As much as i agree with Midnight "directional change"... I can't help but think

Community General Discussion
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We’re paying you to fix issues you’ve created by not having the foresight to understand adding 5 mobility spells, 5 crowd control spells, 3 burst cool-downs, 3 defensive cool-downs, 429 modifiers and proc based rotation which can include anywhere from 4 to 9 buttons has created a negative feedback loop where both PVE and PVP have slowly become toxic.

Why is Ion still game director if every decision he’s made, he’s had to course correct the expansion after?

The direction you took the game in BFA was horrid, the feedback was Universally negative. You then double down on the decisions of borrowed power in Shadowlands, which again were UNIVERSALL NEGATIVE. You tell everybody “WE ARE SORRY” - “WE SHOULD HAVE LISTENED TO FEEDBACK”.

And then you created Dragonflight, granted it wasn’t as NEGATIVE as BFA or Shadowlands because you god rid of your garbage borrowed power systems and gated content, but it was by all accounts a weak expansion, it just didn’t have worse features. You then spend 2 expansions (Dragonflight & War Within) focusing on making every spec insanely strong with every button avaiable to mankind, and although you’re not saying sorry, you have basically done the same thing.

Any body with half a brain could understand adding so much player power would make every aspect of the game toxic, because Battlegrounds, Dungeons, Raids, Arena, World content all have to be experienced through your class, and if you created a toxic feedback loop with the class or it’s interaction with other classes, you damage every aspect of the game.

Granted this isn’t as big as a problem as borrowed power systems, but i cannot help but see Midnight as same expansion reset that each Borrowed power system brought, but in a different skin.

I just don’t think whoever is the head decision maker, whether this is Ion, or somebody else, really understands what people want from the game, and although I understand this is subjective, but I think people want a game where they can log in after work, or school, and just play and progress, and its not the content that deters people, it’s class design, whether it deterring people through borrowed power, or the horrific class design that War Within has, no matter what content you play, class is the most important, and you need to look at both the user playing, and the user playing with.

For example. You might think its “fun” that a Beast Master hunter summons 900 beasts, but it isn’t fun for the user facing them, or fun for the user playing with them.

I just think Blizzard need management change and until this happens, we will end up with the same 1 or 2 expansion cycle where they do not listen to feedback, and destroy some aspect of the game due to their “decisions” then we pay for an expansion with very little content whilst they course correct.

Let me know your thoughts.

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I’ve recently watched Ion’s speech in Malmö and honestly he is completely disconnected of reality, it’s blatantly obvious that he doesn’t play the game anymore.

He was basically blaming players for not playing the game as he intended, and his tone was more of a businessman running a company than a person loving what he does.

I don’t know if he’s always been like this but given the circumstances of this wonderful game being in decline I have no choice but to think that we need somebody else in charge.

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The reason why every spec has to have everything is that M+ exists. That bit of content is what the entire game is now balanced around.

They seem to be walking it back to some degree for Midnight. Perhaps Blizzard even regrets implementing it.

Unfortunately, there is no putting the djinn back in the bottle.

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Oh, they definitely do regret implementing it long-term. Because it made raiding less important, allowed players to gain gear more easily (despite RNG) AND it is a potential problem to engagement metrics. Let’s be honest, what content is more perfect than Mythic+ is when it comes to the player benefits?

You have no weekly/daily lockout really. You can run keys infinitely. You get gear easily and can even trade it. It only takes 5 players and by now you don’t even need to time it for the gear rewards…

It’s from a design perspective the best cost/benefit activity in the game.

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Ion became game director when Legion came out.

This means the expansion he over saw were

Battle for Azeroth
Shadowlands
Dragonflight
War Within.

Guess which expansion have all resulted in Blizzard either apologizing for not listening to feedback, or spending each expansion re-inventing systems and have all been widely considered the worst expansion to date?

Battle for Azeroth
Shadowlands
Dragonflight
War Within.

Who was the game director of these four expansions?

ION!

BFA and Shadowlands are awful expansions.

Dragonflight and War Within aren’t as bad ,but they suffer with horrific class balance issues which has tarnished every aspect of the game.

Ion apologized at the end of SL for not listening to players and losing 50%+ of the player count

Ion has now turned to blaming people for not wanting to play War Within how it “should be played”

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You know the film Monster Inc where they harvest screams (and later laughter) ?

