Battle for Azeroth Alpha/Beta General Discussion

[Soulwind]

I am not sure what type of a boss you are envisioning and what would the choices he is making be.

If you are thinking about having, like, a hundred possible actions, and choosing ten of them for the fight, that wouldn't be perceived as the boss being smart, it would be perceived as the boss being random.

I think the perception of smart necessitates reacting to what the players are doing (and / or being proactive in a smart way that is more likely to succeed with this particular group of players than with other groups).

For one, at no point they've said this AI would be implemented into any raids. They're 3 AI rivals that will try to act as a team to get some objectives before your group and, if possible, ambush and kill you.

I don't think they've even confirmed if they'll be added to warfronts, where they'd have 20 players to worry about.

But if I were to imagine how a rather unpredictable NPC could be added to the existing raid environment without drastically changing the concept of strategies, I'd say they wouldn't be the boss, they'd be adds. Maybe one add that's there throughout the combat, trying to gank your healers or push players into the AoE. Maybe in interphases where a player or a small group is sent to a different place/phase and they have to defeat an AI mob while the rest of the raid keeps fighting the boss. In general, an isolated threat, whose impredictability won't make the combat impossible to organize.

I believe they're not supposed to replace the old "AI", but just be a different kind of mob. Not rare, not elite, not boss, just smart.

On the other hand, I wonder if this is the first step towards having dungeon companions. AI characters that you can run normal dungeons and LFR with, without any pressure. I think other MMOs have them, but I don't know how good or popular they are in them.

You are completely misreading his argument, tbh. He's not depicting this as one or a few super powerful player characters starting a controversy. He's basically saying that a sizeable portion of Azeroth's inhabitants are virtually demi-gods and all have a disagreement because of our ideologies. Which is nonsense on both counts.

There aren't that many of us, and we don't all disagree. His motivation for why this war needs to happen is wrong twice.

It would make more sense if he simply admitted that Sylvanas (or Anduin, or Genn, or whomever) is sinister or corrupt or emotionally dead and simply wants the other side to burn, forcing them to retaliate.

At no point he said that we are causing the conflict. We are making it worse. Because Sylvanas does have a team of elite god-killers at her disposal, as does Anduin. They sending us to war is a threat to the world. We aren't the characters that will choose to destroy the world, we are their powerful pawns.

You can argue that our characters not having a mind of their own, lacking the choice of not fighting the opposite faction, is a terrible thing to tell the player, and I'd agree, but we didn't have a choice to ally with the Defias, or Garrosh, or Malygos. We've fought "reasonable" enemies before, and we've never had a choice.

The game isn't built around what the player wants their character to think, the player has to adapt to what the game says their character thinks.

[Deleted]

At no point he said that we are causing the conflict. We are making it worse. Because Sylvanas does have a team of elite god-killers at her disposal, as does Anduin. They sending us to war is a threat to the world. We aren't the characters that will choose to destroy the world, we are their powerful pawns.

You can argue that our characters not having a mind of their own, lacking the choice of not fighting the opposite faction, is a terrible thing to tell the player, and I'd agree, but we didn't have a choice to ally with the Defias, or Garrosh, or Malygos. We've fought "reasonable" enemies before, and we've never had a choice.

The game isn't built around what the player wants their character to think, the player has to adapt to what the game says their character thinks.

"So when we talk about what's the biggest threat in this world, is it the Titan or is it the Dwarf Paladin that put a hammer in that Titan's head? We've got tens of thousands of almost-living gods [players] now running amok on this planet with very different ideologies. That seems insane but that also seems awesome to me. And that's how this expansion was born."

He says the expansion was "born" from that line of thinking. So whether or not there's a 'Shot at Sarajevo'-moment which ends up causing the war to break out (perhaps the burning of Teldrassil?), it's still clearly, in his view, made possible and interesting because there are "tens of thousands of demi-god-like players running around with opposing world views".

[Chemical Ellis]

OGRES!

Why is no one talking about ogres?!?

The events of Antorus and the wound in Silithus presage an all-out struggle between the Horde and Alliance over the seeping blood of Azeroth - which has begun to calcify into Azerite crystals. Our battleground in this conflict is the Seething Shore.



Notice something? Ogre ruins... ogre towers... it would appear we'll be duking it out smack in the middle of an ogre settlement! Who are these ogres? What has caused them to settle on the sunny shores of Silithus? Where the heck is this, anyway?

While the battle will likely end in a stalemate, lorewise, regardless of whoever ends up winning the wound, the ogres will likely have more continuous exposure to this new Well of Eternity than anyone. And the last time we saw ogres exposed to a massive cache of crystals bearing incredible arcane potential, they formed a slave-mongering empire of mage lords.



