Blizzard Needs to Fire Ion Hazzikostas

Ion Hazzikostas, the current Game Director of Blizzard’s World of Warcraft, is, simply put, the worst thing that ever happened to World of Warcraft.

During his disastrous tenure, he has overseen the worst changes of all, and the game has changed from an enjoyable pastime to something like a disagreeable job.

I don’t know what motivates his decisions — perhaps the team he oversees is a mere skeleton crew compared to the team of developers of Warcraft’s heyday during Wrath of the Lich King expansion — but what characterizes his tenure as Game Director is transparent attempts to make progress as time-consuming as possible. The more speed bumps he can place in the way of the players, the more time they spend on it. Consequently, the less content his team needs to create.

And once you realize his motivations, the stumbling blocks become obvious, running from the relatively trivial details to the major aspects of the game. His favorite tactic appears to be making travel a much more demanding task. Compare the exploration of Arathi Highlands, for instance, to trying to navigate Argus.

Argus (added during the Legion expansion) is a veritable obstacle course fraught with deadly hazards; compared to old world content, where travel was much safer. Moreover, Argus was intentionally designed to make flying through it an absolute impossibility. Anyone who travels through Argus, must do so on the ground, putting up geography so implausible, Dr. Seuss himself would be disbelieving.

Flying is a mechanic that seems particularly vexing to Ion. During the Warlords of Draenor expansion, Ion famously announced that there would be no flying on Draenor. However, the player base informed him otherwise.

Faced with the threat of a mass exodus of players (many of whom had quested extensively to collect their flying mounts), Ion had no choice but to allow flying. However, in a move that could only be explained as pure spitefulness on Ion’s part, Ion decided to implement a new achievement for the players to obtain flying. This would not simply be attaining max level and paying 5K gold at the flight trainer. No, Ion introduced the most elaborate achievement in the history of WoW, known as Pathfinder. Pathfinder had an extensive list of requirements, which seems to be added to with every expansion. In Warlords of Draenor, you would have travel (on the ground of course) to every single location in the expansion. Moreover, you would also have to uncover every treasure chest in every zone on Draenor. These treasure chests would often be hidden, and require some coordinated jumps and tricky maneuvering to obtain.

Evidently, Ion believes that the player base signed on to play Super Mario World.

But if you thought you could look up Pathfinder, find out the requirements and dedicate your game time to achieving all this so you could start flying right away, you thought wrong. The achievements will accomplish nothing until Game Director Speed Bump decides he’s good and ready to let you start flying. And only after you attain exalted reputation in a new faction that he will release when he finally releases Pathfinder II. (There is a Pathfinder I in Battle for Azeroth, which simply gives you 20% faster mounted speed in Battle for Azeroth zones.)

Ion seems pleased with his ‘compromise’ to allow flying, because it was implemented again and made more difficult with Legion, and apparently still more difficult with Battle for Azeroth. While there is no information as to what Pathfinder II (Pathfinder I, released with the expansion, allows for 20% faster mounted movement speed) will require, it appears that not only will you be required to explore all the new and annoyingly difficult-to-travel zones on the ground, and uncover the treasures, but it seems that every zone now has a list of rare encounters you must defeat.

There is no longer a sense of appreciation for the beauty of the zones designed by the art team. Just annoyance at how annoying and difficult travel along the ground has become.

And no area in Battle for Azeroth has escaped Ion’s zeal to make things difficult and unfun. Even just getting on your ship to visit your mission table (another one of Ion’s idiotic creations; the geography is turning World of Warcraft into Super Mario World, but the mission table is turning it into Facebook games) is made unnecessarily complicated. Instead of simply running in a straight path along a gangplank to get to your ship, you descend to a lower dock (which has absolutely nothing on it, except non-functional decorative touches placed by the art team), turn right, then turn 180 degrees left, ascend stairs to an upper dock, then turn 90 degrees right and you’re on your ship.

While geography is the most irritating of Game Director Time Gate’s spiteful whims, it’s far from the only one. Take, for instance, the crap he pulled with professions beginning with Legion. In old world content, if you wanted to mine ores to smelt and make things or to sell, you simply traveled in an appropriate area, finding nodes on your minimap to indicate the location of the ores, and mined your ores.

