" There is a philosophical moment in there where Ion says that they could do a drop with some new content much sooner, but what distinguishes a WoW expansions, what we have come to expect, are things like new systems, new races, new classes, and things like that which simply take more time to get right. An expansion every year wouldn’t be what we we expect out of a WoW expansion."
It’s been 5 years since this interview and this statement. Do you agree in hindsight?
**edit- source: Official Blizzard WoW Legion Live Developer Q&A stream June 15th 2016
Legion Live Developer Q&A w/ Ion Hazzikostas
Since then we’ve come to a place where I cannot imagine a new class ever being introduced. And there’s a noticeable cutback on unique armor sets. Which to me seems that they’ve failed to uphold Ion’s vision.
However I would be excited to see a major cutback on systems.
I hope this vision continues in some form though. I think it will be a sad day if annual, mini-expansions become the norm.
Mind you, I’m posting this as a sincere polling of opinion. Not to induce any bickering back and forth as with typical posts. I genuinely want to see where folks stand on these issues. You’ve offered a wonderful response. Thanks! Hope it sets a standard.
Ion held the Asst Game Director position at the time of this interview, and went on to become Lead. He is speaking in an official function as the mouthpiece for Blizzard in this capacity. His word holds absolutely weight in this video.
Me too. The expansions I liked the most, Cata and MoP, were “simpler” and lacked the “systems” nature of the most recent expansions.[1] But… I am not the target market anymore. I think that a lot of people like the systems approach and I’m guessing it is here to stay.
[1] I played the heck out of those expansions. Now I play to see the story, and I invest the absolute least amount of time and effort to do that. I’m playing more in SL than I did in BfA only because of pet battles and pet collecting.
well those words are dead weight now as expansions have cut 50% of what we used to get. tier sets are gone, new classes are gone, new races are gone. and the systems suck. hes bad at his job. but great at lawyer speak
We literally got new customization options for every core race. We have various cosmetic sets added to the various covenants and while no new classes have been added that is probably because there is few if any design room for a new classes that doesnt just copy paste the mechanics of another class. Each spec is effectively a class of there own and we now have 32(I think) specs.
most of the covenant stuff looks terrible, and tier sets were 12 unique class sets , multiply that by 4 raids most of the time. thats 48 different sets per xpac. they are slacking and you know it. and you agree that the systems suck
they said they would continue customization for races onward through shadowlands, and they cut that short too. what a joke
That sounds like a VERY subjective option. I have played WoW long enough to know people have hated on one tier sets looks or another. They was never a universally beloved their sets.
That would have only been true in Legion. And even then your numbers are off(there were only 3 tier sets, I don’t think Emerald nightmare had a set although we did have class sets)
We have 4 covenants and the Nathria sets x 4 armor sets. Which means we had about 16 different sets for the first tier. Admittedly, they cut back abit in 9.1, with 4 covenant armors and 4 raid sets(one for each armor). Not exactly slacking. Also, I would add they have given us the ability to transmog each of shoulders separately!
Personally, I’m ambivalent. I think some of the systems in SL are abit of hit or miss but also I understand from a design point why they did it. Like it or not, we have been killing dragons/doing pvp/pve with a relatively stable skill set for a while now. My elemental shaman has not drastically changed in the last few expansions.
I don’t get it. You say you’ve found a quote from Ion but the quote you have has Ion in the quote. So he couldn’t have said it. What you have is a jumbled mess. It makes no sense.
Well, if you take the consistency of content updates we have now, you get, maybe 1 patch per expansion if you’re lucky. I don’t think that’s what people want, but this is the WoW forums so there is no shortage of bad ideas.
I wouldn’t hold anyone accountable to something they said two years ago. There are many things to consider such as context and information at that point in time.
Digging up old things game designers have said and criticizing them because actual events deviated significantly from what they said is pretty uninformed and ignorant.
