Blizzard is making ready so as to add a new characteristic to World of Warcraft which may sound unusual at first: an option to have the game inform you what spell you must optimally forged subsequent in fight, with an extra option to easily let the game forged the ideally suited subsequent spell for you.
Today, in a lengthy video interview between game director Ion Hazzikostas, Team Liquid raid chief Maximum, and content material creator Dratnos, it was introduced that the upcoming World of Warcraft patch 11.1.7 a new characteristic might be added known as Rotation Assist. Rotation Assist, when turned on, will spotlight in fight the advisable subsequent skill to your character to make use of primarily based on class, specialization, and the fight state of affairs.
Additionally, the characteristic will include an non-compulsory “one button” option that may enable a participant to easily press one button to mechanically forged whichever spell the game is recommending forged subsequent. However, there’s a penalty for utilizing the one-button option – it’s going to add an extra small quantity of time to the world cooldown, that means gamers utilizing the single button option will general forged spells slower and deal much less injury than somebody enjoying manually.
In the video, Hazzikostas explains that the new characteristic relies on the standard add-on Hekili, which equally recommends non-compulsory subsequent spells to forged but doesn’t present a one-button rotation. As Hazzikostas explains:
“Add-ons are amazing. The things that the community has done over the last 20 years to allow people to experience different aesthetics, different functionality, have information available at their fingertips like that is a huge part of WoW’s success. And we don’t question or want to undermine that for a moment. At the same time, ideally…if you ask people you know, ‘hey, how can I get better? I’m really struggling at this.’ The first answer shouldn’t be, ‘Well download this add-on, this add-on, this add-on. Otherwise you’re doing it wrong.’ Because that’s starting to get into that mandatory place, whether we like it or not.”
Hazzikostas goes on to elucidate that long-term, Blizzard is pondering more deeply about the position of add-ons in World of Warcraft and how for gamers desirous to take part in aggressive content material, many of them have basically change into obligatory. The staff, he says, desires to maneuver away from that philosophy, and is pondering down the line about enhancements that may be made to World of Warcraft’s class design, boss encounter design, and UI that may guarantee the features gamers really feel are obligatory from add-ons are built-in natively.
And although Hazzikostas says they’re by no means going to easily ban add-ons outright, as soon as the staff feels their aims round lowering the necessity of add-ons are achieved, he desires to “rein in” some of the performance of add-ons round “real time in combat problem solving, specifically where like automating, coordination, communication, in ways that are always going to be better than anything the UI could natively provide you, as long as they remain possible.”
If you’re not sure what Hazzikostas is speaking about, these adjustments doubtless gained’t influence you. But as he, Maximum, and Dratnos talk about in the video, high-level raiders have continuously felt the need to depend on add-ons corresponding to WeakAuras that enable gamers to basically build customized instruments to unravel troublesome raid encounters in real-time, corresponding to telling them the place precisely to stand or assigning them teams on the fly. And whereas this would possibly really feel like dishonest for those who’ve by no means skilled it firsthand, Hazzikostas is candid in the video that some of the staff’s raid encounter design selections might have pushed gamers in that route by being a bit too troublesome to determine sans add-ons. “The way we design encounters has been influenced in significant ways, by the way players use add-ons,” he says. “I know you know the community sometimes speculates that [certain encounters were] built clearly to require an add on. I can’t say that’s never the case.”
Hazzikostas goes on to elucidate that whereas encounter designers are by no means particularly designing mechanics with the intent for gamers to create add-ons to unravel them, when gamers inevitably accomplish that in testing, they’ve traditionally seen suggestions from playtesters utilizing add-ons complaining that the fight was too straightforward. But as an alternative of redesigning the encounter to make the add-ons unusable and reinstate the meant issue, they’ve merely added more mechanics. “I think that’s not a great place for things to land,” he says.
You can watch the full 45-minute video here, but we additionally spoke on to Hazzikostas to ask him questions on each the upcoming new Rotation Helper characteristic and the builders’ intentions for future add-on restrictions and interactions. Our full interview is posted under, frivolously edited for brevity and readability:
IGN: I believe you talked round this a little bit in the video. But is it your opinion that it's basically change into obligatory to have add-ons to play WoW at something above a fundamental questing degree at this stage?
