he just seems kind of dead inside whenever he’s out giving interviews or publicly speaking about the game, like his mind is elsewhere or that he doesn’t want to be there
granted those things don’t prevent you from having any passion or love for the game, and i’m sure going from fan to developer has changed his feelings about it over time
What? Did he ever?
No, of course he doesn’t. Have you (“you” in a general sense, not directed to you, OP), listened to him speak, observed his mannerisms while he did so? No, his only concern is getting as much return to investors as possible with as little work as possible. That is his passion, and I’m saying that as someone who doesn’t entirely hate this expac.
Honestly, maybe he does have passion, but for the vision he sees in his mind for WoW…
He should just step back and take a breather and actually see what the community wants for once… rather then what he does.
He just needs to redirect his passion and have passion for making the community happy and incorporate that into his vision for WoW.
A lot of great feedback and suggestions have been put onto the forums, he just needs to have a good read 
Lmao ulduar is the best raid ever and had hard modes. Raids started with just 10/25m difficulty like BC until heroic with LK.
Dungeons capped at heroic then it was raids. Heroic dungeons started in BC
What are you talkin bout willia.?
The guy in charge for Tesla was known for pulling all nighters trying to figure things out. Sleeping on the ground of his office. He righted the ship with that dedication and once the company went profitable the rest is history. Other companies have had executives lower their salary to 1 dollar until they get things right. The game makers don’t seem to have that sort of drive for whatever reason.
True. But honestly I wouldn’t put it past him to not be either giving his guild information on certain things or even taking ideas they have to make the game more in line with thier way of thinking and implement it.
No I’m not accusing without evidence but based on his looks, he comes across as sketchy.
But he is the one who directs the game.
I don’t think that’s the case at all. I think he just really isn’t invested in some aspects of the game, so under his direction, the aspects he does have passion for get far more attention.
As others have said, he doesn’t make all of the choices, but he is the lead role for directing the flow of the game. I can’t say for certain exactly what sort of control he has, but I wager it’s mostly executive. If I had to hazard a guess, his job is mostly deciding where resources go based on his title. (But I could be completely wrong.)
But as for his passion with the game, I’m glad he’s playing it. The game certainly feels like it’s being designed for his character over the years though. Recently they brought in people to focus on PVP and gearing through PVP had improved. I hope the next step is to bring in people who focus on casual game systems.
Just look at his profile. All he does is raid. Someone with that type of tunnel vision and arrogance shouldn’t be leading anything.
Nobody at Blizzard has passion for this game. If they did they would produce content and not endless grind of time gated crap.
This is their cash cow, they will continue to add as little as possible and make sure their margins are highest possible. That is why they are focusing all the money they get from those stuck playing wow due to their 16 year investment and can’t pull away into mobile games.
A very good designer for boss/raid encounters (what he did before). But a bad overall designer for the game, as we have seen with BFA and Shadowlands.
It really feels like system spreadsheet lands. Just numbers and no fun. A good example is WoD. Terrible content flow but very good overall design.
Well designed world, fairly good classes, little borrowed power (leggo ring which is kinda fine), and good raids. But obviously missed other content.
Im sad to say this cause i was a big supporter of Ion when he became Lead Designer, but i think we need Tom Chilton back asap and put Ion back as the lead encounter designer. This is the place where he belongs and does a good job.
He just doesnt seem to have an idea what WoW made so special back in the day with other content out in the world and what an (MMO)RPG is supposed to be. Scaling is another huge factor that is a numbers game but kills all the fun you got from power gaining in an expansion.
In terms of numbers it might make sense, but as a player you lose the feeling of progression and it feels terrible. Something you cant really measure with numbers.
He should have stayed as an encounter designer.
He’s a raid logger in game. He got his first job pointing out flaws in raid design. His forte is raiding, not making the game fun for people that actually enjoy doing other things.
No one can ever take the game in a direction everyone would be happy with, obviously, but there are probably better candidates out there than someone that just logs in to do the bare minimum to get ready for raiding.
Why don’t you find out his birthday and read his horoscope, that may be as useful as your baseless speculations.
Hard modes, achievements, challenge modes, scaled content. All of it was new to WotLK. If you wanna pretend you’re old, don’t. BC wasn’t 10/25 man raids. BT was 25 man only. It had 10 man raids and it had 25 man raids, just like vanilla had 20 man raids and 40 man raids. The levels were set in stone.
What are YOU talking about though?
This 100%, blizzard has moved away from making quality and fun and instead looks at metrics of what keeps people playing longer.
I dont remember WOTLK Scaling at all. Unless you mean it was either 10 or 25.
How do you remain impartial to class balance when you main a resto shaman. That’s also got to be hard. But ya, he’s an elitist and the product shows
Heroic raiding started with the Crusaders’ Coliseum and went on for the rest of WotLK.
One can argue it was technically there from the beginning with hard mode raid achievements like sarth + 3d. It was only in WotLK that they made encounters have scaled difficulty levels as a mainstay feature really. Prior to that, if you beat the boss you beat the boss. The encounters were designed around that idea which made the game feel much more fulfilling and less convoluted.
Oh, i thought you were talking scaling as in flex raid not in difficulty. I wish they would have kept going with the WOTLK model though, running multiple raids every week in different difficulties sucks.