NA Content Creator Interview with Ion Hazzikostas on Patch 10.1 - Mythic Raid Lockouts, Cross-Faction Guilds

Posted 2023/04/26 at 2:52 PM by Squishei

Social, Guilds and Cross Realm

Regarding the guild member cap, they would love to increase it from a 1,000 but there's technical limitations. Raising the cap is not trivial but maybe would like to look at the experience of maybe alts as there are very few guilds that have 1,000 active humans in them. Nothing in the immediate future but definitely something they would like to do.

For cross faction invites and the reason that you need to be in a community or friends before you can invite, it's something that you can voluntarily opt into. The connections of needing to be friends or part of the same community are what makes it opt in. It's a step in tearing down the faction barriers.

Can't set a date for cross-faction queued content, but it's the next step. However, cross-faction queued content is violating the opt-in mentality that they currently have. They want to move carefully but they are moving in that direction of tearing down barriers.

You can't change the faction of the guild and the faction is defined by the leader. You can't pass leadership to an opposite faction leader, but opposite faction officers do work.

Regarding the Battle.net friends cap, Ion would love to increase it personally but it's a technical limitation.

Upgrading System

Current system is very Dragonflight themed and the hope is that it works in Patch 10.1 and is a unification of multiple upgrade tracks. If the system carries forward, then it can be a permanent evergreen feature going forward and then they can use universally named currencies going forwards.

On the topic of open ended upgrades to gear no longer existing, on one hand you can't spam low Mythic+ piece for a piece and upgrade it all the way like I used to which takes away options, on the other hand being able to spam +2s and upgrade that gear they've heard from players as kind of degenerate. They're heard that there is a desire there, but now the system it's not just about dungeon gear but also about raid gear. If a normal raid group can upgrade their normal Sarkareth raid gear to Heroic Sarkareth raid gear before they kill it and complete their progression, you wouldn't need that loot at all and it doesn't feel right. It would also be awkward if players felt like they needed to run Normal and LFR because any drop from any different any time could be an upgrade and approach Mythic level. Overall its an experience and they'll be listening and they're make adjustments as needed.

Raids

For the first time, the first LFR wing at the same time as Normal, Heroic and Mythic. The rest of LFR is delayed as they don't want to spoil the progression experience of friends and family guilds. LFR exists to make sure that everyone can see the end of the story and see the final boss. This way a lot more people see the end of the raid with their friends and guild mates and get to experience that together and that's a cool shared moment. In a world that has LFR open from the start, it would guarantee that everyone has seen the end of the raid in an LFR experience long before they got there with their friends.

No plans to change Mythic lockouts in the future. While people do pug, Mythic raiding is meant as a last bastion of activities meant for semi-fixed groups of players where it's a more hardcore progression experience. They recognize that this leads to inflexible when trying to pug. The flip side to that is it adds a greater investment in the shared experience. On Normal and Heroic if you wipe a couple times, people leave but on Mythic, before you start, it's a little bit like Mythic+ and you're in it together. There's more motivation there to stick around instead of trying to hop, overcome challenges and help others and everyone overcoming the boss together. That's a hallmark of Mythic raiding as it currently stands. Anythign is possible in the future, all the other difficulties have complete flexibility and Mythic is the exception and its targeting a specific audience with that.

Class Tuning

Hope is not to have to do another player health/damage increase in the future. This is something they should have done more before Dragonflight launch. The 40% for Dragonflight launch was a scary big number, but what they saw from data is they should have done closer to a 66% increase. The 25% change in 10.1 is less about scaling and more about continuing to come to terms with the amount of throughput and survivability increases from the entire talent system.

Broadly, there are plans to balance defensiveness and survivability. It is something that they need to look at as much as throughput as maybe some classes feel like they're getting benched even through their throughput is good because they're more likely to die. They don't want complete homogenization, but it's not fair to say your weakness is you just fall over dead. As they get into Season 2, they want to keep their very active tuning, and so every couple weeks, they'll want to be looking at damage throughput but also who has trouble surviving.

Customization

On Class/Race Combinations, the Magic-8-Ball says Outlook good. This is likely. They are chipping away and moving in the general direction of allowing more combinations. However, doing this sometimes requires new animation and visual support and there are some combinations that they want to make sure are consistent and explained in the world such as if Goblin Druids became a thing. Evokers are a tricky one though, but anything is possible.

On Pronouns and Voice options, it's something they're still working on, but having the game reflect that choice is a huge undertaken due to localization and a massive amount of text that refers to your characters gender. They want to make sure they do it right and thoughtfully and they'll provide more information when they're going to be able to move forward.

The Story of the Dragon Isles is focused on the Dracthyr Evoker. After Dragonflight and watching the Dracthyr integrate with Azeroth, it would make sense for them to be able to learn how to learn Frost magic or how to Bladestorm. Post Dragonflight, very likely for them to have other classes.

