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At the end of Blizzcon Day One, I spoke to Ion Hazzikostas, Game Director of WoW, about World of Warcraft 11.0 and the many features coming with it. Though we weren’t at the event in person, we sat in a Zoom chat, talking about the future of one of the biggest MMOs on the planet. During this time, we discussed the new features like Hero Talents, War Bands, and some of the points where the game falls flat. I love WoW as an MMO, but there are some frustrating issues when coming back to the game after a patch or two.
I also spoke to Ion Hazzikostas about the nature of player feedback. Some players already had complaints when the initial WorldSoul Saga was revealed at the start of the World of Warcraft presentation at Blizzcon. It was a fascinating conversation, and I learned a few ways that WoW will become more alt-friendly than ever before.
Ion Hazzikostas speaks about World of Warcraft The War Within, criticism, and more
During the initial reveal of The WorldSoul Saga and World of Warcraft’s next expansion, The War Within, at Blizzcon, we learned about something called Hero Talents. This is essentially the next evolution of the talent trees. Instead of gaining new talent points in the expansion, we’ll receive Hero Talent Points.
Each class will have them and offer a wealth of new ways to explore each specialization in the game. As Ion Hazzikostas said, they’re going to be tied to several familiar concepts in the Warcraft universe. Hopefully, fans will speak up about what sort of abilities they’d like to see.
Q. Are all Hero Talent trees intended to have themes that closely tie into the expansion, or will other themes be available that harken back to older expansion or... potentially the new ones? For example, Raven Priests from the Scarlet Crusade on Northrend, Disc and Shadow, could bring back some Shadow/Light Orb gameplay.
Ion Hazzikostas:
"Yeah, I think those are all spaces for us to explore. We aren’t thinking of this as a system that’s narratively tied to The World Within. It’s not like, ‘Oh we’re going to Khaz’Algar, and the Earthen are teaching us this.’ It’s more just an evolution of each of our paths as champions.
A lot of inspiration is drawn from iconic Warcraft heroes, from units back in the RTS days. Examples given are like Farseer and Dark Ranger. Not inherently tied to The War Within, just the origins and inspirations of the Shaman class today, Sylvanas and her Elite Hunters, Elite Rangers. So yes, I’ll be getting more into this in the deep dive panel tomorrow.
There are 39 total Hero Talent trees. Basically, there are 39 specializations, 39 trees. Each one has two available. So every class will have three to choose from - except Druids have 4, and Demon Hunters have 2. Those are gonna be tailored to a wide range of fantasies: Past expansions, past heroes, it’s something we’re going to be looking forward to getting feedback from the community about.
We’re well into building many of these, but not all of them. There’s room to pivot. When it’s announced, and we start hearing from Priests, that they’re super into the Raven idea you just mentioned, that’s something the team could chase."
Another new feature is one I and several other people I know are very excited about: War Bands. It’s a way to make the game more alt-friendly than ever before. The way it works is that all of your characters - on your whole account - will be in a War Band. Think of it like Star Wars KOTOR’s Legacies. It’s similar.
I asked Ion Hazzikostas about exactly how this will work in World of Warcraft as we get to The War Within, and I’m very excited about it. As someone who has a lot of alts on tons of servers, having access to a huge collection of items, transmogs, and useful items can really make the game easier. I can farm stuff for my lower-level characters to make things easier, and that will allow not just me but many others to enjoy the game no matter what level of character we’re on.
Q. You have planned a feature called War Bands. We're all really excited to see it in action, but - in an attempt to set up exactly what to expect from the feature - what do you want War Bands to be? Are there planned limitations?
Ion Hazzikostas:
"It is only for your characters. We have guilds, we want to keep improving guilds, we want to keep improving our broader social systems, but ultimately, War Bands are for people who have lots of alts. Or, for people who would like to play another character or two, but haven’t had the timeror felt like there’s a few too many hurdles to clear to make it feel worth their time. We’re looking to adapt and respond to the community feedback we’ve heard, and we’ve really built a new foundation for how our systems and progression can work going forward.
In a lot of ways, 20 years ago, World of Warcraft was a completely character-based game. It took hundreds of hours to level a single character, and playing alts seriously was very uncommon, even for hardcore players.
It’s obviously changed over the years, to say the least, but we’ve really been swimming upstream a lot of the time to make more things alt friendly, because the core game was made with a character in mind. War Bands are a new foundation, and that comes with it, stuff for inventory, reputation, achievements, transmog, and more.
But it also is a foundation we can keep building our new systems upon so that again, the time you spend as a player is hopefully higher-quality time. You’re still progressing, in terms of gear, in terms of power on an individual character. But almost everything else should live at the War Band level. You can choose to revisit if you want. But otherwise, will reinforce your player experience as you move forward throughout.”
One thing that’s always frustrated me in World of Warcraft is how tedious some of the farming can be. Even when going back to old content, you have to do so many dailies or farm so much content to unlock specific cosmetics or other rewards.
