Rebuilding the Foundations of Warcraft - Interview with PC Gamer
In an interview with PC Gamer, World of Warcraft Game Director Ion Hazzikostas discussed the change in design philosophy between Shadowlands and Dragonflight, throwing out lessons of the past to bring new ideas into The War Within.
Game Director Interview with PC Gamer
Ion Hazzikostas, via PC Gamer
«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."
This topic has come up several times since the decline of Shadowlands, as Blizzard has set out to re-examine the foundations of World of Warcaft, asking themselves if the ideas of the past are still relevant today.
Although some mistakes are destined to be repeated, Blizzard received a wakeup call after subscriber numbers and failed to stablize with the launch of Dragonflight. As revealed by then Warcraft Franchise General Manager John Hight during a Games Developer Conference lecture reflecting on 30 years of Warcraft, these dwindling subscriber trends indicated a major problem — the players who left weren't coming back.
But these failures led to a radical shift in the team's design philosophy, reevaluating how players engage with the game, and the two-decade old expectations placed upon them — what Executive Producer Holly Longdale would call the Third Era of Warcraft. While the launch of Dragonflight may have already been compromised by the failures of Shadowlands, the expansion continued on to record post-launch subscriber growth and stability.
The failures of Shadowlands alienated many long term players — some of them for good.
With this comes the Warbands account-wide progression system, several
