Battle for Azeroth Alpha/Beta General Discussion

[Cosmic Janitor]

Or, they just made the hole smaller than it should be...

Tbh, would like a revamp of that zone with dalaran being much larger than ingame currently.
Plop dalaran in the zone and add stuff around it, making current dalaran like the center of the town

I think the original bubble was always way too smal to begin with. They really fucked up the scale in that area, lordaeron is not supposed to be in catapult range to it either..

[Rhlor]

I love the golden eyes

[Broken Fox]

That's the entire reason we do need them.

And no, WoW isn't about faction war. Never was. That's always been a side show at best.

Horde and Alliance tearing into each other has always been the backbone of the game. All the villains of the week are just distractions.

[Renley]

That's the entire reason we do need them.

And no, WoW isn't about faction war. Never was. That's always been a side show at best.

I mean, the vanilla cinematic is explicitly about the faction war. BC was almost the same, though it did have a touch of "raiding" in it. The Faction war has always been there. Hell, even the original vanilla game boxes were faction themed.

[Aeluron Lightsong]

I mean, the vanilla cinematic is explicitly about the faction war. BC was almost the same, though it did have a touch of "raiding" in it. The Faction war has always been there. Hell, even the original vanilla game boxes were faction themed.

Vanilla was more about the world(The cinematic). At least that's the vibe I got from it.

[Vakir]

I mean, the vanilla cinematic is explicitly about the faction war. BC was almost the same, though it did have a touch of "raiding" in it. The Faction war has always been there. Hell, even the original vanilla game boxes were faction themed.

The cinematic isn't really the determination of the overarching theme 100% of the time. Vanilla had to be sold on the two factions because the entire core idea of WoW as an MMO was a variety of stories that didn't have any primary through-hook. The main selling point was naturally going to be the "world" and the two factions sharing it.

BC was the first expansion, so it involved progressed variations of the same heroes from the first cinematic (the same human mage, probably-same Forsaken warlock, the same orc warrior now has an Ashkandi, etc.) only now with new allies. And then, Illidan.

Everything after that up to BfA, which depicted actual in-game events similar to the Legion one, has been about a bigger threat or the rejection of war outright. The core of Warcraft is about two factions fighting, but the entire basis for their conflict is that it routinely distracts from things that are bigger than them. This goes back as far as Warcraft 1 and how it was recontextualized in the newer lore - it was about the Horde and Alliance fighting, but the bigger threat behind the scenes was Sargeras!Medivh, and now with the post-Lord of the Clans retcons we're aware that the Horde was being manipulated (to an extent), which was the start of Warcraft diversifying the storytelling behind their monster races so it was more than just standard Tolkien tropes.

The crown jewel in the entire franchise that has the largest amount of new fans brought in from it prior to WoW itself and with the most DNA attached to the present lore style was Warcraft 3, which was literally about the two sides learning to shut the hell up and work together so they still have a damn planet.

I can't fully comprehend how we're given an expansion with a heavy-handed theme like "the planet is dying and two sides are fighting over a superweapon" and take away from it that, sure, we're totally supposed to be on board with this the entire time and there's not going to be any negative consequences.

Mists literally has a super-obvious and heavy-handed metaphor with a board game that both sides are supposed to win cooperatively and then ending with a chewed out Wrathion being told "So it is with your Alliance and your Horde. They are not strong despite one another; they are strong BECAUSE of one another." and people still somehow fail to comprehend that, maybe, marketing around the conflict isn't the same as cosigning the jingoism 100% of the time.

The community's black and white thinking is...bizarre, honestly.

The conflict's probably never going to end, largely due to shrieking fanboys, but you're dreaming if you think the conflict will be at full throttle for the entire time. There's always going to be peaks and valleys in terms of aggression. Whether they adequately write around that is another story.

[Cosmic Janitor]

I mean, the vanilla cinematic is explicitly about the faction war. BC was almost the same, though it did have a touch of "raiding" in it. The Faction war has always been there. Hell, even the original vanilla game boxes were faction themed.