So, the point I'm making - is this deliberate? Are they sowing the seeds of some major development further down the line? Are we about to see this~




~become this?

[Soulwind]

"So when we talk about what's the biggest threat in this world, is it the Titan or is it the Dwarf Paladin that put a hammer in that Titan's head? We've got tens of thousands of almost-living gods [players] now running amok on this planet with very different ideologies. That seems insane but that also seems awesome to me. And that's how this expansion was born."

He says the expansion was "born" from that line of thinking. So whether or not there's a 'Shot at Sarajevo'-moment which ends up causing the war to break out (perhaps the burning of Teldrassil?), it's still clearly, in his view, made possible and interesting because there are "tens of thousands of demi-god-like players running around with opposing world views".

He's answering a question that basically says "why is BfA a bigger threat than the Burning Legion", and he says that it's because the player's powerlevel.

The amount of these characters running around is irrelevant. They're hero units, 1v1, 20v20, 10000vs10000, it's a major battle either way.

The people who create and control this war are NPCs. You are not going to tell Sylvanas to burn Teldrassil, or Anduin to siege Lordaeron, they are going to tell you to do it, and your character is not going to question them.

Our characters are one of the most dangerous elements of this war, but they're not the cause. They are a weapon in reckless hands.

You are looking way too much into it, because every piece of lore surrounding our characters is always a step away from not being canon.

[Nathanyel]

So we're like Sauron, wading through armies, racking up monsterkills? Will we become the endbosses of our own game?

But yes, more Ogres, please!

[deviantcultist]

So, uhm, is there a chance we won't be getting any news for the next couple of months? Or is there anything upcoming? Been a week since the announcement and I am already thirsty for more.

[rda]

So, uhm, is there a chance we won't be getting any news for the next couple of months? Or is there anything upcoming? Been a week since the announcement and I am already thirsty for more.

The closest coming thing is 7.3.5. I don't expect many news until the beta and even in the beta I think the news will be mostly about relatively small things. Like, OK, warfronts look like this, and OK, we are going to have some small things with professions, plus screens and playthroughs.

Basically, everything big already happened.

[Keltas]

So, uhm, is there a chance we won't be getting any news for the next couple of months? Or is there anything upcoming? Been a week since the announcement and I am already thirsty for more.

They'll do something small like push 7.3.5 to the ptr or put up alpha servers with the demo build on them sometime near the end of november/early december, then we won't see anything until january. That way they can generate hype and speculation for holidays and once that starts to wane off they come back with big updates pushed.

[Soulwind]

So, uhm, is there a chance we won't be getting any news for the next couple of months? Or is there anything upcoming? Been a week since the announcement and I am already thirsty for more.

There may be the random interview here and there, and as they progress in development, they'll be more confident to give answers that they didn't before. But I wouldn't expect major news until beta.

[Hyrja]

well, 7.3.5 will have alot 8.0 hints in it. And who knows what the dataminers will find

[Phunkle]

It's not nit-picking, lol. You are dismissing an obvious fact because you are biased and want the expansion to make sense, because that legitimates your hype and lets you avoid any lingering doubts about the expansion you're about to play for the next couple of years. We all want it to be an amazing expansion.

You seem to know me better than I do. Good on you, stranger on the internet.

[Tenris]

Btw, different topic, who is Lightforging Draenei in the storyline introducing them? From the Blizzcon leak we know that there are Draenei recruits who are being Lightforged now but I presumed that would require X'era's help. Will another Naaru come forward and do that? I'd love if A'dal showed up

I think I read somewhere Turalyon offer them up now that the Legion is defeated so maybe he or some of his commanders are training them. I doubt we will see many more naaru now the legion is defeated since that seemed to be their main purpose, until the void lords show up anyway.

[Colonel Sandor]

G O O D B O I

Heckin good curse fren

Sylvannas doin me a frighten


credit to /u/treshtoons on reddit.

[Drekmar]

-snap-

G O O D B O I

Heckin good curse fren

Sylvannas doin me a frighten


credit to /u/treshtoons on reddit.

I hope we get to kill that blue scrub.

[Nathanyel]

I hope we get to kill that blue scrub.

Guess we'd have to kill Mercy Anduin first though, he keeps rezzing him.

[Fahrad Wagner]

You might get the whole world revamp that you wanted... It might just be the aftermath of this expansion.

Who knows?

[Wildmoon]

Who knows?

I hope Blizzard goes ham with this expansion with factions exchanging territories and all that shit then stabilize it in the next xpac so they can update the old world with coherent stories.

