WoW promises streamer Preach “the beginning of a new era”
Former WoW streamer Preach is back with a very long and interesting video. He’s seen everything at Blizzard and has a lot to talk about.
What was wrong with Preach? Over a year ago we reported on Preach turning away from World of Warcraft and no longer reporting on the game. On the one hand, this was due to the ongoing scandals surrounding Blizzard, but on the other hand to the development of World of Warcraft. “The passion is gone,” he explained at the time.
A few weeks ago, Preach then surprised Twitter with a short video. He and World of Warcraft Game Director Ion Hazzikostas were seen sitting in front of the large orc statue on the Blizzard campus.
Preach has now published the almost 70-minute video from this visit and allows some interesting insights from the Blizzard studio.
What is this visit? Preach visited Blizzard – and of his own accord. He wasn’t paid for the trip by Blizzard, nor was it initiated by the developers. Instead, he wanted to see for himself and asked to see the studio. To his amazement, Blizzard agreed, giving him “more insight than any streamer has ever done before.” He spent a week on campus, was able to conduct a lot of interviews there and experienced numerous changes to Blizzard himself.
Preach still had to sign an NDA (“Non-Disclosure Agreement”) for some things – because he also gets to see a lot of content from WoW and other games there that is not yet intended for the public.
At the beginning of the video, Preach emphasizes that, unlike other interviews and visits, this time it is about “unprepared interviews” – so the questions were not discussed in advance or the topics were defined, but Preach simply speaks freely about it what is important to him.
Who did Preach talk to? While not all of the conversations are in his first video, and not all of them were filmed, Preach was able to speak at length with some of the “very important” people around World of Warcraft. This includes:
- Holly Longdale, Vice President and Executive Producer for World of Warcraft
- John Hight, General Manager for World of Warcraft
- Ion Hazzikostas, Game Director of World of Warcraft
The WoW team has reinvented itself, changing a lot
The actually very critical and doubtful Preach seems to be very impressed by the visit to Blizzard. Accordingly, he also called the video with the pompous name “A new era for World of Warcraft” – and he obviously stands by this statement.
Return to old strengths: The return to a talent system was heavily inspired by WoW Classic. After the launch of Classic, it was clear that players love the regular distribution of talent points and that there is value in such a system alone that has been lost over the years.
Content that lasts: You want to move away from the “modular game design”, in which new features and content come with each expansion, which then often have no meaning in the next patch. There should still be features that are tied to an expansion – such as dragon riding in Dragonflight – but you want to make a lot more content permanently accessible so that it becomes “evergreen content” and you don’t have to reinvent the wheel every time .
Time should be valued: In the past expansions, WoW has tried to use various systems to get the players to log in every day or every week if possible. The lack of catch-up systems created a “compulsion” to play if you didn’t want to fall behind. Although this has already changed in the last patches, it is represented in almost all content in Dragonflight. A major negative example here was Torghast, which was seen by many as a constraint and necessity early in Shadowlands.
Ion Hazzikostas said:
It’s Tuesday when you play in Europe. You had a long day at work, went out to dinner with your friends and come home pretty exhausted. And then you realize, “Damn, I haven’t done my torghast for the week.”
Do you have a good feeling about World of Warcraft then? Absolutely not. So… why are we doing this then? One solution here is catch-up mechanisms. When you know you can just catch up next week, the psychology is suddenly very different. Maybe it’s more flexible, you can do more in a week, or the reward isn’t so exclusive that you can get it from other sources as well. […]
Then suddenly it’s okay. You no longer have to log in if you don’t want to.
Preach also repeatedly emphasizes how much he felt the passion of the Blizzard employees. They seem to genuinely love World of Warcraft, and “the only times he should turn the camera off” was when staff were enthusiastically talking about what they were working on that wasn’t ready for release yet.
For WoW fans who are proficient in the English language, the whole video is well worth watching.
The third era of World of Warcraft
In another part of the interview, Hazzikostas explains some interesting details – like why Shadowlands ended up the way it did. A WoW expansion is usually in development for much longer than the players see. Hazzikostas says that “before the launch of Battle for Azeroth, we already knew what the features for Shadowlands would be”.
In terms of the game’s design philosophy, Hazzikostas sees three main eras of World of Warcraft.
- The first era went from vanilla to Mists of Pandaria: Until then, the developers always added new, complex content to the game and always brought innovations – regardless of whether it was game systems, classes or skills.
- The second era went up to and including Shadowlands: Blizzard created a “modular system” known to others as “Borrowed Power”. In each expansion, features were introduced that then disappeared completely at the end of the expansion, but left the character weaker.
- The third era begins with Dragonflight: The focus on long-lasting, permanent systems in World of Warcraft is greater again. There are fewer new systems, but they should be supported in the long term.
The coming weeks and months will probably show whether Dragonflight can really satisfy not only Preach but also all the other fans. Now the developers have to prove that they really understand what the community wants – and add lots of content to somehow satisfy the insatiable hunger.
What do you think of this visit to Blizzard? Are you as optimistic as Preach? Or do you think that’s “a lot of blah blah”?
Reference-mein-mmo.de