Dragonflight Alpha/Beta General Discussion

[Dracullus]

Dude, don't put it here, make new account and new thread. Half of id..ealists in this community will believe you right away (but you must insert some "Kotick is mad with power and want to sell lootbox with feat of strength achievements" to make leak more trustworthy).

[Sondrelk]

Ok so, a friend of mine's in-game community has a Discord with a very active "lore & story" section and there is a guy in there who claims to have knowledge about the next expansion. He is not outright claiming he knows what the expansion is called, what it's about, or any details beyond that... but some plot points having to do with the expansion.

You lost me once the actual theories came forth.

Regardless of the validity of that story, which is pretty dumb, even for the low bar set by BfA and SL. It still only vaguely tries to handwave away the biggest reason why no expansion leak will ever seem legitimate.
No professional would risk their career and personal economy breaching an NDA agreement, especially not against a company as big as Blizzard. It's not just making said person untrustworthy in the eyes of Blizzard, but it would make them untrustworthy in the eyes of large companies in general.


Taken solely on its own merits the leak went downhill fast once the idea of "alternate Azeroth except not really", showed up.
Also, the leak smells eerily similar to succesful pieces of media like the "A Realm Reborn" trailer for the FFXIV Reboot, or perhaps more to the point, the ending to Avengers: Infinity War.

[draugril]

Honestly, I wouldn't be surprised by this. Ion stated there wouldn't be any time travel shenanigans, and given his track record about "misleading" people about the lore, this would be par for the course.

Secondly, it would be a giant middle finger to people that care about consistent, logical progression of a narrative which, again, tracks with the current team. They enjoy subverting expectations for the sake of subverting expectations and see having a "predictable" (or logical) plot as failure.

[KOUNTERPARTS]

So, Sylvanas will scream "The Shadowlands are free!" at the end of Shadowlands

Don't you put that evil into the world.

[Hitei]

he said that a lot of key art has been created already for the content patch that leads into the next expansion.

...

he says some of the key art depicts iconic areas in Azeroth significantly looking different with advertisement wording saying things like 'a home so strange to you' or whatever

Why would the key art for the patch be content for the next expansion? (It's not like the patch is going to have alternate Azeroth). Especially advertising areas that wouldn't be available for half a year+? The patch key art would be all about the jailer invading Azeroth and the Bronze flight.

Also, it's not like Blizzard hires hundreds of outside artists per patch specifically for the job of key art production. This source would be singling themselves out and setting themselves up for legal trouble.

[Sondrelk]

Honestly, I wouldn't be surprised by this. Ion stated there wouldn't be any time travel shenanigans, and given his track record about "misleading" people about the lore, this would be par for the course.

Secondly, it would be a giant middle finger to people that care about consistent, logical progression of a narrative which, again, tracks with the current team. They enjoy subverting expectations for the sake of subverting expectations and see having a "predictable" (or logical) plot as failure.

I dunno about that, "subverting expectations" was still a buzzword in BfA likely because of GoT and Star Wars, which because of the way expansions are made was relevant when they wrote it. In the intervening years though I am fairly certain that most of the world has starting treating "Subverting expectations" as a bad word.

I suspect whatever story beats we get going forward will be as safe as possible, wouldnt want people drawing comparisions to Got or anything.

[Kiivar86]

No professional would risk their career and personal economy breaching an NDA agreement, especially not against a company as big as Blizzard. It's not just making said person untrustworthy in the eyes of Blizzard, but it would make them untrustworthy in the eyes of large companies in general.

While I do generally agree, for what its worth I have seen this happen once. It was over at the Scrolls of Lore forum and the guy got canned pretty quick.

Only time I've seen it happen, however.

[AngerFork]

Ok so, a friend of mine's in-game community has a Discord with a very active "lore & story" section and there is a guy in there who claims to have knowledge about the next expansion. He is not outright claiming he knows what the expansion is called, what it's about, or any details beyond that... but some plot points having to do with the expansion.


The only "source" he claims is that Blizzard often employs a 3rd party to create art for their advertisments, like key art for content patches and key art for promotions, and he said that a lot of key art has been created already for the content patch that leads into the next expansion.


This is what he says (take it with a grain of salt):


- "for some reason or another" Zovaal is unable to be stopped and Azeroth is on track for the first time of actually being "doomed" and not able to stop it

- He doesn't say what the Sepulcher of the First Ones actually is or its significance but we supposedly enlist Chromie and the Bronze Dragonflight to use the "power of the sepulcher" to send us to an alternate Azeroth where the Jailer lost, effectively dooming all inhabitants of the planet to remain on main Azeroth and die/lose/become dominated/whatever... instead of "the main cast" ... he says some of the key art depicts iconic areas in Azeroth significantly looking different with advertisement wording saying things like 'a home so strange to you' or whatever

- Instead of going to this alternate Azeroth of the same "year SL takes place" we instead get flung too far into a "future version of this alternate Azeroth" where "no heroes returned from the SL and things are crazy"


All the quotations are from his phrases directly. Like I said... grain of salt. No mention of Dragon Isles or Void/Light feud.

