it.

[Saltysquidoon]

Faction conflict may make sense for regular characters in Azeroth but not for our playable characters.
We seen too much, We have been to too many places, We have dealt with forces beyond Azeroth scope and the stakes are now universal.

It's like expecting a grown man who travelled the world to still hold a grudge toward Chad for what he did to you in high school.

The thrust of my joke was the lack of consistency in the messaging imputes a lack of planning and/or vision on the dev team's behalf.

I completely support cross-faction raiding.

[Dejablue]

Put on your tinfoil hats!

Ion is telegraphing the plans for the next expansion where The Jailer wins and WoW does a FFXIV style blowup and starts anew:

"What comes next? Let’s go through the whole cosmology. There are others who miss just being in an inn in Elwynn Forest, being an adventurer on a more humble scale. At this point the WoW protagonists are heroes. You’ve done a lot of stuff. You’ll probably never go back to being anonymous adventurers in the forest. But Azeroth is the heart of the WoW franchise, and it started with orcs and humans and dwarves and night elves and the rest. We want to get back to that too. There’s room to tell a big cosmic-scale story, and there’s also room for more traditional core fantasy. That’s not something we want to lose sight of. Even going all the way back, this isn’t necessarily something new. The first expansion for WoW was going to Outland. We had the draenei coming in effectively spaceships and landing on Azeroth. There was a lot of cosmic stuff there. But we want to cover the whole gamut. It’s something we think about when we’re planning expansions as well. We maybe alternate between something that’s more traditional and terrestrial, and then something that’s higher concept."

---

Digging around in the extracted WoW UI to work on addons I make I have read many small pieces of information in the comments of the UI's code that has led me to develop a theory that they are doing Classic Plus as a cross era expansion; or another way to say it is the next Retail expansion will be compatible with Classic, providing a Classic+ experience. Having an expansion that Classic players would buy for Classic content would effectively double their box sales for the next WoW expansion.

Imagine they discovered in a vault a version of WotLK that occurred after Vanilla; just as the game and story of Vanilla seemed to be headed; as if there was no TBC. Now Chromie has opened that never released version for Classic and Retail players to go through; as an entire expansion.

We already have Timewalking where we must make sure that the timeline is not changed; they could do this for the entire expansion; like WoD except a timeline broken off after TBC; they would have to develop the next expansion from that viewpoint and for Classic abilities; but then with the already devised Timewalking mechanic for Retail.

Both Retail and Classic and SoM are level 60 endgame.

That means that the next expansion for Retail could be level 60 - 70 and accommodate all eras.

As well, to accommodate TBC era, once you get a toon to level 70 you may also be able to play this Retail/Classic+ expansion with a TBC character (ala level 55 DKs in Wrath).

Speaking of Wrath; doing this sets up all three eras to be level 70 and ready to embark into the Wrath Classic expansion along with a new Retail companion expansion: Wrath of Arthas: Redemption; it turns out The Jailer did not win; Heroes, Arthas, and Chromie conspire to traverse the timeways to defeat him once and for all.

---

Snap back to reality, oop there goes gravity

The crux of the turmoil between players and WoW developers and leadership is that they are not doing anything to move forward.

Instead they are critiquing the past in a manner that implies the player base was complicit and responsible.

It is alienating and invalidating; effectively stating that players could not possibly have had fun, or have fond memories of myriad aspects of World of Warcraft; that the game we love and remember is fundamentally flawed.

The recent actions against the legacy of World of Warcraft and continued inability to evolve and produce substantive, engaging gameplay that millions enjoy is tantamount to iterating on the theme "You think you do, but you don't ".

Once again the community is correct; the community knows what it wants, what it likes, what its history means, what its game's legacy is; Blizzard Entertainment does not.

The tacit reception of these actions by the community is that at best these disparaging actions are meant to herald an ostensibly better game experience with current Shadowlands content; and at worst are simple virtue signaling and pandering to a vocal minority.

The stark reality is that Blizzard Entertainment does not care about you or your feelings. They are pitting the community against each other to obfuscate systematic progress towards gambling mechanics as their default, fundamental gaming mechanic; to suppress the organization of the community.

They are doubling down against the rising tide and reversion to FFXIV style community gaming; using every tactic to keep us separated and addicted to their brand of skinner box.

The choice you have to make is whether you are a single rat drinking alone furiously until you burn out in Retail WoW; or whether you are a social drinker in a Classic WoW or FFXIV community and only occasionally drink when playing with them.

Even rats almost always choose community, and they are always the first ones off a ship.

Are you a rat?

Be a rat!

Bonus Dad joke: "Retail? More like re-tell!"

[Ragedaug]

• Diversity makes a better game. They don't want WoW to be for a niche audience.

This is a grossly oversimplified statement and I don't think it's accurate at all. I would suspect most hobbies are for niche audiences. Everything is not for everyone. By it's very definition, diversity denotes differences. What one person likes, a person with different opinions would not like. How do you make something that 2 people with opposing view points both enjoy?

What I've seen a lot recently in pop culture is folks trying to make entertainment for everyone, and in doing so, make something no one enjoys. Or sometimes we see art that had a core audience that really enjoyed it, and in an attempt to garner a larger audience, the artist changes the art which alienated their core audience. The larger audience was never crazy about the art in the first place, so they never developed anything close to the attachment the initial core audience had, so the art then withers on the vine.


Finding your Niche Market is a core tenet of sales. It blows me away you can have a company this big that not only doesn't realize that, but looks to do the opposite and thinks they are still going to be successful.

[Aggressive]

Or the expansion can simply last 30 months instead of the usual 24~ to fit a 9.3. Depends on how far along it is. Would be perfectly understandable considering covid, lockdowns, and their own internal issues.

No one knows.

- - - Updated - - -



What exactly is wrong with current content? Or how would -you- improve it?

Are you serious?? You just can't be. Are you saying Choreghast is fine or good?? Are you truly ok with shit covenants?? I mean I guess it is Ok for some fanboys to really be in love with Boringlands.

[hulkgor]

Are you serious?? You just can't be. Are you saying Choreghast is fine or good?? Are you truly ok with shit covenants?? I mean I guess it is Ok for some fanboys to really be in love with Boringlands.

And there we go again. Just because someone enjoys the expansion, they're fanboys, shills, etc.

Torghast was fun, yep. Whilst completing it first, doing Endless Corridors first time, going on different alts for some op madness. I don't run it regularly now, i have no need for it, but it was far from "Choreghast".

Covenants? Again, no issues from me whatsoever. Played NF and swapped to Venth on 9.1, would have liked to have more liberty swapping around, and alas, here we are on 9.1.5 with the ability to do so freely.

Raiding and M+ are top notch.

So again, why does it shock you so much that people can actually enjoy the game?

Also, your signature is friggin ironic, i'll tell you that.