- Why did you guys remove tier/class sets to homogenize every class to look the same immediately after the class fantasy expansion happened?
- Legion felt amazing because every felt and looked different. A fury warrior was way different compared to a havoc DH, but now they all look/feel the same. Why did you change to this?
- I can understand races like lightforged draenei not being able to be death knights, but why can’t races like void elves, zandalari trolls, and dark iron dwarves not be able to be a dk?
- This might not be your fault, but why is BoD so forgiving compared to other raids? Jaina you can literally mess up a bomb on mythic and only lose 40% of your hp. this is a mythic, end tier boss. Any end tier boss in Legion had a one shot mechanic, heck even Taloc in Uldir had a one shot mechanic vs Champions of Light that is a joke. Why did you lower the difficulty in raiding? Is there even a point to 4 difficulties if 3 of them are almost exactly the same?
- Why did we go from being Gods in Legion to boring, noone is special in BFA? it feels super bland and not fun.
- Again, this might not be your fault, but how come specs/classes cna be useless for entire tiers (unholy is going its 2nd tier in a row being bottom of the barrel) while other classes that were middle of the pack get buffed and are now top tier. Why do you refuse to implement hotfixes to classes under/over performing. You added an x% variable to buff/nerf classes easily. Why aren’t you using it?
I’d ask him what it feels like to have your ego driving a beloved franchise into the ground. Assuming he has empathy, and can formulate a response without going dead in the eyes and reverting to automated lawyer speak.
“Driving your own dumpster fire can be really engaging. The driving part was initially a sideplot and isn’t an essential part of the burning. However, our vision for the dumpster was to be on fire and mobile. We wanted the garbage to be deeper and more satisfying. We learned some lessons with previous fires, and we decided to release the fire in two stages with Combustibility Part 1, with Part 2 being released in a future patch. The fire will scale once Part 2 is released, it’s just suppressed for now.” - Ion, probably
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I’d probably thank him for talking with me in the first place (good manners), when there are so many other people trying to get his attention. Although I fear that asking him questions wouldn’t net a lot of exciting/useful things, I’d throw him an easy, feel good question like… so what do ‘you’ like about BFA & beyond?
Then I’d spend the rest of the conversation sharing stories & ideas, hoping to rekindle in him the ideas of fun, creativity, and trust. If he walked away with the impression that there was too much fun policing, that’d be a good thing too 
Example Topics
- Since you guys scaled mobs, wouldn’t it be great to scale trinkets too (with all their unique effects). I loved the Kul Tiran Cannonball Runner & Barov Peasant Caller… back in the day. You guys have put out a few good trinkets lately, but its always BiS that wins. Scaling trinkets might shake that up a bit.
- I know you guys can’t redesign the whole world, but a few ‘optional’ World Quests in old favorite Vanilla areas that grant a bit of gold… well that’d be an interesting experiment.
- Its such a shame having multiple good talents on the same line and multiple meh talents on other lines. Wouldn’t it be so much better if you could just pick a number of talents? It’d be great step in healing some of the Pruning damage.
- Holding back on San’Layn, High Elves, Vykrul and other requested allied races, is just silly. It won’t break the game having a few more races or class options, if anything it’ll net you more $$$. You guys are going to need excess revenue in the next year, so think about it
- Flying isn’t your enemy, if you design for it… or heaven forbid, embrace and expand it. Plus I never understood the allure of flying mounts in the store… with only limited use in old content.
I also couldn’t resist plugging a previous suggestion of mine.
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Id ask him if he knows where Mankriks wife is at.
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Id knock on his head and say, “Helloooo?” “Hellooo?” Anyone home?
I got some bad news to share… she got in Chuck Norris’s way…
The few times I’ve watched him in the Q&A videos cemented my opinion that he’s arrogant and doesn’t care what anyone else wants or thinks. He appears to be a “do it my way or the highway” type of personality that wraps his commentary up in tin foil to obfuscate his thoughts.
Not worth my time or effort to try interacting with someone like that.
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We would talk about how much fun he will have being strapped to a rocket launched into sun.
