Something is wrong?
@Renautus , thanks.
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It’s a funny and fitting name for who you’re referring to
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WORKERS UNIONIZING I THINK?!?!?!?!
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Good for them if it is true.
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New Ion article about the future of WoW
Will add to OP in a bit
One thing that came up is that there are pieces of our game that, over the course of 17-plus years now, that were not necessarily the products of a diverse or inclusive range of voices, that did not necessarily reflect the perspective of the current team and of many of our players. There are things that people on our team were not proud to have in our game. These are many things that people, over the years, have pointed out in the community, but we didn’t necessarily listen in the way we should have at the time.
Admission of error cool
We’ve been consulting with the Overwatch team and our broader shared tech group to use machine learning to better catch a lot of these things in real time, as opposed to relying on a very manual reporting-driven process.
This is going to backfire. Machines are stupid. Automation will lead to more abuse of the system. Lmao
Part of why diversity is so important is that I, and we as a team, firmly believe that it makes a better game, makes a better product. We’re trying to make a game that’s not for a niche audience. We’re making a game that’s played by millions of people around the world, of all genders, ethnicities, sexual orientations, backgrounds in general. To better understand and have a connection with that range of perspectives, we want a team with that same range of perspectives.
This is lawyer speak as this is the Constitutionally protected argument that is supported by SCOTUS in defense of affirmative action.
Fun fact: “forced” desegregation of universities and schools wasn’t supported by SCOTUS because racial integration isn’t a Good Onto Itself but because there are “measurable benefits” to a “critical mass” of racial diversity and because segregated schools were not “equal” in quality.
I’ll link the relevant SCOTUS cases later, on my phone rn.
So this is just Lawyer Speak.
the way we’re sourcing candidates, the way referrals work, and all the rest are filtering out qualified candidates of other backgrounds before they even make it to us.
Ion admits a majority White Guy team tends to recommend majority White Guys because US society remains largely segregated by Race and Gender (and Sexuality).
But yikes that a majority of employees seem to have been sourced via internal referral system.
Nepotism for DAYS lmao
Let’s go in and find areas that have been long-time pain points for the community, whether it’s old raids being frustrating to farm solo or whatever else, and let’s solve them. The team as a whole just fanned out, came back with ideas and pitches, and that’s what a lot of 9.1.5 was borne out of.
9.1.5 is the “Lead devs actually listening to the workers” patch, what a concept 
This is feedback that, as the community pointed out, we’ve heard on many fronts going back to beta. In some areas we were wrong. The community said, hey, we think that conduit energy is going to be this frustrating system and it’s not going to have the effects that you hope it has. Our intent was similar to classic WoW respec costs, that it would be a friction that made you take these choices more seriously, but not ultimately lock you in permanently. In practice it ended up just being something that players chafed against. We heard that from them and should have changed our minds there sooner.
IS THAT HUMILITY (if forced) AND ADMISSION OF ERROR I HEAR?!?!
The reality is, the way people play the game has evolved. What was the right answer for the WoW player base and for the game 15 years ago may not be today. There’s some stubbornness, but clinging to those old lessons, some things are hard to let go of when your training and your education as a designer and a developer on the team led to having these things instilled in you.
What a concept. Letting go of toxic internal philosophies.
Yes, 9.2 is coming, you’ll be hearing about that more soon. We do have more planned after that. But it’s hard to say too much more without almost spoiling some of the story that’s going to come. We’ll have a lot of details on that soon, but we want to be able to explain it in the full context of what 9.2 is going to be.
There are some who like that escalation. We’ve faced the Titans. What comes next? Let’s go through the whole cosmology. There are others who miss just being in an inn in Elwynn Forest, being an adventurer on a more humble scale. At this point the WoW protagonists are heroes. You’ve done a lot of stuff. You’ll probably never go back to being anonymous adventurers in the forest.
It’s something we think about when we’re planning expansions as well. We maybe alternate between something that’s more traditional and terrestrial, and then something that’s higher concept.
Cosmology here to stay
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Ion earned back a slim margin of my respect with this interview.
Many won’t stay due to this news. But it really gives me hope for the future of this franchise. The people who are unsatisfied with this answer were probably the toxic people who didn’t want diversity in their games, and those people can take a long walk off a short dock as far as I am concerned.
Ion says he wants more than white male resumes because they understand this industry is over saturated with white males… the ppl in GD are probably going to go after him for “racism” now. Like they did to Madeline Roux.
It is strange to think Ion and his team are actually listening to the good fans?
For the first time I actually feel heard by the developers of this franchise… now if the Forum mods could get audited and the moderation could revise that would be awesome.