Well i believe Ion and the team harvest negative energy.

The experience they want for us, it to feel like you are being kicked in the giblets repeatedly the entire time you are playing.

They don’t want you to quit, just keep you in a perfect equilibrium of “omg this sucks/this thing is kinda cool”. Like…a purgatory of suffering xD

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That’s interesting to know… Perhaps we really DO need a change of game director.

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I mean its all his opinion. Take it with a pinch of salt.

I’m no fan of Ion’s but hell thats a one sided narrative if I’ve ever seen one.

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Well, from my experience a game director can make a hell of a difference.

Destiny 2 did change its game director 1 year ago. The current expansion Edge of Fate as result KILLED ALMOST THE ENTIRE GAME.

Here, even with data:

https://popularity.report

The game sits at 109k across all platforms. It used to be 600k on average. It’s likely Destiny 2 will be dead in 2 weeks, with the game vanishing in 2 months from the surface of earth.

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How is it an opinion? Blizzard have literally admitted that BFA and Shadowlands were failures, multitude of interviews and stats that prove it from blizzard themselves. Dragonflight did better, but by blizzard own admission, they changed the direction of War Within because Dragonflght was preforming poorly, hence why patch 2 and 3 of War Within became filler patches with none of the original story likes of War Within Playing out.

As much as I do heavily dislike Ion and blame him, that you can say is my opinion, the failure of retail and the expansion he has directed is not an opinion and is factual.

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Shadowlands was horrible no doubts.

BFA however I have mixed feelings… I hated the grind and gear system but I loved how active world PvP was, it’s probably the thing I miss the most because WPVP is dead now…

I don’t think class balance is the real issue here, I think it’s more about design philosophy, though there’s definitely been dark times regarding balance (I still have nightmares with AugEvoker from DF season 2).

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BFA lost an absurd amount of players and the only reason which by their own admission subscription remained decent was the release of Wow Classic, which came out during Battle for Azeroth. If you look at achievement trackers, less people PvP above 1000 rating now then they did in S4 of Shadowlands which is crazy.

Regardless of how you play the game, your class is the experience whether your a paladin raiding, or a paladin mythic plussing , or a paladin in PvP, the experience is still first and foremost a paladin.

the class balance both in numbers and design is horrific and has been through all the borrowed power and now within the current DF/TWW because the game is now well know to be played and tracked via Addons. Why do you think the big changes of midnight is the removal of addons and the class changes? It’s because these are the biggest factors of modern wow

However what I am trying to say is anybody with foresight and love for the game? Understands that DF class design is incredibly harmful to the game as you already max out on CC, mobility, modifiers and burst/defensive cooldowns, and every redesign resulted in even more powerful interaction. This destroys player trust and destroys the game mode they are playing.

As game director he should have the foresight and knowledge to understand the harm Dragonflight talent design created? But now we’re all paying for Midnight for him to once again course correct after not being able to understand.

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They work on expansions years in advance.
If they had completely course corrected based on our feedback during BfA, we wouldn’t have had a new expansion for at least 3-4 years.

Now, I hated Shadowlands just as much as the next guy, but… Having nothing instead for such a long time? That could’ve been the death blow for WoW.

While I agree on the management change (mostly just Ion), it won’t change anything in regards to ’reaction time’. Blizzard is a big, slow machine full of red tape.

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People like to blame and put their anger at just one figure and person instead of looking at the whole picture

Because it has added quite a lot of Microsoft bureaucratic layers before there were Activision ones .the laying off of people has not helped either .

I would wager vivendi was handling blizzard much better then what Activision and now microrsoft are doing to blizzard .

Call of duty is now being overshadowed by battlefield 6 .overwatch 2 popularity has waned by marvel rivals .

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This, and ultimately esports, that were it started, you know the sport that is not a sport and nobody watches or cares about. Especially wow esports, almost nobody cares at all. They need to stop trying to make it work in a mmoRPG. But ye they won’t.

M+ is the natural evolution of that snooze fest people call raiding. It is just not fun needing to show up once a week at x and deal with 19 other buffoons. They should make new raids but leave it on the back burner, 1 difficulty and not to much man power into it. People wants fast dopamine today, not slow boomer waiting around 9 hours per pull.

They should look into making classes unique and work in m+ imo.