Dragonflight Alpha/Beta General Discussion

[cocomen2]

It’s almost like I type the word “Tinker” and some of you forget anything else I type beforehand or afterward.

After your 20 000 posts about tinker and only 1 000 about dragons, can you blame them for remembering only 10 years of tinker blabering.

Priority man, PRIORITY.

[Sondrelk]

Yeah, what happened to the art team? The art team has carried the past couple expansions and has widely been the only part of the game practically everyone loves! But Dragonflight has one unisex dragon race that can't even wear armor and existing rigging and animation and then additional cosmetics for male blood elves and female humans? Like what??? Even Shadowlands gave us a lot more options for existing races and BFA gave us allied races (and the Kul Tirans really are new race).

What happened?!

SL didnt have a race at all, so the argument that Dragonflight is lazy in that regard is absurd.
Presumably the effort from the art team has gone where it always goes, into a whole shitton of new mobs, cosmetics, and zone design.

[Nyel]

So… I took some hours to comprehend stuff.

Anyone just whelmed by this expansion? It’s so… boring ? Lacking? I don’t know. It’s just way less what I expected and so basic. Nothing special, nothing fresh, nothing unexpected. It’s just so generic.

[Chickat]

I mean, its not BlizzCon. What else were you expecting them cover?

Gamescom legion presentation wasn't blizzcon and had the slides. They could and should have showed this expansion better.

[Alanar]

The feels.. when you play WoTLK questing in all these cool zones you love.. knowing what the future holds for Arthas, Sylvanas.. in SL.

Truly a good timing

[Keyalios]

It makes me wonder at this point, how many more expansions the game will be and where is left to go at this point. The next expansion is the 20th anniversary of the launch of WoW and it feels like WoW2 isn't going to happen for a variety of reasons.

We've fought armies and gods, the world has been broken apart and we've also literally been to the afterlife. I think this was the only sort of expansion they could do at this point. Personally, I'd like to see the 2024 expansion be the last and I think the game will be laid to rest after that.

So long as WoW is making money I doubt they’ll axe it. I did say back in WoD I thought the game would slowly decline and besides Legion it seems I was right (said that due to continually declining sub numbers, peak was over a decade ago now). But with Microsoft acquiring them they’ll beat the cash cow until it’s dead. I’d say 2030 it’ll still be running but we are slowly going to see expansions be more like SWTOR expansions than WoW expansions.

[Destinas]

Well, your first big mistake is not even figuring out the 4 colors are the armor types.

You can see that the monk set has beads on the shoulders, being one of the yellow sets. The rogue set is on the far left, with druid next to that. Demon hunter is one of the red sets, with the forward facing horns.

So, no, it's not separated by color for the armor types. They're separated by color for the different Primalist dragons, which are in 4 elemental colors.

[Sondrelk]

So… I took some hours to comprehend stuff.

Anyone just whelmed by this expansion? It’s so… boring ? Lacking? I don’t know. It’s just way less what I expected and so basic. Nothing special, nothing fresh, nothing unexpected. It’s just so generic.

I love it. It doesnt have any massive selling points like BfA or Legion did, but in return it has loads of small imrpovements that the game desperately needed.
I understand it's a hard sell for the players who want a box fature in big letters, but for my money I am absolutely stoked with just having a revamped flying.

[Kiivar86]

It makes me wonder at this point, how many more expansions the game will be and where is left to go at this point. The next expansion is the 20th anniversary of the launch of WoW and it feels like WoW2 isn't going to happen for a variety of reasons.

We've fought armies and gods, the world has been broken apart and we've also literally been to the afterlife. I think this was the only sort of expansion they could do at this point. Personally, I'd like to see the 2024 expansion be the last and I think the game will be laid to rest after that.

Everquest still going strong at 28 expansions and counting, no reason why WoW has to stop.

[jallfo]

Looking through my wish list and checking off what I wanted, versus what we got...

Realizing the expansion is extremely light on content, so far.

- New race and class which are heavily locked down
- 4 zones + starting area for the new race/class
- Dragon riding
- Talent overhaul
- UI overhaul
- Profession revamp

Has there been an expansion with less/equal features on announcement? Maybe MoP?

This is 100% my concern. I'm.... "fine" with what was shown but there are so many unknowns..

- How many dungeons are we getting?
- Any changes to loot acquisition?
- How many raid bosses in the first tier?
- What's the new M+ affix?
- Are we getting more timewalking updates + legacy dungeons brought into the rotation?

My biggest concern is that there are two very simple questions that have not been answered:

1. What is it actually going to be like to play Dragonflight? What's the end game loop? Are we going back to WOD era where it's Raid log or is there more to do? (we don't even know if WQ are coming back... safe assumption they are but man we know NOTHING)
2. Lore wise... why are we there? Like they did a good job creating an environment that looks cool as shit but I am missing the "why do I care that the dragon isles are there and what problem am I solving"

I'm not a lore guy generally but I don't even know why I am supposed to be excited about fighting things on dragon isles. At least in Shadowlands it was like "gotta stop the Jailer + Sylv"... BFA was "Gotta prevent the other faction from harvesting azerite + other big bads"... Dragonflight is..."there's some elemental giants? Protodrakes?"