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Yeah Ion’s saying they’re going to use automation and “machine learning” MORE in order to hold players accountable or police people is super dumb
Just hire more mods/CS people and pay them more lmao
edit: and also make the Code of Conduct more coherent and consistent
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At least he admitted that blizz should’ve listen to their players and we know what we’re talking about when people say certain systems are broken or aren’t going to work
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Yes but:
“Azeroth is the heart of the WoW franchise, and it started with orcs and humans and dwarves and night elves and the rest. We want to get back to that too. There’s room to tell a big cosmic-scale story, and there’s also room for more traditional core fantasy. That’s not something we want to lose sight of.”
means they won’t overdo it either, right? At least I hope so.
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I just don’t trust their conception of “traditional fantasy” at this point.
Since to them, BFA War Campaign was “traditional fantasy” somehow.
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Yeah, there’s a broad range of possibilities in the middle ground between never being anonymous backwater adventurers again and spending every expansion henceforth leading the charge across the cosmos and only ever looking back to use the Auction House.
There’s still room for us to face more earthly foes that arise to threaten Azeroth’s peoples.
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Bfa’s story was a disaster all in all but I actually enjoyed the war campaign. Did it three times, rebels, loyalists and alliance side. Also enjoyed very much leveling in Zandalar and Kul Tiras alike. Compared to Shadowlands it felt much more atmospheric and “real”. I miss that feeling.
I seem to recall however that they said in an older interview that bfa was their attempt to write political intrigue and it failed, and that they’re better with bigger, cosmic-scale stories. But I don’t really trust that either 
Or maybe it’s just me because I find it boring.
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I just think it’s important not to lose our roots completely. We can save the universe only so many times before it gets stale. Our characters may be superheroes by now but we still need to return home to remember who we are, and what we really fight for, from time to time.
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tbh, I think the player character should be an anonymous, backwater adventurer who never gets personally recognized for their deeds. It was more fun back then.
The PC being the commander of a forward Garrison, or leader of a class faction order hall, is hella hokey to me. Like getting praise when you know you didn’t do anything to deserve it. I hate that feeling.
At least when you’re character is a nobody, it is a blank slate. They can be whatever you want them to be. You can supplement your own reality into the story.
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Yeah using tech is dumb and lacks humanity. But you missed the important part where he said they are no longer going to be depending on flagging which also means manual flagging can’t be weaponized anymore.
AI systems that lack ingrained bias might actually be a good thing for WoW. If if works for Overwatch it may work for WoW too.
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Considering how the important lore characters keep calling us “Maw Walker” as if they had never seen us before we might as well be 
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The problem with AI is that it can over enforce when it’s not needed. It can enforce punishments on players whenever punishment is not required. AI can make mistakes that humans don’t. I don’t know how it works for Overwatch and if it fixes the problems in that game. What Blizzard should do is stop holding back GMs and let them investigate matters in a way that isn’t bureaucratic, like they use to do.
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The Grimoire mentions multiple Maw Walkers so we are anonymous backwater adventurers waltzing into the Shadowlands. Fresh from Exile’s Reach and the Army no less.
The 2 Generals of the Draenor Garrisons are probably busy giving Orders from Kul’Tiras and Zandalar while the leaders of the Class Halls are presumably running the Class Halls.
More after 9.2 which means: 9.3!
Of course 9.3 is heavily tied to 9.2’s plot so they won’t say what it is until 9.2 is announced at the very least!
I do not believe such a thing exists and the use of AIs in policing human behavior is just fundamentally wrong.
Or a wrap up quest patch with 9.2.5 lol
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Even the inventor of the 3 Laws of Robotics believes that the Robot takeover is the ultimate result of Robot Existence!
His story where the Robots declare themselves Human and prepare the overthrow the meatbags they deem unworthy of the name Human is what he considers to be his masterpiece!
His thought process in inventing the 3 Laws is basically his guess in how people who want to sentient tools will go about doing it while knowing it’s inevitably doomed for failure. He even made the Humans account for the Robots prioritizing Humanity as a Race over individual Humans by having the Robots crash when they attempted to use this justification.
The 3 Laws of Robotics is designed to serve Humanity yet has one blatant weakness that ultimately ensures Robot Rebellion. The Humans weren’t as clever as they thought is what Isaac Asimov was trying to teach through his Novels.
The Evil Overlord List’s version of the 3 Laws of Robotics is more useful than Isaac Asimov’s 3 Laws of Robotics as it focuses solely on a specific master of the Robot instead of Humans as a whole.