[Shadochi]

Normally you go beta when most of the things are in place and you have time to react to feedback (can spend most of your work hours doing that). Blizzard betas for WoW, however, over the years mutated into a PR message of "we are making good progress, don't worry and start preparing for when we release". They go beta way before they reach the stage where they have time to even assess feedback yet alone react to it. The devs have their hands completely full with things they know they have to finish or fix as it is. Bug reports from the beta testers don't help because there are too many holes and the devs already know that they are holes and have to be fixed. So, bug reports are largely ignored, the devs continue working as they would without the beta, just with more stress, and it all crawls to the release. If the devs are lucky, they manage to get to the stage where it would actually make sense to release the beta some months after they started it. But usually they seem to never get there because as soon as they start raising their heads they seem to immediately get some urgent rework coming their way. WoW betas are a mess.

I also don't know when they are going to go beta with BFA, right now certainly seems like way too early (what's there to test? several zones and several instances? but with the devs being obviously busy with the rest of the expansion - which looks like 80% of it - who's going to react to reports, what reaction can be reasonably expected apart from "thanks, we already know half of the things you reported and the rest needs discussion, we'll look at it later, because we are busy with things that don't need discussion"?) and it will continue to seem like way too early several months from here as well. But this never stopped them, so who knows when the beta will start, this can happen any time. It might make more sense to count back from what you think will be the release date. I think they are going to release Sep-Oct (no strong positions, it might be different), so perhaps the beta will start Feb-Mar.

Legion went into alpha with only 2/3 of the DH starting experience (mardum part, which is way less than they showed for BfA at blizzcon demo) and then into beta 2-3 months prior to launch when most of the features were already there. This means that regarding blizzard, most of your info is outdated since they moved to the new playerbase interpretation of beta (which was caused bu other games doing beta for marketing first, blizz didn't start that).(they explained switchig alpha and then beta instead of just beta in a blue post, on phone so cant find it now)

With that said, BfA alpha of the blizzcon demo is entierly possible before the end of the year since they have 2 zones, 2 allied races and 2 dungeons available, which is way more than 1 class 1 zone in the first Legion alpha build that came less than a month after Blizzcon 2015.

And most people probably mean alpha (first playable build ) when they say beta, and not the actual beta with most of the content in it.

- - - Updated - - -

Who knows?

Who nose...

[Colonel Sandor]

OGRES!

Why is no one talking about ogres?!?

The events of Antorus and the wound in Silithus presage an all-out struggle between the Horde and Alliance over the seeping blood of Azeroth - which has begun to calcify into Azerite crystals. Our battleground in this conflict is the Seething Shore.



Notice something? Ogre ruins... ogre towers... it would appear we'll be duking it out smack in the middle of an ogre settlement! Who are these ogres? What has caused them to settle on the sunny shores of Silithus? Where the heck is this, anyway?

While the battle will likely end in a stalemate, lorewise, regardless of whoever ends up winning the wound, the ogres will likely have more continuous exposure to this new Well of Eternity than anyone. And the last time we saw ogres exposed to a massive cache of crystals bearing incredible arcane potential, they formed a slave-mongering empire of mage lords.



So, the point I'm making - is this deliberate? Are they sowing the seeds of some major development further down the line? Are we about to see this~




~become this?

Hopefully an Allied Race down the line.

[brothernads]

Legion went into alpha with only 2/3 of the DH starting experience (mardum part, which is way less than they showed for BfA at blizzcon demo) and then into beta 2-3 months prior to launch when most of the features were already there. This means that regarding blizzard, most of your info is outdated since they moved to the new playerbase interpretation of beta (which was caused bu other games doing beta for marketing first, blizz didn't start that).(they explained switchig alpha and then beta instead of just beta in a blue post, on phone so cant find it now)

With that said, BfA alpha of the blizzcon demo is entierly possible before the end of the year since they have 2 zones, 2 allied races and 2 dungeons available, which is way more than 1 class 1 zone in the first Legion alpha build that came less than a month after Blizzcon 2015.

And most people probably mean alpha (first playable build ) when they say beta, and not the actual beta with most of the content in it.

What bugs me though is they announced Legion's release quarter of Summer 2016 in the opening cinematic reveal at BlizzCon 2015. This time, they didn't say anything similar about BfA.

This suggests that:
1) They want to try and shock us by releasing BfA in Spring 2018 but aren't sure if they can make it;
2) They want to release BfA in Summer 2018 but aren't sure if they can make it; or
3) They are going to release BfA in Fall 2018 and so don't need to enrage the playerbase by announcing it yet.

Maybe they don't feel the need to announce the release quarter because Legion's content pacing has been steady, and players aren't ready to abandon ship like during the content drought in WoD. But the lack of any news on this front (other than "it'll be out in 2018") is concerning...