Originally Posted by MMO-Champion

I am no longer working on WoW. You should consider any Blizzard comments I make my personal, if educated, opinions.

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We're never certain. Game design is very much a crap shoot, tempered by experience, feedback and your gut. ( Source No way. I was just ready to work on something else. Ultimately game developers want passionate communities! ( Source But most polls suggest the talent changes were liked overall, even if they weren't 100% liked. ( Source Blizzard has excellent metrics overall, but are also smart enough to know when not to let metrics make the decision for them. ( Source My fear was always that players would swap from giving feedback on what was fun and try to become data analysts instead. ( Source Some players enjoy being recognized for commitment and not just raw skill. ( Source Player made content maybe? (Not a WoW announcement by any stretch.) ( Source Totally. As I said, too much frustration can make players quit. ( Source But, when rewards come too easily, that can lead to boredom, which can also make players quit. ( Source I thought the 275 vs 300 food was perfect. It really let folks decide what kind of player they wanted to be. ( Source Yes! Like that economic study that shows folks will drive across town for cheap gas but not $100 savings on a dress. ( Source If I was doing a new MMO (I'm not) I would have one. H vs A is good for WoW overall IMO, but is a barrier to playing with friends. ( Source One thing I underestimated as a designer is how some players simply prefer clear power gains to interesting choices. ( Source RNG is a challenging philosophy for designers to explain. Players typically want to minimize it, but there is risk in doing so. ( Source RNG is a challenge for players to overcome, but that sometimes gets turned into pleas to overcome it by removing it. ( Source Being able to reliably predict outcomes makes games boring. Even chess has a form of RNG in the actions of your opponent. ( Source Perhaps you could say games need unpredictability, which can be provided by RNG or lack of complete information. ( Source In the internet age, it's hard for games to have incomplete information (you Google everything) so RNG has grown as a tool. ( Source Back when I played Wasteland or Wizardry 6, you had to "solve" boss encounters and BiS lists on your own. ( Source Same is true of gear. "Should I take this upgrade?" (RNG) is more interesting than "Just 3 more Immerseus kills and I'm done." ( Source Immerseus is there regardless. Would you rather have a shot at gear or know 100% of it will be sharded? ( Source Yeah, and we implemented some very bad luck protection systems. With millions of players, someone is going to be the 0.01% dude. ( Source I agree. There was just no alternative for solo players. Maybe that problem is fixed now. ( Source I am totally a big, long dungeon customer. But I recognize not everyone is. ( Source Overall, I think zerging dungeons just became more popular, which meant dungeons had a shorter lifespan overall. ( Source Not blaming players for that trend necessarily, and as I said, I like orchestrating pulls and CC personally. ( Source Keeping dungeons (or any content) relevant when you start to outgear it is a big challenge for WoW. ( Source Players would exhaust them quickly. Few want to run the same dungeon 6 times a night, 2-3 nights a week. ( Source Just depends on what you're into, but the WoW biz works best when players have things to do for weeks rather than come and go. ( Source Adding new dungeons is challenging. Players tire of even 3 new ones in a patch pretty quickly. You need a steady drip of them. ( Source I think they were a big success. They didn't of course scratch the itch for players who want hard but not necessarily fast. ( Source No, that's the Mechanar Syndrome I talk about frequently. Few were running Mech every day because it was their favorite dungeon. ( Source Hopefully it doesn't have to be one or the other, but I agree with your statement. ( Source Before LFD, many players just never ran dungeons. I think it's a myth that it forced everyone to find friends. ( Source We were worried LFD would not catch on. We were wrong. Now we need more incentives to play with friends. Some announced at B'con. ( Source Yeah, LFR brings a lot of benefits for sure. I'm just not sure it's enough to keep players engaged for months. ( Source Maybe, but that LFR might "last" 2-3 weeks and the dungeon 2-3 days. ( Source Ultimately whatever keeps someone playing. Folks who only run new dungeons for a week or two might not come back next time. ( Source Other players tend to not have fun when facing a character who takes little damage and has a lot of control. ( Source Tank control grew out of a need to keep everyone safe by controlling the mobs. I agree that it has taken away from the DPS though. ( Source Sadly, it won't. You'll still see flex raids that demand heroic gear. Being labeled suboptimal is the worst of sins online. ( Source I think it's useful to know a potential max target. It's unhealthy to assume that is obtainable. ( Source The idea is the "fun" quickly turns annoying when they are spammed. ( Source Repair has a role in the game - giving you the occasional reason to visit towns and providing a small penalty for dying. ( Source Reforging is little different from "push button -> get stat buff." ( Source You have to actually earn the bracer by accomplishing something. Reforging is just a button. ( Source Yes. The idea is removing the burden of players feeling like they must do unfun things for trivial stat gains. ( Source Their goal is not to put everyone's best stats on everything.... ( Source We balanced around the gear that actually existed not theoretical gear. ( Source If you can gear your 10 alts in a reasonable time, then I gear my 2 alts instantly and get bored. How to solve? ( Source Solutions like that are nice because then you're actually playing some character instead of just having all the alts caught up. ( Source Yeah I mentioned this a couple of weeks ago. You could also have different ways to complete a set, or a transferable bonus. ( Source When game art is very controversial, it's hard to call it a victory. ( Source The team was very excited about goblins and worgen. That level of passion doesn't (yet?) exist for say ogres and arrakoa. ( Source I personally have always been a huge ogre fan. I think they're cool with a decent amount of lore. ( Source If WoW truly was my fiefdom as the forums would have you believe, the