That's a lot of info for someone to receive simply to create or view advertisement key art. Putting aside how Blizz is more likely to do that in-house with their own artists using concept art to design zones/mobs/etc, I'm not sure why any key art creator would need that much information as opposed to "future Azeroth, make it look good."

[draugril]

I'm all for subverting expectations when it is done for reasons other than its own sake. I could use a different phrase if that particular one has too many connotations, though.

I think this trend truly began in the tail end of WoD - they developed that alternate reality as a "What If?" dealing with the Legion never extending their influence to Draenor. Given the premise, the last thing you would expect would be introducing the Legion, as that would void the premise. So they reintroduced the Legion.

Then in Legion, you would think that all of this would lead up to a battle with Sargeras himself, culminating decades of storytelling. Nope, here's Argus, another Titan we just made up simply to subvert that expectation.

BfA... it was barely coherent enough to say it had a narrative, but at the very least, you know that someone at Blizzard HQ thought they were the most clever person to ever live, thinking, "We call it Battle for Azeroth, market it as a war between the factions, but the real Battle for Azeroth is for the continued life of the planet as an entity, protecting it against [insert lingering threats we have not yet addressed]!"

And Shadowlands... I can't even talk about precisely yet. The rug has been pulled out from under us so many times that I'd prefer to remain laying on the floor.

[Fahrad Wagner]

Yeah, I'm not buying this Avengers: Endgame knock-off nonsense, however I do believe the Jailer will succeed and that it will lead us into the next expansion, whatever it might be.

[Hitei]

While I do generally agree, for what its worth I have seen this happen once. It was over at the Scrolls of Lore forum and the guy got canned pretty quick.

Only time I've seen it happen, however.

SoLgate was non-specific though, wasn't it? The guy wasn't like "btw, I work in the X department where there are only four people, here is some information I'm breaking NDA about". I don't think the information was even sourced, it was just an info dump.

Historically, I think most accurate leaks haven't actually sourced their information--no real reason to try and substantiate with "this info comes from X who works at Blizzard" when you already know the information is true, it's when the information is false that people feel the need to try and sell it as legit.

[Kiivar86]

SoLgate was non-specific though, wasn't it? The guy wasn't like "btw, I work in the X department where there are only four people, here is some information I'm breaking NDA about". I don't think the information was even sourced, it was just an info dump.

Historically, I think most accurate leaks haven't actually sourced their information--no real reason to try and substantiate with "this info comes from X who works at Blizzard" when you already know the information is true, it's when the information is false that people feel the need to try and sell it as legit.

Oh it was pretty detailed (edit: Misunderstood what you meant by non-specific, actually):

No new class or races. All of this is pre demon blood so no humans with the draenei being the main Alliance force. Garrosh goes back in time and stops his father from drinking the demons blood and Gul'dan is banished. He brings technology from the current time to reinforce the Horde. Ner'zhul uses this and rises to power once more to try and gain Garrosh's trust in the....Iron Horde. The Iron Horde forbids demon magic but it's pretty likely Gul'dan may end up summoning the Legion still even on his own. We get there via the Timewalkers. I dunno how exactly Garrosh gets to the past yet. But his escape is explained in a upcoming short story with the start being his trial. Garrosh says he regrets nothing while laughing crazily but Anduin still believes he can be redeemed. Baine wants to personally execute Garrosh and Jaina is still her raging self. Eventually it comes to that scene we see in that Timeless Isle quest with Anduin talking to Garrosh. I dunno the rest of the story yet but it's likely Anduin and Zaela help Garrosh escape. 5.5 was to be 2 scenario's showing Garrosh's escape but since they are short on time 5.5 was scrapped for the above story with maybe parts ending up in 6.0. It was also to tie into the Timeless Isle. The ORIGINAL story for the expansion was that Garrosh was banished to Outland but managed to get a artifact of Nozdormu. He used the artifact to summon the great heroes of the Horde and then 're makes' Draenor with the artifact pulling in new landmasses that just tears things up more. This was later scrapped for time travel. The Alliance start in Shadowmoon and their capital is Karabor which is similar to Terokkar now. Karabor looks like how it does in the TBC trailer with Akama but brighter. The Horde starting zone is a new zone west of Blade's Edge in the Frost Wolf Homelands where their capital is a captured Ogre stronghold city. The zone itself is a tundra. Netherstorm is Faralon but will be released in a future patch. Hellfire is a jungle where Garrosh is constructing the Dark Portal so he can invade Azeroth and 'make things right'. Zangar is a sea full of giant mushrooms. Shattrath is taken over by the Iron Horde and is a raid along with Auchindoun being a dungeon/raid. The other raids are The Blackrock Clan Citadel and a Ogre Stronghold. The first dungeon is in the Horde starting zone and is a Ogre Dungeon Cave where we rescue slaves. The zone south of Terrokkar is the capital of the Arrakoa and is where their palace is located. It's like Terokkar but has a LOT more tree houses and flying Arrakoa. Maybe they end up doing something with their Old God. There's some new tiger race as well but no details. The Iron Horde has dominated the Gronn and uses them as giant siege mounts similar to the mammoths in LotR. The 'Warlords' are all the chieftains of the old Horde with Durotan being the only good guy. Some of the main heroes of the expansion are Velen (dunno if its Velen meeting himself or just past Velen), Maarad, Vol'jin, Thrall, Durotan, and some dwarf and tauren. There's a continent southwest of Draenor which is the homeland of the Ogres.

