Dragonflight Alpha/Beta General Discussion

[Aeluron Lightsong]

The biggest issue is that they came out and pretty much admitted they were just rushing through the N'zoth story so they could tell there own. Which apparently is all this cosmic war garbage. Kind of hard to not find that insulting as a fan when the Old God story was one being built up since vanilla.

The cosmic war isn't garbage its the same type of stuff the Legion was. Its on the same type of spectacle.

[Khaza-R]

The cosmic war isn't garbage its the same type of stuff the Legion was. Its on the same type of spectacle.

I mean, it COULD not be garbage. But not the way they are currently presenting it.

Its pretty much going to lead to nothing more than "remember XYZ villain? Well guess what, they were just a puppet for this completely new made up generic enemy. What a twist"

[Sondrelk]

The cosmic war isn't garbage its the same type of stuff the Legion was. Its on the same type of spectacle.

It really isn't. The Legion was a known threat, attacked known locations, and the means of attacking using giant teleporting spaceships and such is far more visually impressive than the Maw minions and their chain fetish.

Just compare the pre-patch events. One has old raid bosses nonchalantly teleport in, the other has entire zones be invaded by spaceships, pitlords and giant doomwalkers.

Animated pieces of armor with chains are not really going to beat out blowing up spaceships with magical nukes.

[Osmeric]

It is pretty surprising how many players have convinced themselves the expansion would have been just as hated if it wasn't for the drought for sure.

Well, the massive loot nerf was undoubtedly motivated by the sparsity of content they knew was coming. The tea leaves were easy to read even before the drought actually occurred.

[Cosmic Janitor]

Well, the massive loot nerf was undoubtedly motivated by the sparsity of content they knew was coming. The tea leaves were easy to read even before the drought actually occurred.

In general every other piece of the game feels like it was designed to waste as much of your time by stretching the little bit that was there as far and wide as possible. Starting from "kill 15/20" quests that often involve especially high HP mobs and ending with excessive loot scarcity in 9.0. And 9.1 was hardly better with stuff like the archivist faction.

[Three Faced Goddess]

In BFA there was the Tinker team in Island Expeditions. For Gnomes, we discovered Mechagon and Mekkatorque becomes the King of the Gnomes, unifying the Gnomish races, and Gazlowe becomes the new Goblin leader with Gallywix pretty much disappearing after Sylvanas is deposed. We also discovered that Kezan wasn't completely obliterated. This sets up a retaking of Gnomeregan, and a pathway to Undermine. Additionally, Wrathion appeared all grown up at the end of expansion, helps us beat N'Zoth, and finds a bunch of Twilight Drake eggs that he uncorrupted.

In short, yeah, your theory is supported by the evidence.

I wouldn't get my hopes up for Tinkers just yet (I know how badly you want them, just like I want Dark Rangers). I got excited for Dark Rangers once because of the signs I thought I saw and ended up disappointed. There's been a lot more indications of a light/void expansion pack than there have been tinker stuff and dragons, though they could add elements of dragons in with the light/void main theme at the very least. I can't see them adding a new class again, but I've been very wrong before. If tinkers are a thing only goblins and gnomes should get it because it makes the most sense with them and not so much any of the other races save for maybe dwarves. That being said, I don't think the dragonling is hinting at anything. Anniversary pets haven't foreshadowed future expansions as far as I know.

Relax people. Given everything that's happened blizz needs to heal. Last thing they need is to host an online event.

That being said.... Check this out.

https://www.wowhead.com/item=186556/...cal-dragonling

This is a pet that's set to be available for wows 17th Anni next month.

What if it is a tease to a dragon isles expansion with the tinker class.

Maybe they'll use wow's Anni to announce the next expansion.

When has the anniversary pet ever had anything to do with the next expansion?

[huth]

The faction war didn't need to be more than a series of protracted skirmishes for the story to function. Even the warfronts could just be portrayed as regular border conflicts that have slightly escalated because of old god influence.

The problem with every single faction war story in WoW has always been that we knew from the start it wouldn't go anywhere and just peter out with no real resolution, since the community would scream bloody murder if one side actually wins.

I'm not sure why they have kept trying. They should have abandoned that whole concept after TBC, it just wasn't ever going to be workable in the game as it is and just hurt the story since they had to come up with some hackneyed reason why they are going at it again while somebody else is doing something of higher priority the factions should be more concerned with.