Ion Hazzikostas: I don't know that I’d go that far, but actually it's been one thing that's been half of neighborhood traits over time, the place gamers are intelligent. When you give them a very versatile toolbox, they are going to make more and more intelligent and more and more highly effective issues. And when it will get to aggressive content material, attempting to defeat difficult raid bosses, attempting to clear the highest Mythic+ keys which you can or PvP at a aggressive degree, each benefit helps. And whereas actually people can and do play the game with out utilizing add-ons and succeed, I believe most gamers at a high degree, together with Max[imum] and Dratnos, and I used to be speaking to them on this , agree that you’re at a drawback for those who're not utilizing some of these instruments.
And in social content material, for those who're in a raid group, for those who're half of a group that's working Mythic+, there's an expectation that it doesn't matter how you personally need to play. If everybody requires that you simply use this instrument, you then really feel like you need to. And on the one hand, whereas the legacy of add-ons over the course of 20 years of World of Warcraft is an wonderful half of how the game has grown and developed, I believe wanting at a world the place somebody is informed that they need to make use of an exterior third-party instrument in the event that they need to play the game the manner that they like, that's not wholesome, we predict.
And so, that's the query of, how can we sort out that basically has begun with us attempting to look at building up the native performance of the game's UI, of the game's techniques, of how we're presenting info, not simply by way of the consumer interface, but additionally issues like visible results and how we're telegraphing the readability of totally different boss mechanics or class mechanics or the like.
I do know that is one thing you've most likely considered for a very long time, but was there any second or any specific raid boss or one thing that made you go, "Okay, we actually need to address this."?
Hazzikostas: Honestly, I don't know that I can pick a single factor. I imply, I believe there have undoubtedly been events over the years. This is just not the first time that the World of Warcraft staff has waded into this space. I imply, even earlier than I labored on the staff going manner, manner, manner back, like 20 years in the past, actually in vanilla World of Warcraft, add-ons might do very highly effective issues like automating focusing on. People who raided in the early days of Molten Core, proper? If you performed back then, you most likely had Decursive for those who had been a healer. And you’d simply push a button, and it will mechanically, intelligently dispel somebody in your group who needed dispelling.
And the staff seemed at this at the time and was like, "This feels like it's actually kind of undermining some of the core gameplay of the game. Let's restrict this functionality. But also, let's continue to improve our built-in raid frames. Let's continue to improve these things." And so, I believe there's been an ebb and circulation there over the years. But I believe more and more, once I'm simply studying by way of neighborhood discussions on our official boards, on Reddit, wherever, and it's quite common to see people ask like, "Hey, I need help improving. I'm trying to play Mage really well. I'm trying to play Rogue well and it feels like I just can't compete with other people." The first query that they get requested is, "Well, what add-ons are you using? What's your weak core configuration?" Not, "What is your rotation? What is your talent build? What decisions are you making?" It's like, "What tools do you have?" That's not wholesome. It's a barrier to approachability.
And so, again, the path right here is to not… Really, simply to attempt to slim that hole by bettering the baseline performance that our game is offering, and actually focus in any long-term efforts in phrases of what we would restrict or limit on simply that slim sliver of fight performance stuff.
And that's why we've tried to make it tremendous clear right here. We have no intent of touching anybody's RP add-ons, world informational helpers, accessibility instruments, gathering help. Any of that stuff is great. It actually is simply a query of like, how can we improve the info that our default UIs giving combat-wise? And then as soon as we've gotten 90% of the manner there, what can we do about that final mile or so that features performance that feels prefer it wouldn't actually make sense to come back from our UI? Like issues which are fixing a raid mechanic for you and telling gamers the place to run, that's variety of the level of the gameplay itself.
We need to present info, make it clear how you're presupposed to sort out the downside. But at the finish of the day, it ought to be up to the raid group to determine that out for themselves.
