Dragonflight Alpha/Beta General Discussion

[Nymrohd]

I really would be surprised with a Dragon themed class tbh. Honestly I'd rather the main theme of the xpac is shared by all. I think the best idea was the Ashes of Galakaros one; make completely cosmetic Dragonflight "covenants" give each spec an ability and just reskin it depending on people's choice of Dragonflight. Not to mention there are several Dragonsworn in lore and they are all very specifically other classes; Dragonsworn is a title more than a class.

I would not mind not getting a class. I'd rather they made a solid effort to get all or at least more specs to feel good like they did with Legion (and mostly managed by the end of the xpac) and would definitely prefer class customization the most. I'm a TRPG player and I am used to having tons of classes. In a TRPG setting I could see WoW having close to a hundred archetypes and that can be pulled off there with classes/subclasses and prestige classes. But WoW itself can never really pull that off. There are many very cleanly presented archetypes in WoW that can never really become classes; they would be too narrow and really at the end of the day there are too many of them. However if they were willing to take more risks with customization and the talent system, it's definitely possible to broaden how we play our characters without having to add many new classes. Not saying that you can't have classes added btw. Tinker is one of them were the theme is wide enough that you could easily add it. But you could just as well have engineering unlock class skins for a dozen different specs and make them tinkers instead.

Now what I think would be truly innovative if we do get Dragon Isles would be to actually see them try and use flight. One of the best gameplay features I've seen in wow in quite a while were the Mechagon back packs. I think a great way to do Dragonflights would be to give us DRAGON WINGS which would function only in the Dragon Isles and work like the backpack. Then just make sure to actually add flying threats. It can be done. TBC had so many flying threats, they did it in Zereth Mortis in the desert area. As long as flight doesn't just let you go straight up and avoid all combat it is not problematic. It would also let them make a more 3D environment and allow for the zones to be vertical or even floating! without them feeling disjointed. For me one of the worst parts of Shadowlands is how disjointed the zones are. In no other xpac did I constantly tab out waiting for a flight path. Even with Cata we had flying on day one and numerous portals so moving around was easy.

[Catastrophy349]

I am so proud that we’ve reached 1759 pages on this thread! I predicted back in January (when we were in the very low one-thousands) that we would be closer to 2000 pages by the time the official announcement happened. Almost to 2000!

[Yeah its Dragons]

It’s because it’s attempting to hide the fact that it’s hanamura from Overwatch.
The symbol on the building shown gives it away.

it's a placeholder

[Raetary]

snip

Dude, just stop.
It's embarrasing.

[Nightshade711]

it's a placeholder

Lol
/10chars

[Calfredd]

it's a placeholder

A placeholder until you can find a better image to make your fake leak seem more legit?

[Constellation]

I am so proud that we’ve reached 1759 pages on this thread! I predicted back in January (when we were in the very low one-thousands) that we would be closer to 2000 pages by the time the official announcement happened. Almost to 2000!

Any leaks that will be substantial at all since there is no blizzcon this time is a leak from blizzard itself (which honestly, hard to see) or leak from the info given to the press (which is probably even less of a chance).


Come to think of it, when Shadowlands was leaked we got the Bolvar image, anyone recall the sources of it? or was it just randomly posted?

[Archmage Xaxxas]

Come to think of it, when Shadowlands was leaked we got the Bolvar image, anyone recall the sources of it? or was it just randomly posted?

It was kind of datamined from the Blizzard Store, I believe they were selling a print of it and that HD preview image was posted early in an unlisted way, but found by people scouring the website and trying url variations.

[Yeah its Dragons]

A placeholder until you can find a better image to make your fake leak seem more legit?

you clearly don't understand anything about the process of designing a game

[Calfredd]

you clearly don't understand anything about the process of designing a game

You clearly don't understand anything about how leaks work. Hint: A real leak doesn't require the poster come back and constantly defend it.

[Local Ardenweald Faerie]

The central image in the 'leak' is just a mirrored and photoshopped version of promotion art when they added the Hanamura map to HOTS.

You can actually see it here: (preview makes it look small, just open in new tab to get full size)

[ercarp]

The Dragon Isles

New Continent: Dragon Isles
New Level Cap: 70
New Class: Dragon Knight
7 New Zones: Hanariyu Cascades, Mistscape, Solvhonheim, Galak'ar Bay, Uldaz, Lordaeron, Quel'Thalas

The Dragon Isles are the original home of the Vulpera, expect a lot of Vulpera lore with some japanese touches. It's also the birthplace of the protodrakes and the place that houses the machines that were used to create plant and animal life on Azeroth.

The new 5 zones are for leveling up while Lordaeron and Quel'Thalas are merely revamped for endgame with world quests.

