The Game Director of World of Warcraft has addressed pressing questions. What does the future hold for RP – and what about the ever-increasing content?
Even though World of Warcraft delivered one of the best expansions of all time with Midnight, as it finally brought housing after decades of yearning, there are still a number of issues that have emerged in the first season.
The colleagues from GameStar had the opportunity to conduct a lengthy interview with Ion Hazzikostas, the Game Director of World of Warcraft. You can read the entire interview on GameStar as soon as it is published – we will add the link here.
We had the chance to insert a few questions as well to address some current issues of the game and the community.
More to do – But less obligation
A growing concern within the community is that more and more content is being added to the game, causing some to feel overwhelmed by sheer volume. We have already talked about it, that some are feeling a bit of WoW burnout, as so much content is being rolled out that it’s hard to keep up when you have other hobbies or simply don’t have much time. More and more quests already have in their description that it’s a “Week 1 of 5” mission. Hazzikostas shared the following thoughts:
One ongoing challenge is to cater to a very diverse player base. Because while there are people who have very limited time per week, there are also those who have a lot more time. Some are afraid of falling behind, while others get bored quickly when there’s not enough to do – they want more goals, more systems to engage with, and they let us know loud and clear when they have nothing left to do and are getting bored.
Hazzikostas further explains that there are always catch-up systems in place to ensure that players never fall too far behind and can still jump in and catch up later in the season.
The problem with unclear abilities
Another annoyance in the first season of Midnight was certain effects from bosses and enemies. While WoW in The War Within took great care to ensure that ground effects and cone attacks (like “Frontals”) were very clearly recognizable, this was not always the case in Midnight.
The Game Director assured that it was never intentional for abilities to be unclear. However, it was a conscious decision not to choose a clearly recognizable area defined by hard lines for every enemy ability. Hazzikostas said:
I believe a world where playing a fight only means avoiding circles, squares, and triangles with hard boundaries on the ground feels almost a bit sci-fi. It doesn’t feel like you’re fighting against a dragon, or a demon, or a void creature. Therefore, we always ensure that there’s a thematic connection to the effects. “This is a poison effect, this is a void effect, this is fiery.”
However, we recognize that we sometimes went a bit too far in the direction of prioritizing aesthetics at the expense of clarity.
In season 2 of Midnight, such issues are likely to be prioritized and belong to the past.
Fewer barriers for roleplay
Recently we reported on an RP event, where the community pushed the limits of housing. In a house, only 40 people can be present, while only about 100 characters can be active simultaneously in an entire neighborhood. We wanted to know from Hazzikostas whether these restrictions would be eased in the future:
Yes, we would love to do that. I mean, there are technical limitations. There’s no design reason why we couldn’t or wouldn’t want you to have as many people as you want in a certain location. We just need to figure out how we can allow that on our servers while still providing the necessary performance so that at least you have a pleasant experience.
But the potential for RP communities both in houses and neighborhoods is something we look forward to expanding further in the future.
This may not be the concrete answer that roleplay fans had hoped for, who are already planning their next big events – but at least it reassures that the developers are aware of the problem. After all, housing and neighborhoods also provide protection against certain nuisances, like a troll who seems to play for only one purpose.
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