Shadowlands Beta forums seem oddly deserted?

[Mafic]

Worst part is you can't make an informed decisions regarding soul binds because of how it impacts specs and classes. I think it is a balancing nightmare.

[MrLachyG]

That's actually horrifying news. Azerite armor 2.0 incoming?

no. Azerite armor was introduced very late into the beta. everything was introduced really early this alpha/beta cycle

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That's because this was probably the smallest beta blizzard has ever done, they basically only invite streamers anymore. Why bother inviting people to test your game when you plan on fixing it over the first 3 months anyway?

oh yeah I imagine you have facts to back this up..... oh, wait, no you don't

[goldlock]

That's actually horrifying news. Azerite armor 2.0 incoming?

It isn't that bad... people seem to think that flooding the beta with people who are already clueless about their class with guides is a good idea... its not mop proved that. Every time I am in beta every target dummy is getting pounded by people figuring out the future bis. Conduits are not a huge focus of testing as they are just % buffs that are easy to math out and not really worth investing any time in.

SL will be a mess but that is from blizzard making a terrible choice to lock a talent row behind a rep grind no amount of testing is going to course correct that at this point.

[Swnem]

Honestly, i think the devs just stopped engaging. People left feedback and are now waiting to see what happens.

Blizz seems to only communicate once a week and only on certain classes/specs. By communicate i mean they just come out and say they changed things. There is no conversation.
Honestly, i think they are just rushing it out now.

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If you want flowing discussion, go to class Discords.

These forums are how to say it... depricated, since all the good people moved to class discords.

There is sure discussion going here still, but it's mostly back and forth between 2 dozen of guys with some randoms offhand commenting in-between.

Implying any sort of discussion happens on class discords with hundreads of people just constantly meme'ing.

[Sunslayer]

no. Azerite armor was introduced very late into the beta. everything was introduced really early this alpha/beta cycle

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oh yeah I imagine you have facts to back this up..... oh, wait, no you don't

You missed the context. He or she was saying that Conduits are locked behind a week cool down so they arent being tested. It doesnt matter if they released Conduits early if people can't test them fully or in such a small way.

[Lucrece]

They're deserted because they're only inviting streamers and big name guilds, both of which rarely post in the fora because they use the beta content to prepare for launch and for youtube/twitch viewer content.

Really, all the people who would report bugs and post on theorycraft are absent while all those world race guilds just use the beta to prep for the race rather than to report and give feedback.

[Radaney]

Why post feedback when Blizzard will ignore all of it?

Also Blizzard haven't looked at the EU forums in about 10 years so that's a significant portion of the player base completely neutered.

[Sunslayer]

They're deserted because they're only inviting streamers and big name guilds, both of which rarely post in the fora because they use the beta content to prepare for launch and for youtube/twitch viewer content.

Really, all the people who would report bugs and post on theorycraft are absent while all those world race guilds just use the beta to prep for the race rather than to report and give feedback.

I think I'm gonna wait for launch and see how it goes. Just isnt enough data to make an informed decision, unless I want to go by all the "Doom and Gloom" which I don't buy as it all about grand video titles and views.

[Sluvs]

Worst part is you can't make an informed decisions regarding soul binds because of how it impacts specs and classes. I think it is a balancing nightmare.

Soulbinds are/will be the biggest problem in this expansion, mark my words. But only if I turn out to be right

[goldlock]

Soulbinds are/will be the biggest problem in this expansion, mark my words. But only if I turn out to be right

There are some problem ones but overall they are rather static.. I would find it very hard to believe they turn into the make or break it they are really generic.

[Sosuke Aizen]

Am I the only one that finds the Beta Forums alarming? Go check the Beta GD forum, it's a Ghost town. I'm not trying to be, Chicken little but what is happening? There seems to be so few discussions on the Beta.
I'm trying to follow the Beta but its tough for Shadowlands.

Part of the problem for me is I can’t post my feedback in the beta forums. I can log into beta but the new thread button and reply button is disabled. I opened a ticket to see if they can fix it.

I initially started with a level 60 then went on to leveling my BrM.

[Aggrophobic]

They are and it's becuase Blizzard doesn't really communicate on them or seem to read them at all.

[Lei]

It's not just the forums imo. The content creators (at least the ones I follow) are not really informative either. They speak about shadowlands as you read a wowhead article: "so you gonna plant this peach tree and then you gonna water it and then there will be flowers and then fruit, which you then eat. Right?" yeah but how much watering will I need (time investment in systems), after how much time will the flowers come? (maxing out renown), when's the fruit? (fully unlocking cosmetics). How much rep the new world quests give? How much time till you get exalted? Is it gonna be like 8.3? That would be shit.
Maybe it's because we have so many systems running alongside and/or maybe the game isn't even ready yet to test properly and tell. I just never felt this blind about an expac('s details) than before. Yes, I read news but news is just news.

[Sunslayer]

Part of the problem for me is I can’t post my feedback in the beta forums. I can log into beta but the new thread button and reply button is disabled. I opened a ticket to see if they can fix it.

I initially started with a level 60 then went on to leveling my BrM.

