WIRED Interview with Ion Hazzikostas - How World of Warcraft Has Evolved

Live Posted 2020/05/11 at 8:44 AM by Archimtiros

WIRED interviewedWoW had become less socialGreg StreetJ. Allen BrackfantasticRead the full interview at WIRED
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Games are very rapidly solved these days. The internet as a whole, the world as a whole, has refined the process of accelerating and socializing information, figuring out problems.

You’d have a whole competitive hierarchy in a local arcade, a local video game store, where there was some character that was perceived as the best or the strongest because some person in the neighborhood was great with them. But in the next town over, arcade regulars battled with different tricks, different strategies, a different hierarchy of characters. Information was fragmented, localized.

The reality is that almost everybody was playing the game wrong. The internet as a whole, the world as a whole, has refined the process of accelerating and socializing information, figuring out problems.

Today, people are almost trained to min-max. The community pushes people in that direction, especially socially. Even if it’s not your preferred playstyle, the people who may want you in your group or may not, are holding you to some of those standards. Once it’s knowable, you’re expected to know.

Check the PinsEvolving Social Dynamics

Players were much more likely to be tolerant of each other’s faults. You probably weren’t going to kick your healer who made a mistake from the group, because then you’d be back to spamming chat for 30 more minutes.

class Discord

It’s amazing how some of the old tropes you never quite get away from. I actually have a coworker who was one of the original developers on a World of Warcraft, whose name you'd definitely recognize if I said it, whose own personal WoW Classic group split up at level 60 over loot drama in Blackrock. This is a group of developers who played the game 15 years ago, worked on the game 15 years ago.

War never changesCapturing the Mystery

One of the biggest things that’s exciting about the concept of an MMO is going into an unexplored, undiscovered world. It’s almost the promise of something that somehow breaks all the rules we were talking about when it comes to how players understand and deconstruct systems. We have an incredibly passionate community we couldn't be more grateful for, but we're still always chasing that mystery, that fantasy of the unexplored and undiscovered.

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Comment by Drhankeey"social evolution"? .. that's a typo, I'm sure they meant to write the correct thing which is social devolution.Comment by ThoorinI find it almost funny to read what suggests Ion DOES understand, but acts opposite to what his understanding is.

If you KNOW people are conditioned to min-max, then the RIGHT choice is Legion, with launch-day things like legendaries, that can be ballpark-gauged WITHOUT number crunching. Yes, people quickly figured which ones would be 'optimal' which could have been solved by just basing their acquisition on hard-to-get currency rather than rng, but several of them had flavor, survivability or utility aspects that were FUN. And if you need more progression to a rigid acquisition curve, then bring back reforging, upgrades, socketing, or something like that.

What did he bring in next, instead? A bazillion-trait labyrinth of traits and talents and essences that NOBODY can navigate WITHOUT relying on raidbots or simulationcraft or some such to navigate...

In Pandaria and WoD, the monotony of dailies was the biggest gripe leveled at devs. Legion answered that briliantly with the zone emissary and World Quests that practically guaranteed there will always be some quests you want to do, for a reward you want to get.

What is Ion doing now, instead? Yep - diluting WQs, and going back to 'same old same old' 3 quests every effing day till you drop... ffs, Ion.

What I completely DON'T understand, is that Ion and even Mike don't seem to get that the decision to de-compartmentalize smaller server communities, add finders etc. while not providing social tools to keep up with those changes was what killed the social aspect.

Back in Wrath, leveling a first toon was a half-year endavour unless you could play 24/7 for a month. This sort of investment meant you didn't want to make your toon a social reject through bad behavior, and if you did something bad, it hurt. With toons becoming more expendable and broadening range of people you meet ingame, to keep people behaving, they should have come with SOME way to encourage friendly behavior. They did not... that's all there's to it. Contrary, they went even further 'breaking' things. In Pandaria, it was still possible to wipe for hours in LFR. Most dropped, but if a few people explained the encounter and organized the group, the kill would eventually happen. And now... lowering the difficulty isn't the answer.

Why complain people don't communicate when devs do their best to remove the NEED to communicate?Comment by Peredhil

Back in Wrath, leveling a first toon was a half-year endavour unless you could play 24/7 for a month. This sort of investment meant you didn't want to make your toon a social reject through bad behavior, and if you did something bad, it hurt. With toons becoming more expendable and broadening range of people you meet ingame, to keep people behaving, they should have come with SOME way to encourage friendly behavior. They did not... that's all there's to it. Contrary, they went even further 'breaking' things. In Pandaria, it was still possible to wipe for hours in LFR. Most dropped, but if a few people explained the encounter and organized the group, the kill would eventually happen. And now... lowering the difficulty isn't the answer.

Why complain people don't communicate when devs do their best to remove the NEED to communicate?Comment by 1910828Crossrealm and sharding makes the world less social automatically. Both from how I behave towards others and vice versa. When I see others doing world content, I honestly cant tell the difference from those players joining me for a world quest or the island expedition NPCs I beat up every week. There are never any words written, from myself or anyone in the group. General chat is 99% coords to an occational rare and thats it. Even if the game rewards me for interracting with others, I never feel like doing it, because it doesnt give me anything in return in the long run. I do like the LFG tool for dungeons, PvP and raids. But for world quests and rare killing it feels like a solo experience with bots.Comment by mmarkus13He is not going to say anything different, is he? The social aspect took a body blow when they connected servers. You were lucky to encounter people from your server anywhere.
How he believes that social interaction is on the same level as it was in vanilla blows my mind.
The downfall is not down to the access of information that is the epitome of a strawman argument.
The downfall is getting into an instance and not a single word is spoken or typed.
The downfall is doing LFR (pointless I know) and being met with toxic trolling chat.
The downfall is the lack of action against players who play solely to spoil everyone else's fun.
The downfall is an MMORPG where you don't need a group for 95% of the content.
The downfall is Blizzard's lack of concern or cares about anything but the bottom line."Players are shaped by offline games. Online games are shaped by the players"The Lucifer Effect by Philip ZimbardoComment by TopetineCrossrealm and sharding makes the world less social automatically. Both from how I behave towards others and vice versa. When I see others doing world content, I honestly cant tell the difference from those players joining me for a world quest or the island expedition NPCs I beat up every week. There are never any words written, from myself or anyone in the group. General chat is 99% coords to an occational rare and thats it. Even if the game rewards me for interracting with others, I never feel like doing it, because it doesnt give me anything in return in the long run. I do like the LFG tool for dungeons, PvP and raids. But for world quests and rare killing it feels like a solo experience with bots.Comment by ArchimtirosIf you KNOW people are conditioned to min-max, then the RIGHT choice is Legion, with launch-day things like legendaries, that can be ballpark-gauged WITHOUT number crunching. Yes, people quickly figured which ones would be 'optimal' which could have been solved by just basing their acquisition on hard-to-get currency rather than rng, but several of them had flavor, survivability or utility aspects that were FUN.

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