Dragonflight Alpha/Beta General Discussion

[therumblings]

Broken clocks.

No. There have been actual leaks that leaked expansions in specific detail, usually a few days, and in some cases hours, before BlizzCon. BFA and Legion both had leaks on this forum. Usually a small paragraph of only a few lines, outlining the details of the expansion features, like allied races and demon hunters.

Shadowlands however, was a unique type of leak, since it was the very first time we had a legit logo, and cinematic, get leaked. Which totally changes how we approach leaks going forward, in previous years, a logo leak confirmed it was fake, now it's not the case.

[Zyrinx]

No. There have been actual leaks that leaked expansions in specific detail, usually a few days, and in some cases hours, before BlizzCon. BFA and Legion both had leaks on this forum. Usually a small paragraph of only a few lines, outlining the details of the expansion features, like allied races and demon hunters.

Shadowlands however, was a unique type of leak, since it was the very first time we had a legit logo, and cinematic, get leaked. Which totally changes how we approach leaks going forward, in previous years, a logo leak confirmed it was fake, now it's not the case.

Didn't blizzard actually leak the bolvar picture themselves? I may be misremembering

[huth]

No. There have been actual leaks that leaked expansions in specific detail, usually a few days, and in some cases hours, before BlizzCon. BFA and Legion both had leaks on this forum. Usually a small paragraph of only a few lines, outlining the details of the expansion features, like allied races and demon hunters.

Shadowlands however, was a unique type of leak, since it was the very first time we had a legit logo, and cinematic, get leaked. Which totally changes how we approach leaks going forward, in previous years, a logo leak confirmed it was fake, now it's not the case.

They certainly have lost detail as the years went on, though. The big leak posts that appear weeks or months before the reveal are rather sus.

While we got a logo for the first time with SL, we had little to no information about the expansion beyond that and the logo didn't really tell us much.

[therumblings]

Didn't blizzard actually leak the bolvar picture themselves? I may be misremembering

It was never confirmed, but Ion joked about it during the SL reveal, considering how it all went down I'm going to say yes it was intentional.

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https://www.mmo-champion.com/threads...3#post35195433

https://www.mmo-champion.com/threads...1#post47806737

Found some old leaks for example

[Varodoc]

Pretty sure any single one of those would be indicative of a fake right now .

I disagree. All these new features by themselves are huge.

- A new class (maybe not the lame Tinker) is huge, see the two Hero Classes and how influential they were in WoW's popularity (the crowd went crazy when Demon Hunters were announced).

- A world revamp would be super huge for obvious reasons (see what a massive shift Cataclysm represented from the "Old WoW").

- Player Housing would also be a huge new side feature, giving players the ability to have their own place to call home in the game world. It would be even more impactful in player customization than Transmogrification.

One of these is bound to happen. They need to do something huge for 10.0 after the travesty and complete shame that was Shadowlands. All 3 at once though? Nope. It's one or the other. They don't got the money to do all three at once. Maybe they can do a world revamp and add a new class (in Cataclysm they did a revamp and added 2 races plus a bunch of new race-class combinations), but then player housing will be sacrificed.

[Slowpoke is a Gamer]

Hey, Wrath of the Bolvar was funny as hell.



People were super hyped about 9.0 being huge because of the BFA story buildup/rage at BFA leading to a "Legion 2" but unfortunately it looks like they decided to do feature-filler while waiting for 10.0. Likely because they needed more time for the revamp/new race cities.

Or, or, there is no big payoff and WoW is just declining into oblivion.

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Anyway if we're talking expectations, what I expect is nothing but disappointment.

BFA 3.0 with Evil Turalyon and Evil Y'rel as the villains, 4 zones, a generic raid, and new reskins of Artifacts and Garrisons.



Now what I'd want to see is basically Blizz reload for another 10 years and hit the reset button on the game a little. Bring us back to EK/Kalimdor, revamp classes pretty much across the board to be more mechanically diverse, and fire the entire story department and start over.

[Cosmic Janitor]

I disagree. All these new features by themselves are huge.

- A new class (maybe not the lame Tinker) is huge, see the two Hero Classes and how influential they were in WoW's popularity (the crowd went crazy when Demon Hunters were announced).