[Ersula]

The problem with every single faction war story in WoW has always been that we knew from the start it wouldn't go anywhere and just peter out with no real resolution, since the community would scream bloody murder if one side actually wins.

I'm not sure why they have kept trying. They should have abandoned that whole concept after TBC, it just wasn't ever going to be workable in the game as it is and just hurt the story since they had to come up with some hackneyed reason why they are going at it again while somebody else is doing something of higher priority the factions should be more concerned with.

A faction war plotline is fine, but for some reason Blizzard feels compelled to throw some kind of anti-war message at the end of it. They really don't need to do that. Especially not in a war that's, on a meta-level, never supposed to end. The original reasons for the war were never resolved but the characters keep acting like they had.

[Slowpoke is a Gamer]

A faction war plotline is fine, but for some reason Blizzard feels compelled to throw some kind of anti-war message at the end of it. They really don't need to do that. Especially not in a war that's, on a meta-level, never supposed to end. The original reasons for the war were never resolved but the characters keep acting like they had.

Even an anti-war message is fine at the end. The problem is Blizz has this love of every time they toss in a faction war they feel the need to include actual war crimes along with it.

[Ersula]

Even an anti-war message is fine at the end. The problem is Blizz has this love of every time they toss in a faction war they feel the need to include actual war crimes along with it.

Agree to disagree: At the end of BFA, Ion's insistence that the faction war needed to continue without question or intention, while the king of the alliance is literally having sleepovers with Horde leaders, pissed me off way more than any city that got casually destroyed.

[huth]

A faction war plotline is fine, but for some reason Blizzard feels compelled to throw some kind of anti-war message at the end of it. They really don't need to do that. Especially not in a war that's, on a meta-level, never supposed to end. The original reasons for the war were never resolved but the characters keep acting like they had.

None of the faction war plotlines in WoW were any good. There's no reason to expect that to change in the future. The war itself hardly makes any sense with how often they work together to combat outside threats, either. The "original reasons" for the war no longer have any relevance, either, since that was mostly the Legion's doing. Horde and Alliance have no actual reason to be at one another's throat anymore, and haven't had one since at least WC3.

Part of the problem is that "the war isn't supposed to end" clashes with the reality of what is going on.

[Ersula]

Part of the problem is that "the war isn't supposed to end" clashes with the reality of what is going on.

Not necessarily: Besides all the past aggressions, which are legitimate reasons for them to hate each other: The Alliance is an organization that preaches a peace in the form of assimilation, or at certain points in history, forced displacement: Before the legion the Alliance basically only existed to push Trolls off their ancestral land. And on the opposite side, there are aspects of Horde culture the Alliance finds gruesome, with good reason. And that's it: You don't need to give them more reason to fight. That's plenty.

There should be enough drama from just that. There is inherent drama in armed conflict. And you can still have them band together over a common threat: Their mistake is acting like all the faction baggage is resolved after they work together briefly, and erroneously believe they need to think of brand new reasons for them to hate each other.

[TheFirstOnes]

Literally no one wants to fight in a faction war again. Stop.

[Nyel]

You thought they would kill off zovaal so soon? Shadowlands will have a 9.2, 9.2.5, 9.3 and 9.3.5. This pretty much confirms 10.0 isn’t coming until 2023

No, it really doesn't.

A 9.2 announcement after 9.1.5 went live is imminent. After that? We don't know. 9.2.5, 9.3 and 9.3.5 would stretch Shadowlands way too far, at least to mid 2023. That's insane. Imagine 20 or more months of Shadowlands, when the first 12 have been very rough already.
_________

This leaves plenty of options for them to announce the next expansion besides any major event.

When it comes to events, PAX East and Game Awards are in December, not the biggest events, but it could be an option to do it there. Besides that there's nothing until E3. And that would result in 10.0 not coming in 2022 at all, it would push 10.0 to Q2/Q3 2023. This would be a devastating future outlook for WoW.

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Relax people. Given everything that's happened blizz needs to heal. Last thing they need is to host an online event.

That being said.... Check this out.

https://www.wowhead.com/item=186556/...cal-dragonling

This is a pet that's set to be available for wows 17th Anni next month.

