Ion Hazzikostas - A New Era For WoW Dragonflight?

[@Preachgaming]

This is the full interview from Mike's visit to Blizzard at the end of October last year. We've had them up on our website for premium supporters but now we are going to be steadily releasing them publicly on KZbin. Ion's audio was not great unfortunately due to his mic position and the room where it was recorded so apologies on that front. Please bear in mind the time that Ion's comments were made in light of the recent Blizzard drama, and that Ion is not responsible for any decisions that fall outside of the development of the game itself - his perspective on the harassment and working from home is interesting - but of course he was limited in what he could discuss. we hope you enjoy the interview which was intended from the off to be an informal discussion - with no preapproved or set questions - where Mike could ask whatever he wanted.

[@necrobale]

Are you guys still planning on releasing the other interviews on the website? That holinka interview has to be top shelf.

[@nrbism9614]

Can you please let Preach know that it looks like he's playing footsies with Ion every time the camera switches to him, and I can not stop laughing. Thanks :p

[@falynnbeyon]

Thanks for posting your entire interview with Ion!

[@Cluuey]

That was a good chat, thanks for putting it up. I've not played WoW for about a year now, I've not watched any of your videos either. I came to unsubscribe and saw this in the list of videos and thought it would be interesting. Ion takes a lot of heat from the WoW player base, most of the complaints are are so specific it's unlikely they ever make it onto his desk. Trying to explain that to people was a waste of time, people don't want to hear it or they're too stupid to understand it. 🙄

[@legreeniris]

Thanks for posting the entire interview. This is honestly the best interview with Ion I have listened to.

[@ademord]

Can u gimme a summary of it

[@fragdq]

because its more of a chat/talk between two guys than an Internview with a very short time frame

[@AdamGrasser]

transparency makes all the difference...investors aside...developers need the freedom to make the game (instead of the money).

[@PrimarchRoboleonFrenchyman]

​@@fragdq this is what is interesting

[@TechNinjaHS]

Honestly I would watch/listen to this discussion even if it was double the run time, hearing all these well thought out questions asked by Mike and also the interesting answers given by Ion made this worth watching/listening.

[@blech71]

I’m digging the fact these two talked about their experiences east back and not just focused on current WoW.

[@StrobeFireStudios]

Ion is actually great. I love that guy. Really humble, really intelligent, very down to earth and connected to the game he's played and designed for years. Really great watch. Thanks for this.

[@Shannendetro]

How much did he pay you?

[@StrobeFireStudios]

@@Shannendetro oof, that's a yikes. Are you okay, mate?

[@Shannendetro]

@@StrobeFireStudios I’d ask the same with all the money you have. Must be nice.

[@sitrueis4007]

He made lot of mistakes, same as Holinka but other than that quite great guy.

[@StrobeFireStudios]

@@Shannendetro Yeah, I'm pretty loaded. New house, new car, married my fianceé and child all in the last year alone. Doing pretty well for myself. Are you okay, though mate?

[@kaaiooo]

What a great interview! Mike being genuine and curious with his questions and Ion answering candidly. A great discussion not avoiding the sore spots.

[@ThichabodCrane]

A New Era For WoW Dragonflight? The question mark is the only part of this sentence I trust.

[@kernel2006]

Great interview, thanks for making it happen! So fun to hear Mike and Ion nerd out about minutiae from vanilla, circa 2005. I’m sure they coulda done it for hours.

[@yummyirl]

Who is this chilled, relatable Ion? 😮 I have literally never seen him in any interview ever. Huge kudos to both of you for making the opportunity and environment for us to meet him on this level. It's so good for the community to see this side of him. His responses are always thoughtful and considered regardless, but I wish he would do more of this stuff to balance out the constrained, lawyerly image he more often projects. It's so reassuring to see another actual gamer in charge of wow stuff that matters to me.

[@WarMonkeyPlays]

I agree, felt like watching an entirely different person.

[@Lupinemancer87]

Wait really? I've seen him in a few.

[@Freestyle80]

you people really love trying to paint him as a bad guy

[@Freestyle80]

you people really love trying to paint him as a bad guy

[@yummyirl]

@@Freestyle80 ... Can you read?

[@luja5546]

For once Ion doesnt look stressed out. I know he took over as lead game designer during wod when players were not happy with the game so that had to be very stressful.

[@azurblueknights]

I would say he has a good reason to not be stressed. After Shadowlands, the team couldn't go anywhere else as they were already rock bottom. So at this point, he's kind of banking on Dragonflight being good enough and not stressing about how the game is doing. Should be noted that Ion is likely the primary brain behind Legion, which was stupidly successful and he didn't seem too stressed then either. But folks didn't really start getting tired of the "infinite grind" until the end of Legion, at which point BFA had been in development for two years already, and BFA wasn't all that great of an expansion, had unhappy players, and poor Ion was back to being stressed again.