I think I saw a thread with someone having the same issue and they solved it by changing their password (I guess that resets your account somehow).

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It's not just the forums imo. The content creators (at least the ones I follow) are not really informative either.

Ive been watching the same tanking video creators for a decade and they are all gone or just arent posting videos. I did a youtube search and there are tons of M plus tanking guides for BfA Beta. There are zero? For Shadowlands that's seriously weird.

[Redroniksre]

I mean i got into the Shadowlands beta a few weeks ago and the only thing i have got going for me is that i have been in the beta almost every expansion (except TBC and Cata). I have been doing most of my bug reporting ingame, and a fair amount testing the main story. At a standstill right now with a bugged quest preventing progression in Ardenweld, so starting up a 60 premade to test other things. Forums are somewhat active, but again that is not the only place people go to post feedback.

[Gaidax]

Implying any sort of discussion happens on class discords with hundreads of people just constantly meme'ing.

At least you have people with a clue and people who just come to stir shit up with their sky is falling get permabanned.

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You missed the context. He or she was saying that Conduits are locked behind a week cool down so they arent being tested. It doesnt matter if they released Conduits early if people can't test them fully or in such a small way.

I'm in beta and it's nonsense, because you can instantly create max level character with gear, with all legendaries, all conduits unlocked and whatever covenant you want instantly.

Right now is the time to test things, because you can immediately create any character you want with everything unlocked and there are plenty M+ groups running with all keys and affixes unlocked. You can create your own key too.

[exochaft]

Ive been watching the same tanking video creators for a decade and they are all gone or just arent posting videos. I did a youtube search and there are tons of M plus tanking guides for BfA Beta. There are zero? For Shadowlands that's seriously weird.

Here's the thing with SL M+ right now: a lot of the nuance is what covenants do you have, and the mob counts are WAY off in some dungeons. Beyond that, most of the dungeons are insanely linear... which ties in to the mob counts being off, so there's no real initial tank route that's universal as you need rogue/DH or death skips for a bunch of SL dungeons right now. If you don't have skips, you're just going in a straight line for the most part, even if you got 30% over mob count. Furthermore, there's still a bunch of bugs, as well as boss/boss mechanics that will probably change soon. If I was making tanking vids for SL, I wouldn't waste my time right now with the current state of M+. I'd start making videos with 1-2 weeks until SL release at the very earliest, possibly even after launch since M+ won't be out immediately.

There's a decent amount of chatter on the beta forums, however most of it likely is in the class development section. There's TONS of stuff that still needs to be fixed with many classes/specs, and I have a sneaking suspicion that pre-patch will launch with several issues still in place. While people are testing M+ and working on strategies, classes are at the forefront. From a personal perspective, I've posted much less on the official forums as most of my bugs/comments are submitted via the in-game reporting tool (as it's real easy). If I need more than 255 characters and/or I need to go into detail with a post, I'll go to the forums.

I've said it in other threads, and I'll say it again: I think Blizz is pushing out SL much earlier than they should with the current state of the beta. I've been in every beta (and some alpha) tests for WoW, and the builds we're getting to player test are behind where they should be in relation to pre-patch/release. I'm fairly certain the release date likely came from on high, as it makes sense from a corporate perspective, not necessarily a player/completeness perspective. Or they're relying on 'mass player test', also read as pre-patch, to get info and adjust classes/spec... but that doesn't give them much time to fix stuff, or make massive changes if there needs to be some.

[Lucrece]

Soulbinds are/will be the biggest problem in this expansion, mark my words. But only if I turn out to be right

Nope.

Soulbinds are the easiest element to balance. They are static for all members of the covenant.

What will be impossible to balance are covenant and class abilities, because some of them are only ST, some only worthwhile in AoE, some alright in both, and this difference across classes means you can never use soulbinds to balance those deficits out as some class's Kyrian ability is ST but another's is AoE, so you can't just change the soulbind to give more aoe for the ST class because then the AoE class lacks ST.

That's the problem. The covenant class abilities are a steaming pile of shit, and instead they should have been two separate talent rows you pick according to situation.

[Yayeet]

Confirmation Bias. Blizzard has been very stingy with invites this time around you don't need to be a rocket scientist to figure out that they want quicker turn around on development times. This is the shortest beta cycle they've ever had.

Not confirmation bias. On my realm nearly 30 full guilds were invited to beta, on other realms it's the same story.

Yes it's a short beta cycle, however, it's also the first time that a beta launched with everything for max level into place.

Past beta's you still had to test each zone separately and the systems didn't come until very late into that beta.

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TO OP: the longer the testing cycle lasts, the less feedback they receive, I doubt even 10% of all testers give feedback on the forums at this point.

[Vilendor]

There used to be constantly updated videos for tanking in every aspect. There were tons of tanking videos for BfA M plus. Go do a YouTube search there were plenty. But zero for Shadowlands.

The last thing Actizzard does while developing an expansion is class tuning. Yes, there were BFA tanking videos... when the tuning was done and it's not a waste of time to make videos that will be outdated in a few days. Go do a YouTube search and check the release dates

Jesus f**ing christ, it's not even out jet but the doomsayers are already out preaching the "wowISdead" gospel