wow Icy Veins BlizzCon 2023 Interview with Game Director Ion Hazzikostas

[Staff 1,195]

Our team at BlizzCon had the opportunity to sit down and talk to Game Director Ion Hazzikostas. Here are the interview highlights!

Update: Ion Hazzkisotas has clarified that there will, in fact, be a dinar system in Dragonflight Season 4:

Reddit (Source)

Replying to the top comment so this hopefully gets seen - there's a misunderstanding/misinterpretation here. Not sure if I misunderstood the question or the summary was inaccurate, but either way:

There will absolutely be a Dinar-type system in Dragonflight S4. We don't think it was too generous in SL - it worked great. I was commenting on what I thought was a question about introducing that system more broadly across all seasons/raids, and in that context, while we do want to keep exploring fallback mechanisms for mitigating bad RNG, that shouldn't invert things to the point where a vendor becomes the default/expected way of getting your BiS PvE items every season.

Apologies for any confusion here.

Interview Highlights

• The WoW team is happy with how the new talent system has panned out, it offers more customization and granularity compared to the MoP-style trees.
• More updates to class and specs are planned, including talent pruning and adding more interesting options.
• Most Hero Talents will be passives to avoid button bloat. There will be some active abilities where they make sense.
• Delves will have a seasonal currency to avoid player burnout with a mix of reward types. The more lucrative rewards will have some limitations on how often you can get them.
• Future UI improvements will focus on the Guild Ui and the Friends system.
• The devs are mindful of the balance between gear from PvE and PvP. They want to avoid forcing players into playstyles they don't prefer.
• Ion explains feature development is a collaborative process with ideas coming from the team rather than top-down directives.
• No plans for Classic Timewalking, as Classic dungeons are "considered too simple" for modern players, which is why Timewalking starts with the Burning Crusade.
• The team plans to review class distribution of tier tokens to make it more fair.
• With the Mythic+ rotation changing every season, the need for seasonal affixes has diminished, but the team is open to community feedback.
• Bad luck protection for the legendary axe from Fyrakk will be active from the very beginning.
• They want to see the community's reaction to how the Fyrakk axe has been implemented. Based on feedback, they may reconsider the approach of implementing legendaries. The legendary comes from Fyrakk and should have a similar acquisition process to the Evoker legendary, not exactly the same, but similar.
• Dragonflight will have a Season 4 with Fated Raids.
• The team wants to continue exploring catch-up mechanisms for loot acquisition to counteract RNG, but Dinar-like vendors with BiS PvE items introduced every Season shouldn't be the default.
• A Dinar system similar to that in Shadowlands Season 4 is coming in Dragonflight Season 4.

[Dejo93 942]

Let's hope they rework Monk at some point. That class needs some serious fixing. Them and SV Hunters

[Roriwix 3]

• No plans for Classic Timewalking, as Classic dungeons are "considered too simple" for modern players, which is why Timewalking starts with the Burning Crusade.

 

Isn't the problem more that the dungeons are too long and unfitting for timewalking? why would you care if timewalking is simple? they are just loot pinatas

[dlhak 30]

Very disappointed by retail announcements, new zones, an allied race, new talents, that's all I can see, I am more hyped about season of Discovery than anything announced. DF is good but most servers are empty, there is no community left to play with, a World revamp could have been good to bring back players, but another generic expansion is very underwhelming, but can't wait for Season of Discovery, and it comes only in three weeks !

[Ken007 64]

Was surprised to see: no new race (allied doesn't count), no new class, no new specs.......

Also, big question about hero talents- they might be mostly passive but do they change the way the ability looks? I think most of the "ohhs an ahhs" from the hero talent ability were because it looked different. I think if the hero talents are just mostly passives that do not change how the abilities look or the rotations in a meaningful way- they will be a miss.

Still excited for the x-pac but might be more so for the Season of Discovery since classes will essentially getting new specs/ roles through the new content. I just hope they don't run through the content too quick. Give us time to explore. 

[TheRagingwolf 194]

7 hours ago, Dejo93 said:

Let's hope they rework Monk at some point. That class needs some serious fixing. Them and SV Hunters

Has SV Hunter ever had any hope?

[Starseed 112]

9 hours ago, dlhak said:

Very disappointed by retail announcements, new zones, an allied race, new talents, that's all I can see, I am more hyped about season of Discovery than anything announced. DF is good but most servers are empty, there is no community left to play with, a World revamp could have been good to bring back players, but another generic expansion is very underwhelming, but can't wait for Season of Discovery, and it comes only in three weeks !

come on there is that whole delv thing for casual player plus the delvs give a way to earn vault rewards that is something nice