[@shawnhayes6938]

@@azurblueknights Sometimes people bring stress on themselves.

[@gregjross852]

The zones in BFA were beautiful and the story of Drustvar is the best dtoryline they’ve come up with in awhile imo. But yeah BFA and shadowlands sucked

[@luja5546]

@@gregjross852 Yeah Like WOD, BFA, and SL had great zones and imo i liked their story, it was just the infinite grinds or lack of content outside of Raiding and M+. Like I dont have time to raid and i only like M+ as a catch up for raiding. Since I cant commit to raiding there isnt much content i can do casually besides PvP and Pet Battles. Im giving DF a chance so im hoping its as casual friendly as everyone claims

[@PrimarchRoboleonFrenchyman]

​@@shawnhayes6938 Good luck not stressing yourself with few millions people are insulting you on internet and your job is actually to make them like your product.

[@LameMule]

I had no idea the interview was so long. That's just awesome. A damn good spread of questions and good on Ion to give you so much time for it.

[@jampk24]

Would love to see more longform interviews like this from the devs. Very interesting to hear about their perspectives on things without having to sprint through a bunch of questions due to short time limits.

[@nonamesavailable4]

I could have easily listened to another 2 hours. Mike and Ian, you guys are the best

[@greenxintet1651]

seeing vanilla clips reminds me so deeply of specific moments of my childhood, even the temperature and weather of certain days I was playing. The clip of the warrior with the whirlwind axe for example

[@Fr0stybee]

Ion and Preach nerding out while reminiscing the old days of WoW is most wholesome shit ever.

[@rickdiculous5655]

It's cool but it's 100% definitely not the most wholesome thing ever... come on bro quit exaggerating

[@Bichpwner]

Yes, Ion!! That stuff he says about 10 more talent points and deeper trees with every major release is exactly how I was personally hoping they would proceed. Very pleased, finding a lot of respect for the Dragonflight development direction of WoW

[@dusk1947]

Again, I just appreciate that both Preach and Mr. Hazzikostas took the time to do this. Interviews like this provide what was missing for far too long: Context. It's one thing for us as players to assume the best or worst after Blizzard announces a feature or content. That's usually informed by our own perception of a developers past behaviors. However, it is a far better scenario when we the players hear the direct intent from the Dev's. Understanding what they debated, their direction, the decision process, the pro's and con's as they weighted. It fills in the gaps and lends credibility. Even when I don't like a system, if I can appreciate why they created it that way, and see the merit in their decision process: I'm usually ok with that feature.

[@jdflynn55]

I love Ion's willingness to share the 'product' side of the business here - prioritizing the tradeoffs on development work and how to manage that. This is the best interview with a WoW Dev I've personally ever seen.

[@Joel_bjornfors]

Ian make so much sense when he talks about what they aim for and accepting responsibility when things didn’t end up as they intended

[@ninjaman0003]

The era that seems like it will die before it could achieve anything from the looks of recent moves.

[@nhagan001]

Yep. Looks like the those rough waters will hit around July. Then we will see what becomes of the patch that is made under those conditions.

[@Holliday1217]

@@nhagan001 what happens in july?

[@nhagan001]

@@Holliday1217 July will be when the possible Layoffs from Mike Ybarara's announcement starts. Will enough of the Blizzard staff be able to get a place close enough to commute to work 3 days a week? Or will there be mass layoffs because people had to find new jobs due to them revoking the Work From Home policy they had?

[@Emidretrauqe]

@@nhagan001 Not to mention the issues with bonuses. When morale is low, innovation slows. Bugs, repetitive quests, hell there might just be a return of old problems just because the devs don't care anymore.

[@fokus271]

I love the free and open format. I feel I can understand and relate to Ion more so when there aren’t stressful time constraints. Well done and hats off to the both of you!

[@MrCeratix]

I can tell from Ion's candor that the new dev environment feels a lot more comfortable and it shows in the game that's getting built. I've been impressed with my time in DF so far, and while Mike says he wants that "I can't wait to see what's next" feeling for the game's plot and setting, I'm like that too now with the game itself, Dragonflight restored a small spark of hope, and I pray they manage to stoke it further as they update the Expansion and beyond

[@deesul4134]

love this sort of openness and discussion on a game I've devoted so much of my life into. love peeking under the drape and seeing the wizards

[@kevinmshields]

Ironically, I feel like something akin to order halls for the aspects would have gone over well in Dragonflight. Unlike covenants, or any AP, the aspects are a larger part of wow's history and identity that have resonated with the imaginations of millions of people for years. I really want my evoker to delve into the bronze dragonflight, and I'm leveling a mage who has a blue theme. Renown is fine, but I'd have been genuinely more motivated to play were I more involved with helping the aspects reacclimate to their homeland and rebuild from their lost powers. It's the same level of wonder that had me trying new races in Cata to experience their starting areas; new classes in Legion to experience their order halls/powers; and actually making an alliance character (my now main) in BFA to experience the opposite faction's story. Good interview!

