ion hazzikostas
World of Warcraft’s game director defends cross-faction team-ups: ‘It’s time’
Yesterday's announcement that World of Warcraft will, for the first time in its storied history, allow cross-faction raids, dungeons, and rated PvP sent shockwaves...
World of Warcraft is finally getting cross-faction dungeons, raids, and rated PvP
So hey, if you're one of the bajillions of World of Warcraft players who've been agitating for Blizzard to nuke the faction divide for...
Vague Patch Notes: Skewed perspectives of the MMO industry
So there were some surprises when Fractured announced that it had secured a publishing deal with Gamigo, or rather that Gamigo announced that Fractured was...
WoW Factor: The player council is not the solution to World of Warcraft’s ills
So World of Warcraft is going to establish a player council to offer feedback to the developers. What a terrible idea with already poor implementation...
World of Warcraft patch 9.1.5 arrives today as Ion Hazzikostas finally pipes up
As Patch 9.1.5 pulls into World of Warcraft's port today, it encounters an MMO that is battered and a studio that is heavily bruised....
WoW Factor: What’s behind the turning of the tide in World of Warcraft’s patch 9.1.5?
There's some interesting stuff going on right now when it comes to World of Warcraft's next major patch, due in no small part to the...
Blizzard’s Mike Ybarra clarifies that Ion Hazzikostas is still running World of Warcraft
Ever since Bobby Kotick removed J. Allen Brack from his post atop Blizzard and replaced him with Mike Ybarra and Jen Oneal in the...
WoW Factor: What do changes in Blizzard management mean for World of Warcraft?
Blizzard is going through some changes at the moment. This is a good thing, as Blizzard has made it clear that it is a...
WoW Factor: Why Blizzard’s line about story beats is so frustrating
So the most recent roundup of interviews with World of Warcraft's staff deeply hurt me on a fundamental level. Like, this was the sort...
A new slew of World of Warcraft interviews touches on the future of Sylvanas and lack of story planning
Good news, World of Warcraft fans! If you thought you were going to be done with Sylvanas after the next patch arriving tomorrow, well......
WoW Factor: What would it take for big changes in World of Warcraft?
The last time I wrote an installment of this column, it was in specific response to an interview that contained no small number of...
WoW Factor: What we really learned from the World of Warcraft Hazzikostas interview
The problem with writing about World of Warcraft right now is that there's actually less to write about than you might think. Sure, we've got...
World of Warcraft’s director Ion Hazzikostas has no plans for Legendary refunds but does promise catch-up systems in 9.1
Apparently, you should have an entire collection of Legendary items in World of Warcraft. That's one of the takeaways from an excerpt from a recent...
The Daily Grind: Do MMOs need ‘friction’ for social bonding?
Not quite a year ago, World of Warcraft Game Director Ion Hazzikostas sat for a Wired interview in which he discusses social bonding in...
World of Warcraft hints at delving deeper into Shadowlands in 2021
I can't be the only person wondering about what World of Warcraft has up its sleeve for 2021. Now that Shadowlands is going on...
World of Warcraft is making Torghast easier and faster to clear in response to player behavior
Torghast isn't too hard for what the developers had intended in World of Warcraft, but it is too hard for how players had actually been...
World of Warcraft’s Ion Hazzikostas evaluates Shadowlands’ launch
Now that we're approaching a month of exploring Shadowlands, Blizzard and players alike have a better idea of how the World of Warcraft expansion...
Massively Overthinking: The best and worst MMO developer quotes of 2020
We have a fun end-of-the-year tradition on MOP to recap the best and worst MMO developer quotes of the year. In fact, I keep...
World of Warcraft makes good on its new multiboxing policy, confirms delay of endgame grinds until post-launch
Earlier in the month, we reported on a shift in World of Warcraft's multiboxing policy that was going to leverage action against those who...
World of Warcraft goes on a Shadowlands interview blitz
With only days to go until Shadowlands ushers World of Warcraft players into the afterlife, it's definitely a good time for the studio to...