Taken from this thread here,as the original post on SoL was deleted.

Also Blizzard reached out to several people who posted at SoL, one of whom had interned at Blizzard (Omacron). They searched out hard and found the guy (username Curll)

[Nagawithlegs]

I don't think Zovaal will win when they're setting up Sylvanas on helping to stop him. Would be a pretty pointless death for her (and maybe Arthas) if he still reoriginated everything.

[Hitei]

Oh it was pretty detailed (edit: Misunderstood what you meant by non-specific, actually):

Also Blizzard reached out to several people who posted at SoL, one of whom had interned at Blizzard (Omacron). They searched out hard and found the guy (username Curll)

Yeah, that's a pretty different case. Not thinking Blizzard is going to investigate is one thing, outing exactly who you are is something else entirely.

[Kiivar86]

Yeah, that's a pretty different case. Not thinking Blizzard is going to investigate is one thing, outing exactly who you are is something else entirely.

Fair point.

Still, just wanted to remind that there has been a case of someone leaking and getting fired for it.

Also in looking this up again, I actually didn't realize the post was that specific. I was too late to see it before it got removed at SoL back in the day (somehow never thought to look here back then, hm), so I only heard a few snippets, not that big block of text I posted. Good lord.

[Sondrelk]

SoLgate was non-specific though, wasn't it? The guy wasn't like "btw, I work in the X department where there are only four people, here is some information I'm breaking NDA about". I don't think the information was even sourced, it was just an info dump.

Historically, I think most accurate leaks haven't actually sourced their information--no real reason to try and substantiate with "this info comes from X who works at Blizzard" when you already know the information is true, it's when the information is false that people feel the need to try and sell it as legit.

Accurate leaks can easily be assumed to be non-professional hired staff, possibly even volunteers catching a glimpse of a test-presentation.

It would explain why its only right before the release, why anyone would be willing to risk breaking and NDA, and it would explain why all the correct leaks have been more leaks of the slideshow rather than the actual expansion.

[Nyel]

I don't think Zovaal will win when they're setting up Sylvanas on helping to stop him. Would be a pretty pointless death for her (and maybe Arthas) if he still reoriginated everything.

The thing why I don't think he will win is: it wouldn't make sense for further expansions unless he dies as he basically is the personalized death and when he's gone the entire death trope has come to an end. Can death lead into void/light? Sure. But I don't see how that would require him "winning".

So yes, while he can win, Zovaal has to die. He serves basically no purpose anymore if he wins. And we for sure won't have another expansion where he's the bad boy. So while his actions might prelude the next expansion, his character was dead on arrival already. Or is anyone here anticipating yet another expansion where Zovaal is the main villain and we have to fight him? Come on, typing that already sounds dreadful.

[Dracullus]

I'm leveling new alt through campaign, I was so stupid to use threads of fate before, this is waay faster and more fun. We definitely need "skip to Maldraxxus/Ardenweald/Revendreth" buttons in 9.1.5, otherwise later chapters will be wasted, at least during SL.

[Edward Wu]

Zovaal is just ridiculously uninteresting as a character.

I really hope we get some better villains next expansion.

[draugril]

Zovaal is just ridiculously uninteresting as a character.

I really hope we get some better villains next expansion.

He's as interesting as the player characters themselves. A plot device and nothing more, only involved in the narrative to progress the stories of the actual protagonist(s).