What if it is a tease to a dragon isles expansion with the tinker class.

Maybe they'll use wow's Anni to announce the next expansion.

Honestly, yes to both. Don't want that cosmic sh*t, give me Dragon Isles and a Tinker class (melee/tank + ranged + healing spec) and I am happy. They basically had fully fleshed out Tinker-NPCs with animations etc. in BfA. Azerite Essences could basically be the spells a Tinker gets. Would be a waste to not use all of these animations and spell effects (which looked great by the way). Azerite or something made out of it could be the main source of power for Tinkers (something like: Gnomes and Goblins were able to recreate the power of Azerite and created Gnomeregan Super Diesel bla bla bla for) and with that Azerite and BfA would retain some meaning. Add some Azeroth-related stuff in there story-wise and you could easily make an expansion out of it.

[Cosmic Janitor]

The problem with every single faction war story in WoW has always been that we knew from the start it wouldn't go anywhere and just peter out with no real resolution, since the community would scream bloody murder if one side actually wins.

I'm not sure why they have kept trying. They should have abandoned that whole concept after TBC, it just wasn't ever going to be workable in the game as it is and just hurt the story since they had to come up with some hackneyed reason why they are going at it again while somebody else is doing something of higher priority the factions should be more concerned with.

I'm not sure the people are as much of a problem here as you think. If there was a constant flux with somewhat balanced outcomes it wouldn't be as bad. The issue is more that the game has no means to deal with the outcomes of one side winning, because that would mean towns change hands, people living under foreign occupation or settlements getting razed to the ground. It also doesn't work narratively, since server balance was always an illusion and it becomes an increasingly hard sale to say the horde won when on your server you only see a horde player once in a blue moon.

But I agree, I wonder why they keep trying it. They are completely stuck in the red vs blue when it makes little to no sense. The issue is, if they were to change it now, they'd face even more opposition, as currently they have pretty much burned through all the good-will that they had and it would just add to the list of nonsense changes - even if it is long overdue.

- - - Updated - - -

This leaves plenty of options for them to announce the next expansion besides any major event.

When it comes to events, PAX East and Game Awards are in December, not the biggest events, but it could be an option to do it there. Besides that there's nothing until E3. And that would result in 10.0 not coming in 2022 at all, it would push 10.0 to Q2/Q3 2023. This would be a devastating future outlook for WoW.

Doing it at events is absolutely not in their favor right now. They want to control the message as much as possible, which means their unidirectional streaming version of Blizzconline was pretty much the best thing they had, besides just posting it as a drywall of text. I don't see them going to something like the many paxes, E3 or GC. That would be an absolute PR nightmare for them.

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Not necessarily: Besides all the past aggressions, which are legitimate reasons for them to hate each other: The Alliance is an organization that preaches a peace in the form of assimilation, or at certain points in history, forced displacement: Before the legion the Alliance basically only existed to push Trolls off their ancestral land. And on the opposite side, there are aspects of Horde culture the Alliance finds gruesome, with good reason. And that's it: You don't need to give them more reason to fight. That's plenty.

There should be enough drama from just that. There is inherent drama in armed conflict. And you can still have them band together over a common threat: Their mistake is acting like all the faction baggage is resolved after they work together briefly, and erroneously believe they need to think of brand new reasons for them to hate each other.

That is really not enough, not in a world where imminent planetary annihilation is a bi-weekly occurance. This makes sense for the 10k years after the sundering and before WC1, after WC3 it's utterly nonsensical to keep fighting over pebbles when you currently hunker down to evade orbital fel bombardment.

[Luck4]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BlizzCon#BlizzCon_events

Not held in 2006, 2012, 2020.

But yeah, first time they haven't held it. Yeah.

There's one thing about these examples though, in all of these cases Blizzcon did not happen AFTER the next expansion was announced.

Under normal circumstances, we would be hearing about the next expansion by NOW, and even considering covid, we should hear about it early next year, but chances are we're not going to hear about it until E3 or Gamescom.

I really think we're having a scenario of an announcement happening in the summer of 2022.

[Nyel]

Doing it at events is absolutely not in their favor right now. They want to control the message as much as possible, which means their unidirectional streaming version of Blizzconline was pretty much the best thing they had, besides just posting it as a drywall of text. I don't see them going to something like the many paxes, E3 or GC. That would be an absolute PR nightmare for them.

