Dragonflight Alpha/Beta General Discussion

[huth]

Yeah, and usually the last patch lasts for nearly a year, so the point stands.

Halfway through isn't "close to ending". Also, everything has been delayed. The point is nonsense.

Not sure why people are so enamored with the idea of Blizz dropping a patch anyway. No 9.3 just means the drought till 10.0 gets longer. It won't release any sooner.

[Sondrelk]

Just saw todays update for the allied races. -_- sooooooooooo when are humans going to get a touch up, if not, you know, their own racial costume and mount. EVER?!

Humans got large amounts of cosmetic upgrades when SL launched, the Allied Race customization options are added because they didn't really get anything.

Also the human racial mount is a selection of horses. It's the mount that requires Stormwind reputation to get, similar to how the dwarf ram requires ironforge rep.
The human heritage set is also likely going to come last since it and orc stuff is given quite often normally, so there is less need for a specific custom tailored transmog ensemble.

[Raetary]

Just saw todays update for the allied races. -_- sooooooooooo when are humans going to get a touch up, if not, you know, their own racial costume and mount. EVER?!

Did you miss the customization they got on launch day?

[Lahis]

Just saw todays update for the allied races. -_- sooooooooooo when are humans going to get a touch up, if not, you know, their own racial costume and mount. EVER?!

Humans got more new customization options than any other race in 9.0.
Human racial mounts have been in the game since 1.0. They're known as horses, you might have seen them.

[huth]

Humans got more new customization options than any other race in 9.0.
Human racial mounts have been in the game since 1.0. They're known as horses, you might have seen them.

Hell, they even got more of them just last expansion. Meanwhile, the new Allied Race that was the main feature of the Alliance campaign didn't get any mammoths to ride.

[Dracullus]

Strange that Covenant swap wasn't available on day 1, I thought it will be simple removing "betrayer" quest and restrictions on cosmetics. Maybe we will have some UI change to enable switch on the fly? That would be cool.

Btw, funny how community feedback react. 9.1 gave far more thant usual X.1 patch and it was hated. 9.1.5 give less than typical X.1.5 (just timewaling that is more or less required cause time moves on + cosmetics for 3-4 races) and it is loved. Changes are cool, but people overestimate how covenants/conduits were problem for most people. If people are lazy enough to never switch talent or sometimes even spec, it's not like ability to switch covenant or conduit on the fly would change their experience 180 degrees.

Same with judging devs. Ion clear mythic raids and morons say he doesn't play this game and/or he makes game for elisists. Ybarra show cutting edge achievs and suddenly mob is cheering how great it is that Blizzard man is player just like them.

[Sondrelk]

Changeable covenants like we are getting now was not in the game to begin with for the exact reasons we see now. Without a penalty for swapping there is no reason to stick to a single covenant at all except not bothering with the trip back to Oribos.
Without a penalty the covenants might as well have been regular zone specific buffs. Which consequently would have likely meant less diversity in the rewards.

[Nyel]

Yeah, overall it would be way easier to have the Covenant skills just as another talent row now (as if we weren't suggesting that during beta) where you can change them on the go. The same with the other stuff with Soulbinds etc. Having to go to the Covenant Sanctum to manage all of this is pointless and a waste of your precious time, it's just there that you need to spend more time in game to do it. It's the inconvenience that might hinder you from changing Covenants too often.

[micwini]

Yeah, overall it would be way easier to have the Covenant skills just as another talent row now (as if we weren't suggesting that during beta) where you can change them on the go. The same with the other stuff with Soulbinds etc. Having to go to the Covenant Sanctum to manage all of this is pointless and a waste of your precious time, it's just there that you need to spend more time in game to do it. It's the inconvenience that might hinder you from changing Covenants too often.

I hope they make it into a 4 choice talent row for the next expac and change the visuals to fit the class instead of the covs.

[Pheraz]

I never liked the covenant idea.
Instead of meaningful factions we tried the covenant idea. Instead of a well known system such as reputation we get a very similar system with a much better UI. Can't we have reputation but with the renown UI?
I'm optimistic that they learnt their lessons from Shadowlands. This all smells like agile development to me

[Sondrelk]

I hope they make it into a 4 choice talent row for the next expac and change the visuals to fit the class instead of the covs.

