Wired Interview with Ion Hazzikostas - How WoW Has Evolved with the Internet
Wired recently interviewed Ion Hazzikostas on the evolution of World of Warcraft with the internet over the years. Here are some highlights. Click the banner below to read the whole article.
Fan Art - Warcraft Cosmology Chart in Color
Redditor AJT2K19 recently posted to reddit fan art he created of the World of Warcraft Cosmology chart in beautiful color. There is also a version without the text to enjoy!
Rumor - Diablo 2: Resurrected Remaster Coming this Year
A recent rumor has surfaced from the French site Actugaming that seems to claim that Diablo 2 will be remastered as Diablo 2: Resurrected and released for the fourth quarter of this year. (They also state it might be slightly delayed do to the current situation.) Take this rumor with a grain of salt, but this website was also responsible for the Overwatch 2 and Diablo IV announcement rumors that surfaced before BlizzCon last year.
Continue reading...
Wired recently interviewed Ion Hazzikostas on the evolution of World of Warcraft with the internet over the years. Here are some highlights. Click the banner below to read the whole article.
- In the early days of WoW, opacity was a double-edged sword. Strategies and class hierarchies were mostly dependent on fragmented information that didn't work for everyone.
- The reality is that back in the day almost everybody was playing the game wrong.
- These days, the internet as a whole has refined the process of accelerating and socializing information.
- Because of this, stretching and sustaining an increasingly elusive sense of awe in the game has many more challenges.
- In the early days, WoW's magic came from a sense of mystery due to the vastness of its world and the long, rocky path to top level.
- This feeling of being teleported into an antagonistic, unknowable world forced players to use each other as buoys.
- You were much more tolerant of each other's mistakes and faults because of the effort needed to create a group.
- Finding good players usually ended in friending each other for faster leveling next time.
- There's an inverse relationship between friction and the strength of bonds that are formed as a result of that friction or to overcome that friction.
- Over time both Blizzard and the players began to streamline ease of access with quality-of-life changes and information sources such as wikis and guides.
- Today players are almost trained to min-max their characters. The community pushes people in this direction.
- Although there have been things added to the game to make finding a party easier, things like group finder and server hoping has also made online strangers plugged into a party disposable.
- WoW Classic isn't made to be blasted through at top speed, and as a result questing feels less like a means to an end than an end in itself.
- Back in the day, much of the novelty of the game was the ability to talk to strangers online. Today, almost every multiplayer game has voice chat and social networking systems.
- Although there isn't the same desperation to connect, the core of WoW still holds up. It is still a place where people gather, a fantasy-washed social media network.
- Ion mentions having a co-worker who was one of the original developers on WoW, whose guild in WoW classic split up over loot drama. Some of the old tropes never go away.
- Ion says that they have an incredibly passionate community that they couldn't be more grateful for, but they are still always chasing that mystery, the fantasy of the unexplored and undiscovered.
Fan Art - Warcraft Cosmology Chart in Color
Redditor AJT2K19 recently posted to reddit fan art he created of the World of Warcraft Cosmology chart in beautiful color. There is also a version without the text to enjoy!
Rumor - Diablo 2: Resurrected Remaster Coming this Year
A recent rumor has surfaced from the French site Actugaming that seems to claim that Diablo 2 will be remastered as Diablo 2: Resurrected and released for the fourth quarter of this year. (They also state it might be slightly delayed do to the current situation.) Take this rumor with a grain of salt, but this website was also responsible for the Overwatch 2 and Diablo IV announcement rumors that surfaced before BlizzCon last year.
Continue reading...