[@Cogsworth23]

I actually feel like Dragonflight already gets you quite involved with helping the aspects reacclimate and rebuild. It's just that you don't do that so much on a day to day basis after you are done with the initial campaign quests. But if you remember back to those quests you will remember questing with each of the aspects, and the main focus of those quests being reacclimating and rebuilding just like you said. The oathstones were a perfect representation of this theme. Personally I'd be disappointed if they made me choose to devote my character to just one flight and then cut me off from seeing the stories of all the others as was done with order halls, covenants, and BFA factions. It just seems like it's a lot of content to make that is then only seen by a portion of the players, and so as an individual player you are basically getting a 5th of the story content you otherwise would have. I also think there is still plenty of room to have your character identify with a flight of your choice in the game as it stands now, despite not having a system built around it. You can match your customizations/tmog to that flight, and maybe even imagine a backstory that connects you to the flight while playing. I know I have done this for my Evoker, who I connect heavily to the blue flight, which is reflected by her appearance in dragon form and in my visage too. My Ele/Resto Shaman on the other hand, connects to the Red Flight, which matches my playstyle of both fire and renewal, and I always make sure I am riding around on a red dragon when I am playing her.

[@Emidretrauqe]

@@Cogsworth23 Yeah, why wear one pin from your Dragonflight Collector's Edition box when you can wear all of them at once? Show the world how proud you are to play the game!

[@christiantaboada]

The problem of covenants specifically was that you always felt that one was better for one type of content and mediocre or bad for others. If covenants were only cosmetic changes (like changing your execute animation) and not radically changing your power output in AOE or ST that would have been a completely different story. Even some conduits and specific souldbinds felt mandatory in some situations. If you wanted to swap between one and another was a hassle so it should have been left as an RPG element rather than a power creep thing IMO.

[@wowTharabbi]

The best interview, I have ever seen so far! Great work Preach thanks so much!

[@rep8778]

This is my favorite interview from Preach's Blizz HQ visit by far.

[@filipurde5702]

Amazing interview! Thank you. Love the Open and self reflection thinking of Ion. And Dragon flight is a blast!

[@JamesEtallaz]

Was't this interview done back in november or december 2022? Before the talks of imposing coming back to the office full time and tensions returning among employees?

[@DaWoWzer]

they're so close to making the game actually alt friendly, the bonus xp rep I feel is good enough vs account wide, they just need to go and add that back to all the older reps. They REALLY REALLY just need to removed that dang primal chaos tax, there is ZERO reason I should have to lose 25% of my mats just to mail them to an alt, especially when the mat is as common as primal chaos. Making it BoP randomly doesn't make it rarer it just makes it annoying. even raid mat drops back in the day weren't BoP for the most part.

[@bringbackcommonsense528]

agreed i wish they would bring in rep back to the dungeons for those who enjoy dungeons more than world quests etc and not tie the story line behind reknown

[@DarkScreamGames]

No, the primal tax must stay. Otherwise, it's incorrect to play your alt to gear your alt. As it stands, now, even with the tax, If your main can do +20s and your alt can't do +15s, its wrong to play your alt. This is a very dangerous precedent to set - And it also robs the lower level queues of players (which is the real reason why people want it.. they don't want to progress again and think they're too good to interact with the lower level public)

[@GreenGoblin30]

Cool mounts (not necessarily recolors) are the number one main non gear incentive in my opinion. Gear... Mounts... Transmogs... in generally that order... is what I see from my own play and from what I gather from the forums.

[@brianmcdaniels8249]

People werent bad back then. The top players I know still are good today and bring another element. The problem in vanilla back then was simply we didnt have any knowledge of the best preraid gear and what not, so people didnt get through the bwl wall until you had a few guilds that just grinded through it to t2 then everything was smooth sailing. pre-raid and t1 was ass.

[@MrToby136]

I thought challenge mode in mop was way way more fun than mythic plus and the armour sets still look epic

[@deathwrow9652]

Legion m+ was more fun than what it is now. Crazy that the legion dungeons are the ones i enjoy doing the most

[@MilkshakeGuruTTV]

@@deathwrow9652 That was the last expansion people cared about the game they worked on. Then they left the company. And you could literally tell the difference.

[@brandonboss6868]

I would rather have that then a ground mount in a flying expansion. :)

[@bandenwesen]

Challenge mode was the best thing in WoW to this day for me. There's content I highly enjoy, but CM is unmatched.

