World of Warcraft's developers did an abrupt about-face after largely refusing to acknowledge player feedback during the Shadowlands expansion that nearly killed the game. With the MMO's 10th expansion, The War Within, on the horizon, game director Ion Hazzikostas told PC Gamer that Blizzard is more willing than ever to re-examine WoW's basic systems to stay in tune with what players want.
"The last few years really have been a time of introspection and reexamination of all of the building blocks, the design DNA, of WoW," he said. "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?'
