WoW: Hey Ion, it's been 1,052 days since you last spoke!

With the words "We will see you next time" WoW's Community Manager Lore and Game Director Ion Hazzikostas last said goodbye to the developer Q&A for patch 8.1.5 for Battle for Azeroth. Since then, 1,052 days or just under three years have passed. Since then, there have been no updates with questions from the community about WoW. "Watcher" Hazzikostas reads just about everything on the WoW forums and other platforms, but his thoughts on World of Warcraft since the last developer Q&A are only picked up from interviews or short forum posts

that usually spring up suddenly. What's the reason for the radio silence between game director and community?

Negativity reason for "pause" in Q&As?

Yes, Blizzard as a company has been through a lot in recent months, and as a former lawyer, it's probably a smart move by Game Director Ion Hazzikostas to keep a low profile on topics where people can unintentionally say a lot of wrong things. But the radio silence hasn't just been going on since

the

sexism scandal broke in mid-2021

, but since the beginning of 2019.

One could assume that they stopped holding Q&A sessions/updates due to poor feedback from the community. BfA was perceived in hindsight as one of the, shall we say, more difficult expansions by players and always ends up way down in the ranking of the best WoW expansions

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WoW: 9 .1.5, Sexy-Purge & more - Interview with Ion Hazzikostas

On the release of WoW patch 9.1.5, we spoke with Game Director Ion Hazzikostas about the patch, the Sexy Purge, the relationship with the community and more.

But looking at the YouTube comments on the last Q&A, the reactions are mostly very positive or neutral, although there was certainly a lot of swearing about the Azerite armor in BfA at the time. Hazzikostas and Lore seem relaxed in their hour-long video, which they hold every few months. So too much negative feedback can't be the reason.

Has the planning of expansions and features become too complex?

Cataclysm, WoD, BfA, and now Shadowlands: aside from shiners like MoP and Legion, it's been a common thread throughout the development WoW expansions that the devs seem to only be able to bring a good addon when work on the previous expansion has stopped prematurely. This is also where the meme comes from that a bad WoW expansion must always be followed by a good one. Now Shadowlands hasn't really reached the end yet, but after the rather disappointing expansion BfA, the pandemic has now led to Shadowlands missing a complete patch as well.

This is especially noticeable in the lore around Sylvanas and the dungeon master. With Shadowlands, the pandemic can be blamed, but somehow the workflow of a WoW expansion at Blizzard never really seems to be well conceptualized from front to back. You can only guess what's going on behind the scenes. And that's why I'd like to get an update from Hazzikostas about what we can actually expect in WoW and when, what the developers are currently working on, what they think about topic XY and much more. Maybe it's higher-ups like a Bobby Kotick, who not only pulls from Overwatch staff for arbitrary projects and thus sets back planning by months. But who knows ...

Right now a developer update would be important

World of Warcraft (buy now )

is (again) at a crossroads of a kind of new beginning. According to their own statements, Shadowlands closes a big chapter in the WoW universe. So you can start with something new and maybe even develop more in the future through the deal with Microsoft, as soon as Mr. Kotick has taken his hat. That's exactly why it would be important to let the players share the devs' thoughts.

Normally we should get all the important information about the future of WoW and co. at a replacement event for BlizzConline, but this event hasn't even been announced yet. It's obvious that once again many ideas from several months ago will be thrown out after all. This is shown by the radio silence on the transfer package announced four months ago and possibly the associated removal of faction limits in patch 9.2.5

. Apparently, Blizzard is no longer even sure about the planning of the near future. 07:35
World of Warcraft | The best raids of all time

All these overturned plans within the company would explain why it might not even make sense for Hazzikostas to get in front of the community, if he can be at all sure about what he's talking about next week. Also, this spontaneity like the announcement of Cross Faction Gaming makes Q&As, whose information quickly becomes uninteresting or outdated again, redundant.

It's no wonder that all you really hear from Blizzard employees like Mike Ybarra is that "something big is coming soon" when internally it's probably not even sure what "the big one" is at all and when or if it's really coming. The upheaval that is currently taking place is too great. I, and I think many in the WoW community, have always really liked these Q&A rounds. Why do you think the Q&A sessions with Hazzikostas no longer exist? Write us in the comments.

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