Battle for Azeroth Alpha/Beta General Discussion

[Lightwysh]

I know Blizzard likes time-gating, but that would be too much.

Or we could cap at 112 in 8.0, in 8.1 some time-wimey shit happens when we catch up to the Chromie scenario, then we get sent back in time/whatever, and "squished" to 50 and re-level to 60(there was another "leak" that had this). Thus rationalizing a level squish and making a stat squish not feel out of place.

[xskarma]

I have a theory about "leaks". Walk with me through this.

Before Legion: Most expansions were fairly monolithic. Handful of stories, handful of characters that get attention.

Legion: Wide cast net, bringing in a TON of characters and giving a TON of old story hooks some new progression.


If you think back to when Legion announcement had just happend, we were SHOCKED. A lot of people were convinced that cause WoD was so badly received that Blizz had gotten desperate and was throwing everything and the kitchen sink at us in Legion to get us to come back (or remain invested). It seemed like everyone who wasd anyone was getting screen time and that every loose story thread from old expansions was getting revisited. The general feeling was that Blizz was desperate and threw everything at us, and was just going to figure out later where they were going to get stories fro the expansions after that, cause it felt like they used up all the good plot that they had remaining.

That turned out to not be very true. If you look around at what is being thrown at us with leaks there's PLENTY of undiscovered story.

Also consider this: the base premise of Legion is, well, the Legion. But look at what was covered in the Broken Isles, how many wildly different areas and stories were presented. Why would a new expansion be so limited as most of these leaks portray them? Why are so many of these "leaks" so very monolithic and limited? With only a handful of story ideas and characters. Isn't it far more logical that after Legion Blizz is going to continue to cast a wide net and touch a TON of stories and characters?

Tl;DR: Limited scope "leaks" make no sense given what happend in Legion. They should be sprawling and going into a whole range of stories and characters.

[Randypan]

nothing, thread has been ''dead'' the last 2 days, post now are just desperation from people who wants to reach 2k posts.

Ahh well at least i havent missed anything lol, im reading something about a possible leak today? hopefully I NEED INFO!!!!!!

Many thanks for the reply btw

EDIT: Politeness.

[Eurhetemec]

For the level 112 leak, what besides the level cap being 112 raises any scepticism for you? Seems to be some love for it the last few pages. I believe ppl mainly criticised a 2 level xpac and the water physics part and name of specs for new class.

I think the water physics part could just be more of a general statement from him and its just a minor touchup which would make sense for blizz to do if theres an xpac with lots of water. As for the spec names, weird but possible with the void theme or simply old names he knows of that are now changed.

http://www.mmo-champion.com/threads/...ft-8-0-details for reference

It's one of the more credible leaks, but I feel like it's just a well-done fake, myself. I mean, the subtext seems to be "I'm a translator and this is coming across my desk", which would explain a lot about it. For example, as you say, the water physics deal could be a misunderstanding of a lesser claim - like they just reworked the water surface to actually have some Waverace 64-style physics (which would be viable, I believe, given Waverace 64 was on the bloody Nintendo 64!). Stuff like the BAOS claim cuts both ways - the originality of it and the unasked-for nature of it kind of make it seem more potentially real, but equally, the extreme-ness of it and lack of upside is hard to credit. Similarly the level 112 deal - again it cuts both ways - it goes against what Blizzard have said re: not wanting 5-level expansions and the vague offhand comment re: L120 and legendaries, but there's a believability to it.

I'm going with fake on this one myself, because whilst it's high-effort if fake, I just don't quite credit it, but I think it's more plausible than a lot of the fakes, including the Cluemancer one.

[Noraver]

So, here's a thought.
When Ion said "Dragons will be important at 112.", it made me wonder.
If we get to choose where we level in the new expansion, then technically, dragons won't be important at 112 for all of us... unless they've chosen to do something different this time.
Choosing where to level was great, and I don't see why they would take that away from us since it got such positive feedback, so that leaves me confused.

He was either lying to throw us off (Dragons will be important at 112 because you're set to 112 in the scenario, and only for that reason), or they've gone and tried something different. ie. We're forced to start in one zone until 112, then choose the order of the rest until 120. Maybe there's a quest-line with each different flight at the end of each zone? Makes a little bit of sense regarding the wyrm-forged "race" or whatever.

All of these different clues are leaving me so confused. :c

[Myrrh]

For the level 112 leak, what besides the level cap being 112 raises any scepticism for you? Seems to be some love for it the last few pages. I believe ppl mainly criticised a 2 level xpac and the water physics part and name of specs for new class.

I think the water physics part could just be more of a general statement from him and its just a minor touchup which would make sense for blizz to do if theres an xpac with lots of water. As for the spec names, weird but possible with the void theme or simply old names he knows of that are now changed.

http://www.mmo-champion.com/threads/...ft-8-0-details for reference

I think a lot of thought has obviously gone into it, even if it relies a bit on my pet peeve of less levels. That said, I think it contains too much info for me to believe it. Personally I expect that if any leak past or present winds up correct, it will be one of the small, relatively vague ones (maybe one specific thing like a namedrop so it's not just throwing darts at a wall).

