Live Q&A VoD with Ion Hazzikostas

Community General Discussion
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Man do I strongly dislike these dudes.

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24

Really happy we finally learned why the Zandalari were postponed, thanks for clearing it up Ion.

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So I’m still left with the same two questions I had before the Q&A

  1. Expected release date of 8.1.5?

  2. There are many people who upon trying to access the PTR are getting this error. No realms are currently available. (WOW51900309) This has been an issue since the PTR went live and there has been no response. Any plans to fix this?

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26

If you didn’t have the capacity to figure out how to use vendors I really doubt that you could have even made it to max level to use those vendors in the first place. Vendors were not confusing, if anything they were more simple than the system we have now. Saving up badges to choose my gear is less confusing than hoping for the 1/x (however many dungeon items there are) chance that the gear is want drops from a weekly chest.

The same is true for PvP, don’t act like there is more choice in the gearing system, there isn’t. Player choice is gone when it comes to which item slot I want. The only people who get to choose are you guys when you determine which pieces will be available months in advance. Even if there was a obviously path for choosing gear, it didn’t matter because players got to willingly choose that path. Taking away player control isn’t fun, engaging, or exciting.

I feel like this goes back to the idea of agency. Even if there is an obvious choice, the fact that I still have the option to not choose it and suffer for it is better than blizzard choosing the right thing for me. That’s a problem that plaguing more of the game than just gear.

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27

That was a travesty. Vendors are too complicated? But its okay for Timewalking vendors to exist in two faction cities, Shatrath, Dalaran, and Timeless Isle, on a rotation all with different inventories?

It’s painful obvious that Blizzard simply doesn’t want us to have any control over the gear we get. Master loot is gone. If I decide I want a belt my only option is to use a bonus roll on something that might have a belt or just keep on doing emissaries and weekly rewards hoping that I get the slot I actually want.

This is garbage game design. Back in TBC I could save up valor points and replace my boots. And when I did I felt like I had earned something and ENJOYED earning something. Now I just pull a lever on a slot machine everywhere. Raid? Random personal loot. PVP? Random gear drops at the end of arena matches. Warfronts? Same deal. Island expeditions? Even worse. Get a random island with mostly random mobs for a shot at random loot.

It’s pathetically obvious that the real answer is “we know our skinner box techniques work and we can’t have you in control of your own equipment.” You need to drag gearing out by making it luck based as much as you can which is why crap like Titanforging exists. It’s the same reason that the game broadcasts to your entire guild whenever someone loots Invincible. It says “Hey, look, if you’re willing to waste enough of your time maybe you can luck out too.”

I’m absolutely disgusted. AND my damn Vicious War Riverbeast still doesn’t have a working /mountspecial. So the one thing I was able to actually work towards and enjoy the old fashioned way in BFA wasn’t even finished. Horde mount for season one works fine though!

I’m letting my sub run out this time.

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People are missing the point so much , why do we need WF/TF valor upgrades in the first place? What was so wrong with having pre determined stats and sockets in gear? What was so bad about having less of it?

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With that hat did anyone else think Lore’s hair looked like big Poodle ears?

Look I am thrilled you do the Q&A. Just tired of feeling like Lore talks to us as if we are idiots and didn’t understand what Ion said. Not everything needs to have an example or a story from Lore. I mean the Q&A is an hour. If he would shut up ask the question they might get to 5 or 6 more each time.

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30

Oh yeah, Ion, I’ll take my Bingo prize in cash, thanks :slight_smile:

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31

Nothing important was really addressed, and the few important things that were addressed weren’t really solved, just “We know, we’re looking at it.”

I came away from this with nothing I didn’t already know.

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Then a bunch of it doesn’t really matter how players feel or what players want it is this way because it has to be because we can’t think of better ways to fix the problems.

TF/WF, Valor, Justice… None of that crap would even be needed if you just made people want to clear the content. You made it fun, Made it rewarding to be part of a group. This RNG chance at a better reward only diminishes the value of the base reward. Why is that difficult to understand?

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Hi Bornakk,

One thing I would like to have incorporated into the Developer Q&A’s is more feedback from Josh. He just nods along and says phrases like “sounds good” and “makes sense”. He knows so much about the game, I would like Josh to have discussions with Ion about his answers and actually represent the Community. He will never disagree or give any non-positive answer. He doesn’t represent the community if he just agrees with the developers.

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The alternative is to fix the core of the issue, which is why do players prefer to play horde and pvp as horde.

