Battle For Azeroth
What content do you most enjoy in an MMO?
I'll be up front -- I thought the Mission Table was the best innovation in Warlords of Draenor. Now, many years later, the news that it won't be in Dragonflight fills me with a kind of joy I wasn't aware I was capable of feeling -- a boisterous, almost terrifyingly primal exultation, like unto that you would expect to feel just before you started singing and a musical number just sort of happens.
How should Blizzard handle Allied Race restrictions in Dragonflight?
The first Allied Races we got were unlockable by doing Legion content, and the others all required Battle for Azeroth unlocks, which means as of Dragonflight we're talking two or three expansions ago. World of Warcraft certainly seems to be trying to make leveling easier and more streamlined, but that also makes those older expansion unlocks for Allied Races more and more extraneous, in my opinion.
Can you solo Battle for Azeroth group content?
With the arrival of the final Shadowlands patch, World of Warcraft has officially entered its pre-expansion lull, and while the Dragonflight alpha is chugging along, many players tend to farm old expansions during the downtime, looking to pick up collectibles and transmogs they may have missed the first time around.
How do you feel about cosmic storylines in World of Warcraft?
I'm generally pretty down for storylines in my games that swing the focus as wide and cinematic as it can get. Legion, for example, was a story I really enjoyed -- the invasion of Azeroth by a vast, world-spanning host of demons which led to a showdown on a planet seething with fel corruption between a Pantheon of beings on the scale of gods and their fallen former champion, who sought to potentially destroy our whole world.
What game tropes do you really respond to?
Fiction has tropes, and a lot of games are an avenue of storytelling -- World of Warcraft has told a lot of stories over the years.
Mission Tables aren’t returning in Dragonflight. Here’s a brief history of the feature
In recent interviews regarding the next expansion to World of Warcraft, Dragonflight, Ion Hazzikostas confirmed that there would be no new version of the Mission Table.
How should tier gear function in the next World of Warcraft expansion?
Was it a mistake to remove tier sets in Battle for Azeroth in favor of Azerite Armor, and were you surprised when they didn't immediately return in Shadowlands?
Shadowlands Season 4 will include affixes for raiding, Mythic+ dungeons from multiple expansions
The announcement of Shadowlands getting a Season 4 is a fascinating attempt to provide players with something new in that period after all the content has been released, but before we get the next expansion.
What moments in games have emotionally affected you?
Sometimes our games -- the ones we play, that become part of our lives -- can actually get under our skin.
Everything we know about WoW patch 9.1.5
Shadowlands patch 9.1.5 is now live and with it comes a lot of quality of life improvements.