A few things off the top of my head though:
Aside from the obvious of the level cap (and the poster's later justification not really passing muster), I'm hesitant to believe a new class would be implemented straight off the back of another. It's not impossible of course, but I'd default to skepticism on it.
The 'shadowforged' concept is interesting, potentially, but scant on detail. Giving something's name without detail could wind up legit, sure, but again I'd default to skepticism in the context of the whole package.
From a lore perspective I'm not sure C'Thun would act to release N'Zoth? The Old Gods have always seemed to be at odds with each other.
'Current honor system will remain the same + some bits & bobs' - I vaguely remember a recent blue post suggesting another change up to honor? I could be misremembering, might have a dig around.
Insanity m+ affix would not be fun to play, at all. Of course that doesn't totally discredit it knowing Blizzard...

I know next to nothing on the subject of code so the more aware feel free to correct me here, but the poster also claims that LUA will be deprecated yet old addons will somehow work. A dubious (to me at least)-sounding statement that is exceptionally light on detail.

[Nathanyel]

112 as a level cap just seems like such a reach to me. Sure, they could do it, but why? Especially why only two levels?

Indeed, I disregard anything that mentions some cap other than 120.

Yes, it could be changed, but it obvious it would receive very mixed feedback, and there's the Cataclysm precedent.
An increasing level cap over the course of the expansion would also imply an increasing hurdle, however soft, for returning players (e.g. left when it was 112, now it's 118) instead of just using something like the Nethershard vendor, or quick access to the current LFR.

In summary, while abstract, the 10 level increase per expansion is just too ingrained into WoW. A new game could experiment with that, but not the old behemoth WoW.

Tl;DR: Limited scope "leaks" make no sense given what happend in Legion.

And that's why I instantly dismiss all yammering about how Kul'Tiras couldn't be its own expansion, because it won't.
There are lots of islands, and Legion already showed that taking us back to "old" zones for some quests can be awesome, too.

[Recom]

112 as a level cap just seems like such a reach to me. Sure, they could do it, but why? Especially why only two levels?

There's a lot of ways they could only increase the level cap by two levels, but I just don't understand what end it would achieve; ilvl bloat would still need to happen in order to outlevel Legion gear, the pacing while leveling would remain the same due to each level requiring more experience; it doesn't change anything on that end.

Plus, they have level scaling now; seems strange to design tech that doesn't get utilized as heavily in the next expansion because they limit themselves to two levels.

Especially when they said only increasing our lvl cap by 5 in Cata/MoP was a mistake and that they would not do it again.

[8bithamster]

So, here's a thought.
When Ion said "Dragons will be important at 112.", it made me wonder.
If we get to choose where we level in the new expansion, then technically, dragons won't be important at 112 for all of us... unless they've chosen to do something different this time.
Choosing where to level was great, and I don't see why they would take that away from us since it got such positive feedback, so that leaves me confused.

He was either lying to throw us off (Dragons will be important at 112 because you're set to 112 in the scenario, and only for that reason), or they've gone and tried something different. ie. We're forced to start in one zone until 112, then choose the order of the rest until 120. Maybe there's a quest-line with each different flight at the end of each zone? Makes a little bit of sense regarding the wyrm-forged "race" or whatever.

All of these different clues are leaving me so confused. :c

Or.. Or.. at 112 we unlock an ability through a questline that is defining for the expansion (See class hall, artifact weapon for Legion).

[Deleted]

In summary, while abstract, the 10 level increase per expansion is just too ingrained into WoW. A new game could experiment with that, but not the old behemoth WoW.

Cataclysm and MoP?

[Deleted]

it could be 112 is the known cap and thats the only info the leaker has, but this time around blizz does something new, and we lvl the rest to 120 mid expac or some shit, but without it affecting our item power or level

[Noraver]

I still feel that Wrathion is the only one who should be capable of creating Dragonsworn with wyrm powers because the black dragonflight is the only one which hasn't lost its powers; the others are too weak go even create more of their own, let alone empower others.

Although.. The other flights could get some of their powers back from the blood of the wound.
That would be a nice lead-in to Nozdormu going insane. Follows the other flights to get power back, realizes "oooo, this is nice!" and bathes in the blood for too long, going power-crazy.
Or, when it's his turn to do so, the void/C'Thun taints the blood and he goes mad.

Those sound pretty fun and would make for a neat cinematic, but I'm still left wondering about the 112 thing.

[Deleted]

Yeah, it could be that. I'm not trying to pretend I have some insider info that disputes that.

But why would they do that?

who knows? maybe to have everyone at cap much quicker or for whatever reason i have no idea could be anything if its tru

[Myrrh]

So, here's a thought.
When Ion said "Dragons will be important at 112.", it made me wonder.
If we get to choose where we level in the new expansion, then technically, dragons won't be important at 112 for all of us... unless they've chosen to do something different this time.
Choosing where to level was great, and I don't see why they would take that away from us since it got such positive feedback, so that leaves me confused.

