"One of the things they want to avoid is excessive randomness."Does he even play this game? There are literally layers upon layers upon layers of randomness in this game and I find that statement extremely ironic.
He can't be serious when he says the team is happy with corruption, can he?I understand he has to lie to seem positive about that kind of crap, but come on... Corruption is horrible.
Blizzard got it all wrong again.Corruption is most hated system by player base. And no, it's not tuning issue.Can we just get good old gear progression without all of this nonsense like azerite traits, essences, corruption, AP, convenants (in SL) and stuff like that?Can they make classes be complete without all of those side systems on top of other system?And N'zoth cinematic is horrible.
I understand why they choose this "cinematic" but it could be done way better. Imagine that at the end of the raid all players would get corruption effects on them meaning that they all would be covered in Purple and some shadowy tentacles would be on the player model body. In that point only thing you would recognize on you character is just your model skeleton, you would not see your hairstyle, gear, nothing. That would give them oportunity to just render that cinematic for each race and play the specific one depending on your race. There would be normal cinematic as always and what would be even more cool - you character would be in it!And by the way I was just thinking this is what Sylvanas said in the Loyalist ending - "My bargain with Azshara will yet bear fruit. The armies of Azeroth will fight her master, and he will line their streets with corpses. In the end, he too will serve Death."So if N'zoth is really dead doesn't that mean he now serves Death/Sylvanas and it is possible we will encouter him again in Shadowlands?
N'zoth cinematic was fine, I have yet to see people even give actual constructive criticism, just complaining that they don't like it. He's right, you'd complain about the cinematic no matter how he died, if someone else stepped in and did the killing you'd complain that they gave credit to someone else when you busted your ass off. The homage to sauron's death was great. The fact that all the AP grinding since launch was given a payoff on the final boss by using that power to channel the power of titan forges to finish off a boss was also good. We killed so many bosses with nothing but our power in numbers and this time we actually (lorewise) had to do a lot of things in order to beat him. Anyone under the delusion he would survive this fight hasn't paid attention, Shadowlands was announced as next expansion, which has nothing to do with N'zoth as that's focused on the death and life aspect of warcraft cosmology. Also us losing this fight means N'zoth would have accomplished his goals in corrupting us, and we would have fought for his side.Also, it's a god damn mmorpg guys, it's not a movie or a tv series, expansion lore with raids is a bunch of people coming together and defeating super powerful beings we generally have no real reason to be able to defeat just because we have numbers on our side. Seriously, lorewise most bosses should be oneshotting each of us one by one and wiping us. It's a video game.
The way he pretended our only complaint with N'zoth was that he died and omg we're so dumb for not wanting to kill something in an MMO was REALLY snotty. It's not about N'zoth dying, it's about the first ever full release of an Old God being completely devoid of substance and the freaking 10 years of buildup and constant creepy prophesizing leading up to NOTHING.
The amount of people screeching about ARRRRR ENNNNN GEEEEEEE and grinding to "make you play longer because MAU" just amuse me at this point. Clearly it's a case of selective memories, because RNG has always existed in WoW (Titanforging was the worst of it, and I'm glad it's going away) in different ways. Can it be frustrating? Yeah, of course, and it's been frustrating since the beginning. Ask anyone who tried (or is currently trying in Classic, I suppose) to farm the Savage Gladiator Chain from BRD, or look at the rant in the World of Roguecraft series about the warlock farming the Headmaster's Charge.I think when Ion says that they're "happy with how the experiment has played out" it could mean that, rather than not realizing/listening to what the playerbase are complaining about and thinking it's perfectly fine, they're happy with what they're learning from it going forward into Shadowlands. I've maintained a neutral/disappointed stance for most of the expansion; there's been things I've really enjoyed, and things that I've viewed as poor decisions, but haven't outright decried, purely because I'm not particularly affected by them; I'm not a hardcore mythic raider that's trying to min-max and squeeze every last 0.1% out of everything. Some of the lore has been handled very poorly, and I agree that all the buildup and murmurs about N'zoth for so many years leading to a single end-of-expansion patch/raid and a somewhat lackluster cutscene is a damn shame. Not to mention, I'm sick to death (hurr) of Sylvanas. That particular story element has well overstayed its welcome.All that being said, I haven't gone around on every post defending the things that I liked about BFA. Why? Because no matter how reasonable you are, how measured and balanced your considerations might be, or how equalized your criticisms might be with your praise, it seems like, these days, giving the vocal fanbase the slightest whiff of positivity will have them shrieking about how you're a shill in a single, frothing instant. Blizzard isn't perfect, neither is the game, but there's a serious case of groupthink going on.