Protip: it isn’t because we have green skin or fur.

Crap like this that, Blizzard has pulled is fixing the symptom not the disease.

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Or just not have incentives in the first place so neither faction turns off their subscription. Problem solved.

His explanation is they don’t want players being able to choose their own strength progression, they’d rather it be tied to luck and RNG for the “feel good” moments.

I’d rather have item upgrades over Titanforging, because the player would still have to giv effort for their gear. If not that I’d rather have ToT thunderforging, 10 item levels, no more no less, and without having sockets/leech/avoidance/speed being locked entirely by RNG.

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Valor upgrades and Vendors allowed players to feel more accomplished, because there was “optional” and “different types” of loot players were able to “choose” from that also made players think “carefully” upon which pieces of loot they would “upgrade” first and so forth. This system felt more rewarding to me then the RNG system and I’m pretty sure others would agree. I, and I’m sure others, went 2-3 weeks and got 1 piece of loot with :poop: stats and a bunch of gold from bosses/rolls, WHILE those who were “lucky” from RNG got what they needed. I would rather farm heroic dungeons or Mythic ++/Raids to get x amount of Valor badges per run then wait weeks to get the right piece I need to only find out the next raid is coming out Tuesday. Now, we don’t have to completely get rid of RNG/Titan, but not make the loot based around RNG “only” with the luck of Titan. The system built around vendors and upgrading loot “CAN BE DONE” the problem is is that WoW content is so focused on “instanced” base that players are left feeling empty once they have been locked out of weekly content. So, the only farmable content we have that isn’t locked out and would provide a “chance” a loot would be Mythic ++ and Warfronts, though loot item level is very low there.

The RNG only loot system doesn’t work with WoW’s system because;

  1. The content doesn’t last long enough with 6 months per new raid. So players trying to get “loot” sometimes fall behind others because they are “unlucky”, while those who are “lucky” are now bored 2-3 weeks into the new raid, because they already have all they need from that raid; therefore, allows for more RNG to time gate drop % till next raid.
  2. The Expansion lasts for at least 2 years. Next expansion comes out and what was from previous expansion, loot or items for professions don’t really transfer over, therefore, things become useless. There are games that have features where new expansions and old content use old materials with new ones to keep old and new content fresh and not “empty”; like we see with almost all of old content zones.
  3. Raids are locked weekly. There is nothing outside players can do because mostly all content is instanced. RNG and Time Gate is here due to the fact that once you exit those “instanced” zones, you have nothing to really do beside boring WQs or PVP. WoW doesn’t have good Open World content, therefore, players aren’t engaged once raid is over, so they would either log on for weekly raids or rewards, pvp, do WQ’s, farm Mythics + and… that’s really it. If you take out instance based content, what does WoW really have. That is the lack of engagement players are feeling too and why we are dealing with RNG and Time Gated content.
  4. Add-ons allows raiders to clear quickly leaving content time gated stretching out the RNG in loot. Add-ons telling players when to move, and etc. This allows raid groups to quickly clear content leaving them with nothing to do once they finished within 3 weeks to a month. The most they can do to keep busy would be to level another character, gear it up and repeat.

This can be discussed in depth, games have these features, Devs have social media and platforms to discuss this with players, BUT at the END of the day, its going to be what the DEVs want and what THEY find fun through their metrics rather then what the players find engaging or exciting. This isn’t 2-10 people complaining about these issues its thousands and thousands, etc. complaining, which is why players are leaving and posting their frustrations.

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37

If this is true, why are most guilds not 8/8 mythic uldir or at least 8/8 heroic?

Addon do help, but there is no way your raiding team will turn into a perfectly tuned killing machine just because some alerts show up when something is about to happen.

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Please, for the love of god, stop answering questions that we already know the answers to. I don’t think I’ve ever learned any new information from any of these Q&As.

That said…would be nice to get some focus on the game that wasn’t raiding, mythic, PVP or azerite armor related.

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I’m honestly sad you guys haven’t talked about major class redesigns. Sure some might do good numbers/dps but rotation, gameplay and style are horrible. Please consider giving us information about class design overhauls being possible in a later major patch or whether it’s being worked on or will be worked on for the next expansion.