ogre, centaur and nerubian player races would be OP. ( Source I think it could be done. I'm not sure it's very likely. ( Source I don't think it was a mystery. They have a lot of utility and some ability to heal in a pinch but at the cost of mobility. ( Source Most players want spec diversity in PvE. In PvP more of a mixed bag - some players are happy with few but balanced spec options. ( Source We nerfed Arms too hard trying to solve the early Shockwave + TfB problems. We buffed them in 5.4, but it was too much. ( Source Our thought was that very rare occurrences don't have much balance impact because they are so rare. ( Source Yeah I admitted that in a second tweet on that subject. ( Source But overall the design goal for "Why have multiple DPS (or healer) specs in one class?" has proven difficult to answer. ( Source Maybe WoW would be better if rogues had 1 spec, warriors had 2 and so on. Shrug. ( Source Maybe warrior should be Fury and Prot (no Arms). Maybe hunter should be Hunter (no MM, BM or SV). ( Source We always struggled to define reasons for players to play both warrior DPS specs or all 3 mage specs, etc. ( Source I feel there is a lot of untapped class design space. D&D, Pathfinder etc. still come out with clever new ideas. ( Source Based on your previous tweet, do you feel like removing mandatory choices is dumbing down? ( Source Because that is an argument I hear. Knowing that DK = Strength may not be a choice, but it is something you have to learn. ( Source I also wonder how much of the "dumbing down" discussion is because players themselves are much more sophisticated now. ( Source In BC, folks wondered if an item or talent was good. Now that knowledge is readily available in seconds to most of us. ( Source Overall, I vastly prefer the new model, as a designer and player. ( Source Old issues: Things like respecing at key levels to get gold medal talents you were expected to have. ( Source Old issues: "Your X has a 20/40/60/80/100% to cause Y, and BTW it's crippling if Y doesn't happen so you better spend 5 points." ( Source Old issues: designers always moving powerful talents deeper in trees to stop players from getting broken "hybrid" builds. ( Source New issues: Not every spec gets a true choice at every tier yet. That feels possible to design though. ( Source New issues: Some players just like more choices, even if the choice is an illusion, or can't actually be designed. ( Source I doubt it will ever happen. The time investment is just too great. ( Source Those buildings in Silvermoon aren't there. They are all ugly facades like a Hollywood backlot. And even that SM took months. ( Source Very. The original cities were all fake. There were several SW Cathedrals, and the castle was kind of a skybox. ( Source Buildings in WoW are hand-crafted by dungeon artists, and cities have a lot of buildings. It took months. ( Source Blizzard employs X artists. If some of those work on Silvermoon, then something else isn't going to get made. ( Source Even hiring more artists still makes the choice between working on something old or something new. ( Source What would you consider the right way? ( Source Isn't that twice as much quest content though if we had to make 2 versions of say Badlands? ( Source There was some hope that BC and LK could be updated as well, and maybe that can still happen some day. ( Source We caught 1-60 up to "modern" time so that Deathwing and the Cataclysm could be front and center. ( Source Doesn't Blizzard always? ( Source It wasn't in a good enough state yet. I still like the idea of power progression that isn't related to gear or character levels. ( Source Concept was cool. Reality was grinding linen and Silithus lag. I'd love to see the team try again knowing what they know now. ( Source The team has grown with the hope of delivering content faster. It has taken time, and they aren't quite there yet. ( Source I agree, and it's easy to get caught up in mechanic and number tuning and not the grand adventure that it is supposed to be. ( Source Is that true though? My prediction (sans data) is that fewer players are playing any MMO today relative to say 5 years ago. ( Source I tend to think because the game is 10 years old and not exactly easy to get back into, esp. if your friends move on. ( Source I really don't think it has much to do with game features or direction at all, but that is my opinion and not a Blizzard statement ( Source WoW was never "under" me, so I wouldn't be the right person to can. Personally, I would get my facts straight before I trolled. ( Source I say this frequently, but players vastly overestimate the degree to which design changes cause sub loss. Vastly. ( Source The guy who quits because his work schedule changes tends to not broadcast that fact. ( Source The rage quits so often cited on forums seem more common than they are because they're on forums. ( Source It's more likely to be an issue when a player returning after 2-3 years can't recognize the game any longer and leaves again. ( Source Number of players coming and going has always been fairly high. Fewer new players are trying the game these days. ( Source Pretty sure I've never said that specific changes cause a lot of players to quit. Too much change overall can and does. ( Source My opinion is that Horde racials are too raid friendly, but my opinion doesn't count for much. ( Source Yeah, like I said, that may cause current players to lapse. But too much change can make it hard for others to return. ( Source Would be awesome if more players were like you, but we also know many do come back and quit again quickly because they feel lost. ( Source What do you think they should have done? Free moves have limited effect and forced moves are very unpopular. ( Source As I've said, WoW gets a lot of returning players. It's not a great experience when you can't find your friends or guild or name. ( Source You seem to be linking business data with an opinion on content, which is tenuous. ( Source Now both can be subjectively right, but how does that become a measurement of community views? ( Source The conclusion from your tweet seems to be that no design should be changed ever because someone won't like it and might quit. ( Source Blizzard would never radically change a design because of just a few isolated complaints. ( Source There is complication because something is confusing for new players, which is legit, but understandable that vets don't agree. ( Source The game supports a fair amount of that, but whether fellow players tolerate it is a different story. ( Source