- A world revamp would be super huge for obvious reasons (see what a massive shift Cataclysm represented from the "Old WoW").

- Player Housing would also be a huge new side feature, giving players the ability to have their own place to call home in the game world. It would be even more impactful in player customization than Transmogrification.

One of these is bound to happen. They need to do something huge for 10.0 after the travesty and complete shame that was Shadowlands. All 3 at once though? Nope. It's one or the other. They don't got the money to do all three at once. Maybe they can do a world revamp and add a new class (in Cataclysm they did a revamp and added 2 races plus a bunch of new race-class combinations), but then player housing will be sacrificed.

I think especially because they are "huge" they are also extremely unlickly.

Class: WoW is already bogged down with too many things and Blizzard clearly fears that they can no longer handle the game at all. That is part of why we have these idiotic borrowed power systems, that while they are highly inefficient for the current expansion's development, at least don't add further complexety in the future, because they get abandoned at the end of the expansion. A new class is very much one of these complexity concerns and let's be real, if they wanted to add a new class they would have had plenty of opportunity to do so in shadowlands, yet they channeled all their power rather into giving each class 4 new abilities, 3 of which each individual player might never even have any use out of.

World Revamp: It's simply way too much effort for too little gain. The main complaint right now is that people want to have something simple again, you can achieve that without redoing all old zones though, Blizzard can just tack on new zones and islands like they've done in the past but set them on Azeroth or even new outland shards if they wanted to. There is no need to do this with the old world and run the many risks, ranging from coming accross as lazy to repeating Cataclysm mistakes, happening again. Also after SL, even if they pull the emergency brakes right now with the cosmic bullshit, I simply don't see small local stakes being interesting, after all what does death matter now? For everyone that complains about the current direction, there is someone among the remaining people who hasn't spoken out about thinking smaller stakes are boring. Ideally we'd have both and for that a world revamp is not neccessary.

Player Housing: While I think they have some people on their team that want it as well, I think the main problem is that the overall team (or their leads) have no interrest in investing resources into the whole profession eco system and they very much prefer to focus on the current PvE Dungeon/Raid Content instead. I also think that they have extreme issues with their engine, which probably can't handle dynamic loading of hundrets if not thousands of assets. The pop in in WoW is already ludicrously bad for a few pieces things here and there, and while phasing is usually hailed as good tool for storytelling in WoW, the reality is the kind of seconds long delay we see always happening, would get you laughted at in every other video game. Stuff like NPCs freezing up, then reloading in a new state while phasing out with tons of glitching, seriously, in every other game that would be grounds for dozens of meme videos about how shit your graphics are. I also think their server architecture started to hit a wall a while ago, as the lag for things like world bosses in the last 3 expansions has become game breaking in parts.

So while you are right and each of these features would be big in one way or another, I don't think most of them adress the core issues of the game people have. They would lure people in for the launch, but that does every launch. What they need is something that actually adresses core issues instead of being a placebo that leads to more initial sales.

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It was never confirmed, but Ion joked about it during the SL reveal, considering how it all went down I'm going to say yes it was intentional.

Nah. He seemed a bit annoyed by the leaks, but he just knew they happned and rolled with it. They prepared the page for when the announcment was over, but someone found a few assets and posted them. I don't think this created anymore hype than just shocking us at Blizzcon would have done anyway. It wouldn't even give them extra virtual ticket sales, because the opening ceremony was free anyway.

[YYDelive]

The player housing has been tested in a fortress in WoD, which is a complete failure.

But maybe give the guild an exclusive functional hall like auctions, merchants, portals, etc., and then set up some tasks to beautify the interior decoration of the guild hall

tbh, they have abandoned the guild for a long time

[therumblings]

The player housing has been tested in a fortress in WoD, which is a complete failure.

Except that wasn't actual player housing. If Blizzard wants to be stupid about, they would claim it's a failure and players don't want housing, but they would be incorrect. The Garrison was nothing more than an expansion gimmick, restricted, forced and antithetical to what actual housing should be. As for Guild Halls, they are also cool, but the problem is the GM would have full control, player housing in addition to guild halls would be perfect imo.

Blizzard simply is paranoid that players wont do something just for fun, they have to make it forced.