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Shádôw<Slide>

10 posts

110 Human Warrior6925

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Thanks for providing an opportunity to ask a question, I do apologize for not staying within 40 words. With the excessive pruning/simplifing and the shallowing out of the game in a whole, everything from class design, skills, class individuality, player choice, professions, profession passives, lore, quest depth, guild permissions, armor design, class armor, sets/set bonuses merging of server types (pve, pvp i.e. WM), removal of vendors, currency types, character stats (i.e. resilliance, spirit, hit, weapon skills, dodge, block, spell crit etc.), growing stronger (progression), limited flying, stacked RNG rules, loot rule options and time gating most/major desired content in addition to major core system overhauls and major catchup mechanics mid xpac cycle, despite some aspects of the game have had improved depth such as pet battles, is WoW being staged for release on console platforms? My follow up question is, can we also expect to see a full fledged WoW experience coming to Mobile?

@Ion/Watcher

Be patient with me, I’ll provide some honest feedback from your Q&A (additional post) but first let me start out by saying I do appreciate your shout out at the very beginning of the Q&A that referenced my statement I posted in the Q&A announcement thread (pasted). I’m still not sure how I feel about you referring to me and a few others that made statements about not answering tough questions, sticking to easy topics etc. as trolls.

Do you think I’m a troll or that my post was for the sole purpose to troll you? Is it possible that rather than a troll, I’m a passionate player whom literally loves this game and sees its current state through a different lens? Is it possible that I’m not ugly, mean, living in basement, trying to create unrest because I don’t like you or Blizzard, that I’m actually smart, creative, in fact am an Application Engineer for a billion-dollar company, that has invested literally thousands of dollars, countless hours (more than 12+ years) playing/supporting Blizzard, Blizzard games, WoW (aka you and everyone else working on this game over the years) most of all and my post was trying to get a point across?

I do agree the Pet Battle comment was intended to dig a little (though I actually collect pets and enjoy pet battles at times). The questions yes, were not really there to be answered but rather to highlight the points I was making in my lead up to them though there is some legitimacy to them. Let’s be honest, the whole Diablo Immortal debacle started out as an April Fools Joke on the Diablo game site years before that was announced so as absurd as it may sound initially, nothing is off the table

To elaborate just a little on how I and many, many others feel about the state of the game. Over the years, the whole RPG aspect of this game has been fleshed out. It started as an MMORPG today it feels like its an MMOA (massive multiplayer online arcade). I put in my quarter, pick a character and go pewpew one of the 3 options you’ve given me (M+, Raids or PvP). In order to continue on, I just keep popping in quarters every so often. What I think your missing is that every playstyle (casual, hardcore, PvP, PvE etc.) relies on the RPG depth and is what ties it all together and makes it great and engaging. I’m sorry but I feel like, you and everyone else on the team has been doing this too long. You’ve moved away from the fantasy (RPG) of the world and look at it through numbers, charts and graphs. You’ve sized the game and as the years go by refuse to let it grow as you keep pruning and altering it, keeping it contained (shrinking in a lot of cases) as much as possible with a ‘plug-n-play’ type approach. I feel like developers today don’t log-in for the fantasy and community anymore but rather to figure out if the ‘system’ is working properly.

I come from a player perspective, its not my job to make the scenery look good, progression feel fulling, the story make sense, boss encounters work, classes balance etc. I get that, but don’t you think someone (players) would be a key resource for feedback, ideas, improvements etc.? We play in the playground, who is more qualified on how fun the slide is? Is it the engineer/designer whom built it, or the person sliding down it every day?

Does blizzard hire players or have players on the payroll who do nothing but play the game? Who can provide true experience, player feedback, that don’t just nod and agree with everything being designed. I doubt it and you should! You can get this from forums and the PTR but honestly, does anyone really take people who post negative/constructive feedback in the forums serious, refer to them as trolls and/or see them as the minority voice? PTR for example, some of the core systems launched in BFA (azurite) was brought up as not fun and an issue. The company charged ahead anyway, only to rehaul the system in 8.2 with major catch up mechanics. It feels like your design is set in stone for PTR, you do not at all want any game design feedback, you only need players to find the bugs, make sure the ‘system’ works on a larger scale. Currently I feel like 8.0 to current has been nothing but a beta to begin with. Is there any point in playing right now if core things are changing in 8.2 with a super quick way from me to be just like everyone else in a week or two?

