World of Warcraft game director Ion Hazzikostas has a lot to say regarding the changes that the game’s development staff is making moving forward in The War Within. But the changes don’t come out of nowhere; they’re very specifically being made as part of a change in how Blizzard incorporates feedback from players from Shadowlands onward. As Hazzikostas puts it in a recent interview with PC Gamer, this is a change that necessitates re-examining the game back down to its base structure:
The last few years really have been a time of introspection and re-examination of all of the building blocks, the design DNA, of WoW. Turning over every stone, holding it up to the light, and examining it and asking ourselves, ‘This clearly served us well for a long time, is it still the right thing for our players in 2024?’ And in many cases the answer is yes, put the stone back, and we continue. In other cases, it’s time to rebuild some foundations.
The interview (which is paraphrased in the article in large part) notes that changes to the game’s Mythic+ dungeons as well as changes to the overall progression gameplay with Warbands are part of how the team is re-examining core parts of the game mechanics. There’s no major preview of future changes coming to the game, but it seems clear that this is the continuation of a larger shift in how the game is designed and directed moving forward ahead of The War Within‘s release.