[@savuflorin6242]

Yeah but you only did CM once for the rewards and that was it,m+ is supposed to be an alternative endgame pve activity

[@SuJu944]

Great interview! So glad to be able to see the full lenght one now too

[@ShadowsOfThePast]

On the Dragonflying part. I wish they would fix the BUG that gets your camera stuck after you land from flight!! It's been there since launch and it's SUPER ANNOYING! 😑

[@tuskgarcia9851]

@Preach Gaming This was a phenomenal interview. The pacing and direction of the questions shaped into a setting akin to a storytelling hour than a focus interview, even though it hit all the topic I personally wanted to hear about. I believe it made mor entertaining to watch and listen to than just having him answer a bloat of questions about the game in consecutive order. Thank you

[@olizandrey2]

Thank you Mike and Ion! What a great look into why some systems are discarded or changed. Thank you!

[@ZekZekaru]

I can't deny i'm a little confused. (Upon making this comment, this is before watching this video) You title this video "A New Era for Dragonflight", but 6 days ago you posted that video about the CEO making people return to the office, thus calling it "CEO destroyed our hopes for a A New Era" so I'm wondering on a genuine level, where do you actually stand on the entire matter? It's looking like in admittance you're posting this with title bait and grasping for clicks with it. Are you trying your best to remain optimistic on the matter, or are you still expressing a sort of negative/"we'll see I guess" approach to it all? I apologize if the tone comes off as negative, it's not meant to it's just confusion. Love your content.

[@taylurjack]

Simple answer. These are two entirely different things. Ion is not the CEO and doesn't control the annoying things we are angry about. They are talking about the actual game here, not Blizzard/its work ethics. It's super obvious if you're able to critically think at all. We need to turn our anger at the CEO's, at Bobby. NOT the devs, not the ones who've listened to us so eagerly and made the changes we've asked for.

[@HiddenEvilStudios]

An even simpler answer: This interview was done in October and is now being released in full. Not much to do with the current events.

[@ZekZekaru]

@@taylurjack I agree with the fact that we need to turn our anger towards the CEOs, all our anger in all honesty. Also when it comes to your not so great "Critically think at all" snark, I made mention that I'm commenting before watching this video and was commenting on the title of these videos. Sure your answer is simple you're just a viewer like myself so say what you want to, but from a content creating perspective maybe Preach's answer is different, hence why I asked him what his thoughts are.

[@notjefflee]

This is the full interview from his previous video that was about the new era of WoW

[@sl5945]

me when i post before watching the first 20 seconds of the video:

[@sy-ky_buddy4603]

FANTASTIC interview!

[@AkTaSbOy]

Didn't even watch the whole video, liked as soon as I heard that beautiful talk about classic era raid memories.

[@MD-ee2fq]

I love hearing Ion talk about his char and older stories. You can hear his passion and for once hes not in his laywer mode. I wish we had more of this from him. That makes him so much more relatable

[@bigdeadanimals]

This interview is really tastefull and insightfull. I wish there was a way for Blizz to do this kind of often actually. But I dont know how. If their own stuff would do this - it will be stale and "safe". And most of WoW content-creators and enthusiasts are in Europe not NA, so its barely possible for such traveling to be frequent sadly.

[@folonrng]

you guys are cool. really enjoyed the interview! thanks for so much insight in the decisionmaking and motivation of the dev team! love that he mentioned they want to revisit proving grounds. rn in df i get people in +17 keys that don't interrupt enemy casts. while at it, perhaps split raids in single bosses for pugging with the ability to just phase into the raid and join the rest of the group like you do when you enter a dungeon after someone left it before it ended. let people practice mechanics with npc raids / groups before entering the real thing or have easy to look up officially supported visual guides embedded in the adventurer guide for boss skills. wow in it's current state isn't an intuitive enough game where everyone will naturally react in the right way to things happening around or to them regardless of individual player skill level. but that's not just a fallacy of wow. i hope mmos in general find a way to be less UI based and more reactive/instinctive while posing a challenge and still have enough depth to the combat system. dragonflight so far has been a lot of fun and kept me playing for hours on end constantly busying myself with something and i almost exclusively play one character! if i could wish for one more thing it would be 1 more guy working on bug fixes. there's been issues since day one that haven't gotten any attention to this day like wrong spawns of ores inside of terrain, wrongly phasing expeditioner scout's backpacks that you can interact with but not loot (same for some ores) or the crafting ui that displays wonky values, calculates stuff wrongly and doesn't display enough information in terms of how different rank materials will affect the craft BEFORE the customer is sending the order. but i really do love the crafting system. it's a lot of fun! great job!

