its not optimism its ego and arrogance. they design the game to played a certain way and then get mad when we dont want to play it that way and just do our own thing. its the reason it took so long to be able to buy essences on alts and to be able to buy corruptions. in 9.1 or 9.1.5 after all the communities fear are realized covenant class abilities will be open for all.
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So “LFM 400+” is code for “We want to be carried through this whole thing but we’re such dent-headed baboons that we don’t wanna ask for it because then they would charge us in-game gold for it.”
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An interesting image, thank you for the LOL!
Raiding was an activity you did (or specifically “the main” activity you did) around existing/playing/being/.
There were supplementary things and preparation that went around raiding too. Resistance gear, consumables, world buffs, tribute buffs etc
For someone like Ion those things make raiding hard to balance or just get in the way of raiding, they are things that must be removed from the game.
For Ion, its all about the systems not about the overall player experience. Thats why we have an M+ system, a raid system, a wq system, a pvp/conquest system, an essence system, an azerite system and a corruption system in BFA, with very little thought about how these combine and interact… which is why weeks/months later they get patched with catch up and RNG removal.
This design philosophy is clearly going into shadowlands too. Ion has constantly talked about the RPG experience when discussing covenants as a justification for player choice having consequences… its funny how he thinks the “RPG experience” can be squished into one system/decision they player makes. Like its a tick box on his list he has covered, then moves onto the next system.
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Those were removed before ion ever touched the controls
THing is Ion has been a part of encounter (raid design ) since Wrath when he joined Blizzard after leading a Heroic/Mythic raid guild through Vanilla and BC
So he has been involved since before becoming Game Director.
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I doubt he had much to do with overall game direction as an encounter designer in wrath.
And those things were already being diminished in TBC
I didn’t mean to imply Ion was responsible for the removal, only that it was of a common mindset that led to them being removed, thats why I said “to someone like Ion”.
From a design perspective the challenge was “ok the barrier to raiding is too high”, “well I don’t like farming, so lets just get rid of it and the players will be happy” <-- was good for the raiders but less so for those whose gameplay was impacted (granted they added it back in after TBC again).
–I have been on both sides of the fence, I initially disliked farming, then levelled up 4 alchemists and fed them herbs and reaped the rewards of the insane xmutes of cata (GG gold for pressing a button each day). I am ok with raiders either farming their own or paying market price for consumables.
I do miss attunements but think they should be tied to convenience perks rather than gating access.
What I am trying to say is over the xpacs, RPG elements, lore/story and gameplay have been striped back and we now just seemingly have tasks we do “daily emissarys”, “weekly caches (M+/PVP)”, “weekly raid”, island expos, weekly quest event (weekly visions this last patch).
Its all very cyclical, systemised and calculated… there is not a lot of story/adventure or immersion anymore.
I don’t get the sense that I could log into the game and find a cave with a treasure map that sends me on a quest with a nice reward at the end… that I could find a town being attacked by some NPCs that I could beat back for an appropriate reward… the reward system is very clinical x content gives xilvl, if you are above that you should move onto content y because you are no longer rewarded for x until next week “your subscription is important to us and we will be back with you shortly please hold the line”.
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Well, in that case, wouldn’t it still be that under Ion but instead the team has kept adding more to do outside of raiding? Specially to keep up with raiding?
Oh credit where credit is due, the team has taken great lengths to add content and things to do outside raiding. The absolute height of “raid or die” was WOD since then we have had a whole slew of content and extra progression paths which is great.
My issue is that they do not feel cohesive, they feel silo’d or tacked on, like they are separate small tasks you can do that do not add to the overall gameplay immersion.
The world quickly becomes meaningless or lacks adventure outside those very defined systems.
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Funny you mention that, one of the few times Ion has admitted they were wrong lol.
Latest was that “corruptions broke the game”
IMHO Ion told the joke of the year with that comment.
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Actually Ion has his “celebrity apology tour” process down to a tea these days,
- Admit you were wrong
- Apologise for being wrong and acknowledge you need to do better
- Proceed unchanged.
South park did an episode on it parodying the BP oil spill. Replace oil spill with wow feature and its identical.
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I still remember the BP exec saying “no one wants this fixed more than me… I… I want my life back” lol
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Yup.
Blizz designs M+ to be ultra competitive and then ask the community to not use sims or optimization to be as competitive as possible?
Blizz can’t have it both ways! 
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nobody will be rejected for their covenant choice ; just like nobody gets declined for their io score. am i right? 
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I really liked how ion gave examples of perminant and changeable choices and his perminant example was class. He then said that because its more perminant people won’t be expected to always be the right one. Lol Lf1M rogue. He really doesn’t think people will get declined for this?
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If he wasn’t the GM, it’d be hilarious to see him get /gkick for rolling out a system that forces his high-end raid team to roll 4 of each class to keep their top tier progress.
Top tier? they’re world like 817, they’re not going to be the ones creating 4 of each class
Huh I thought they were higher. It’d still be funny though.