[Makabreska]

Kul Tiras was leaked as a location through gear in Legion. WoD was leaked by an item called "Iron Horde banner". Suramar-named gear was put in WoD as a tease at Legion, the same way Kul Tiran marines and Zandalari troops appeared in Azsuna to foreshadow BFA.

And Worgen/Goblin Halloween masks were added to the game pre-Cata. All of that kinda spoils the reveal, unfortunately. Can't have any surprises in modern day and age.

[Nyel]

I don’t know if I find it refreshing or frightening to not know what’s in store for WoW‘s future. Usually leaks or little hints get me excited (besides the Shadowlands stuff which I disliked initially; the leak for the Kul Tiran stuff made me very happy, unfortunately the expansion didn’t deliver).

Right now WoW is in a pending state where you basically don’t know what to expect (but based on the previous, you expect nothing good) and just… hope for better times? I don’t know how to describe it, but I am excited for the new expansion, yet I fear it’ll be just another reskinned Legion without innovative ideas or new creative input.

[Sondrelk]

I don’t know if I find it refreshing or frightening to not know what’s in store for WoW‘s future. Usually leaks or little hints get me excited (besides the Shadowlands stuff which I disliked initially; the leak for the Kul Tiran stuff made me very happy, unfortunately the expansion didn’t deliver).

Right now WoW is in a pending state where you basically don’t know what to expect (but based on the previous, you expect nothing good) and just… hope for better times? I don’t know how to describe it, but I am excited for the new expansion, yet I fear it’ll be just another reskinned Legion without innovative ideas or new creative input.

I feel confident in the next expansion though, simply because I cannot imagine Blizzard will go to yet another ill-defined mysterious plane and go on to undercut the mystique twice in a row.

Next expansion will most definitely be on Azeroth, and by extent likely feel more grounded. The only real question is where. Though the answer to that question is most likely Dragon Isles...

[Tiradon]

I don’t know if I find it refreshing or frightening to not know what’s in store for WoW‘s future. Usually leaks or little hints get me excited (besides the Shadowlands stuff which I disliked initially; the leak for the Kul Tiran stuff made me very happy, unfortunately the expansion didn’t deliver).

Right now WoW is in a pending state where you basically don’t know what to expect (but based on the previous, you expect nothing good) and just… hope for better times? I don’t know how to describe it, but I am excited for the new expansion, yet I fear it’ll be just another reskinned Legion without innovative ideas or new creative input.

Yes the pending state is complicated, however I'm worried about 9.2 more than anything because if the team fails to deliver new content before November I doubt we'll be able to survive the content drought.

Player retention in 9.1 is bad as we all know, so unless 9.1.5 brings something refreshing to the table our best bet to get things back on track would be 9.2.....

[keygy]

I think especially because they are "huge" they are also extremely unlickly.

Class: WoW is already bogged down with too many things and Blizzard clearly fears that they can no longer handle the game at all. That is part of why we have these idiotic borrowed power systems, that while they are highly inefficient for the current expansion's development, at least don't add further complexety in the future, because they get abandoned at the end of the expansion. A new class is very much one of these complexity concerns and let's be real, if they wanted to add a new class they would have had plenty of opportunity to do so in shadowlands, yet they channeled all their power rather into giving each class 4 new abilities, 3 of which each individual player might never even have any use out of.

World Revamp: It's simply way too much effort for too little gain. The main complaint right now is that people want to have something simple again, you can achieve that without redoing all old zones though, Blizzard can just tack on new zones and islands like they've done in the past but set them on Azeroth or even new outland shards if they wanted to. There is no need to do this with the old world and run the many risks, ranging from coming accross as lazy to repeating Cataclysm mistakes, happening again. Also after SL, even if they pull the emergency brakes right now with the cosmic bullshit, I simply don't see small local stakes being interesting, after all what does death matter now? For everyone that complains about the current direction, there is someone among the remaining people who hasn't spoken out about thinking smaller stakes are boring. Ideally we'd have both and for that a world revamp is not neccessary.

