In World of Warcraft, you can invest a lot of time – but even that must have limits, says the Game Director.
Last week, the Game Director of World of Warcraft, Ion Hazzikostas, answered many questions in a Q&A livestream with Community Manager Josh Allen. Later in the conversation, they also discussed the death of the major guilds (we reported on that yesterday) and the urge to want to collect more and more artifact power to gain that last point in the third decimal place as an advantage.
Hazzikostas states rather soberly that the game simply isn’t made for players to sink 80 hours or more into it every week.
“If you take a week off and plan “Yeah, next week I will play WoW from morning till night” – that’s okay. We want that to be possible, and there is a lot to do in the world.”
However, it becomes different when that time investment becomes the norm, as is the case with some professional guilds. They play extremely a lot to gain even the slightest advantage that is important in the race for first kills.
The guilds and players need to ask themselves more: Can and do I want to invest so much time in the game every week? Is it healthy, and is the time spent worth the rewards the game gives me?
The future path seems quite clear here. Blizzard does not plan to include an “end” for artifact power, as the new talent with 50 upgrade levels shows. However, the amount of artifact power needed will eventually become so large that “farming just for artifact power” won’t be worth it anymore.
The goal is to have artifact power as a “nice extra” that comes in addition to other rewards – or as a substitute when nothing good drops.
With Patch 7.2, legendary items rain in World of Warcraft for second and third specializations!