Ion, I love your work, especially all things Legion. You guys often do amazing things, and sometimes you make mistakes or just don’t come through. I’m still salty about never seeing Farahlon in WoD. In the end, though, it’s all good, but I will admit I’ll never forgive you if you don’t at some point make the playable Tinker class so I can make my Gnome and Goblin Tinkers…
Sorry but this just isn’t working out, we’re letting you go, good luck on your future journeys in life.
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I’d give him a wedgie for repeating so many mistakes they made in previous expansions in BfA.
"Well we’re excited about our new AP path called “Frosterite”. You see, you get this ring called Finger of Frosterite, which then links to your other ring, your necklace, and both your trinkets. Then you automatically have Frosterite applied to this ring and it will, in turn, empower the other items with random procs. It’s so exciting.
For instance, one of the procs is a spell that you have no control over, but when it activates, you have a chance to get snowflakes around your character, and when you walk into these snowflakes, you have a chance to get a puddle effect at your feet called ‘melted snow’, and when you stand in the ‘melted snow’ effect, you have a chance to proc something called WET-BOOT, which in-turn has a chance to activate something called OMEGA TRENCH FOOT. Let me tell you how exciting this is. When you see this spell activate, you’ll see a frost effect, which is cosmetic only, trickle UP your character’s legs, and then, when it reaches your knees…
breath
… it has a chance to activate Frosticle Spear which then shoots ice-beams out of your knees at the mob you’re fighting. We feel that this is a very valuable addition to gameplay because it’s cosmetic only.
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If I was able to sit down with Ion for a couple of beers and hear his honest thoughts on the how the game has progressed over the years (without him worrying about ActiBlizz finding out what he said), I’d jump at the chance to do so. I feel like it would be a pretty interesting conversation.
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Hardly. The only “problem,” with those servers before was the inability to play with your friends but with my solution you could always, (and for free) turn warmode on anytime and join them. You can’t go back sure, but that’s your choice.
But the point was (using your analogy) that people that had friends on PvP servers that didn’t want to play on PvP servers with their friends didn’t have the option of being on the same server but eliminating the PvP/PvE server designation will now allow that. People that resided on PvE servers were getting ported over to PvP servers just by joining their friends or groups in the LFG.
I get that some people like PvP all the time, but not everyone does and having the option of Warmode is better than the alternative.
Giving people options will always trump having no options at all, IMO.
Except it’s not. When you have the “option,” of warmode, it’s not warmode. It’s queuing into a giant BG that covers the entire world, that you can leave whenever you want. It opens up a massive hole for abuse which is exactly what we got.
We don’t get world pvp, we get quest and flight path camping. We get big groups that run away at the first sign of equal numbers. None of these were issues with PVP servers, because those same people would STILL be on a pvp server later that week when they were alone, and you took your revenge.
I would explain to him that from a players perspective it appears that they current changes are simply crude attempts to extend play-time.
I would further explain that there is no need to artificially extend play-time as there are already way more things that I would love to work on but simply do not have time. Real life is the limiting factor, not running out of things to do. Adding artificial barriers like changing portals, crazy RNG, unbalanced world scaling, and poor character design (just to name a few) negatively impact user experience. While the per character impact of any of these items is small, when combined and replicated over many alts the impact is not insignificant for me.
Basically I would explain that all these changes create friction to achieving my personal goals (mounts, pets, pet battles, achievements, etc.). At some point, the additional friction (annoyance, effort, whatever-you-want-to-call-it) is not offset by the reward; in other words playing becomes more of a chore than a game. In many respects WoW has already crossed this threshold and has impacted my dedication to the game accordingly.
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That is blatantly false. I spent 6 years on a pvp server that was all war all the time so I know what pvp servers were like. There was still quest and fp camping, and there were areas to avoid if you didn’t want to participate.
Nobody is denying your choice of warmode and playing with your friends. It wouldnt be fair to deny others of wanting to play a how they want to either because at the end of the day, you pay you sub fee and I pay mine.
I’m just saying that having choices are better than not having them
My conversation would consist of allusions to the fact that I earned my Taoist Moniker of “Patient Dragon” for a reason…
Ion, why can’t holiday items be mogged all year round?
Most holidays are 2 weeks in length and an “average” player would prolly take a week to collect enough tokens to buy some items. So that leaves 1 week to wear the gear until the holiday is over and then you have to wait 365 days to be able to mog it again.
Does that sound like fun to you?