'It's time to rebuild some foundations': Shadowlands forced Blizzard to rethink World of Warcraft's oldest ideas to make it a better MMO, director says

pcgamer.com:

World of Warcraft's developers did an abrupt about-face after largely refusing to acknowledge player feedback during the Shadowlands expansion that nearly killed the game. With the MMO's 10th expansion, The War Within, on the horizon, game director Ion Hazzikostas told PC Gamer that Blizzard is more willing than ever to re-examine WoW's basic systems to stay in tune with what players want.

«The last few years really have been a time of introspection and reexamination of all of the building blocks, the design DNA, of WoW,» he said. «Turning over every stone holding it up to the light and examining it and asking ourselves, 'This clearly served us well for a long time, is it still the right thing for our players in 2024?' 

»And in many cases the answer is yes, put the stone back and we continue. In other cases, it's time to rebuild some foundations."

A recent example proves the point: the radical overhaul of Mythic Plus.

Mythic Plus-difficulty dungeons have long followed an established pattern in WoW. Each week, different affixes add new challenges to existing dungeons, like one that increases a boss’ health and damage. Some of these mechanics can be more punishing for players of certain roles in the five-person groups that regularly run them. Some weeks tanks or healers would hate their lives, other weeks were seen as easier «push weeks» for climbing through the difficulty tiers, and sometimes they were so hard even top-end teams would limit their playtime.

When beta testing began for Mythic Plus dungeons for the upcoming expansion, The War Within, players responded immediately and harshly about the minor changes to the balance of affixes. In particular, high-end teams again expressed their frustration with the affix system in general and how they inhibit the fun of trying to push high-tier Mythic Plus dungeons.

And Blizzard responded. No longer would affixes affect «push keys», or those at or above level 12 in the infinitely-scaling difficulty progression. Four