The next “Item Squish” is coming in World of Warcraft – the values in the game have become too high again.
The values in World of Warcraft have increased significantly with the last expansion Legion. It is not uncommon to encounter players with 10,000,000 hit points or to deal critical hits of a similar amount.
Have these values now become too high to really enhance gameplay? Yes, believes Ion Hazzikostas, the Game Director of World of Warcraft.
In an interview with the YouTubers from FatbossTV, Hazzikostas explained that a new Item Squish (“Stat Squish” or “Item Squish”) is “very likely.” The values have now reached proportions that make it difficult to get any sense of good performance. Too many zeros on a damage spell do not give the feeling of more power but trivialize the fights.
In the past, there had already been an “Item Squish” where the values of all items were drastically reduced. This was with the pre-patch of Warlords of Draenor, at the end of the expansion of Mists of Pandaria.
Old mistakes should be avoided
However, a lot has been learned from this first Item Squish and several mistakes are to be avoided. They want to take a closer look at the concept of item levels (item level), which is currently not consistent and leads to some absurd moments during the leveling phase.
If, for example, the item level rises from 135 to 200 between Burning Crusade and Wrath of the Lich King, that actually means only an increase of 2 points of intelligence on the equipment. That feels wrong, especially when an increase of just 5 item levels at maximum level results in several hundreds of points of intelligence (or other attributes).
The whole concept needs to be revised. Although Hazzikostas does not promise this directly, a fundamental revision with the next expansion seems very likely.
It is also likely that with the Item Squish, consideration will again be given to the fact that old raids can still be soloed. An additional system is active in all the “old” content that significantly increases character power.
Hazzikostas also believes that the RNG was much worse back then than it is today.