Obviously you all the time need to improve your UI and improve your boss encounters. But so far as including stuff like a WoW inner model of Hekili. You talked in the video a little bit about wanting at perhaps doing in-house injury meters at some level or different issues like that which are at present solved by add-ons. Why not simply proceed letting the neighborhood deal with that degree of stuff? Is there any concern that for those who attempt to begin doing the job of modders, you're going to need a lot more time and assets when at present you've bought principally crowdsourced downside fixing?
Hazzikostas: To some extent, so I believe, yes, it's taking up more duty for the staff. But I'd argue that that is duty that we actually ought to've been shouldering for a whereas now. And I believe the neighborhood at occasions has stated that add-ons are fixing issues in our video games design, and I believe typically they're proper. Sometimes there are locations the place a class mechanic or a expertise actually is asking a participant to do one thing that the game isn't natively giving them the instruments to do accurately, like monitoring stacks of a buff and making selections on the fly primarily based on how many stacks you occur to have primarily based on some proc that triggered.
That's not a cheap in-the-moment computation for a human, but add-ons streamline and simplify that. Similarly, when one thing isn't clear in an encounter, when a visible impact is just not clear, but somebody has an air horn that's telling them once they're standing in one thing to make up for a lack of readability in our VFX, that's a fully cheap criticism. And if some of because of this we need to do additional work to repair points, actually I believe that's in gamers' curiosity and one thing we should always've been doing all alongside.
And again, to be clear, we're not seeking to, in any manner, marginalize or push apart our great add-on creator neighborhood. Step one right here and step two and step three contain nothing about limiting any kind of add-on performance. They're simply persevering with to build up our different options, give gamers a probability to offer us suggestions on these, perceive what more they might need to do, what more would need to alter for these to really feel like they're ample.
And then after we get to the finish of that street, finally limit some issues. Because again, that half is required, I believe, with a purpose to clear up the downside of becoming a member of a group and being informed you need to obtain this or use this week or no matter. Again, when there's an open-ended toolbox, gamers are all the time going to attempt to computationally clear up the challenges we put in entrance of them. And of course, people are going to make use of each benefit that's at their disposal. That's simply the nature of aggressive gamers
…Another side is there are tons and tons of gamers, even setting apart accessibility issues that will restrict somebody's skill to do a mechanically intensive rotation. There are many people who, actually, fight is just not what they get pleasure from most about WoW. Mastering and optimizing how to make use of all 20 of their talents in sequence to maximise their injury is just not what's enjoyable. It's immersion, exploring, accumulating, doing all these different issues. And the mechanics of the game are typically an impediment to having fun with the components that many gamers need to embrace. And so, I believe offering simply a baseline manner of opting out of that complexity is one thing that, I believe, might be welcome to many gamers. It's the similar manner, after we modified our expertise system in Dragon Flight. We supplied simply a default starter spec.
If you didn't need to deal with optimizing and putting all of your factors, you can simply use our preset loadout for your self and deal with the components of the game you get pleasure from. At the finish of the day, that is about giving gamers more choices and more customization. It's additionally an instance of how, in some of our kind of built-in options, we will do issues that add-ons couldn't. Hekili clearly can spotlight the subsequent buttons for you, but it might probably't truly mechanically decide which skill to forged primarily based on a single key bind, whereas our answer is in a position to try this.
Have you spoken to the Hekili people at all? Do they’ve an opinion on this?
Hazzikostas: Personally, not but. I do know that our UI staff, and significantly the engineers on our UI staff, have close communications with our add-on creator neighborhood. Lots of bug reviews and updates and issues go back and forth. They're normally attempting to maintain them up-to-date on any adjustments we're making to the APIs, so that they're not caught off guard. So I believe that's going to be half of this dialog going ahead for sure. And I believe we perceive that after we offer a answer ourselves, it's not going to be as deeply and totally customizable as add-ons for energy customers are.