I have all kinds of, what I think, would be great ideas to help improve the game, return it to its roots and add back in some fantasy for everyone and all play styles which WoW has drastically lost of the years. I could sit and riff with you for hours on every single bullet (point) I made on my original post. I could go on now but who knows if your still even reading at this point. (I’ll toss a few ideas at the end just cause)

I get it, with more depth and facets to the game requires more resources to manage and balance it but I promise you, “If you build it, they will come”. When they all come, you’ll have the funds to support all of the resources

  • Player housing – Community has been asking for this, for years. Not a garrison, a place you decorate and create as your own. Azeroth is huge, you can have housing zones in all different kinds of places. You could add furniture/housing item patterns to all of the professions. Bosses from all xpacs and zones could drop rare special items and trophies.
  • Professions – Some people like being crafters of their servers. They focus on gathering, selling and crafting some of the most epic, awe inspiring pieces in the game. Add, deep profession quest lines, return profession passives so your characters performance will benefit a certain way when you become a master, return/add profession specialties (i.e. goblin vs. gnomish engineering). Add levels of profession mastery (not based on character level) but rather how much you train/level your profession. Add high level, super rare patterns that require you to travel/explore all of Azeroth to find, run dungeons/raids to obtain. Return to more mounts/pets being able to be crafted. Make the gear that is on par with high level Mythic that takes rare, exotic materials and is BoE to sell to the community. Have these pieces inspiring and cool sets that players want to get just to Tmog. Have your secondaries compliment your primary professions (i.e. you can find ancient rare crafting patterns via archeology). Have your catchup mechanics by disregarding the earlier expansions crafting tiers but add incentives to going back and collecting patterns and leveling those, that could improve your mastery and potency of your passives. I could literally just go on and on here.
  • Character fantasy/improvements. Return some of the things that provided fantasy to your character and have it mean something. For example, go back to ammo for hunters, poisons for rogues (add more to other classes). Yes, it was a pain waiting for a hunter to go out and grab ammo for the raid but it also provided a level of fantasy depth and realism knowing, if my hunter wants to shoot its bow or gun, I need to have ammo to go in it. That opens returning of the ammo crafting and vendors, I can be a super gnomish engineer that can make some super rare, cool ammo that has some cool effects when I shoot it. I can get this from rep vendors (using the rep system you have today). Add new cool things, for example give hunters the ability to dual wield again with a range weapon and polearm, better yet how about the quivers! (another thing that has been asked for, for years). I literally could write you a book here.

I hope you made it through this post and can understand where I am coming from. For what it’s worth, I will later, provide some feedback to your Q&A. Otherwise, I’m sorry you felt TL;DR

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41

Thanks for this post!

I actually enjoyed this Q & A a bit more than recent previous ones. Also, does Ion have a new haircut? :slight_smile:

Anyway, just want to throw my $0.02 in on a point summed up via MMO-Champ : “The team has talked about social ratings and endorsements in Mythic +.” An Overwatch-like endorsement system may not exactly work for M+. A fear I would personally have is that people might make “Endorsement Groups” in LFG and use it so that everyone can get a thumbsup for doing nothing. Overwatch has these groups, and they tend to be people who do whatever in a match and then get an Endorsement regardless of skill, leadership, or other capabilities used in the OW system.

I just hope a lot of thought is put into any kind of endorsement system as it could be easy to juke, exploit, or people just up vote healers/tanks out of habit (regardless of the player’s skill or likability).

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Spread the word all horde going to turn off war mode make alli have do RBG or Areana to get the 415 gear . If horde dont turn off war mode then alli cry babies will keep getting the free item 415 gear andwill have full 415 item level set of gear when you think itis bad now all the alli with5 and 6 40 man raids camping the assaults and world quest and flight paths with their 340 gear ganking 2 or 4 horde players trying to quest and stopping horde from getting the 370 gear i think is stupid that blizzard has done this cause horde will have raid for months and do rbgs and arenas to get 415 gear it be 6 months before we are even able to top our gear out when alli getting feed from bottle like babies and even with the alli getting it free they are exploiting the game by getting 5 and 6 40 man raids camping the assault and world quest and fp the low levels are even being slaughtered by these 5 and 6 40 man raids of alli that is super over kill it takes 4 and 5 40 man alli raids to kill those 1 or 3 low levels out there trying to quest i have had war mode on from day one and have always been on pvp server and I today joined in with the rest of the horde that have started turning off war mode and refuse to turn it back on till blizzard fixs it not only are they giving allli the item level 415 gear they are ging them a 30% boost in honor and conquest lol giving them item lvl 390 whould had been giving them to much but what can you exspect when i bet you money ION plays Alli side