Player Housing: While I think they have some people on their team that want it as well, I think the main problem is that the overall team (or their leads) have no interrest in investing resources into the whole profession eco system and they very much prefer to focus on the current PvE Dungeon/Raid Content instead. I also think that they have extreme issues with their engine, which probably can't handle dynamic loading of hundrets if not thousands of assets. The pop in in WoW is already ludicrously bad for a few pieces things here and there, and while phasing is usually hailed as good tool for storytelling in WoW, the reality is the kind of seconds long delay we see always happening, would get you laughted at in every other video game. Stuff like NPCs freezing up, then reloading in a new state while phasing out with tons of glitching, seriously, in every other game that would be grounds for dozens of meme videos about how shit your graphics are. I also think their server architecture started to hit a wall a while ago, as the lag for things like world bosses in the last 3 expansions has become game breaking in parts.

So while you are right and each of these features would be big in one way or another, I don't think most of them adress the core issues of the game people have. They would lure people in for the launch, but that does every launch. What they need is something that actually adresses core issues instead of being a placebo that leads to more initial sales.

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Nah. He seemed a bit annoyed by the leaks, but he just knew they happned and rolled with it. They prepared the page for when the announcment was over, but someone found a few assets and posted them. I don't think this created anymore hype than just shocking us at Blizzcon would have done anyway. It wouldn't even give them extra virtual ticket sales, because the opening ceremony was free anyway.

The game new more classes, new classes add a lot of content in the game, talking about balance after so many years its a little utopic wow was never balanced, what i want from classes is some type of gameplay rework.

[Kiivar86]

Thank you for compiling this sheet (or whoever did it), I shall take those parameters into consideration when reading future leaks.

For example, if a leak says the next expansion will simultaneously have:

- Tinkers
- World Revamp
- Player Housing/Guild Halls

I shall know that the leak is fake...

Thanks, though I wish I could take credit for this work. This was compiled by another user here named ercarp, I just bookmarked it two years ago thinking "this will be useful in the leadup to the next expansion" as so many people went to a lot of these leaks and went "This is it! This is the one!" and so forth.

lol
Someone actually made this sheet
BTW
There were genuine mentions of next expansions in game files, like gear on wowhead, I remember some Suramar named gear on wowhead, before Legion.
If I remember correctly this kind of thing happened during other expansions and someone even made thread about it.

Oh I know there's legit things that slip through. I remember the worgen and goblin "masks", for example. But there's a difference between things actually found in files like that and all these BS leaks.

And there are sometimes legit leaks well ahead of Blizzcon or reveals. There was a guy on the Scrolls of Lore forum who had a friend who worked in China leak WoD like a week ahead of the reveal. Last I heard that guy got fired for it, too.

[draugril]

Skimming those brought up some memories...

This one is still my favourite:

Someone I was dating let a few things spill, specifically about the starting experience. I lost access to my source a few months ago, but this is what she let slip to me:

Name: Hadn’t been decided last I chatted. Twilight of the Dragonflights was a contender, but it is definitely too wordy.

The squish is real. We’re going down to 50, capping at 60. No lore reason, purely mechanical.

Story is focused on the Dragon Isles and the race to exploit the power of a malfunctioning Titan facility. Wrathion found them on the “other” side of Azeroth. The twist is, they’re floating islands and only those imbued with draconic (ie. Titan life signs) power can find their way to them. But somehow Sylvanas found her way there so we need to follow. She wants to use the facility to open the way to the Shadowlands. (My own speculation is that she is able to get there due to her deal with Helya, and I’m assuming the new DK zone will have Death Knights fending her off from the Frozen Throne, necessitating her need for another entry point).

Intro takes us to the Twilight Highlands. Horde consults with the Dragonmaw Orcs led by Gorfax Angerfang. They know a thing or two about playing with draconic power. The Alliance spy with Shaw with Falstad of the Wildhammers as his escort. Nathanos and a few loyalists ambushes the Horde (didn’t ask how loyalist players factor in), the Alliance jump in to assist, and ultimately Alexstrasza intervenes, and assists by imbuing us with her power. The dragons give us the last of their power in the hopes that Wrathion can restore them all.

This is the new AP, Draconic Power. Unfortunate abbreviation.

New class is Dragonsworn. 5 specs. The original plan was to give every class a dragon-themed spec unlocked at the start of this content, but it was difficult to create unique specs for all 12. I didn’t get details on which specs do what, only that they align to the flights.

