Assistant WOW Game Director Ion Hazzikostas talks Legacy

[Hydra9268]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hEn8iVkOMd4

[Tactician]

Yeah, was about to post that here. All in all, these guys are pathetic. Just steal Rift's system with these "flexible" zones, really. But then again this "new" Blizzard is completely fail on so many levels.

[Hydra9268]

The thing to take away from this video is he said the decision to do legacy servers is above his pay grade.

[Drain]

He seems to know what he's talking about and understands the state the game is in right now, but confesses that he wants to focus on the future and also that the decision to host legacy servers is entirely out of his control or influence.

I especially disagree with the fact that leveling should be faster or have the option of skipping just to play with others. Your max level friend could have just rolled an alt. Leveling faster or skipping most of the game does not in any way help the game. It in fact cheapens every level, item, and content you're hopping over. The leveling should not ever have gotten faster, 1-60 should never have been shortened, nor any expansion bracket. One thing he mentioned was the fact that you outlevel most quests now, which goes to show you what a shitty state the game is in. Originally, you'd be hard pressed to outlevel quests. They only gave you just enough to get by, forcing you to go everywhere in the game, and that's how it should be. Now you can skip most of the game, or all of it if you just level in the dungeon finder, which has become the normal way to level.

It's ultimately pathetic when you don't even bother questing and just poof to dungeons all day. Players today don't even know where dungeons are located because they've never had to walk to them. The dungeon finder, along with heirlooms, are among the worst things ever put in the game. And despite how easy it would have been to just remove them, they refused to ever do so. They actually kept adding more heirlooms, as if you weren't OP enough just using the original set. Worse yet is that you used heirlooms past their bracket just for the XP boost, hurting your stats, but who cares, you level faster. I used every heirlooms from Wotlk in Cata, despite the gutter stats at that point, just for the XP boost. Dungeons required gearscore, but I just cheated it with items, which I'd carry to open the doors, but not actually fight in. Terrible system.

[Norjak]

It's clear his focus is entirely on Legion & the current version of the game. Not the best person to ask about legacy...he is right to say it's above his paygrade, because it is - if you are looking for a realistic answer, you need to go to somebody with a broader perspective of the company.

[ceoddyn]

I don't understand what is the point in saying he doesn't make the final decision? He is clearly part of the conversation that is taking place within Blizzard about whether they should commit resources to legacy servers.

Nobody has mentioned it in the thread, in this video he brings up the idea of fixing leveling in retail by having zones automatically scale to your level.

So basically they completely miss the point and are looking for any possible solution to not fix the problem and not have to bring us legacy servers. Stay tuned to find out whether they end up having to do something they really would not like to have to do.

[Jeniwyn]

Heres the thing. Ion isn't the guy who would be working on a Legacy project regardless. His job is to look forward and make new content so he is a fairly bad person to stick front of a camera to talk about it. He even said so himself in the end. His job is current wow, potential Legacy realms is for the higher ups to decide upon and build a team for if it comes to that.

I think he did a good job.

[Sirganksalot]

Ion hasn't really addressed any issues regarding the Legacy servers, nor is his opinion really relevant.

All he has managed to do is admit the game is currently in a poor state as a result of poorly thought out development.

[Arucado]

I don't even know why do you surprise. It's damn clear that their focus was Overwatch, and now is Wow Legion, they are not going to spend their resources now in opening an old shitty game that we love and most people don't care about.

What i can say is that maybe and only maybe, Blizzard licenses Nostalrius to keep their project, giving to blizzard some money (which i would say is that i most want), just to make us stop bothering them.

Just an opinion (well i think the first few lines are not an opinion but a fact).

[Galadourn]

I'm curious, haven't they realized at Blizzard that the game begins @ max level for the majority of players? That's what they aimed for when they were designing WoW . The thing is, leveling to max in Vanilla had achieved a golden balance between being frustrating and actually feeling rewarding to the player.

All the moronic level increases implemented in WoW's expansions achieved was to obliterate that balance and lead to bad design decisions.

I would have aimed for even lower level caps, like i.e. lvl 20 in original AD&D, as long as each level was harder to attain and offered satisfying rewards (abilities, etc.) to the player, but 60 was ok with the pace implemented in Vanilla because the first levels were really achieved within a couple of hours if you were not entirely new to the game.

But this constant stretching of the leveling process I think deserves a Golden Berry award for whomever came up with that idea.