And so, our goal is to not variety of subsume, like take over a space solely, but reasonably offer a robust baseline answer to one thing whereas nonetheless leaving add-ons as a space for people who need beauty customization. They need to tweak the show of the info even more than what the base UI permits. And additionally, again, it's a probability for us to get suggestions on the nature of these gaps, so we will attempt to offer as a lot of what our gamers need as doable.
As far as the performance of this factor goes, how reactive is it to differing types of builds? When I play, I’ve set up builds for a single goal spec, a single goal with cleave, a multi-target Mythic dungeon, a Delve loadout. And with Undermine proper now, there are a lot of fights the place I'm utilizing my single goal ranking build primarily, but there are additionally moments in the similar fight the place I’ve to change to cleave injury or one thing like that. And so, I'm curious how adaptive this instrument goes to be in direction of what kind of build you're working and what kind of belongings you would possibly need to do in the second in a fight.
Hazzikostas: So I believe that's going to differ a little bit by specialization. I'd like to say that we now have each doable permutation that somebody would possibly spec into accounted for, but we don't. And we're going to get suggestions on that. Some of that may merely be a bug or one thing we ignored. But the system itself is designed to be very versatile and one thing that our staff can proceed to replace over time. It is wanting at what skills you at present have, but it's additionally making suggestions situationally primarily based in your present out there assets, whether or not there's one enemy in entrance of you or 4 enemies in entrance of you, so that you don't need a separate preset loadout of dungeon versus raid.
It will suggest an AOE skill if it's going to hit 5 targets or a single goal skill if there's just one boss in entrance of you. And again, the goal right here is, not absolute perfection. There's actually all types of little sneaky min-max tricks that gamers have optimizing for motion and issues that the system can't learn about. But the goal is de facto to be one thing that helps for those who're attempting to study a new spec or for those who're simply attempting to, such as you're attempting to study an encounter and also you don't need to put an excessive amount of of your bandwidth into interested by your rotation for a bit. The similar manner people use many of these add-ons, we predict this might be a very useful instrument for simply approachability of spec gameplay and simply attempting to raise the talent flooring in the game.
Especially with the one button option, is there any fear that it’d inadvertently have the reverse impact the place you've bought people becoming a member of up into a regular or heroic group by way of Group Finder, after which simply kind of closing their eyes and hitting the button, after which pissing off a raid chief or one thing. I can hear the feedback coming in now.
Hazzikostas: I imply, actually, frankly, for some people who might battle with their rotations at present who haven't actually variety of grasped how they're presupposed to build, spend their assets, and use their totally different instruments situationally, I believe even the one-button rotation might be an enchancment. Certainly, it’s going to enable them to deal with mechanics and deal with different components of one thing that they're doing. I believe we've crafted that. It has a small penalty that's incurred to the world cooldown if you use it, to make sure that… It's by no means the greatest approach to play.
We undoubtedly don't need a world the place a raid group is failing to fulfill some injury test, and the raid chief tells all different gamers, "Stop trying to play your class. Just turn on this one button thing and that's going to be the right way." But as simply a easy baseline, that ought to be enough for solo gameplay, for out of doors questing, for raid finder, issues alongside these traces, this ought to be more than ample and permit people to only focus their consideration on different components of the game that they discover more participating.
Do you assume that raiding has gotten tougher over the years?
Hazzikostas: Yes. I believe that it has gotten more concerned, more complicated. I believe that our targets for how many makes an attempt we wished to take to defeat a sure raid boss at a sure issue haven't modified, proper? In that sense, we might imagine, "Okay. On heroic mode, the final boss should take 20 or 30 attempts. It should take a few hours for a group to beat for the first time." That's true as we speak. That was true 10 years in the past. Now the factor is, gamers on average have gotten higher, as is the case in any game, proper? Whether it's a PvP game, in any other case. I imply, it's best to see in PvP video games the place somebody perhaps has stepped away from their favourite MOBA, or Overwatch, or no matter they usually was a platinum participant. Then, they arrive back they usually're like, "Oh, wow. Everyone is so much better now."