Don't really need 4 talent either, 3 would do. Just cut down the least exciting one and leave 3 strong choices.

I wonder what will happen with the cosmetic side of covenants going forwards though. I cannot imagine we will see the same wealth of unique transmogs and mounts, but maybe a few good ones to take the place of the large amounts we had now, with a stronger emphasis instead placed on class themed raid sets.

- - - Updated - - -

I never liked the covenant idea.
Instead of meaningful factions we tried the covenant idea. Instead of a well known system such as reputation we get a very similar system with a much better UI. Can't we have reputation but with the renown UI?
I'm optimistic that they learnt their lessons from Shadowlands. This all smells like agile development to me

Whenever Blizzard tries something we tend to get something good out of it though. The Renown system for instance is something I absolutely adore as a reward mechanism to organically gate content. The covenants also experimented heavily with zone specific content which I would love to see going forwards.

Experimenting is how the game grows. Without it we wouldn't have stuff like M+, or questline scenarios.

[Cosmic Janitor]

I hope they make it into a 4 choice talent row for the next expac and change the visuals to fit the class instead of the covs.

They could even make it just 3 talents tbh, every class has at least one that is total garbage anyway.

On another note, the conduits and soulbinds might have been one of the few reasons to not make them talents, but I feel they completely ignored the story component of soulbinds anway (I had more connection to most of my legion orderhall NPCs by a far), so they could have just made that some random do-hicky in our soul's constellation or whatever they want to RP it as. That way we would have probably avoided part of the Pelagos drama and his multiple nerfs.

PS: Agile development. ROFL.

[Dracullus]

I never liked the covenant idea.
Instead of meaningful factions we tried the covenant idea. Instead of a well known system such as reputation we get a very similar system with a much better UI. Can't we have reputation but with the renown UI?
I'm optimistic that they learnt their lessons from Shadowlands. This all smells like agile development to me

Me too, mostly because 12 choices (classes) are enough. We run out of max level (non-repetive) stuff too fast. I would love Renown style campaign - if story progress EVERY week of expac until final raid boss released on LFR (+ some epilogue). If they would incorporate LFR and patch dungeons as story chapters + get rid of all splits to make single campaign for everyone, it would be doable.

Second, devs spend too much time on balancing soulbinds/azerite/conduits etc. All time goes to waste cause people google BiS on wowhead and move on. That that should be spend on talents. People still usually pick bis, but talents are so easy to swap that some of players at least experiment a little or use specific talents in specific situations (we could see similar thing with legendaries during late Legion when mains had all and we could play around with different combinations).

On another note, the conduits and soulbinds might have been one of the few reasons to not make them talents, but I feel they completely ignored the story component of soulbinds anway (I had more connection to most of my legion orderhall NPCs by a far), so they could have just made that some random do-hicky in our soul's constellation or whatever they want to RP it as. That way we would have probably avoided part of the Pelagos drama and his multiple nerfs.

50/50 for me. On Venthyr and Kyrian soulbinds had stronge presence in the story and I recognized them right away, on NF all NPCs were too weird for me, on Necrolord characters like Draka or Vashj eclipsed soulbinds in my opinion.

[Aeluron Lightsong]

Me too, mostly because 12 choices (classes) are enough. We run out of max level (non-repetive) stuff too fast. I would love Renown style campaign - if story progress EVERY week of expac until final raid boss released on LFR (+ some epilogue). If they would incorporate LFR and patch dungeons as story chapters + get rid of all splits to make single campaign for everyone, it would be doable.

Second, devs spend too much time on balancing soulbinds/azerite/conduits etc. All time goes to waste cause people google BiS on wowhead and move on. That that should be spend on talents. People still usually pick bis, but talents are so easy to swap that some of players at least experiment a little or use specific talents in specific situations (we could see similar thing with legendaries during late Legion when mains had all and we could play around with different combinations).

I hazard a guess there was at least one or two people who were just stubborn af and most of them are aware of the downfalls of covanents(I like them as a concept but I digress).