He was either lying to throw us off (Dragons will be important at 112 because you're set to 112 in the scenario, and only for that reason), or they've gone and tried something different. ie. We're forced to start in one zone until 112, then choose the order of the rest until 120. Maybe there's a quest-line with each different flight at the end of each zone? Makes a little bit of sense regarding the wyrm-forged "race" or whatever.

All of these different clues are leaving me so confused. :c

Could be a Cata/Deepholm-like situation where you have choice for some levels, collapse to one zone (Dragon Isles?) and then back out to choice again? I agree though, realistically they're not gonna walk away from the level scaling they brought in for Legion. Probably.

[Eurhetemec]

I also feel like people don't consider how easy the first 4-7 levels are for most people because of how strong gear is on most characters at launch. 2 levels is likely not enough time to find better gear for every slot so you just breeze through them and don't replace anything until cap at 112. At least in the current system, by the time you'd hit 120, a good portion of your 110 gear will have been replaced.

The "leak" specifically addresses this, so that's not a good counter.

(Again I think the leak is fake, but it's worth reading it before you come up with stuff it already dealt with!)

Specifically the leak says 110-112 will take as long as 100-110, and the gear you will get is a special kind of gear called "Shadowforged" that is needed to fight the minions of N'zoth and so on.

I'm not saying that makes it plausible, but they did address that.

[Nathanyel]

Cataclysm and MoP?

I mentioned in the paragraph above that how Cata's 80-85 was ill-received, and MoP was just to get back to a number divisible by 10.

At most, I could see a "level squish", setting the starting level for the new expansion to 50, and the maximum to 60. This would mostly makes sense along with a rework of older content and especially scaling these zones to 10-50 to allow for a free-form levelling experience.

[Makorus]

The fact that people are so hung up over 112 is baffling.

112 would be one of the biggest blunders in WoW history.

Yeah, taking 1 day for one level. It's not like getting to the cap is any faster. Levels is the most inconsequential number. They could make the cap 999999999999 and nothing would change, essentially, except having the level pop up thing every few seconds.

Let's ignore the fact that they outright said that 5 levels felt boring.

[Miralynn]

So, here's a thought.
When Ion said "Dragons will be important at 112.", it made me wonder.
If we get to choose where we level in the new expansion, then technically, dragons won't be important at 112 for all of us... unless they've chosen to do something different this time.
Choosing where to level was great, and I don't see why they would take that away from us since it got such positive feedback, so that leaves me confused.

He was either lying to throw us off (Dragons will be important at 112 because you're set to 112 in the scenario, and only for that reason), or they've gone and tried something different. ie. We're forced to start in one zone until 112, then choose the order of the rest until 120. Maybe there's a quest-line with each different flight at the end of each zone? Makes a little bit of sense regarding the wyrm-forged "race" or whatever.

All of these different clues are leaving me so confused. :c

Or, dragons being important at 112 has nothing to do with where you're leveling, and is part of the story that triggers based on your level. Like a lot of the order hall quests did. There have always been a few main story quests that started based on your level and not where you were questing at the moment.

[Eurhetemec]

I know next to nothing on the subject of code so the more aware feel free to correct me here, but the poster also claims that LUA will be deprecated yet old addons will somehow work. A dubious (to me at least)-sounding statement that is exceptionally light on detail.

Deprecated doesn't mean "instantly stops working" in code.

It means "no longer encouraged and will be dropped in future"

So what the guy seems to be proposing is not entirely unreasonable. He's saying LUA would be deprecated, i.e. Blizzard would say "We will be stopping using LUA in a future patch, and encourage you to use BAOS instead" and presumably Blizzard would not provide new LUA hooks and so on, to help nudge people to BAOS.

So say 8.0 comes out, and LUA is deprecated, your LUA addons still work, but Blizzard have warned you that this will change, and come 8.1 (say), LUA is no longer supported at all and only BAOS works.

That's the theory, anyway. I personally think it's unlikely because you'd have a weird period where both LUA and BAOS addons worked, but they would probably be mutually incompatible, so you'd need to pick one or the other anyway, and given you're doing that, it might just be better to force people over to BAOS.

You're going to lose a huge number of mod-developers and cool mods either way, because a lot of mods exist and are maintained almost entirely because it's low-effort (there are exceptions), and learning a new scripting language? Hahaha. Plus it would be "casuals" who would be hit worst by this - "serious" players will switch to BAOS instantly and any "serious" addons they need will be swapped over, if they are still possible on BAOS. Even if they aren't still possible, most "serious" players will switch so as to start learning to do without them sooner.

[Deleted]

i mean its kinda weird the leaker says 112, i mean anyone who would make a leak would say 120, i mean if he said 120 we would be talking about the features right, dont u think thats very weird that he chose 112, imo that either means this is tru or the leaker is pretty smart