And that's the similar phenomenon that we've been working by way of in our dungeon and raid gameplay. We do should offer novel appears to be like at issues. We should throw a couple more mechanics in the combine to offer the similar degree of relative problem that we used to have the ability to do with much less, proper? Going all the manner back to Classic, you can see clearest-cut instance of bosses that appeared unimaginable, that took teams actually months to defeat that now look easier than a frequent dungeon boss, and that trendy gamers with out prior data go in and steamroll in basic variations of the game. That's simply how the participant base has developed.
You've additionally designed issues in a different way too in that regard, proper? Raiding with 40 people was a lot tougher simply purely on a communications degree. If you need to present problem when we now have fewer people, you need to make issues tougher in numerous methods.
Hazzikostas: I believe that's actually half of it. I believe one other issue is… I believe that is one thing that was touched on in the dialog with Max and Dratnos. We by no means design issues with the intent that add-ons are going to unravel them, but we can also't be ignorant of what add-ons are succesful of doing. And if we now have a enjoyable concept for one thing that is perhaps a enjoyable mechanic, which may've been accomplished years and years in the past in phrases of a raid-wide coordination problem, the puzzle that you need to clear up as half of your group, we all know that somebody's simply going to make a WeakAura that solves it for you. The raid chief's going to pre-type everybody's identify into it earlier than they've even pulled the boss as soon as, and that mechanic is just not going to play out the manner we wished it to.
And so we're most likely simply not going to make that mechanic period. And so as an alternative, I believe we now have most likely over time skewed more and more in direction of testing expertise in gamers that add-ons can't trivialize, issues like simply response time, getting out of a lot of stuff that's below your ft, fast motion, twitch reactions, issues on that degree. And I believe whereas that's a area of interest that ought to exist in WoW encounters, I don't assume it's wholesome for the game. And I believe gamers agree for all encounters to be like that. I believe for those who're a raider in the World of Warcraft as we speak, right here's a problem. Try to depend the quantity of bosses that aren't at some level placing a swirly below your ft that you’ve a couple seconds to maneuver out of. Good luck. It's principally all of them. I’d love for the game to only have more selection in the challenges that it's posing to gamers. And I believe that finally after we get there, with the ability to limit a couple of features of what add-ons can do as we speak, I believe will open up a very fertile design space and permit for encounters which are equally difficult in phrases of how many hours they're going to take your group to study and to beat, but that put that problem in other places which are, hopefully, a bit easier and more participating.
Is this one thing you’ve already been slowly attempting to implement so far as Undermine goes? Are we already subtly seeing adjustments to encounters to maneuver in the route of that philosophy?
Hazzikostas: A bit. Yes. I believe that we've gotten suggestions from the neighborhood on Liberation of Undermine. But I believe there are fewer fights on this tier than in earlier tiers that really feel like they had been solved by an add-on, that they actually virtually required one. There had been encounters in previous tiers like Broodtwister or the like that made people really feel like, "Okay, we don't know how to do this without using an external tool." And we’re consciously attempting to steer away from that. Another instance of a manner that we've continued to improve issues in our Undermine replace earlier this yr, one of the adjustments we made was actually revamping a lot of our spell visuals for elevated readability.
Ultimately, I believe philosophically for years we had usually stated, "Okay, we want these things not to feel too gamey." We need them to really feel a little bit like chaotic fireplace or no matter. And in the end, simply variety of accepted that that's not in the greatest pursuits of gameplay and readability. And let's get some laborious edges on issues and let's make it actually clear cut when you’re or aren't standing in one thing. And even issues like that may immediately help gamers to have the ability to simply leap into an encounter and really feel like they know what they need to be doing versus needing help to allow them to know what's protected versus what isn't.
Long-term, how quickly ought to we count on some of these greater adjustments to what sorts of add-ons you’ll and gained't enable? Is this a subsequent raid tier variety of factor, a subsequent growth variety of factor?
Hazzikostas: Yeah, so I believe there's no particular date in thoughts. It's more variety of kicking off a dialog and signaling a basic trajectory, a heading. I believe we all know we now have a bunch of work to do. I wished to variety of put into context some of the adjustments that gamers have seen that really feel like most likely like a departure from previous follow, like the cooldown supervisor that we added as a first iteration of serving to to trace your own talents and cooldowns in our most up-to-date 11.1.5 replace.