[Dracullus]

I hazard a guess there was at least one or two people who were just stubborn af and most of them are aware of the downfalls of covanents(I like them as a concept but I digress).

I disagree Covenants are some disaster. It's just flashy seasonal thing for expac, who knows how many less boxes WoW would sell if every expac would be just more zones/dungeons/raids. SL main issues are too few things to do for ultra casual players (but that's WoW problem in general that grow little by little every expac) and patch timeline (that's on SL).

[Cosmic Janitor]

50/50 for me. On Venthyr and Kyrian soulbinds had stronge presence in the story and I recognized them right away, on NF all NPCs were too weird for me, on Necrolord characters like Draka or Vashj eclipsed soulbinds in my opinion.

While I recognize all of them, and the Kyrian and Venthyr NPCs certainly had some exposition during the campaignquests, I feel like that was simply not enough. I mean even for the Kyrian one, only Pelagos got some above average coverage, but Kleia and espcially Mikanikos barely get anything. Theotar obviously was a cool guy and so is Merileth, but besides a tiny bit of flavor during world quests you don't get much time with them at all. Certainly considering the fact that you bound your soul to them which is a big deal. In general the last guy for each covenant suffers, because you only get them at the tail-end of the original campaign.

But yea, I certainly agree. Especially for Necrolords the other characters were more front and center and the nightfae ones were also odd choices, since they all were kinda no names you meet only briefly during your travels. No clue why they didn't went at least with lady moonberry. Edit: I guess they didn't want us to bind with the direct underlings of the covenant leaders, though Theotar and Draven certainly felt alot higher ranked.

[Pheraz]

Don't really need 4 talent either, 3 would do. Just cut down the least exciting one and leave 3 strong choices.

I wonder what will happen with the cosmetic side of covenants going forwards though. I cannot imagine we will see the same wealth of unique transmogs and mounts, but maybe a few good ones to take the place of the large amounts we had now, with a stronger emphasis instead placed on class themed raid sets.

- - - Updated - - -



Whenever Blizzard tries something we tend to get something good out of it though. The Renown system for instance is something I absolutely adore as a reward mechanism to organically gate content. The covenants also experimented heavily with zone specific content which I would love to see going forwards.

Experimenting is how the game grows. Without it we wouldn't have stuff like M+, or questline scenarios.

Totally agree. Just wanted to point out that I think they develop WoW with agile development.

[Nyel]

Do y‘all think the four Azerothian poster boys / girls for each Covenant will get another role or will they be forgotten by the next patch?

Venthyr: Kael‘thas
Necrolords: Vashj (Draka?)
Nightfae: Ysera
Kyrian: Uther

I guess those four will be characters that might come back to Azeroth after Shadowlands. I chose Vashj because I think Draka‘s story is pretty much told already and a reunion with Azshara could be interesting. The same for Kael‘thas and the Blood Elves. If there’s a conflict with the Light / Turalyon, having Uther back could be an interesting twist. And Ysera is Ysera.

[therumblings]

Do y‘all think the four Azerothian poster boys / girls for each Covenant will get another role or will they be forgotten by the next patch?

Venthyr: Kael‘thas
Necrolords: Vashj (Draka?)
Nightfae: Ysera
Kyrian: Uther

I guess those four will be characters that might come back to Azeroth after Shadowlands. I chose Vashj because I think Draka‘s story is pretty much told already and a reunion with Azshara could be interesting. The same for Kael‘thas and the Blood Elves. If there’s a conflict with the Light / Turalyon, having Uther back could be an interesting twist. And Ysera is Ysera.

I don't think we will see them again in Shadowlands in much detail, except for maybe joining us on the way to Zereth Mortis, bringing them back to life is a whole other story, which I'm not sure if Blizz wants to go down that road.

[Luck4]

I think you guys were right unless the next expansion is in Kalimdor, which I doubt, sounds like we're going to visit Elune's cosmic realm...

The pieces are assembling...



Gardens of Life, or whatever that s***t is called... Even Dragon Isles would've been better... I'm so disappointed...