Dragonriding

They are building upon Dragonriding and the things that Dragonriding can do with new abilities in 10.1. They're still planning to have traditional flying available on the Dragon Isles and how they're going to bring Dragonriding to the rest of the world. The next step here is probably going to set precedent for the next step of WoW forever, so there's a lot to talk about and figure out.

Bag Space

No plans to address this in Patch 10.1. The bank is definitely something they have been looking at as it's very dated, maybe in a future patch but more than likely in a future expansion.

Crafted Gear

Yes, 418 crafted gear will automatically upgrade to 421 gear. As for why, as they planned out Crafted gear for Season 2 they are also rolling out the upgrade system, they wanted the systems to be aligned with each other. Doing that meant that crafted gear would start at 421 at a baseline, so there would be this weird 3 item level gap between the end of S1 crafted gear and the start of S2 crafted gear and players may have felt like you needed to recraft everything to get a 3 item level gap. Doing something retroactively is something they do sparingly but it just made sense players to spare players the awkwardness.

Tier Bonuses

With 50% Tier set nerfs in PvP, it's not to discourage using them, it's just reducing the overall impact they have in PvP. The damage profiles of raid are different in PvP, but the bonuses are still net positive.

Timewalking

No plans to do continue Turbulent Timewalking, but the overall event is something that they might do again. Timewalking and the event for the end of the Season was good for general catch-up, but if it were to be at the beginning of the expansion it would probably overshadow the new content. They don't want old content to be the best thing in a new Season. They also want to make sure that Timewalking doesn't become stale.

The Weekly Event rotation was introduced in WoD and haven't experimented and evolved it since then. There's so much they can do to spotlight things from week to week.

Lore

Book collections would be awesome. Personally would rather start with a library collection of your own character. They can do it for past expansions and past zones retroactively as this is your character's personal journey. Recently, there are a lot of interesting books scattered around the world, and turning them into a collection could be a really interesting idea as well.

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Comments

Comment by Maximad

"They recognize that this leads to inflexible when trying to pug."

Well no %^&*, we've been asking at least fix the lockouts on Mythic raiding so people at least can hop too another group and not be stuck too 1 Lockout and also make it less realm only. Why should I be punished if the raid can't progress in Mythic raiding compared to M+ being that I can go to another group try again.

Just make it so people can't get gear from a certain boss(After defeating one of them) and let people do whatever they want in Mythic raiding. It's not hard and you can get more participation for Hardcore content than gatekeeping people out from trying or even bothering in the first place.

Comment by Rellyne

Book Collection and unified crafting reagent bank for your characters in a server. That would be amazing.

Also, updating some of the character customizations to match the recent ones (at least when you have allied races that are just an old race with a new skin, give some of their base customizations to the original race).

Comment by Weryx

Yeah cool. /s
How about increasing the number of items you get? 2 items is pretty low, especially if you can't grind them in low keys. Bump it up to the old legion/bfa amount. The nerf was completely stupid in SL anyway. And you know you have exactly the problem in m+ you describe? Endchest ilvl is way too low. should be 1-2 ilvl tiers higher (19/20s should drop at least 431, better 434).

Raiding is dying and instead of making it more accessible you don't change anything (and instead you are nerfing m+, very clever)

On Pronouns and Voice options, it's something they're still working on

How about making all hair colors available for each race? shouldn't be too much work...

Why would you ever use your slow motion mounts ever again?

Just buff the ilvl reward from normal timewalking to heroic. With normal loot as a reward timewalking is pretty useless outside of leveling.

Comment by VystrelRes

Every time I read/watch an Ion Hazzikostas interview, I have started to realize that I only agree with about 10-20% of what he says and the direction he wants to take the game and the reasoning behind his decisions. And I realize now that I think I'm playing the wrong game. Old habits die hard. But it's being run by people that just have fundamentally different views than I do about what makes a good game, what is fun, and what is important to focus on. I know no one cares, but it feels good to just yell out to the twisting nether that I think Ion Hazzikostas has been terrible for the game. I disagree with almost every single decision he makes, and I hate his explanations for why he makes those decisions. I held out hope for a long time that he would eventually be replaced, but he seems firmly entrenched, and the Microsoft acquisition now seems on shaky ground, which I saw as kind of a last hope that they would come in and really shake things up there. Oh well, I guess congrats to anyone who is excited about the stuff he talked about.

Comment by Lalon

im Curious to know what you would like in the game?

Comment by SwayAwayGeorge

Honestly, I wonder a few things with classes, more with class fantasy, but I would actually like to see a return for Paladin seals, buffing themselves with various effects and judging effects - I'd also like to see a return on Stormlash totem shamans had in MoP, I thought that was a nice addition for extra damage.