[@Tre-99]

Man, I just love watching gamers talk about games. My kinda peoples.

[@jordanf00]

10:58 As a person that's been playing MMOs since I was 4 years old (I'm now 26) and that now has parents that I've had the chance to watch play... People REALLY struggle to understand how vast this skill gap is. It is TOUGH playing with some of my friends that are nearish my skill level that constantly bash the players around them. I have to remind them on a regular basis, often in complete futility, that those players could legitimately just be someone's parents, just trying to have fun. And it's very difficult to explain to players on the bottom end of that spectrum, too. Both on a technical standpoint AND a moral one - like, it doesn't feel good to have to tell someone something along the lines of "I could sit here and try to explain to you all the things that you are doing wrong, but it would take me hours, over half of it would go over your head anyways due to complete information overload, and half of the remaining things are related to muscle memory that would take you months/years to build anyways." I haven't been able to. Just don't have the heart for it. Especially when my parents seem to just genuinely enjoy playing the game the way they are (until they are forced to do group content, where they get blasted by their game's community). I used to be STRONGLY in favor of WoW's proving grounds, and was so disappointed to see them go away. But in recent years, I definitely agree with Ion on the reality of what it was doing. SOOO glad to see his new perspective on it, and would LOVE to see a AAA title make genuine efforts to try and teach these more obscure gaming concepts in an inoffensive way.

[@danielolsson7621]

great interview man would be great if u and other continued this type of interviews:) the more the merrier

[@KickassMcfly]

Great conversation! really enjoyed this

[@fridowski3143]

Great Interview, was interesting to watch

[@Dungeon47]

18:28 This is the real crux of it. Players will always take the path of least resistance to the goal that attracts them most. If doing better in PvP can be most efficiently accomplished by grinding rep with a bear tribe, PvPers will do it, even if it's not a PvP activity, and they'll be grumpy about it.

[@timar6868]

Ion "with that said" Hazzikostas

[@barbz2741]

I feel like Mike and Ion could have been best buddies in another life. Just two nerds talking their favorite game. Great interview.

[@R3ar3ntry]

i'm only 4:51 into the video and hearing Ion talk about warrior shit some how made me respect him so much, HOLY, he isn't just a dev or a robot, he's actually like human and a player, which is crazy... idk

[@Daijaga]

Man being left behind as a support player is exactly how I feel about healing, and I feel it more everytime I come back. I dont want to dps, I dont want to manage 3-4 affixs or be expected to fix other's affix mistakes. I want to get my boys up, clutch a tricky heal every few pulls, and bottom my mana out in a last stretch on fumes and screaming exited when I squeeze one more cast out. All my friends' mistakes are buried in a chart via addon, mine are plastered on the timer on the default UI.

[@Nightykk]

I do miss the time where my dps as a healer was.. well.. not a thing. These days you're more of a weak dps doing some healing on the side. And, for some reason, while tanks are allowed to, at times, do near-dps levels of dps, then a healer doing dps feels bad on several levels. The dps is horrible, and we're not healing. Healing unavoidable damage is fun. The challenge, timing your heals, keeping the group alive.. managing your mana while healing on fumes... it's fun. Healing damage caused by a missed explosive feels meh. Dealing with all the affixes that all essentially just means "this week sucks even more to heal than most other weeks.. which also sucked.. just isn't fun". I write this knowing that tomorrow a week of Bursting+Griev starts, and I'll just ignore doing high keys outside of a single 20 for vault, on my priest.. and 1-4x20 on my hunter. "Oh, we got 4stacks of Bursting after I just Mass Dispelled 6.. and now Griev will finish off everyone - if Bursting didn't already.. and I'll feel terrible about it" - The week. Neat."

[@pskfry]

the only problem i have with having to do so much dmg as a healer is that the dmg rotation as a healer sucks weiners.

[@MrOPD]

That sure sounds a lot nicer than saying "while all my friends are stiving for optimization and fighting to stay alive, man, I really just want to get by throwing out a random HoT here and there and maybe press a CD every like once or twice per dungeon". "I wanna be a supporter" he says - then proceeding to list a all the things he doesn't want to support his team with. Like, it's fine to have your opinion, but just say it as it is, you wanna get carried. You wanna do half the work everyone else does, hell, ideally even less than that. No responsibilities, just clicking the shiny button that reads "other guy do more damage". Again, it's fine if that's your thing, but stop selling it as anything else but you wanting to get carried for doing less than the absolute bare minimum. Being a support and then complaining about actually having to do the support work while also complaining about your efforts actually having an impact on the outcome of a run is truly something. I don't know why you don't stay in heroic dungeons if that's the level of challenge you're looking for. I don't know why every other role is pushing their performance to the max to get into +20s and you think to yourself "man, I too really would like to get there, but I'd just prefer not being challenged more than once or twice per run - oh, and those challenges better not be overly punishing because I'm only the supporter".