We also find a clutch of unhatched Chromatic dragons Nefarian had secreted away to Grim Batol. They bond with us and become a mount. Similarly to Legion artifact appearances, we can choose different colours, wings, faces, ornaments, etc. based on the content we do. Also thankfully, dragons are getting a model and animation revamp after 15 years.

Oh, and those Wildhammer Dwarves and Dragonmaw Orcs? Allied races at launch. Dragonspawn or Drakonids to come later as a neutral. Apparently they wanted to test the waters on community acceptance of limiting transmog options before developing dragonspawn. I assume this was mechagnomes. And since Diaperbaby is a thing, I’m guessing they’re going with drakonids.

I think I touched on everything we chatted about. Oh! No pathfinder. There was also something about flying mounted combat, but it’s mini game based with your effectiveness determined by your Draconic Power. Used for a few quests, and talks of it being used in PvP where it grounds the both of you, giving the winner a combat buff. With Warmode optional, they’re more open to exploring this.

[Raetary]

They really have to give newcomers access to chromie time and stop restricting dungeon selection in the dungeon finder.

Seriously, just get rid of the restriction.
Add a few quests after finishing Exiles Reach that explain what chromie time is, then let them choose an expansion that they are interested in and let them go ham.

The current system is not only overly restrictive, it literally does not work.

1)it does not "let them catch up on story" because the lvling campaigns in BfA have no bearing on the most recent expansion events.
Lvling in Zuldazar or Tiragarde will not give anyone any context as to what is happening in the Shadowlands, the context is only available through the mid-to-end of the war campaign, which most people simply won't get to do.

At most, Drustvar and Nazmir slightly foreshadow some story elements in Ardenweald, but that's it.

2) People are often bored from being stuck in the same 3 zones for 50 whole lvls, so they go around lvling in other zones anyway.
Which they then can't properly experience because scaling itself is more restricted (as they lack chromie time) and they won't have access to the other expansions LFD.

Or they just miss the BfA introduction completely, because Blizzards pop-up quests still are absolute shit apparently.


I had to explain to so many damn people what Blizzards (shitty) intended lvling path is, if i got a penny for each time that happened i'd be richer than Bezos.

[Cosmic Janitor]

I had to explain to so many damn people what Blizzards (shitty) intended lvling path is, if i got a penny for each time that happened i'd be richer than Bezos.

Out of curiosity, did you explain that to people who just wanted to level an alt? Because if you actually found that many completely new players I'd be interested how you do that..

[Edward Wu]

I think it's high time they gave the transmogrification system a huge upgrade. I think it's time for a true armor dye system to make it into the game and create absolutely insane customization to armor possible, with full color customization. Just as well, do the same thing with gloves and boots that you did with shoulders, and make each hand and foot able to be separately transmogged.

That by itself would be an enormous casual boost. I know I'd resub again just to farm old raids to see what crazy mogs I could come up with.

[Sondrelk]

I think it's high time they gave the transmogrification system a huge upgrade. I think it's time for a true armor dye system to make it into the game and create absolutely insane customization to armor possible, with full color customization. Just as well, do the same thing with gloves and boots that you did with shoulders, and make each hand and foot able to be separately transmogged.

That by itself would be an enormous casual boost. I know I'd resub again just to farm old raids to see what crazy mogs I could come up with.

Tinting gear is not really going to work. For one it would require either redoing all old gear to not make tintng old gear abhorrent, and secondly it would make the current reward system of different gear tints mostly pointless. It would be beneficial for the few time we get a single armor tint, and it would make transmog farming mostly pointless when we get several.

Separate transmogs for gloves and boots should be a thing though. And for that matter allowing left and right side gear to be swapped freely.

What I think will be good though is the ability to transmog any gear. Just not allowing everyone to gather all gear types. That would organically give reasons to have alts, and also quadruple transmog options, and by extension farming opportunities.

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Out of curiosity, did you explain that to people who just wanted to level an alt? Because if you actually found that many completely new players I'd be interested how you do that..

Newcomer chat has a steady stream of new players.
Mostly they just don't know how to use the /wave command, but sometimes they are curious about all the other zones they see on the map that they don't get to visit easily.