blaming the failures of an expansion cant be pinned on 1 single dev nor should it be.
Ion looked alarmingly unwell and tired on the livestream , man needs a holiday on a nice quiet beach i think
that’s his job, he accepted it and the salary that goes with, if he can’t handle it which he obviously can’t he should man up and ask for help, Instead he uses his Lawyer training to baffle people with BS and never gives a straight answer to anything…But thats what he’s paid to do
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just because somethings your job doesnt give people a license to treat you like garbage tho, hence the argument OP is making.
If youd ever worked a retail job before youd know how awful some people can be , just because " its your job " to take the abuse.
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Its not only Shadowlands though, look back at Azerite gear and all the pushback even in Alpha when that first came out…kinda says it all
But to Answer the OP, I do agree Ion does not deserve " the hate" but he certainly does deserve the criticism, that’s his job and if he can’t do that and accept it then he should not be doing that job in the first place.
Personally for me the game has had a lot of issues with convoluted badly designed systems and awfully bad implementation of content and gone down hill a lot since Ion has been Head Dev, His fault…I duno, but he is head of that dept.
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Ion is that you? when’s the next court case
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Legion-bfa-SL
Wq-wq-wq
Farm artifact currency-farm war resources and island-farm anima and soul ash
Mage tower-island-torghast
Artifact power-azerite power- covenant and conduit
Ion is developing the same system over and over, with minor changes.
You can t even question him for his job…because he s doing anything, not working at all.
Just spamming same concept, expac after extpac.
That s truly unforgivable, let s add also sub drop…well, i confirm: Ion should leave
P.S. who decided to hire just 2-3 devs for class balancing? Ion or CEO? Right answer, the main developer----}. Ion
P.P.S. Ion ofc should be criticized, not hated, nobody should be hated for its different opinions/plans
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I think when you work as the sort of face of the company you expect a lot of heat aimed at you.
Saying that, I agree with you OP. I don’t personally hate him, he is a sort of guy who gets things done.
I still think WoW is better then a lot of games out there personally too.
I agree with shareholders putting pressure on timegate for money milking.
And i dont blame ion for that.
Instead, the unbalance in the game pvp wise has nothing tondonwith shareholders who never player wown1 hour in thier life.
Thats on Ion and his team yo balance things and dont make borroewd power sustems that unbalance the game.
The pve drops its on ion and his team also.
They have solutions to the issues and can still keep people grind and sub for shareholders to be sattisfied but also the players.
Corporate greed its ruining the planet in all industriea not only wow or gaming in general.
I dont want ion to be fired, i just want
For him to find a balance between what we the fustomers want and the highchain investors!
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As much as I hate current expansion I still wouldn’t blame Ion for that.
I would blame whole dev team that has something to say in design decisions for:
- Not having a damn clue where the game is suppose to be heading.
- Complete lack of vision.
It seems to me that they are going in blind, listening to whoever screams the loudest. Their target audience is “everyone” and that just doesn’t work.
They should just pick to who they are trying to make the game and stick with it. “Hardcore casual pvp pve gladiator mythic raider pet battler M+ pusher collector” just doesn’t exist, and if it does, its a rare spieces.
Its not wrong to have many areas of gameplay but its wrong to swing focus each expansion
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Tbh, seeing him like that on the Blizzcon livestream made me rethink my whole position on him. No fecking way you let yourself get into that shape over something you truly love or want to be doing, I know there are some caveats to this ofc but the man looked straight up sick and overworked to the bone.
It might have been the stage lighting but it genuinely seemed like he hasn’t been sleeping or eating right for weeks. His skin looked almost green ffs, I felt sorry for the guy honestly.
I’m the first to lay the blame at his feet like the vast majority of players, but that wasn’t right when he appeared on stream.
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The
Main problemm with wow is that it has
No continuity on most good stuff.
They always try to bring new stuff and forget about designs that work.
Pvp gear- we had it fine, not 1 seaeon the same.
Pve gearing - changed somewhat every exp.
Borrowed power systems changed always.
