We can argue for days about Ion’s treatment of BFA. But I don’t think it’s fair to say that Ion has a “disconnect” to Classic WoW.
The main reason Ion has a job at Blizzard is that he was:
US first horde Nefarian
US first horde C’thun
US first horde Thaddius
Mal’ganis server Scarab Lord.
Ion I’d argue has way more “clarity” about Vanilla World of Warcraft than many and I’m happy that he is leading the project. (I think he’s leading the project. I’m not sure, but I believe he has some in put.)
Yes I watched the video. But you keep saying that they’re going to influence Classic. How? They’re not even changing anything.
The video talked about different design philosophies. There aren’t any different design philosophies for Classic. It’s literally just reopening World of Warcraft as it was in 2006. That’s what they said in Blizzcon. They’re are very little things they need to think about since the work had been done before.
That’s a really really low bar to set when they could be doing infinitely better by producing a game people actually like playing.
I did not think to my self when I purchased BFA “Oh hey this will be crap too!”, instead I was thinking: “Legion was kinda bad when compared to Wrath, but it had room to improve and some stuff was ok, maybe if they make the right set of choices to get back that MMORPG feel then BFA could turn out really great”.
Can you guess what they did? They literally ditched everything that was “MMORPG” that remained in Legion and replaced it with more stuff that almost no one likes because reasons.
I get it, Ion is going to defend BFA no matter what because his name is on that, but you have no stake in the game; why would you defend that steaming pile of excrement?
You lack understanding of what was being asked and talked about.
When they were talking about Classic WoW design philosophy, they were specifically talking about the philosophy that went into building the ORIGINAL World of WarCraft; now referred to as “Classic WoW”.
I view BFA and Classic as two very different versions of WoW. BFA is something I can play for a few hours and not get too attached to.
It reminds me of an interactive story game for the most part. Where I get to experience a story through my character.
Classic, on the other hand, is a game where I make my own story with my character.
There are aspects which I like about BFA. There are aspects I don’t like about BFA.
Yes I understand that. However the current audience for BFA does not like that philosophy. The people who currently enjoy BFA and there are some people left. Enjoy BFA to the extent that they keep logging on and the game keeps making money.
Go to the general forums. They hate Classic WoW’s philosophy.
Good lord, it speaks directly to the mindset that drives decisions like AV 1.12. I am not talking about changes, I am talking about choices being made between content versions. If you do not see where that is a concern then either you actually did not watch the entire video or you did not understand what was being said.
Design philosophies drive decisions of what versions of vanilla content to use.
Which is a HUGE decision, driven by their philosophy.
If you had actually watched the video you would have heard the part where with all of Ion’s accomplishments he hasn’t actually described something he enjoyed doing while doing it.
I don’t care to hear:
US first horde Nefarian
US first horde C’thun
US first horde Thaddius
Mal’ganis server Scarab Lord.
I want to hear about cool experiences he had playing the game, not just what was earned at the end. Grand Poobah rank of PVP impresses me just as much, but really, how was the experience “fun”?
That philosophy, back in 2006, was the same philosophy used by original WoW devs.
The philosophy sure changed from 2004-2006. But it was still a “Vanilla” mindset. If you don’t like 2006 WoW, that’s not Ion’s or the Classic team’s fault. That’s the originals team fault. They changed the game from 2004-2006, didn’t they?
The Classic team is just using the template they were left by the original WoW team. They’re not changing anything. They have the 2006 version of Classic WoW and they’re using that. It’s hardly a change in philosophy since it’s using the same decisions that the original team made.
Now on topic, yes the philosophy of the game has shifted due to many reasons. You could look at the competition in the gaming market overall. MMORPGs as an entire genre have been slipping with not many AAA titles being released.
I think that the reason current WoW had so few buttons is because MOBAs were getting popular around the time when that change was made, so now it plays more like a MOBA with my four button DPS rotation.
I think many things have contributed to WoW changing over the years. But yes I agree with what Kevin said for the most part. WoW feels like a different game because the devs have backed themselves into so many corners trying to improve things that weren’t really that broken.
The classic team has 15 years of hindsight and commentary of original developers looking back and describing what choices were made that turned out to be unfortunate. However rather than taking that knowledge and choosing versions of vanilla elements players of vanilla actually preferred (as Brack asked us to voice), they instead chose the very end versions, which had already gone through bad changes, because they best reflect their own philosophy.
That philosophy that was in the video:
More people doing thing = fun BEEP BOOP BOOP BEEP, regardless of whether the thing was actually enjoyable and not simply a streamlined way to acquire loot.
In that interview, Ion is talking mostly about giving players something to do between raid logging. Fun is a measured thing by daily active users and participation in the ‘systems’ WoW has to give you something to do.
Kevin Jordan, Jeff Kaplan, Alex Afrasiabi, et al talked about fun in terms of what it feels like to push a button unique to your class, learn a new skill or complete a challenging dungeon.
Very different mindsets about what makes a game fun.
Exactly! He cared obsessively about one small aspect of the game: Raiding.
And so, under his tenure, that aspect expanded until it took over the game.
And people who, like him, didn’t recognize it as nothing more than one small aspect of the game point and say, “Look at all the raiding he did, clearly he doesn’t have a disconnect to the game!”
And they don’t understand how thoroughly that makes the opposite point to the one they’re claiming.
And, as the game designer in that video points out repeatedly, whenever anyone asks Ion a question about roleplaying or immersion, he mentally reparses it into “better loot, better abilities, more power.” Because that’s all he’s capable of understanding about WoW, or ever was.
The guy in that video (Ion - Ian? I don’t know - it says Ion, but the guy watching the video calls him Ian…) is a prime example of why I have little hope for Blizzard products and Classic at this point.
Funny you mention that, i did that on tons of stuff for school when i has to watch 24 hours of footage of a court case i was doing a study on. I didnt bother for this, might ho back and check it out.
Indeed. Also what struck me was the OG dev wondering if Ion is capable of actually giving an honest to god example of game content that he actually enjoyed playing and explain what made it enjoyable beyond finishing it and getting loot.
The jab about expecting computer parts to come out when Ion had a coughing fit cracked me up because it was so spot on.
Hopefully we can all band together and make Classic a roaring success, showing them that yes, there really is a better way, and once your company made it.
![:smiley:](https://d38bqls1q93fod.cloudfront.net/en/wow/images/emoji/twitter/smiley.png?v=6" ":smiley:")