But beginning with Legion, Ion decided to implement tiered professions. There are now two types of nodes to obtain your ores, both of which now have three levels). Getting the next level in mining ores might involve attaining a certain skill level, or it might involve a minor quest. Of course, attaining second and third rank in mining ores isn’t a requirement. However, failure to do this means that mining will produce meagre amounts of ores and you may have to do an extensive amount of mining to get the necessary number of ores to use for your other profession, such as engineering or blacksmithing.

The productive professions also have tiered items to create. And again, you might need to attain a certain skill in said profession to get the next level. Or you may have to undergo a minor quest. And as with the gathering professions, you could certainly do without the next tier, but the cost of materials would be very steep without it.

These aspects of the game, which can only be described as being sabotaged under Ion’s inept direction, simply work to make the minor aspects of the game more time-consuming. The more time players spending on farming materials and traveling, the less time the players have to quest, do dungeons, battlegrounds and raids. Therefore, the less content Ion’s team has to create to keep the players entertained.

Paradoxically, it seems that Ion works hardest to avoid working. Inflicting stalling tactics on the players seems to be the MO.

And his methods of implementing these stalling tactics go beyond just travel and professions. Take, for instance the ubiquitous trash mobs. Due to changes among the character classes, maximizing one’s DPS depends upon using AoEs. Even if you’re fighting just one mob, the cooldowns on your abilities may necessitate throwing the occasional AoE, just for the sake of having something to cast to inflict more damage.

However, due to the ever-present trash mobs, using an AoE could cause the trash mobs to be hit and aggro. So, you can either forgo your AoEs, inflict less damage and take a significantly longer time to kill your mob. Or you can use the AoEs, aggro trash, and have more mobs to fight, again, taking a significantly longer time to kill your mobs.

If that sounds like a clever, if despicable, strategy to make players sink more time into routine killing, I haven’t even talked about Ion’s masterpiece of stalling tactics: scaling.

Mobs no longer exist at a set level. They now adjust automatically to a level appropriate to your level. Content will never be trivial to you, allowing you to breeze right through it to gather material for professions, for instance, because the mobs will never be trivial to you. No matter what level you attain, the mobs will always be at your level, at least.

I say this is clever, because when I first discovered it, I thought it was wonderful. I have a particular fondness for the John J. Keeshan questline in Redridge Mountains. So, when I created a Death Knight, which starts at 65th level, I was pleased to be able to do my favorite quest line at an appropriate level. Previously, the Redridge questline started at level 14. Now it starts at whatever level you enter it as.

However, Ion’s scaling does not apply only to mobs relevant to your quest, but all mobs. My low-level Druid, for instance, can no longer breeze through Darkshore to gather the plants I need to make Swiftness Potions. The aggressive trash mobs will always be at a level appropriate to my Druid.

I could go on, but this essay has already run long. I understand that MMORPGs are a time-sink to begin with. In fact, they are arguably an unhealthy pastime. But I have never seen more blatant and far-reaching attempts to make every aspect of the game, from the most significant down to even the trivial, consume as much time as possible. There is no sense of wonder or interest in the interesting graphics or storyline. Just irritation.

Why don’t more players quit? That can be explained with the sunk-cost fallacy. Basically, the hangers-on feel that they’ve already invested too much time into the development of their characters to quit now. That same type of thinking often compels people to stay in bad marriages; they’ve invested too much time in it to just walk away.

However, depending on the sunk cost fallacy to retain the player base will only work for so long. Players will reach a breaking point when the annoyance factor will override any sense of attachment they have for their characters. And if Blizzard wishes to save itself from the impending crash, then they need to show that they’re listening to the players’ grievances.

They also need to send a clear message that tawdry tricks to turn trivialities into time-sinks is not what Blizzard is about. Blizzard needs to assure their players that they want to keep players logged in by creating good, entertaining storylines, not because the players spend so long just getting to the quest location that they have to finish it, causing them to stay logged on for longer periods.

And because of Ion’s obvious agenda to frustrate and annoy players by requiring inordinate lengths of time on even the minor aspects of the game, all in an attempt to avoid having to create content because the player base went through it too quickly, Blizzard needs to deal with this in a heavy-handed manner.

Blizzard must announce Ion’s termination, then apologize to the player base that Ion’s incompetence has alienated, and finally state their determination to make World of Warcraft the entertaining and exciting game it once was.

The players need to get Blizzard’s attention, but don’t look to the WoW forums to do it. Any calls for Ion’s dismissal will result in a suspension from the forum. Ion will brook no dissatisfied grumbling from the hoi-polloi.