Of course, this fight help coming in 11.1.7, and more issues that may comply with. I believe we all know that earlier than we attain an eventual endpoint of limiting the skill of add-ons particularly to parse real-time fight occasions, we'll need to have our own answer for a customizable injury meter for issues like encounter boss timers, letting you recognize when an skill is coming subsequent and how far-off it’s. Things that gamers have relied on add-ons primarily based on real-time fight info for a long time.
Our intent is to not immediately simply break issues and go away gamers in the lurch. We need to build up a strong basis. And then, when the neighborhood feels and all of us collectively really feel like we're prepared for that subsequent step, we predict it's one which the neighborhood will hopefully embrace and be for the good of the game in the long run, making issues more approachable whereas protecting the full array of informational and beauty customization that add-ons have all the time supplied.
Do you count on that long-term, your adjustments to design are going to dramatically change the taste of any lessons or specs? I do know you had been speaking in the video a little bit about Outlaw Rogue – I don’t play Rogue, but you instructed it was perhaps maybe a little too complicated.
Hazzikostas: Honestly, I don't assume it’s going to dramatically change the taste. No. I believe there are particular mechanics that may need to be revisited. Outlaw Rogue is a enjoyable spec, but it's one which I decide on for these functions. Because for those who go look up a guide for enjoying Outlaw Rogue, you'll see that there's some conditions the place it's like, you probably have more than 60 vitality, and the cooldown of this skill is much less than 12 seconds, then do that. And it's like, "Come on." There's no manner that anybody goes to parse that in actual time with out simply having a manner ahead that pops up and tells you, "Okay, push this button now." And these are the types of issues the place it's like, "Is that fun? Is that part of the flavor of the spec really?" What might an different implementation of that kind of basic vibe primarily based round the concept of re-entering stealth and unleashing your assaults and fight as a rogue? How can we notice that with out leaning on one thing so intricate and mechanically intensive?
Have you seemed at all at what Final Fantasy 14 has accomplished in phrases of how a lot they limit add-ons? They limit them fairly closely and all the time have. How do you look at what they've accomplished and how it's impacted the taste and the sort of game that they’ve over there?
Hazzikostas: I believe it's their selections made at the begin that inevitably impacts how issues evolve. There's actually a lot more control that you’ve as a designer of understanding precisely what info your gamers are going to have at their disposal, what instruments they’ve at their disposal to beat an encounter? And so, you’ll be able to design in that world for everyone in a more degree enjoying area, or as we now have to just accept that people may have a bunch of other ways of wanting at or processing issues.
But that's half of how World of Warcraft has developed. I believe that we need to be very slim and surgical in these restrictions, they usually're not terribly totally different from issues we've accomplished over the years in the previous. Years in the past, add-ons might draw issues in the 3D game space, and that was one thing the staff seemed at and was like, "No, this is clearly too far." That's not a factor that add-ons ought to have the ability to do, and that performance was restricted, and gamers developed, and the game moved on. There's an alternate world the place if the staff had by no means accomplished that, if 15 years in the past the staff in Wrath had stated, "Yeah, this seems fine." Today, each encounter you go into can be full of these digital 3D markers which are telling you precisely the place to run and stand, and that will be how people performed the game. And so, it's like having this highly effective ecosystem.
It's tremendously empowering to gamers, but it additionally requires vigilance on our half as builders to make sure that we're variety of preserving the integrity of the game and giving people a degree enjoying area. Where for those who simply set up World of Warcraft and also you need to play the game and expertise what it has to offer, it actually it’s our obligation that the out-of-the-box expertise ought to be ample. And if it's not, that's a downside we need to work on fixing.
Is there any concern that it's kind of a one button rotation goes to result in people doing annoying exploits? Going into LFR or principally AFKing or one thing like actually inflicting points with it?