I can't think of others right now, but I hope single-minded fury gets a rework because even though it's awesome you can choose, TG will still always be the talent Warriors will use.

Comment by MurrmorMeerkat

Raiding is dying and instead of making it more accessible you don't change anything (and instead you are nerfing m+, very clever)

On Pronouns and Voice options, it's something they're still working on

How about making all hair colors available for each race? shouldn't be too much work...

Why would you ever use your slow motion mounts ever again?

Just buff the ilvl reward from normal timewalking to heroic. With normal loot as a reward timewalking is pretty useless outside of leveling.

They literally are doing the hair thing no reaosn to cry about pronouns

Comment by nozzlegear

> Ctrf+F PVP
> 3 results found, just a quick mention about tier sets being nerfed.
> Close tab 😪

Comment by darkyxyz

1) scrap the pronouns bull%^&*. stop trying to turn wow into twitter: the game

2) in pvp, you either have tier sets at full potential or you don't have them at all. the 50% nerf just feels awful for certain classes

3) 20 years in and we're still figuring out the gearing system. wow had this problem solved 14 years ago. ion is willing to die on the rng hill. rng is fun in moderation, not as only option.

4) make timewalking weekly. it legit harms no one. you don't have to do the turbulent blah blah blah. just give people more options to play the game.

Comment by KarthusTeemo

Sometimes reading these interviews it becomes very clear that the reason we can't get major desperately needed improvements is because the people in charge don't have the guts to actually do it.

Comment by nozzlegear

Sometimes reading these interviews it becomes very clear that the reason we can't get major desperately needed improvements is because the people in charge don't have the guts to actually do it.

What improvements would you like to see that you don't think they have the guts to do?

Comment by CashmereWizard

using the new system youre implementing for upgrades as the main reason against letting people spam lower keys to target pieces they arent getting to drop is kinda weird imo

Comment by Mapleine

Edit: I'll just blank this.

Honestly I don't even see the point of discussing this game at this stage, the level of apathy and lack of ambition when it comes to... literally anything in the game is very sad.

Comment by Fooysari

Personally I like homogenization for some things like survivability. Just give every class and spec the same tools or close enough.

Just because a player has the tools doesn't mean they will use them. The skill difference will still determine who rises to the top and who doesn't.

Comment by Flowerhorn

"However, cross-faction queued content is violating the opt-in mentality that they currently have. They want to move carefully but they are moving in that direction of tearing down barriers."

I am 95% sure that when they first announced cross faction content, they mentioned they wanted it as "opt in" as possible, and gave the example of a check box, that starts disabled by default, that enables cross faction instanced content.
They added that check box to custom group finder (The check box only LIMITS it to your own faction, and starts disabled by default, making it very much NOT opt in) to expand forming groups for M+ and pugging raids but not for random group finder.
Just add that check box to the random dungeon queue UI, there's open space directly left of the drop down to choose what you want to queue for.
If theyre concerned with new players queuing with opposite faction and getting confused why theyre doing a dungeon with other factions, make it like they do with every other major cosmetic option, lock it behind having a max level character that has cleared certain content/questlines.

Comment by dalch

You guys really need to proofread your posts.

Comment by Kabookiejoe

With CrossFaction guilds coming they should really consider unlocking the 8th tab for guild banks this point instead of having it locked behind an achievement

Comment by Bwgmon

In a world that has LFR open from the start, it would guarantee that everyone has seen the end of the raid in an LFR experience long before they got there with their friends.

Perhaps someone could fill me in since I haven't been super into raiding for a few expansions, but are there guilds that are both interested in raiding and take more than 6 weeks to clear them on Normal? I've always heard that the biggest barrier to doing Normal raids nowadays is getting the group together.

Opening the first wing of LFR seems like a good step, but would it really be bad if they released wings weekly instead of every other week?

Comment by evilmark443

I disagree with Ion about additional Evoker races being tricky. It's really not tricky at all, just make the race options replace the visage form. IMO Evoker should have worked that way from day 1.

Comment by Overhaul

Such a bad take, but I think it is to force the remaining Mythic guilds on dead servers to continue paying for transfers.

Mythic+ lockout is fine because it is for one run and by the time you refill the timer is already dead. Mythic raiding however is a full week and it isn't uncommon for people to leave after the first two bosses, even after 'promising' to stay, because they just want the higher ilvl gear rare drops that are BiS for many specs/classes (Looking at you Whispering Incarnate Icon). If you end up pulling a player who promises to stay and they end up being a jerk and leaving after the first two bosses, you're now stuck with 19 players and no one wants to miss those first two bosses due to BiS drops. It is fine if Blizzard kept the lockout for the first few weeks of release, but for months is just ridiculous.

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