Yeah, this is true. Something unrelated to an official event is their safespace at this point, as they control the narrative completely - as you said. No pesky journalists or fans trying to argue with them, they can just share their message. I still find it surprising then that they cancel exactly this type of in-house event. Guess the situation must be way worse than we expected when even an exclusive Blizzard event is no possibility for advertising their products anymore.

What I see as a possibility is an exclusive news story with major gaming outlets like IGN. Something like an exclusive livestream with an in-depth interview attached to it (solely about the new expansion and nothing Blizzard-related, imagine a deep dive / what's next panel thing hosted by IGN with a short interview done by Ion). This could work quite well.

[Lady Atia]

There's one thing about these examples though, in all of these cases Blizzcon did not happen AFTER the next expansion was announced.

Under normal circumstances, we would be hearing about the next expansion by NOW, and even considering covid, we should hear about it early next year, but chances are we're not going to hear about it until E3 or Gamescom.

I really think we're having a scenario of an announcement happening in the summer of 2022.

Calm down - they already said they will do announcements independed of the other games as usual. I honestly expect a 9.2 reveal stream soon, aswell as an Expansion announcement early next year.

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Yeah, this is true. Something unrelated to an official event is their safespace at this point, as they control the narrative completely - as you said. No pesky journalists or fans trying to argue with them, they can just share their message. I still find it surprising then that they cancel exactly this type of in-house event. Guess the situation must be way worse than we expected when even an exclusive Blizzard event is no possibility for advertising their products anymore.

Well, they prolly rather spend their time working on the games instead of having to create content for all of them at the same time. It's far easier for each team to do a presentation for stuff when it feels right instead of getting forced to have it till a certain date. Also some game may have more news to share while others may have none, and they may want to avoid a situation where it's basically Warcraftcon/Diablocon again instead of a propper Blizzcon.

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Elaborating on this, I know that it was stated that they needed Sylvanas in a certain position, but that could've been achieved in a different way, too:
Sylvanas burns the tree, then fucks off immediately and leaves the factions at each others' throats. Hardliners want to turn the War of the Thorns global, it does start, but across one, two patches there are peace talks, exchanges of information about the casus belli, diplomacy. So instead of the war culminating in a second Siege of Orgrimmar, it instead is resolved more naturally, "anticlimactically" like many real-life wars, with the factions coming closer together again just as the threat of the Black Empire rises/becomes more apparent.

Honestly it didn't felt as much as Siege of Orgrimmar 2.0 but instead it was basically a Cold War Nuke situation. Yes, the armies were at the gates of Orgrimmar but we never did a full blown attack this time, thanks to Sadfang.

[Cosmic Janitor]

Yeah, this is true. Something unrelated to an official event is their safespace at this point, as they control the narrative completely - as you said. No pesky journalists or fans trying to argue with them, they can just share their message. I still find it surprising then that they cancel exactly this type of in-house event. Guess the situation must be way worse than we expected when even an exclusive Blizzard event is no possibility for advertising their products anymore.

Yeah, I don't really get why they would cancel the online event. Either they have such massive internal issues that they can't even find a couple presenters or they have simply nothing to show, because this year's Blizzconline was pretty much already the most minimal effort. The whole "it takes everyone of us" part was rather laughable, since it takes essentially 2-4 people of each team and a host to present it in the podcast manner they did. They could even pre-record it and no one would be the wiser.

My money would be on nothing worth showing, as the last one was already rather lame and felt like a massive waste of time, because modern WoW essentially had a 15 minute slot, as half the wow panel got eaten by classic rubbish as well and they clearly had nothing much to show besides. They might not want to repeat that next year.

[Nathanyel]

Honestly it didn't felt as much as Siege of Orgrimmar 2.0 but instead it was basically a Cold War Nuke situation. Yes, the armies were at the gates of Orgrimmar but we never did a full blown attack this time, thanks to Sadfang.

May have phrased it badly, didn't want to compare it to SoO too much, more to the ramping up of the conflict (between H&A and internally in the Horde) which then had a quasi-climax and immediately ended after that. That's what was bad about it, the hyping up, then something, then nothing, while we focus on something else.