Which was complete bs, unless you were running around actively ganking one another there was no real faction conflict at all in the vanilla game. Battle grounds were introduced way later, heck, even the honor system wasn't in to begin with. None of the plotlines actually encouraged attacking the opposing factions, at best you had local splinter groups of each faction in a zone that served for a few quests, but it was never the focus during any of it. Arguably even the most popular time during the franchise's existance as an RTS was during WC3 and it's addon and there as well the faction conflict took a backseat in the story campaign. Claiming the faction bs is the backbone and core of the franchise is just that; BS. Neither the Alliance nor the Horde actually existed in the way they do today back then. The factions that spawned the whole red vs. blue are not even the majority player characters choice wise, and never have been. Fuck you could probably argue that the Kirin Tor have contributed more to the overall story of WoW than both the factions combined..

[Drekmar]

Build with endgame content would be welcomed.

[George Costanza]

Yeah. End game content would be nice Beta Needs more content atm.

Fast.

[Valysar]

Beta coming veeeeeeeeryy soon™
In a few days

[GoodUsername55]

Maybe if the new build isn't today it will officially be the beta in the next.

[Cosmic Janitor]

Maybe if the new build isn't today it will officially be the beta in the next.

Well they want to do raid testing in less than 24 if I adjusted that time properly. One would expect at least a tiny patch with a bit of a raid and a boss model.

[Broken Fox]

The conflict's probably never going to end, largely due to shrieking fanboys

Or you know.. the design of the story and the game. They wouldn't have split us into two factions otherwise.

[Pantupino]

I’ve had enough of Dalaran

Nonsense champion!

[Cosmic Janitor]

Or you know.. the design of the game. They wouldn't have split us into two factions otherwise.

They did that at a time when they didn't even have an idea for what engame the game would have. That was over 13 years ago.

[Drekmar]

Well they want to do raid testing in less than 24 if I adjusted that time properly. One would expect at least a tiny patch with a bit of a raid and a boss model.

Boss is already in afaik, models have been datamined few builds ago.

[Vakir]

Or you know.. the design of the game. They wouldn't have split us into two factions otherwise.

I'm kinda surprised that this is the only takeaway from that post.

In any case, you can have two factions while not having two factions in an active war. Having an in-universe treaty of some kind between two nations doesn't mean those two nations are immediately in bed with one another. And no, "peace treaties are riveting gameplay!" is not an argument. The lore has tons of things that don't happen actively in-game that make for storytelling evolution without being tied to gameplay.

You can even revert it back to a tenuous form of that non-aggression, a sort of cold war with occasional independent skirmishes, which is effectively what it was back in Vanilla.

The reason the war remains in the form it is now is because Blizzard markets around scandal and shock of storytelling developments (character deaths, sudden swerves, etc.) rather than quality and people demand that if the war isn't actively high-velocity then somehow we're all pussies or some such nonsense.

[protip]

They did that at a time when they didn't even have an idea for what engame the game would have. That was over 13 years ago.

I mean, every iteration of the game's design has been built up on the two faction system as foundation. It's a pretty core part of the game.

I'm kinda surprised that this is the only takeaway from that post.

In any case, you can have two factions while not having two factions in an active war. Having an in-universe treaty of some kind between two nations doesn't mean those two nations are immediately in bed with one another. And no, "peace treaties are riveting gameplay!" is not an argument. The lore has tons of things that don't happen actively in-game that make for storytelling evolution without being tied to gameplay.

You can even revert it back to a tenuous form of that non-aggression, a sort of cold war with occasional independent skirmishes, which is effectively what it was back in Vanilla.

The reason the war remains in the form it is now is because Blizzard markets around scandal and shock of storytelling developments (character deaths, sudden swerves, etc.) rather than quality and people demand that if the war isn't actively high-velocity then somehow we're all pussies or some such nonsense.

That's what they do every time we get an Isle of Quel'danas type patch. It's just a part of the story, not a final state for the game to exist in.

[Cosmic Janitor]

Boss is already in afaik, models have been datamined few builds ago.

Yeah I was unsure about that, but did they also mine the raid zone itself? Well I guess chances are that I missed the preview of that (or no one bothered). I had at least hoped they wouldn't use the current build.

[Daffan]

Really depends how Warfronts turn out but yes, having more then one Warfront will help, add variety and make the gameplay not tire out.

I don't see how the gameplay doesn't tire out, didn't they say already that Warfronts are virtually impossible to lose???