World of Warcraft Dragonflight IGN Developer Interview

[Alanar]

The concept art

ugh

the dragon form comes off very hentai rule 34 furry/scaley things
and the humanoid form looks like they just took humans and added scales, instead of putting actual effort into whole new models skeleton skin everything

Didnt even bother to maybe change their idle animation, you know to look less like blood elf or human. It workee very well for nightborne. Such an easy way.. should have happend with highmountain, void elves. They all missed that opportunity.. so low effort.

[crusadernero]

That's what i thought, too.
All of the zones lookes exactly like ones we've seen before.

One dragon riding shot looks exactly like a wod zone,
The "lush valley" is just copy pasted stormsong valley
and the mountains shown could've been taken straight from stormheim.

I dont know where that "fresh feel" they talk about comes from, but maybe it'll show when we get to see more alpha/beta footage.

The best part for me was that they said the factions work together and we can do stuff together now.
A minute later one dev said that the ships from og and sw arrive next to each other and you could jump over to wreck them.
Good start to the whole idea of working together again.

With that argument a game like wow cant put out new content. What kind of landscape havent Blizzard made by now? Snow area? Vanilla. Desert area? Vanilla. Lush green area? Vanilla. Space area? BC. Dark and gloomy? BC. All made 15+ years ago.

The important thing is if the zones are fun to be in, to engage with. Having stuff to do. Not having it as a small clusterfuck of mobs jammed into the place. Seems like they are pushing for big & grand zones and thats a good thing.

[Pakheth]

With that argument a game like wow cant put out new content. What kind of landscape havent Blizzard made by now? Snow area? Vanilla. Desert area? Vanilla. Lush green area? Vanilla. Space area? BC. Dark and gloomy? BC. All made 15+ years ago.

The important thing is if the zones are fun to be in, to engage with. Having stuff to do. Not having it as a small clusterfuck of mobs jammed into the place. Seems like they are pushing for big & grand zones and thats a good thing.

Agreed. So far they seem to handle the issues that has bothered me for a long time so I am cautiously optimistic. Larger zones is a huge plus for me as the latest expansions has felt too tiny. I hope it will be ala MoP in sense of scale.
And familiarity isn't an issue as long as the zones are well made. After all we are still on Azeroth, not a different planet.

[cocomen2]

I guess if men (or Dragonkin) were being tageted, killed, assaulted, r*ped by, who knows, assassin trolls because of their gender/looks you'd have a point. It is not the same thing for a woman to talk about the looks of a man. Men don't get killed for that.

So if they would keep Alexa showing us her belly in her metal bra, someone would really go and r*pe and kill someone?.... horrible world.

[Dystemper]

They have been laying the groundworks for this expansion since even before Shadowlands.

Oh, bullshit. Dev, please.

Yeah that's bullshit. You can tell from the reveal and the deep dive that this has been a hastily slapped together expansion out of desperation.

I get the feeling the various departments are not even on the same page and that management not managing. Low moral, key devs quitting suddenly. All going to lead to a shit show.

[Drusin]

There will be a lot more exploration than in Shadowlands, but the zone order will remain the same for everyone on their first character. Telling a linear storyline is not easy utilizing the Legion and Battle for Azeroth "choose your zone order" methods.

Dear Blizzard,
Not everyone gives a fuck about story, give people the option to just do whatever zone order they want because they don't care.
-Yours always, Drusin

[Dismayxz]

The new talent system will probably shake things up. Unless I missed something the druid one were separated between tank/dps and a healer section.
The current 3 dps/tank specs were separated into 3 branches but linked up with each other.

To mix the talents together like that (which I assume they do for all classes in similar or different ways) you need to make the baseline kit bit mixed as well. Maybe elemental mage is coming back.

Not Tank/DPS and Healer. It's specc based. You have a main tree that's your Class tree (Utility, mostly), which is available to all of your Speccs regardless of role (Aka, the left-hand tree) and then your Specc tree, which is always about your throughput for the role you play and maybe some small specc-based utility for your throughput kit.

- - - Updated - - -

The Horde and Alliance are working together in Dragonflight. (But don't worry, we'll put in some silly, forced, reason for them to be at each other's throats again in no time.)

- - - Updated - - -



I'm really hoping there's some other form than just "humans" for them, I mean especially if they can join Horde, it's just odd.

I don't know if this is just the usual MMO "I'm dissatisfied and blind" take, but it's humans and elves atm. - two options. And knowing Blizzard, this is just the usual "We'll add more options later, when the story is over and it's not about the dragons anymore". Already see them eventually opening evoker and Drakthyr for other race/class combinations.

- - - Updated - - -

Hehe!

I have watched it now after school and it is everything I thought it would be. Not good.

An underwhelming cinematic that has no idea of what it's supposed to be. Every single cinematic since Vanilla has been centralized around explaining the conflict. In Vanilla it was Alliance vs Horde vs the world itself. In TBC it was Illidan's schemes in Outland. In Wrath we had the Lich King creating an army of the dead to destroy all life. Etc., etc. Heck, even Mists of Pandria understood how to frame the conflict of the expansion by having the Alliance and Horde realizing the vast potential of this newfound continent and its people. Dragonflight attempts to copy that same premise of a hidden world without a proper reason as to why it had to be hidden and why we the players should care.

The story makes zero sense when you actually start thinking about the old lore. Why would the Dragonflights not know the location of an entire continent when they can fly and have powers to warp space and time? Why would they have a defense system which not even they can find a way to unlock the path back? Why didn't Deathwing crack a way open when he literally controls the element of Earth? He broke the entire world from just writhing in pain and being enveloped in pure wrath, so why the heck didn't he just crack it? How come these islands were not affected by not one, but TWO sunderings, the Great Sundering and the Cataclysm? The true answer is, there is no answer. To any of these questions. They just write without thinking.

