Venturebeat Interview with Ion Hazzikostas on WoW's Future

[FelPlague]

Watch them say it's the communities fault in a couple of months.

i mean partially it was... in vanilla even, then tbc, and even wotlk we became rather well known for what we did, its literally why WE got in the argent tournament, and sent to icc and ulduar.

but then players cried and complained on mass "we killed the lich king, we beat kiljaden, we killed kelthuzad and an old god, yet we are still just random people WE WANT TO BE SPECIAL" and this went all the way through the end of wotlk and cata, constant, till finally in mop we got it, and people said they wanted more, and then well wod, and legion, then BFA tired to reset it, people didn't like that "we killed a god, why are we doing random shit for trolls" and then boom, shadowlands.

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Especially if they have a problem with the word "damsel".

they didnt change damsel because it was damsel, they changed it because it was being used to talk about a man.
there is still 2 quests with the name damsel (2 gone)
1 npc named damsel (3 gone)
1 item called damsel

[MoanaLisa]

Please. I've been here for over ten years, and there has never been one thread about flying. There were weeks when I'd see a new one once a day. It usually went something like: flying good/bad, tinker good/bad, player housing good/bad, casuals good/bad, rinse, repeat.

Prior to that and afterwards you are correct. But for those several months while they were making up their minds we kept it to one thread that ended up with something like 40,000+ posts. That didn’t stop people from trying to make new threads about it but they were closed or merged within a day.

[|Dexter|]

Ian is not going anytime soon! That is clear from this article he will be around for years to come...

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Ian claims they want to look at fan feedback but completely ignores the fact that fans don't want agenda crap shoved in the game as a misplaced snap reaction to Blizzards own issues internally. No one wants a woman's picture replaced with a bowl of fruit or /flirt removed or changed or the name/icon of Big Love Rocket changed. Those aren't priorities.

What do you want Ian to say we really can't care less about fan feedback, we never read it, the beta and PTR are just there so fan sites give us free promotion and hype up the 'new content' on YouTube...

[pahbi]

Blizz's soundboard for Ian

[Lundhz]

I tried shadowlands, and once again it shows how out of touch the developers are with its communities. Just flat out shit priorities, and no focus on making a good game anymore.

As someone who has played every expansion, it's clear that the game is worse and worse as time goes on, and it no longer deserves neither it's expansion nor it's monthly price. It's time to let it die.

[Esper]

If they want WoW to be an escape from the real world, why do they keep shoving real world issues and politics into the game?

[Kokolums]

There is absolutely nobody on any forum crying for more diversity or more justice in the game. Why is he using those buzzwords? Who is he talking to? And then he goes on about needing to listen to the community?

[Teriz]

[b][*]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.[/list]

Good! That's really good news.

[Cathbadh]

"The team understands that they aren't fixing systemic injustice by these changes, but why not do it in tandem with working on larger cultural community."

An admirable goal that's unfortunately been taken on with Blizzard's usual broadsword instead of a scalpel approach. I get removing characters named after dirtballs and even get a new policy for no characters named after real people. I get that /spit was an outlier in terms of emotes in that it was only toxic. But Blizzard has gone so much further. Replacing blurry "art" that could have been nude I guess with fruit bowls or suspending players who name their pet gorilla Gorilla, etc is too much. Focus your efforts on the vaguely racist posts that pop up in trade chat and things like that. No matter what you do, someone'll be offended by something, either legitimately or as a part of trolling. At some point it just isn't realistic to keep making changes.

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

Two things on this front: 1) Go back two years and look at how Jeff Kaplan communicated changes in Overwatch, then do exactly that. As a player of that game I can say I didn't always agree with buffs or nerfs or changes made, but I always knew the exact reason why they were happening. 2) Communication is completely and totally useless if nothing changes. Conduit energy is a good example of this. If you're getting a lot of complaints about something, communicating to just double down and say the players are wrong and you're right, you're wasting your time.

"Ion acknowledges that they should have reacted to player feedback earlier about conduit energy, and knows that they can do better about communicating not only that we are being heard, but why things are not necessarily implemented or changed right away."

Feedback on this was loud and consistent and included being directly voiced by a (now former) influential wow streamer. Flexibility in things like talents and abilities is something players generally want, and it should be embraced. There's only really one "meaningful choice" players make, and that's class. You should be flexible with everything else because in the end, it doesn't make a huge difference.

"Cross-faction raiding is a bit more on the radar now. If Jaina and Thrall are working together, why can't the players?"

Unless you can double, or probably now, triple your player base and keep them, I don't see how there'll be much choice. Cross faction guilds and full grouping should be the next thing worked on.

[Tylanthia]

I agree. Sometimes it can feel too strict, but generally speaking, it allows a game to continue being a game and the main point is to have fun, not to get caught up in political discussions, dps-epeen measuring, etc.

FF14's policies and enforcement--which I love--seem to me more about enforcing player harmony and social order than enforcing any side of the American cultural war.

[Devilyaki]

Translation- we are a big company and only list to the payer when it effects revenue. The cost benefit of fixing what we broke is only now becoming a problem.
Next expansion will be the same, ptr will report what to change, game gets released broken and a few patches in they’ll “listen and say sorry” again.

[Azxza]

Ion’s comment about the conduit energy thing is telling. It doesn’t sound at all like they plan to cut back on systemslands. Just that they might make said systems a tiny bit more player friendly. Yikes!

[pahbi]

Ian listening to player feedback is literally a meme.

[Leyre]

Fantastic news about the diversity hiring, hopefully they push it forward even more so this fucking game finally dies

[Yarathir]

FF14's policies and enforcement--which I love--seem to me more about enforcing player harmony and social order than enforcing any side of the American cultural war.

That was basically my point.

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Personal anecdote from here: Back in Warlords we kept the entire flying controversy more or less to one thread which eventually ended at over 40,000 posts. I did a few basic analytics on it as it was all ending and something like 18,000 of those 40,000 posts came from less than 100 accounts. It's one of the problems of relying on post counts or anything that is prone to mass swarming to reflect the reality of what people think.

Hot damn. It makes sense, though.

[WowIsDead64]

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

M+ - is only viable content for now. But casual players have to buy boosts for $$$, that isn't reasonable in P2P game. Maw and Korthia are garbage. WQs are unrewarding. Torghast is pointless, because it still doesn't have reward structure, i.e. it's challenge for the sake of challenge. Anima grind is still overtuned. Because ~100K per character at 500 anima a day (no Maw, no Korthia, at least no rare/treasure grind 24/7, no 100% anima WQs every day), that I can afford - is 200 days per character, that is unreasonable time-frame. And for what? For crappy cosmetic recolors? There is still 0 content for players, who don't want to play for the sake of challenging themselves somehow.

[Zmagoslav]

And nothing of value (to the game itself) was said.

Just a CEO spouting out buzzwords and assuring us the future is gonna be great.
Water is also still wet, more news at 11:00.

[Nyel]

So... 9.3 back on the menu? 10.0 back to Azeroth, Dragon Isles (core WoW fantasy)?

Did he explicitly say 9.2.5 or 9.3? No, he said there’s more in the future. Which could be directly related to 10.0.

[Super Kami Dende]

Fantastic news about the diversity hiring, hopefully they push it forward even more so this fucking game finally dies

Had me in the first half, not gonna lie.

[Peruh]

Fantastic news about the diversity hiring, hopefully they push it forward even more so this fucking game finally dies

hard agree