Dragon Knight uses polearms and plate armor. Two specs, one tank and one dps spec.

The story involves the Infinite Dragonflight trying to enter the Halls of Creation in Uldaz and using it to reshape Azeroth.

This was already shared here earlier. Originally posted on Reddit, presumably also by you.

https://www.reddit.com/r/wow/comment...h_effort_fake/

It's a decent fanfic and the HTML editing isn't terrible. I actually think the fact that you used the datamined Green dragon texture for the background was a nice touch.

But it falls apart very quickly with the other visuals, like 1) the logo which takes five steps backwards from the more innovative designs Blizzard has gone for after WoD*, 2) having black text on a background where white would look more readable, and 3) as others pointed out, one of the images is from OW.

There are also some other things that wouldn't make sense if this was a real leak, like how one of the features advertised is "new character customization" and yet it doesn't even show any of the new customization. (Also, this was already a feature for SL so advertising "new character customization" as a major expansion feature back-to-back seems a bit silly.)

* If you look at the logos for Legion, BfA, and SL, you'll notice that the borders of each logo look vastly different. BfA and SL in particular took this up to a whole new level. You've done some changes to your logo, and that's a start, but 90% of it uses the same template as the older logos (Vanilla to WoD) which makes it look outdated.

[Throren]

also (as much as I would kill for playable Vrykul) the Vrykul models in that leak are wearing bits and pieces of armor ripped from Sonya's HoTS model as well as the HOTS Leoric Vrykul skin. Clearly fak as all hell

[Makabreska]

You clearly don't understand anything about how leaks work. Hint: A real leak doesn't require the poster come back and constantly defend it.

Gotta give it to the guy. 99% of leakers post their shit then fly away. Dude is actually sticking to this horrible crap.

- - - Updated - - -

you clearly don't understand anything about the process of designing a game

So process of designing the game contains having these horrible, low res pictures with Frankenstein monster type of characters and clearly and shoddily shopped art 18 days before official reveal?

[Local Ardenweald Faerie]

also (as much as I would kill for playable Vrykul) the Vrykul models in that leak are wearing bits and pieces of armor ripped from Sonya's HoTS model as well as the HOTS Leoric Vrykul skin. Clearly fak as all hell

Yeah, there's a ton of Heroes stuff in those photoshops.

Clearly they were used because HOTS died a while back...

I miss Heroes.

[KainneAbsolute]

Talking about Hots and leaks, there was a leak earlier about dragonsworn with dps and tank specs...why not healer? lol Alex in hots has nice healing powers

[Varodoc]

You have to be joking

More than you for sure, although I will concede that that's not saying much.

[Shadochi]

The story revolves around The Nailer, an ancient, immortal pirate forged by the Original Creators. The Nailer's original identity is lost to time, but his nickname was earned for his habit of nailing his victims to the sides of the ships under his command. The Nailer leads a faction of fearsome undead pirates known as The Shadowhands, which he was able to raise and control using the secret lost art of Flagon magic. The Nailer, after having been locked away in slumber deep beneath the sea for over 9,000 years, finally awakes as a result of the attack against Azeroth. The Alliance and Horde must put aside their differences to discover the mysteries of the Flagon Isles, and defeat The Nailer once and for all.

Better villain than the Jailer /thread

But tbh I do hope they come up with a new villain out of the blue, that isn't an existance threatening bad guys but actually wanted to do good. Like with many important figures in the leadership or culture of each faction being away for SL surely new villains would take that opportunity to arise, and pirates make sense since Jaina is the Admiral of one of the biggest Navies and she was MIA on Azeroth

[Hitei]

It won't only use polearms, it's just the trademark, like Demon Hunters use warglaives.

And the abbreviation the community can use could be DRK for Dragon Knight and DK for Death Knight.

Some reasons people come up with for why something can't happen don't actually matter as much as people think.

Not saying it won't only use polearms. I'm saying that there's no reason for it to be the trademark, when even DK's "trademark" was watered down, and dragon knights aren't an established thing to have a trademark in the first place. They aren't going to forcibly build an animation kit suited to polearms for a brand new role that, shoehorning it into one weapon type to look decent in combat.

And they aren't going to sit around and go "what's a good name for this dragon class?" "Well we have a whole lot of options, how about the one that's nearly identical to an existing class"

Not a matter of "can't happen", it's a matter of "only an idiot would".

[ercarp]

Talking about Hots and leaks, there was a leak earlier about dragonsworn with dps and tank specs...why not healer? lol Alex in hots has nice healing powers

Yeah, I imagine a dragon class would 100% have a healer spec. One of the most important Dragon Aspects is the Aspect of Life itself.

I'm curious what it would look like though. Canonically the breath of the red dragons has healing properties, right? Would be kind of funny to scorch all your party members with happy healing fire.