[@Daijaga]

@J Classic Peter Parker, always busting peoples balls and calling them out. If only Spider Man was known for like, being friendly.

[@Daijaga]

@Mr Peter Parker Feel like Im getting a little splash damage here from some beef you've got somewhere else. Look were all Preach veiwers here, its fair to guess Im plugged in, care about my spec doing well and not tapping sparkle HoTs and gg. I run a few keys with the boys, we might run at 15 here and there but if not having KSM or CE is your bar thats fair enough, I don't clear it. Im just showing up in the comments to voice a not unpopluar opinion, healers are getting wrecked in keys. Belluars latest video was about it and Preach and Ian both in this very video lament the slow decline of this sort of role, person w/e in raids and dungeons, beef with those guys but Im right in my lane doing 10s and happy with my 402 ilvl

[@chrisrad2521]

guild halls with perks and things to do for the hall/guild will help with some of the issues I personally think in terms of the player loggin on not seeing people on in the guild..having a sense of "if i can accomplish this whilst my guildies are offline and surprise them when they come back" goes a long way. I do understand not everyone will agree and thats ok but there is definatly not enough emphasis on guild oriented content.

[@Achonas]

basically better implemented guild levels from cata XD I do kinda miss that actually

[@SteveGVocals]

Honestly think that half the battle for the WoW team to reduce issues could be breaking down the impact of certain teams on some content. A lot of us are not producers/project managers for these kind of scales so often udnerappreciate the effort that goes in to the content we enjoy or hate. Great eye opener here, Mike. ratJAM

[@ridespirals]

I would love it if preach could do one of these interviews with someone from guild wars 2 (like grouch).

[@DomXM]

Come on someone has got to do a timestamp for each topic. Please.

[@ingolf82]

I remember doing proving grounds on my elemental shaman, it took me over a month to finish it, because they had just nerfed the spec so lightning bolt wasn't castable on the move and I remember I found it really hard to do it. On my hunter I did it on the first try. the proving grounds in WoD were not equal for all classes even if it was the same one. some were way easier than others, like Elemental shaman.

[@edwardhatfield5360]

Kinda like Torghast as a Prot Paladin, Cap America shield tossing everything to bits vs struggling a ton as a rogue.

[@FGazi-qf1hp]

Love this videos, hope you have more in storage :D. What I would love to know is since they are rewriting and adding new content almost all the time since the start of the games production (I think it was the year 2000), are they thinking maybe on wow 2? New engine or just a new start in general? What are they thinking about class design? How come some classes are really complicated to play and require a lot of buttons (for example arcane mage in DF), why do some classes have so many abilities (for example prot warr in df was too much for me, I was overwhelmed how many abilities there are)? Whats their stance about dungeon/raid encounters? A lot of players that I talked to say the encounters are way more complicated than before. There is too much stuff happening on the screen. What do they think of designing the battles that have way few abilities, but they are more impactful in the fight (I really like ff14 boss design, and I think it would really fit into wow). What about botting and botters in general? How do they intend to fight that? Mass reporting innocent players, and do they mean to change that system? Maybe introduce GMs again? Sorry for my bad english, but unfortunately sometimes I think about those kinds of things when I play wow.

[@sweatyraider7241]

What I learnt from this 3 part series and mike's follow up to blizzard latest ordeal. The interview renewed my assurance on the developers, producers and designers commitment to WoW as they are so passionate and love what they are working on. Now their biggest barrier is on the executive level which is so out of touch with reality. When they are forced to go back to office, the company will experience a brain drain which is disheartening to see. Not sure if Microsoft's acquisition would fix that one can only hope so.

[@90VYD]

same

[@AdventW0lf]

100% agree. I want things to be good, but every time I feel like we see the light at the end of the tunnel, a cave in happens.

[@ExValeFor]

Bruh you really think Ion isn't the problem lol he's been saying all of this shit for years while giving us Legion, BFA and SL.

[@sweatyraider7241]

@@ExValeFor seems like ion learnt his lesson in SL Preach believe so too and I believe Preach

[@xRichhhx]

Looking forward to watching this! Also really curious as to how the first major patch will look like with the kind of patch cadence they have now. If these previous small patches are any indication it's looking really juicy, especially stuff like the Ret pally rework.

[@marcusriisvrnholt7238]

I am loving WoW again, just as I did 15 years ago

[@Arcashine]

I could listen to days of this type of content. Absolutely loved the bit about mousewheel Hunters back in BC. I remember refusing to play BM because I thought it was so dumb.

[@yazx2434]

9:25 one of the issues with proving grounds was that it was significantly easier for some classes than others, too.