Besides a few of the systems (i.e. talent trees and possible flying mechanics) I didn't like this reveal at all. The new playable dragon race feels so out of place. Looks like they came from a completely different fantasy game. Not to mention how the writers justify it with Neltharion/Deathwing being their creator, even though the guy was notorious for creating abomination experiments, so anything he made would have been very monstrous looking. Also, why would he create humanoid dragons when actual dragons are larger, more powerful, and can already turn themselves into humanoids? It makes no sense.

Still, at the end of the day, even if I was positive toward all of this stuff, I have been burnt before. Multiple times. I gave BfA a chance after really enjoying Legion, but with Shadowlands I decided long ago that it was going to be my last chance I will ever give WoW. There are only so many chances I am willing to give and with BfA, Shadowlands, and WarCraft 3 Reforged all being massive duds, I just can't support this franchise anymore.

Anyway, I hope for the people who continue playing that they don't have to get burnt anymore.

You are getting your N's mixed up. Neltharion/Deathwing's experiments were perfect when he wanted them to be, monstrous when he needed them to be (Chromatus). Nefarian, his son is the one that constantly concocted failures for experiments, abominations at every turn and kept them around (Maloriak, Hydra Boss, Atramedes).

[ExtremelyCrusty]

Give us a new CoT dungeon!

[|Dexter|]

They have been laying the groundworks for this expansion since even before Shadowlands.

Uh ok, what ground work they talking about?

[Cheezits]

Uh ok, what ground work they talking about?

The end of BFA directly sets up this expansion with the Dragonflights getting together. Also BFA namedrops Dragon Isles for the first time ingame.

[|Dexter|]

OH! Blizzard has confirmed that you will only be able to "fly" in the Dragon Isles using the new Dragonriding system. Your broader mount collection will act only as ground mounts in the new zones.

In an interview with AusGamers, Jeremy Feasel spoke more about the new system, including details about how it will allow you to travel faster than existing mount speeds and an idea about how the system will work in practice.

[Dragonriding] is very fast and fluid, it's arcadey,” Jeremy explains. “You press the spacebar and you do a giant takeoff. And then the whole mini-game is that you've got height and speed and you have to try to figure out how to get as far as possible before you land again. And it should feel like you're swooping and diving through these landscapes. With giant zones the two ended up working really well together. You're gonna move really fast when dragonriding too, much faster than existing mount speeds. Taking off there should be a giant gust of wind and a big flap of your wings,” Jeremy adds. “Our environment team is doing a great job incorporating things like more cloud layers so that you can fly through clouds and get that feeling of moving really fast. And then as you start to speed up and go faster and faster you'll see particles fly off your wings. And eventually that turns into contrails.”

“A big push was to make the experience of moving around the world feel more three dimensional,” Jeremy continues. “That idea of conservation of momentum, of caring about when you stop, because you don't want to stop, you want to keep going fast. How do I get from A to B as fast as possible? Finding those different spires to jump off of becomes an interesting thing to look for as you're traversing the world.”

[Kumorii]

Uh ok, what ground work they talking about?

Concept arts, rough outlines of stories and worldbuilding. Early talks of what they want to achieve gameplay wise such as talent reworks etc etc (not going into details how it will work). Realizing problems with the current state etc etc.

[Puremallace]

Nah its Class talent tree and Spec talent tree.

Example shown was a Druid in Resto spec (Druid tree on left, Resto on right), if you play a Ret Paladin it will be Paladin tree and Ret tree - if you respec to prot you just change your ret tree to prot tree but keep the paladin tree and then just spend your points.

The problem with this expansion just like every other one is look at what they announced. 5 zones that the players will burn through in 2 weeks, raid that will not even release on launch, dragon flight system they admit is going to be time gated.

If you are a casual player used to RP'n, doing housing and listening to music in FF14 not even remotely concerned about chasing gear what did Ion or any of those devs say that will lure you back? Ion does not understand how to develop something outside of raiding to give people something to do.

They pushed Dragonriding so hard because that is literally it and how fast will that get old with it being limited via timegating of abilities? He could have put some time into revamping the Darkmoon fare to literally copy the Gold Saucer from FF14 but someone like Ion does not understand why you would log on to do that content.

Blizzard is not capable of thinking outside of a set formula. Patch 6.2 in FF14 is going to have more features added than an EXPANSION announcement from their biggest competition. That is the problem.

[Lanesra]

I gotta ask not because i think your wrong but could you give me an zone or an idea of a zone that has not been done yet?

I know they have only so many bioms to work with and they did alot of grassy / forest / desert / snow / whatever zones.
Thats not my point.

What i meant is that zones with the same theme should still feel and look different. Some zones are newer so they look different because of newer and updated graphics.

Take jungle forest zones. Stranglethorn and feralas in classic have similar themes, yet look and feel completely different.
Then, a few years passed and we get jade forest or zuldazar.
Same idea, completely different artstyle.

Newer graphics also work well with places that we never seen before or were untouched for x years.

Now we go on an island which was abandoned for 10.000 years and we get to see very familiar stuff, no new artstyle to distinguish this place from the last places we went.

They really emphasized how new and fresh all of this is, but all pictures shown felt like they were copy pasted from earlier stuff.

And again, all of this is just a feeling i got from the short clips we've seen so far and it might change once we get to see more footage.