It's safe to say that Legion is now one of the most successful expansions that Blizzard's World of Warcraft has seen. The largest MMORPG was filled with mixed criticisms over the past years especially after the release of the previously anticipated Warlords of Draenor. But after the dusts settled, it turns out that the hype train has gone down the drain after the studio was lambasted with negative criticisms in their site's community threads. Now, the newly appointed game director, Ian Hazzikostas, shares his sentiments regarding the previous expansion and how it was a "mistake."
World of Warcraft: Warlords of Draenor
According to Hazzikostas, one of the major concerns in Warlords of Draenor is the fact that there's not much of a casual content that would appearl to regular players. The expansion itself had catered the hardcore gamers more than the casual ones which comprised the bulk of the community. In an interview with Destructoid, he said:
"People change," he explained. " People who were once hardcore raiders now have families, and might not have time to play as much as they did. They want casual content. So if you wanted to do dungeons, you were basically out of luck with Draenor. You only had a small pool of content to go with, and although we think we did a good job with our raids, we lost sight of just about everything else and just didn't deliver. Mistakes were made, that's a fact."
It's not surprising to see that Blizzard is admitting such mistake considering the fact that after the release of Warlords of Draenor, the franchise has lost 44% of its total 10 million subscribers at launch. Indeed it was a crucial blow to the company but it also became the fuel that will drive the company forward coming towards Legion.
World of Warcraft: Legion
After the release of Legion, Blizzard didn't just bounce back -- it definitely regained its once former glory as the subscribers skyrocketed to 11 million from 5.5 million during WoD. The expansion has also recorded a sold-in of 3.3 million copies worldwide which ties it with the game's 2010 expansion, Cataclysm.
According to Hazzikostas, they learned a lot from their mistakes in Draenor and all of the missing components from the previous expansion was then improvised and incorporated into the game. One of the major concerns which they fully addressed in Legion is the broadening of World quests which, according to the game director, appeals to those that have limited time to dedicate for the game. Aside from that, they've brought back characters which were long gone in the history of World of Warcraft franchise and expanded their story making the lore even more enriching and satisfying for the community.
Future of World of Warcraft
Hazzikostas concluded the interview saying that there's definitely a future iteration of Legion to come and that players should expect the hype to elevate even further. It's great to know that as the community is changing, then so does the developers and their approach to the game is also evolving. What's more, we can expect the hype for World of Warcraft to continue in many years to come!