Hazzikostas: I hope not. Honestly, you've been capable of go in and attempt to fly below the radar and simply auto assault. Those are conditions which have occurred in teams for a long time, whether or not it's non-participation in Battlegrounds or simply attempting to coast and leech off a group. But I believe most gamers once they're sitting down to play World of Warcraft or seeking to play World of Warcraft and achieve some objectives, and I believe that's all the time going to be, we need to design in the curiosity of the majority. And we now have instruments, whether or not it's reporting or different measures to make sure that people aren't disrupting different people's gameplay or being poisonous.
So you stated that you simply're not seeking to fiddle with people's quest add-ons and stuff. But you'd additionally talked about desirous to build in-house instruments like injury meters and stuff like that. Would you ever take into account doing more inner stuff that’s primarily based off add-ons that people use for stuff that’s outdoors of fight? Pet battling, public sale home stuff, professions, something like that?
Hazzikostas: I imply, I believe completely and that's stuff that we proceed… We're undoubtedly impressed by the types of instruments that the gamers flip to for out of doors world game plan for comfort as we glance to proceed to only make the game more approachable. I imply, issues like, this has been a number of years now, but in the world of 3D navigational marker when you’ve a quest tracked or some goal tracked is one thing that in the previous people would use an add-on to do for them so as to add variety of wayfinding help. That simply felt like a more trendy manner of doing it than asking you to continuously pop open your 2D map to see the place you had been headed. So we added one thing like that. We're going to proceed bettering all of that performance. I don't assume there's any world although the place we're going to limit what add-ons can do in that space, as a result of I believe there's a large distinction between comfort and aggressive benefit.
Someone would possibly say, "Oh, having this gathering add-on or having this World Quest tracker or whatever, it's convenient. Or someone with a Quest add-on maybe saves themselves a couple of alt tabs to look something up. But I don't think anyone would seriously claim like, "Oh, no. You have to make use of that add-on if you wish to achieve World of Warcraft." And that really is the difference. It's us looking at add-ons where someone is pretty reasonably, incredibly able to say to a new player or to their group mates, "Really, you just about need to make use of this if you wish to succeed." And our goal is in this blue sky idealized world, that we can say that there isn't a competitive advantage to using add-ons in World of Warcraft, that they're a powerful tool for customizing your aesthetics, for customizing your information, and for kind of add an extra layer of self-expression in your game experience, but not a competitive advantage.
Is there any concern as you think about what sorts of things to add and how to add them, that the UI might become too heavy or too complex or actively work against the player in becoming unapproachable? Right now, opening World of Warcraft for the first time, there's already a lot of things on screen. And we've all seen that sort of joke screenshot of someone's UI with all the add-ons on it.
Hazzikostas: Always. I mean, I think we're always mindful of trying to strike a balance between serving our engaged core players who've been with us for years and making sure that the game stays approachable to someone who's coming back to it or picking it up for the first time. Because if we're not hitting both of those, really, we're not going to be able to continue to serve our audience and grow our audience. And so when we talk about these things, we have a lot of customization built into the UI. Some things are going to default off, some things are going to default on.
We're talking about how we want to introduce some of these new elements to players in their new player experience, kind like if you're level three on Exile's Reach and you only have two abilities, do you need to know about a one button rotation? No. We're actually like, "Press frostbolt. You'll be tremendous." At some point, maybe when you're level 40 and you just spent your 30th talent point and you have a couple dozen abilities, might that be a great time to introduce something like this and make sure you were aware that exists? Yes. And so, I think that's how we want to continue to think about and iterate on our onboarding experience as we add more customization built into the game.
Well, thank you so much, Ion. I really appreciate you taking the time. This has been really interesting. I'm very curious to see what my guild thinks of this announcement.
Hazzikostas: Me too. And truly, the goal here is really just to kick off a conversation. I know it's a scary looking 45-minute video that's really just announcing two minutes of new stuff at the start. Then, the rest is like, "Let's discuss philosophy and let's get a sense of how open gamers are to us strolling down this long path."
Rebekah Valentine is a senior reporter for IGN. You can discover her posting on BlueSky @duckvalentine.bsky.social. Got a story tip? Send it to [email protected].