[@BoomyNation]

Great interview!

[@itsladrana]

Good shit Preach. Great interview thank you

[@edwardhatfield5360]

Bring back MoP level blood dk oppression in PVP. I use to love easily, although not quickly, killing 5 enemies by myself while flag carrying. 😅

[@Matthew-lu4sf]

I had no idea Ion was such a knowledgeable and experienced player of the game.

[@greyknight627]

It’s odd and sad to see so many people flip so easily on Blizzard and Ion. I remember how people used to say Ion was unrelatable as a developer and a player because he was purely a top tier raider and his interviews were garbage in the end. Now, he just gives some polished interviews, WoW has a half way decent expansion (after years of flailing failures) and everyone is acting like things are totes fine. Yet, people prior to DF were (rightly) about needing a trend of behavior, success, and change from Blizzard. Folks, it’s simple, ion has been practicing how to give good interviews. DF may be to your personal liking, but the success is middling at best (thirsty man in the desert, in a sea of bad expansions for years a mid their one looks amazing by comparison) and not a massive one at that. Blizzard has to show way more to display change. It’s astonishing to me to see the level of abused spouse syndrome Blizzard consumers have. They can easily pull the rug out from under you at this point and many of you will be genuinely shocked and try to defend them all over again because of DF and Ion right now. You do have any trends, any long patterns of change in trajectory that Blizzard has invested in changing their business for the better. They’re still mired in controversy. WoW in particular is far from out of the woods and DF is but a single point of reference, not a sign that things have changed for the better. Honestly, I feel really bad for the conditioning Blizzard has put on you all. Their poor game design, marketing strategy, and business practices are still not how game design should be, and yet the consumers for Blizzard are more than willing to claim victory and accept this. 🤦‍♂️

[@maggimaster]

watcher: oh if we dont do this they might think we are ignoring them no dude we KNOW you ignore us because YOU YOURSELF admitted to it

[@ChiefCast]

Great interview good job everyone ❤

[@MrHuntervad]

Hmm, giving every class a choosing between self improvement vs improving another and a bit of self, would be a thing, but for this you have to make choosing someone easier tho. (like targeting in middle of chaos)

[@mistakai4226]

They still haven't finished the class design...

[@eco999]

There it is dude!

[@TheRabidSniper]

lol. ~21:30... Why design something that only 8% of people play? *cough* Mythic raids *cough*

[@TheChunkeyNinja]

I suppose its more like with the challenge modes he talked about where adding another difficulty isn't really that much of an investment - most of the resources are into making the bosses and the raid itself so it actually benefits them to maximise its value to the playerbase. Mythic plus is much the same in that sense as it lets them add way more value to the dungeons they create.

[@moos5221]

This is great content!

[@Pompen]

19:10 when have they made content such as this? Give Gilneas/Gadgetzan cinematic story content

[@valeclaw1697]

Monkeys paw lol tbh. Imo, the 'strength' of DFs story is that its not applying these ideas to places people care about already. Everywhere else is stuck in the dynamics of the rest of the game and writing, and I don't think it'll fit well with how the new people write.

[@georgeindestructible]

Respec'ing is something i do all the time, what i hate about it only one thing, because i use a lot of macros with modifiers i don't have enough macros for some characters and some times due to the stupid 255 character limitation i cannot make a better choice on sticking more than 2 spells which fit thematically or in some sense on my brain which would allow me to perform way better instead of having to place it on another macro, somewhere which might be way too impractical to use, and i ponder for minutes to minutes to think about where else where i can put that 3rd spell, where does it fit in my keybindings or i just leave the game for hours or days because in rare cases it's just not possible and frustrating because it literally messes up the entire point of playing that spec because that one spell i can't put on the macro could be from super important to critical being there and it sucks so much that we can't do that. DF is such a good expansion i hope they can at least triple the amount of macros/char at some point and slightly increased the 255 level without the need of some addon, addons are great an all but i am tried of having more than 6 and to maintain them all the time manually (i don't trust automated programs, and some times add ons themeslves to be honest) and even worst just have them there to do 1 single thing (i have one) becasue the devs hasn't bother to fix that even though a lot of players have an issue with like like mouseover macro over raid frames not working, 2023, still not addressed.

[@싸넬동지-7성담배]

I loved the early part of Legion as opposed to most people(the end) dunno i just felt the early game was magical (had a druid) the Halls was just magnificent and i haven't felt that way since Vanilla. Also discovering Survival Hunter again as opposed to most people was amazing, i just regret the way the spec evolved during expansion like being forced to have the Tier set or Raptor Strike playstyle. And the Tier vendor from DF could've relieved a lot of people back then. I kinda miss Legion, it was a great experience overall even the early random affixes on M+ and even the insane farm was a part i didn't expect i would do to get that 15% more damage once you fill your whole Artifact weapon.

