Guest of The War Within Press event in London, Gamosaurus had the exclusive opportunity to conduct a 1-to-1 interview with Ion Hazzikostas, Game Director of World of Warcraft. The opportunity to discuss some hot topics from the end of Dragonflight but also the new features of The War Within, mainly focused on the PvE content of WoW.
We have therefore separated the different answers according to specific themes. Do not hesitate to use the summary to navigate this article.
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Questions more about Dragonflight PvE content
You will find the answers here from Ion Hazzikostas regarding topics such as the specialization reworks currently being expanded, the limitation of WA in the context of Mythic Raids, as well as his opinion on Mythic Tindral, one of the most complex and difficult Bosses of the history of the MMO.
We begin our recap of the interview around the important topics of the Dragonflight period with the impact of the Rework of the Paladin's Retribution specialization currently being expanded. This subject had already been raised during a previous interview with Ion Hazzikostas, when this rework was implemented.
While the Retribution Paladin represents a very significant portion of Raid DPS since its rework (even too much for some players), does he consider that this rework model being expanded should have been repeated for less popular specializations like the Elemental Shaman?
The director of World of Warcraft continues to think that the reworks currently being expanded, totally transforming the gameplay of a specialization, are not necessarily the best tools due to their impact on part of the community. They have to relearn how to play their character overnight. However, he and his teams are very satisfied with the result and consider that the experiment will be repeated if they deem it necessary to in-depth rework a specialization currently being extended.
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Another sensitive subject during Dragonflight was the limitation of WeakAuras on Raids. While certain WAs made it possible to greatly simplify the lives of players, Blizzard decided to limit their use, before going back.
“We want to ensure that players at the highest level succeed in obtaining a World First or a place in the HoF thanks to their preparation, coordination and impeccable execution rather than because they have the best developers in WA and tools to make their job easier. »
However, he understands that current combat requires a lot of tools and that by limiting the capacity of WA, the developers had pushed players to use ever more complex macros in order to compensate for this change. The head of World of Warcraft nevertheless indicates that this is not a war between Blizzard and the developers of these tools; he also believes that communication between the two groups is very important and the goal is to find a balance on this.
In connection with the WA and the Mythical Progress, we could not help but mention the Tindral case. Nicknamed “ the guild killer » so many groups have disbanded or decided to stop Raid because of its difficulty, the Boss was far from unanimous among the community. However, the Game Director of World of Warcraft has a slightly more global approach to combat, considering that it is one of the best in the expansion from a design point of view.
“It’s a fight that provides constant challenge for all roles, with many different mechanics to execute over multiple phases. In addition, we were able to integrate dragon flying in an interesting way. I find that fights that can use the setting in a natural way are always better experiences for the players.”
Note that he mentioned Tindral a little later in the interview, when he presented the challenges around the first Raid of The War Within, while we avoided bouncing back on it following the trauma suffered by our 554 sweaters made to beat him on his Mythical version.
His opinion and responses to the “WoW is too difficult” debate
We discussed a hot topic in recent weeks, mainly within the Anglo-Saxon gaming community: “ World of Warcraft is too difficult » (WoW is too hard)! This controversy has caused a lot of ink to flow between casual players and the most invested. We therefore took advantage of our interview with the person responsible for WoW to get his point of view on this subject.
According to him, the game is not necessarily too difficult, it is in fact very complex at high levels. Ion Hazzikostas hopes that this aspect of WoW will continue to be extremely demanding for the most organized and prepared players.
However, it is considered that WoW has become very complex due to the multitude of information that a new player or a player returning to the MMO must understand in the first hours of play. This is why the Blizzard teams have a lot of worked on the interface aspect, with better visuals, additional options and more directive information on the basic UI.
“We are trying to ensure that players do not feel obliged to download a lot of addons to be able to enjoy the game. Whether they choose to do so is not a problem, but we would like them to be able to play without if they wish. »
Picking up on his answer, we mention a lack of an interface that would guide a beginner player, potentially via arrows that could visually indicate important elements such as his resources to use, his main spells in his rotation or his defensive and offensive CDs.
Ion Hazzikostas responded that this was something his teams were currently working on and that the work done on the Alpha was only the beginning. He added that they were always looking to make the UI both freer for those who want to customize it, but also easier to learn and more educational for less experienced players.
Note that he also cited the issue of game complexity when discussing Depths and Heroic Talents (next chapter of this article).
Ion Hazzikostas' answers regarding PvE topics in The War Within
Here we address the question of new heroic talents and their impact on class balancing, the subject of buffs in Raids (bring the buff and not the player), the presence of legendaries during The War Within, the importance Depths in the expansion's PvE content as well as items on the expansion's first raid.
Related to our question about the rework of specializations in the expansion, we discussed the impact of heroic talents on class balancing. According to Ion Hazzikostas, the idea is to offer options to add more personality to talents, but also to facilitate balancing between classes. In addition, by limiting the size of the new Heroic talent tree, the discovery of these points and their understanding would be easier.
He also hopes that these new talents will make the choices within the current trees (class and specialization) more dynamic, which are sometimes a little too rigid on certain specializations.
Note that he considers that the balancing work on The War Within is only just beginning and that this is at the heart of their concern during this entire testing phase, both in Alpha and in Beta.
Another very recurring topic among Raid players, especially at the highest level, concerns Class-specific Buffs. Thus, with now around ten buffs unique to each class and sometimes to certain specializations, composing a Mythical Raid becomes particularly difficult. We end up choosing a Buff rather than a player (as opposed to the famous “Bring the player not the class” of a little over a decade ago) and certain classes are completely set apart in this equation.
“We like the fact that players need to think to compose a Raid, especially as this maintains a very varied representation of classes and specializations. Without it, Raids would be made up of much less variety. »
However, he agrees that certain specializations deserve to have their own Buff or an equivalent. On the other hand, he does not consider scrolls to be a viable alternative, since that would exclude certain specializations and classes. He adds that according to him, the case of Heroism and Ground Combat are very different since they are necessary in groups in Mythic +, the low number of players in a group justifies a generalization of these skills.
As for legendaries, he quickly confirmed that there would be no no legendary on the first season of The War Within. He believes that it is an interesting tool in the game but that you have to know how to make it a little rare and special. Thus, he mentions that Fyr'Alath, Fyrakk's two-handed weapon, became a legendary weapon quite late in development, since its design was so impressive that it would have been a shame to make it a simple late weapon. of landing.
Regarding the random aspect of loots in the weekly chest (the Vault), Ion Hazzikostas considers that the current system sufficiently protects players against lack of luck.
“The idea is not to have a seller from whom you buy equipment. Randomness and progression over time in the power of your equipment are major elements of an MMORPG. »
However, he adds that the new Vault row in PvE via the Depths will allow a larger portion of purely PvE players to obtain better coins each week. Note that he also confirmed that this new game mode will offer, at its maximum difficulty level, “end-game” rewards as well as set pieces. The idea really being to make it an alternative to Raid or MM+ for players looking to play difficult content, but who don't necessarily have the time to invest in relatively long activities.
Finally, he used the example of Tindral, with the flight from platform to platform, to discuss certain new features on the first Raid of The War Within. He explained in particular that there would be new game mechanics with fairly vertical combat and a lot of magic. We therefore consider it possible that a Boss will force us to use spider webs to move from platform to platform, but by climbing the latter.
That's our summary of our exclusive conversation with Ion Hazzikostas, Game Director of World of Warcraft. Do not hesitate to consult our other articles on The War Within and in particular our detailed opinion on the Depths after our first test on the Alpha of the new WoW expansion.