WoW: More patches and more flexible reactions – Hazzikostas in an interview
The upcoming patch 10.0.7 will be the second content update of WoW: Dragonflight and will not only bring us the Forbidden Island, but also a lot of other content – for example the vault of Zskera. For many players, however, the patch is just a small prologue to bridge the waiting time until 10.1. Because Ember from Neltharion then brings us a completely new zone and as much content as is usual for a large patch.
But for the Blizzard developers, 10.0.7 is more than a prologue. It allows them to no longer necessarily release content together in a patch. Instead, the devs have the freedom to cater to different groups of players individually, which they plan to increase in the future. That and many other things were the themes we talked about with WoW (buy now ) Game Director Ion Hazzikostas spoke.
Interview with WoW Game Director Ion Hazzikostas
The relaxed conversation was not only about the upcoming patch 10.0.7, but also about the developers’ ideas and plans for how they would like to tackle things in the future. We have summarized the most important points of our conversation for you.
- In WoW: Dragon Flight the developers intend to release patches much more regularlyeach of which also provides relevant content – although not always for all players.
- Devs used to leave fully developed features lying around for weeks because they were only planned for the next big patch. In the future you want to publish such things independently of each other and with it react more flexibly to the demands of the players.
- Patch 10.0.7 offers, among other things, new content for open-world players because one had the impression that they were done with the current stuff. But they didn’t want to end the first season because there are still many guilds in the raid. So you publish the content independently of each other.
- In addition, 10.0.7 should be considered a kind of prologue that heralds the story for 10.1. This should make the transitions between updates smoother and smoother than in the past.
- Patch 10.0.7 is much more than just a prologue. It offers more content and repeatable tasks. But the developers don’t want to wait too long before 10.1 is added as the main update.
- The onyx base ring does not count as borrowed power for developers. However, the item should still be significantly stronger than other items and thus indirectly nerf the remaining content from the first season. However, we don’t want it to be so strong that players feel compelled to come back and claim the ring in future patches. The new items from Season 2 should replace the ring in the medium term.
- Typically, developers save major class revisions for changing an extension. In some cases, however, the grievances are so great that the devs have to intervene. Above all, they look at the feedback from the players. The class revisions that have now been announced (priest, shaman, druid, etc.) will probably be the last of the current expansion – at least to this extent. Minor adjustments to talents will continue to be made as developers see fit.
- The tier set bonuses can also be used to strengthen or weaken various talents, without having to adjust the talents directly.
- The new class/race combinations are primarily based on purely logical considerations. It is no longer a matter of saying which people and which classes go together or not. Rather, why shouldn’t people X have learned class Y over the years. There’s no reason worgen haven’t learned the art of monks over the years. With other combinations, such as druids, things are different.
- The Winter Fur Furbolgs will not play a major role in the fate of the Dragon Isles. But they are part of the population of the island. Faction introduction is more of a cool feel-good story and less of a faction grind. Therefore, you tend to collect your reputation through one-off story quests and fewer repeatable tasks.
- The developers would like to do solo content like the mage tower or the vault of Zskera more often, as they see how many players are enjoying it. However, such content is relatively complicated to implement and of course takes up resources from other features. Still, we’ll likely continue to see things like this in the future.
- According to Hazzikostas, the storm events are part of the “core experience” of an MMO. Lots of players working together, albeit often uncoordinated, toward a goal. Of course, that can’t be compared to a dungeon or raid, but there are many players for whom that is the core of an MMORPG. Therefore, such events will continue to be an important part of WoW.
- The items that come in the trading post do not follow any special direction, or even indicate the story of the future. Instead, you just want to use a few cool optics and make sure that the widest possible range is offered. On the contrary, they even try to exclude items that fit the current story and prefer to offer them as a reward in the current content.
- Incidentally, of all the upcoming features, Ion Hazzikostas is most looking forward to the Zskera Vault. He is curious to see whether the general public will find treasure hunting as good as he does.
Are you already looking forward to the upcoming patch 10.0.7, which will be released on March 22, 2023, or does the update not have enough to offer you and is it just a small bite for you before the main course 10.1? Or do you think it’s good when the developers regularly release such small patches, even if there isn’t always something for every type of player?
Reference-www.buffed.de