[@karj_gaming]

Really glad to see you adding wow coverage back to the rotation the way you have. This whole series has been great. Really appreciate the work you and the team are doing!

[@StoovTV]

What a great conversation! Really nailed it and bridged the need to hit stuff vs the nerding out convo.

[@platinumfactory]

I could have listened to you guys go on another 3 hours

[@uchihayui]

Still wish one day you interview Ion as a player, no developer. It would be fun for sure.

[@dogemans3951]

This was so great

[@sirnicholibraden86]

I actually really like Ion. Yes, he thinks and builds WoW too much in terms of a math problem, but he's a great dude.

[@unhingedcrouton]

Ion is abroken record constantly repeating there are many different types of players but never going into any specifics.

[@raidwipe]

he does at one point in the full interview, he says imagine any mismatch type of content people do, and there's an audience for that. he can't get more specific than that because it's literally impossible lol

[@sbsftw4232]

"oh, there are different kinds of players? List every kind." -Crouton 2023

[@Nightykk]

So.. a politician?

[@ExValeFor]

Its his get out of jail free card for why a lot of the systems are such dogshit. He can claim that there's heaps of people who absolutely love this and you're being close-minded by complaining and it shuts people like Preach down every single time. The mythical casuals who enjoy whatever it is that's in the game and that's why there's no reason to try harder or do better or at least avoid straight up cancer design. To think Mike was so close to waking up in 2021...

[@keithb6344]

@@ExValeFor so let’s see. SL was one of my favorite expansions. I had no issue with the covenants being locked and there was plenty of random stuff to do. I enjoyed the world content and also got KSM a few times. I also did a lot of pet battling. I loved running Torghast when I got bored. When he says there is a lot of different types of players it’s because he is right.

[@thomashays9332]

Bring support roles back in the game, would be awesome.

[@Celthor]

I like that the music is there but is so faint.

[@edwardhatfield5360]

The balance between infinite player power grind and players feeling like time gating is a curse word is tough for MMORPGs. I dont fault devs for occasionally being too far left or right on that balance.

[@enigmabis.]

LOL love that the recent video title is "Destroyed our hopes for a new era"

[@oreshe]

PwOjEcT RwEsToWaTiOn wont finance itself you know, he wasted money on this trip to murrica

[@zephyros256]

@@oreshe The office water incident occurs after their trip to blizzard though.... So unless they had a psychic, it was rather difficult to prepare for it financially.

[@oreshe]

@@zephyros256 why ever PAY to visit a company's office that you actively hated for last 5-6 years and then promote them despite "new era" company behaves exactly same as usual and game is still on stable decline?

[@robusmc1713]

I'm just so excited for the Ret Pally rework, mained Ret since classic, right now pallys is a wet tissue dies from a sneeze, hurry up 10.07

[@timar6868]

"we looked at our culture" ya that's when you made a woman into fruit..maybe don't get so deep into culture of a video game and just keep with what makes it great; the issue wasn't the game it was your company.

[@Mael6469]

I have still never done the Chromie event in Legion even though I normally would enjoy that kind of thing.

[@arthas_stormr8ge877]

Ion said he use to play a shaman! I think that’s what most of the devs did back then, none of them play shaman now that’s why they don’t get the same treatment as locks,mages,druids, and rogues.

[@Voidload]

I have always loved Ion and always believed in him and never stopped. I think he REALLY cares and that's the most important thing. A shame that mike ybarra and other hidden people there make it worse for these amazing people

[@TheBirdsDen]

cant wait for everything said here ages like milk

[@Boingcat]

Genuinely the issue with stuff like support players etc. is that it feels like the game is just too tightly tuned in a lot of difficulties compared to the people who play it, that you don't feel like you have the room to bring them. Like you might actually have that room, but if you don't FEEL that you have that room, you won't bring them. The end-game content doesn't feel as approachable as it used to. Not because it's actually all that difficult if you've done end-game content before, but for new or more casual players it's really damn steep.

[@Shiirow]

new era... HA... good one. its just a repurposed previous era with a few bits of spray paint to cover the scuff marks.

[@CoachJohnMcGuirk]

I tried to log onto retail for the first time in like 10 years. The UI looked like I had a bunch of add-ons already installed and was bombarded with all these like pop ups and notifications and all my character tab and achievements tab and stuff were all tiny and tucked away where I couldn't see them at first. Wtf? I logged off within 5 mins and canceled the install.

[@crabsupreme]

The entire wow playerbase is just 1 PR interview away from bowing down before the company that has been spitting in their face for over a decade. If you still blindly accept blizzard based on their interviews then you haven't been paying attention.