The game doesnt feel
Like an entire pizza, feels like u ordered a big pizza , and every piece of
It has different ingriedients.
The customers are also part of this, we as customers always want something new, and they try to give it to us.
We should just
Keep the same slice and change the ingridients from
Time to time.
Wow is nr1 mmo, but i played some gw2
Even when an expansions came, the core base of the game its kinda the same with new ingridients.
U love or hate the new stuff, but the core game feels the same after all those years.
Wow has lost its identity over time.
Every expansion is disconected and has such different plays and sustems.
Thats ine big issues with wow nowadays!
If u could get to play every exp on ur lets say” mage”- its like 8 different styles of play, we some similarities.
Hope they get to reunite the pieces some day and this shareholders can gofkthemselfs!
P
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He did indeed look very sick. The fact he didn’t do a lot of presentation also kinda tipped me off that he’s either very stressed or unwell.
We don’t know, the guy might be actually ill and still be working hard. We don’t know what’s going on unless it’s made public. Hell, he might have been recovering from covid, who knows!
Either way, whoever is in charge gets the blame. It’s the same with every development cycle and expansion. Ghostcrawler had people actually threaten his life over WoW. That’s how jaded some people in the community get. I understand being unhappy with design decisions but to actually go to those lengths is just ridiculous.
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He is the game director.
He either is directly behind all the bad design choices.
Or he’s allowing bad choices done by others.
Either way he needs to go.
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he doesn’t deserve hate maybe, but thats as a person. as the games director he does, and he should be replaced as he is taking the game down to new depths.
what? lose money? im sure investors would be far more happy with the financial income of WoW with a 12M sub like in WotLK rather than the 4M~ sub in BfA. and i dont want to give a current estimate because people are saying like 40% loss of subs recently but not sure on what strength of evidence they are basing that.
believe me, with players who love wow and hate whats happened to it, theres enough anger to go round and Blobby and those who are similarly at fault are not forgotten.
director? as in person at the top of the chain with all the responsibility? who should we be angry at? the bottom of the chain? the tea lady? the mail boy? the graphic designer apprentice?
true, he was meant to have had a hand in making ulduar as great as it was. but he obviously is not fit for the position he currently holds. that isn’t to say he’s not talented in other fields, he’s just destroying the game while he holds the position he does.
he is a lawyer, what do you expect from that sort of mindset?
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Hey, I love alcohol and I’m in a pretty bad shape.
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The whole world would be better without modern “businessmen” who don’t give a damn about the future and only hoard cash that they think they can take with them when it is time to kick the bucket.
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He deserves a bit of hate, since he’s the one in charge of leading the direction and validates or declines ideas.
However, he’s not the only one in charge and blaming him for a lot of things ain’t fair. For instance, Jeremy Feasel is the guy in charge of systems, therfore if they suck then it’s on him. As regarding class design and balance, if you don’t like both, then blame Holinka. If lore is being poorly written then blame Steve Danuser. So on and forth.
Tldr: He deserves it, but some others guys at blizzard also do.
That will be Ion. He was in favour of removing it completely in WoD, but stuck it behind Pathfinder after a colossal backlash from the community.
On topic, he DOES deserve criticism as the overall lead designer, but there are other people equally to blame, as Shihiroki mentioned. As for the hate thing, then no, because it then becomes personal thus inferring that a player actually knows Ion RL when they actually don’t.
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Investors are not game designers and they are not executives. They don’t hold much power over the company’s decision making and many of the choices taken in Shadowlands go directly against investor interests.
Things like quicker leveling making buying a boost a waste of money. Conduit swapping not costing gold, hurting token sales. The main thing Shadowlands did that is in investor interest is the entire covenant system and weekly recurring content with the campaign.
It’s good that the campaign is over before the patch ended btw - now casual players are free to covenant swap and do the other campaigns too.
No, he doesn’t deserve hate, no one does for doing their job. However it is plain to see the dev team needs freshening up. They no longer seem to be intune with a significant section of the player base.
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