The final / last concern I have is this might be the "reveal" that has the least actual gameplay / content shown ever. Usually they give you a preview of a bunch of dungeons (at least concept art) but holy shit does it sound like this expansion has basically nothing.

The hopium in me says they're going to slow roll feature previews over time and maybe keep sharing cool shit. The 17 year vet in me says this is all we're gonna get and... "welp I'll be bored in 2 months".

[huth]

Because the fiery red ones are clearly all leather wearers. The only armour type with 4 classes. Seriously, it's not how it's being done

Except Druid and Rogue are very clearly wind.

[Nyel]

SL didnt have a race at all, so the argument that Dragonflight is lazy in that regard is absurd.
Presumably the effort from the art team has gone where it always goes, into a whole shitton of new mobs, cosmetics, and zone design.

It didn’t have a playable race… but the Covenants seem way more ambitious than anything in Dragonflight. If Shadowlands wouldn’t feel like WoD 2.0 I’d definitely say DF feels like that. It‘s so lacking.

[Nymrohd]

They said nothing about alpha or beta did they? Not even a "Stay tuned"?

Evoker is just not for me. First off, no tank spec so no way I'd ever main it. And the race just doesn't look that great to me; the male humanoid form is cool I suppose and I will definitely roll one but doubt I'll focus on it.
On one hand that's not good but on the other hand as we had discussed, if we had gotten a multispec dragon race/class that actually was a dragon maybe that would just be too cool and harmful for the game.

UI Revamp is . . . OK? Rift let you move the UI around with no addons how many years ago? Ofc will check it and it could be interesting, especially if its not just about utility but also about cosmetics. Heck maybe they could let you earn cosmetic UI elements for in game activities down the line?

Talent revamp I have no comment until beta. Could be good, could be a pointless. Definitely has potential and they let us have multiple loadouts changeable easily which is what's important. On one hand I'd love if we could have all 36 specs have more than one way to play them, on the other hand that's one tall order.

Profession revamp is probably the one feature I'm excited about. My main is a blacksmith who became a paladin, not a paladin who just learned blacksmithing so I love that part. I do hope that specializations are not mutually exclusive. Let me grind all expansion long to learn both armorsmithing and weaponsmithing!

[Golden Yak]

So, I had a dream last night that the reveal was going to be called World of Warcraft: Boughs of Nordrassil, referring to the world tree in Mount Hyjal. I can't recall much beyond that, but there was a scene that looked like a bunch of Titan-architecture pillars and platforms underneath a sky that was just filled with giant roots, like we were in a Titan facility beneath the world tree. Also, the Constellar were there, we were gonna visit their city. That's all I remember.

I think I was more excited for that than what we actually got.

[Makabreska]

Gamescom legion presentation wasn't blizzcon and had the slides. They could and should have showed this expansion better.

And Gamescom was STILL a stage presentation. This was not.

[Nyel]

I love it. It doesnt have any massive selling points like BfA or Legion did, but in return it has loads of small imrpovements that the game desperately needed.
I understand it's a hard sell for the players who want a box fature in big letters, but for my money I am absolutely stoked with just having a revamped flying.

But is that enough? I‘m happy about flying. And talent trees. But again, is that enough and what WoW needed right now?

[Chickat]

So far, only the open plains zone and the mountain zone seem somewhat cool. The red dragonflight zone and the bronze one feel and look pretty weird imo. Like there's no real strong theme there, just random assets that look pretty dull.

Also why are there only 4 zones? Not even an end game zone like the maw? Maybe the drakthyr zone will become end game at some point?

[Jodmos]

So… I took some hours to comprehend stuff.

Anyone just whelmed by this expansion? It’s so… boring ? Lacking? I don’t know. It’s just way less what I expected and so basic. Nothing special, nothing fresh, nothing unexpected. It’s just so generic.

I don't think it's an uncommon feeling after the reveal.

It looks nice as you would expect from Blizzard but things like the class/race link and the limited visage forms strike me as really odd choices, particularly the visage form as I've seen a lot of interest in being other races when not in dragon form running up to the reveal. It was even joked that it was bound to be dragonelves earlier in this thread.

[Chickat]

Hell yeah can do em all

That's sounds really cool tbh.

[Nymrohd]

It didn’t have a playable race… but the Covenants seem way more ambitious than anything in Dragonflight. If Shadowlands wouldn’t feel like WoD 2.0 I’d definitely say DF feels like that. It‘s so lacking.

And the Covenants ended up being massive grinds that constrained the way you played more than they augmented it. Did they really have the wow factor of Artifacts or Garrisons??? not for me.
Dragonflight might go back to basics. Maybe that's good. If it keeps the content cycle running at good speed, it has every shot of being a good expansion. I mean, MoP promised far less.

Honestly