Dean "Iksar" Ayala - Game Director for Hearthstone - Leaves Blizzard
In a shocking turn of events, and less than 3 months after he officially announced his promotion to Game Director, Dean "Iksar" Ayala is announcing his farewell from Blizzard.
His current Twitter profile says "Unemployed" but it is reasonable to suspect we will hear from Dean in another capacity, and for another company, soon enough!
From us at HearthPwn, a heartfelt "Thank you for everything!" and a hope that Dean will use his great talents as a communicator to enrich some new gaming community!
After 11 years, I am leaving Blizzard.
— August Dean Ayala 💙 (@IksarHS) September 16, 2022
Hearthstone is an incredible game. To have played even a small part in its creation is an honor I'll never forget. Thank you to all the players, and a special thank you to my fellow game creators. I am proud of all we built together. pic.twitter.com/zhc0PBuOke
He will be new design director of LoL now.
He is not the only one.
https://www.pushsquare.com/news/2022/09/overwatch-2-lead-hero-designer-geoff-goodman-departs-blizzard
11 years in the same company. In the last decade, I got jobs in 8 different companies (except from 1, all software development), changed for better offers in the next. If I find one that makes me stay even half that time I am assuming it must be a very good job already.
He seemed like a decent guy to me. I feel like working for a company like Actitvison, especially in the last couple of years, they have offered very little in terms of wiggle room for anything creative. It's all profit profit profit. Once they think hearthstone has truly run out of road they will inevitably start thinking about Hearthstone 2. Dean probably quickly tired of being little more than lip-service.
It's not just Activision - suits and shareholders are choking the life out of the games industry. The budgets to create even double-A games have ballooned in the last decade. No one wants to take risks anymore, and the investors are too goddamn greedy - Art and business don't work so well togteher once scaled up into the hundreds of millions.
Old Blizzard would have seen the success of Battlegrounds and have been working on scaling that up - A Battlegrounds like playing expereince with a battle view more like a Total War game. Instead of doing that they are lazily applying the squeeze. The company just isn't what it was.
I will be very scared for Blizzard's approach in case of HS 2. We will see how they will deal with Overwatch 2 and things seems not very promising.
I hope nobody buys into this cave-troll and actually attempts this. would have been almost report worthy due to it's nature of misleading beginners.
I'm going to leave HS after this expansion, too.
I stopped buying bundles from previous expansion. Game is still playable with all the gold I get, especially in wild. So that's it...
I will not miss you.
Ok, But the question we all wanna know - Whats ur elo?
insane truly, but almost every expansion i get between 15 and 20 legendaries at least. opening between 100/200 packs for expansion.
I always turn off the modem , wait for a minute and turn on again after open a legendary.
GOOD RIDDANCE
I dont mind. Warlock and druid endless tier 1 while he was in charge. Sick of it
Warlock ? Naaaaaaah actually can't remember too many major monstrosities in Standart before Implock.
2015 Brode Era Handlock and Zoolock were dominant... during that time the class got two S tier decks at the same time
Druid is flawed by design, can't really blame him on that, Mana ramp was the class identity given already from back the Beta days.
If anything I'd blame Mr Ayala for the direction he took Mage onto, becoming the annoying "game stealer" class, winning games they have no business to win due to silly Casino RNG.. (I'd bet this is Sherman's actual tournament class, entering a Field of Pro dudes, and trying to land a sucker punch or two)
Agree warlock hasn't been prevalent, but if I'm not mistaken one of the worst designed cards - Tickatus - was during Ayala's reign.
100% agree for mage. This class totally lost its identity and it's just rng bs all the way - pure garbage. They need to stop this and redefine it entirely.
For me, as a classic fantasy/DnD fan, a mage class should be about utilizing powerful spells with specific effects - like polymorph, fireball etc. - not some random slot machines; summoning elementals and golems to help you fight; striking from distance and being vulnerable (opposite from the endless freezes and immunes), dealing and/or specializing in the different magic schools, etc. Long ago Mage used to be a little bit like this, but it was never refined and elaborted - it just turned to rng fiesta and every expansion a new theme... Mechs, flamewaker, endless turns, skeletons, what next - pirates...?
Well I'm not talking about monstrosities. Tier 1 =/= tier S.
Also, warlock has had the most obnoxious designs in the game. Tickatus, OWLTK, questlock,... they were all strong decks that made the game miserable for me..
In the past 2 years, Warlock has had a Tier 1 deck 2 or 3 times, for no more than about 2-3 months... Now compare it to Druid, Rogue, Hunter, Shaman or Paladin.
Since Brode left, Warlock and Priest are consistently the worst classes in the game, maybe with a few short breaks.
Priest has been the worst class since Brode STARTED :p
Although I agree with you on this and have told it before here, the Lore in WoW is not that classic fantasy. Mages in WoW create mechs and do lots of shenanigans. They'll never be comparable.
I actually don't dislike the way Mage works. Latest archetypes were awesome. Mage is a love it or hate it class, I don't think that's something bad.
You could even argue that having some random minion synergies here and there is necessary, unless mage should just be pure damage from hand. The fire/spell-school-package that mage got in UiS (stormwind) was perhaps the most mage-like flavored set ever and people hated it...