Dragonflight Alpha/Beta General Discussion

[Sondrelk]

That is what I don't get. It's not like they couldn't animate them a bit better, but instead the always use these canned animations that just never work and never look good. Not to mention the unhinged jaw animations, those drove me crazy in BfA with Jaina..

In that case they would need to give random NPCs custom animations on the off-chance they would need them for a cutscene at one point.

Pre-rendered cutscenes already do everything you want though. Having entirely custom animations and lip-syncing, camera angles and what have you. They are just not always worht making when all you want is a quick once and done cutscene that is meant to show off your player character.

[Wangming]

Sargeras got 100% fooled, and the Void abilities on the Naaru chick is clever asf. From what I've seen from the SoD and whatnot, seems like Danny and co are 100% Team Zovaal.

I still firmly believe, irrational it may be, that the Nathrezim have plans that don't involve Zovaal. Scheaming is what they do. Besides Denathrius is a more interesting villain than heartless Picard.

[Cosmic Janitor]

In that case they would need to give random NPCs custom animations on the off-chance they would need them for a cutscene at one point.

Pre-rendered cutscenes already do everything you want though. Having entirely custom animations and lip-syncing, camera angles and what have you. They are just not always worht making when all you want is a quick once and done cutscene that is meant to show off your player character.

Maybe I remember it wrong, but I'm fairly certain you could manipulate individual body parts in the old model viewer software. There is no reason why they couldn't do the same ingame if the model already allows it, this needs to only run client side anyway. Not to mention these videos are hardly scripted with such detail that adding a few special cases for interactions would actually kill them and their "animation" budget.

As for the unhinged jaw, I'm not even talking about lip sync, come on please. The basic talking animation with wild gesticulation, the head jerking around like crazy and the jaw doing some unholy things though.. let's just say they could have toned that down..

[huth]

There is no reason why they couldn't do the same ingame if the model already allows it, this needs to only run client side anyway.

At that point, you already did 99% of the work to just make a new animation for the model anyway. There's no practical reason to design the engine to be able to do it, rather than just have it run existing animations.

[Valysar]

Why do we hear one of the Boralus theme is the new 9.1 musics ?

[johnnyd2]

Why do we hear one of the Boralus theme is the new 9.1 musics ?

probably for the Infinite Pirate Dragon's area of Tazavesh

[Valysar]

probably for the Infinite Pirate Dragon's area of Tazavesh

Ah yes, good guess !

[Raetary]

Fucking Naaru are just the most useless creatures ever. Also these ingame cutscenes will never look good, will they?

They could if they bothered to simply add more NPC animations.
Like they did for Anduin and the Jailer at expansion launch.


0:15

But considering they totally won't do that, i'd rather they just keep the budget for... literally anything else and simply do dialogues like they used to.
I'd really rather just have the dialogue between 2 NPCs rather than these cutscenes.

[Dracullus]

It’s definitely July now as we didn’t get the release candidate this week and they’re still tuning.

Can we for once wait until something happens definitely before we call it happens definetely?

No end of season warning this week would be clear sign it's July release, nothing else. I did literally 10 sec searching how it was during 8.2. It got release build 10 days before launch - and it was SECOND build that week. Not to mention I don't get why release build couldn't be week later for you.

As for tuning, season is not launching with patch. Yeah, yeah, no word about it from Blizzard yet. Also Blizzard hasn't put any word that next reset on EU is on Wednesday again.

[Cosmic Janitor]

But considering they totally won't do that, i'd rather they just keep the budget for... literally anything else and simply do dialogues like they used to.
I'd really rather just have the dialogue between 2 NPCs rather than these cutscenes.

Agreed. I don't dislike cutscenes on principle, like some other people, but they should at least serve a purpose and show us stuff that can't happen ingame. For most of them though, even the camera work isn't much more interesting. Only advantage is yyy_rofln00b_xxx not (additonally) breaking immersion in a scene and/or having to awkwardly match the pace of an NPC, but sadly that is often bought with highlighting that the animations up close don't look very good.

[Edward Wu]

You only said 9.3 wouldn't be a thing cause you thought SL would be like WoD, which is a wrong statement to begin with.

I'm fairly sure I spent time in this very thread stating that I thought a 9.1 and 9.2 situation would NOT be like WoD because it essentially offered double the content to WoD's single content patch.