Q. One place where World of Warcraft struggles is when an expansion is wrapped up. There are typically three or four currencies to keep track of, and while they aren't relevant, players who return to do old content can find this very frustrating. Has there been any thought to consolidating an expansion's currencies into one for the sake of grinding through old content/unlocking rewards?
Ion Hazzikostas:
“That’s a good question and a good point. I will confess, we definitely have currency bloat in certain areas. I think War Bands will help a little bit here, because we have the option to allow much easier cross-character currency transfer than ever before. So more of that can feel account-wide.
But I think that it's an interesting suggestion. At the same time, the currencies often function in very different ways, at different scales, in terms of how they are earned, how much of whatever you’re earning, whether it’s purely for cosmetics off a vendor, or there’s a power progression aspect to it.
I think we do have to be mindful when moving off an expansion, like Flightstones and Crests on the power side, that we are continuing to streamline and update those as we’re continuing to refine that system in Guardians of the Dream, coming out next week. I think we’re overall happy with how it works, but we’d like to keep making it more elegant, and less encumbered by lots and lots of different currencies to keep track of and make that a permanent change in the game going forward
I think if there’s a currency the Niffen in Loamm, for their vendors, then there is clarity that is contained by keeping that specific. Also achievements driven by it, and so forth. We want to be mindful of a player’s experience returning to old content again, as we come up on year 20. There’s a lot of content for the majority of players to do, and we should not neglect it.”
A downside to covering MMOs and playing a lot of online games is that you don’t always have time to do everything when it’s fresh. Sometimes, it takes a patch or two to get back to things in World of Warcraft. By the time you get there, it’s either not relevant or players simply move on.
That was something I broached with Ion Hazzikostas during our chat, and he did say it’s something he’s noticed in the game as well. The nature of evergreen content in World of Warcraft definitely needs a look, and while they can’t always just scale something down, they are looking at ways to make the content more viable, even if it’s old.
Q. While the gameplay for Dragonflight has been good, one could argue that there has been entirely too much extra content in each major update. Then, when this content stops being relevant, it becomes too difficult to complete. Will 11.0 and beyond's side content be more evergreen, or perhaps scale with the number of players doing it?
Ion Hazzikostas:
“This is something we talk about a lot. I think we realize that definitely the style of World Events we use in Dragonflight require a critical mass; we don’t have that critical mass, it’s a problem. Something we’d like to do in the nearer term is use the kind of ‘green eye’ automated matchmaking to pull people together across shards, so they have critical mass to do this content. Scaling in some cases would be a bit tricky when the nature of the events itself implies the presence of more than one or two players present for it to just mechanically work.
But to things like rare spawns, that’s something we’re definitely looking into as well. We want to make that when you’re going out, you want to engage with the world content, regardless of whether or not it’s the current patch, you should be able to. I think that’s feedback we’ve heard, and seen ourselves playing the game, over the course of the last year. It’s something we do plan to improve on.”
However, one thing about World of Warcraft fans is that they're always quite vocal about how they feel. Even if it's a bit too early to tell one way or another, fans will shout their feelings across social media.
Shortly after the WorldSoul Saga was announced, people were quick to doomsay on X.com about how it's a mistake to announce so many expansions at once. With that in mind, I wanted to ask Ion Hazzikostas how they handle feedback like this:
Q. One critique fans online have already made is, 'What if one of these expansions is bad?'. With that player feedback already in mind, if something does go awry, are there plans to change course with this upcoming storyline?
“Our goal, obviously, is to get feedback now, on the idea as a whole. Certainly, if there’s aspects of what we laid out for the entire arc that are concerning people, that they’re hoping to see, an advantage of signaling where we want to go over the coming years is that we’ll have time to pivot in some ways.
But no, we don’t plan to rethink on a fundamental level the antagonist, or where the story was going, but honestly, every step of the way is going to be shaped by the feedback we get on how the story is landing. I think even on a micro level - patch to patch - there are characters that we make that unexpectedly become fan-favorites. Then we try to look at that, and find ways to incorporate them into more of our stories going forward.
Or maybe they were originally intended to die, but don’t. You’ll never know. That’s how we build the game. At the end of the day, we have a roadmap, a set of goals planned out, but the details and - the devil’s in the details. It’s in the execution of each step, and each step is going to be informed by how the last one went, and what we’ve learned from it.
I’m certain whatever we have in our minds today for exactly how this is going to end, in The Last Titan, and down the line, that will be different when we get there. The overall contours of what we’re trying to accomplish will not change. The exact path we take, yeah, we’re gonna be so much smarter, and better informed by all the players, and what we’ve learned, that we’d be foolish not to pivot.”
Blizzcon is still going on, and there’s a great deal to be excited about as the event continues. From Diablo to Overwatch 2, Blizzard Entertainment is giving fans the biggest news so they can get ready for 2024. Here’s what you may have missed for World of Warcraft during day one.