Not liking the historical revisionisms here.

[TheFirstOnes]

I'm fairly sure I spent time in this very thread stating that I thought a 9.1 and 9.2 situation would NOT be like WoD because it essentially offered double the content to WoD's single content patch.

Not liking the historical revisionisms here.

It was either you or someone else, but I very clearly remember someone saying that SL would be like WoD

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There is no way in hell this expansion goes normally, its either a) getingt cut short or b) we getting some extreme scuffed patches. They will not adjust the timeline for the 250+ day X.1 patch and have a 3 year+ expansion

Blizzard is already publicly on blast by Activision to for not releasing enough products

It’s not getting cut short, and 9.1 isn’t scuffed. SL overall feels like a shorter expansion than normal.

[TheFirstOnes]

I dont know who you are responding too but my post has nothing to do with what you said.
But good to you know you already know whats gonna happen 100% i guess, you should give mmo champion interviews instead of ion

I meant to reply to someone else. That’s odd.

Well, we’re mostly going by patch length and whatnot. If 9.2 isn’t the last patch of SL, that’ll be crazy.

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Wait, no, I was responding to you. I think my post is pretty on the nose with what you said.

[huth]

They could if they bothered to simply add more NPC animations.

And how do you expect them to do that? Animators don't exactly grow on trees. It's not exactly a secret that they're one of the big bottlenecks on new models, either.
They're not going to get asked to do anything that isn't considered high priority.

[Raetary]

And how do you expect them to do that? .

I don't.

/10chars

[huth]

I don't.

/10chars

Then you need to rephrase that, because it strongly indicates that you do believe them capable of doing it and choosing not to, rather than lacking the resources to do it.

[Revamp Man]

so E3 pretty much confirmed that covid screwed up all releases
i dont think we are going to see a normal expansion cycle this time around and im gonna drink the towellie kool aid and say 29th of june was their original goal but it probably got pushed a week

i do find the whispers interesting especially connected with the new dreadlord cinematic because it makes me think that Argus really was the thing that broke the arbiter
it also makes me think xalatath was a dreadlord (her line about us giving her and her side a victory)

"but titans would go back to their realm of order when they die"
maybe but maybe not because we never got to see a titan actually die like argus did
"he would just go back to the twisting nether"
not how that works

personally i believe that as the titan of death and the unmaker he would go to the shadowlands and there is no way that a soul like argus could be judged like the others.

Now here is where i get extremely out there in my speculation:
we are told the eternal ones all had keys representing their covenants and that the jailer wanted to use those keys and the others didnt so they imprisoned him. Now what if Zovaal was the original arbiter of souls?? This kinda makes sense considering his goal is the arbiter herself and that makes it seem like he wants her power specifically the orb in her chest though it could also be that argus is still in her and he wants to drain that power of UNMAKING. The recent whispers about lying voices is also interesting when we have an npc called the VOICE of the arbiter. Possible dreadlord replaced the original and everything we have done is what zovaal wanted. We have seen that being drained of their power is able to cause the eternal ones to change such as with the runecarver which means zovaal will have a new model undoubtedly.

9.1 is going to be very interesting with all the lore they are dropping to cover the new setting and i cant wait to see how much further they push the "Anduin is the Sylvanas to Sylvanas who is Arthas" line and have her sacrifice herself to save him and beat the jailer because we aint killing her no matter how much i wish we were.

9.1 july 7th
season 2 july 13th
9.2 ptr in november
9.2 release february/march
9.3 ptr july
9.3 launch october
10.0 launch september
(i dont care if you think 9.3 wont happen this is just a personal guess the "9.3 isnt needed it wont happen" discussion has its own thread just like tinkers and leaks)

[Alanar]

There's like...

3 Hours of Music here! WHAT THE FUCK???

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Compare that to 7.3: That's simply 2 hours of Music MAX! Barely even 2 hours.

Just rlx.. its just some backround music..

[Revamp Man]

Just rlx.. its just some backround music..

music is his main thing
i mean i think its crazy to react like that but hey hes gonna do what hes gonna do so more power to him

[Sondrelk]

music is his main thing
i mean i think its crazy to react like that but hey hes gonna do what hes gonna do so more power to him

Sometimes you get absolutely kickass music though. You never know when you will get another track like Requiem of Lost Cities from Legion, or the Zin'azshari piece from Nazjatar.