Dragonflight Alpha/Beta General Discussion

[Nymrohd]

Can't say I get a clear idea of what they are planning for Resto like I could with feral. Guess we'll wait for next week to actually see how it looks.

[draugril]

Though I would love it if they would hire a few people/designate a few people who maintain things like the timeline, lore consistency and world-logic.

They literally have an entire staff of historians for this. But it doesn’t matter if either: (a) they don’t do their job properly, or (b) the writers don’t listen regardless.

[Nymrohd]

They literally have an entire staff of historians for this. But it doesn’t matter if either: (a) they don’t do their job properly, or (b) the writers don’t listen regardless.

Are you sure? I think the Archive department is in charge of Company records, not game lore. I think they probably have a point person at best.

[AngerFork]

Random question which I fully disclose may be slight bitterness coming from my own lack of a beta key: does Blizz's beta invite setup give an unfair advantage for certain players to be Evokers during the first tier of raiding? This is presuming that we don't have Evokers in the 10.0 pre-patch PTR (which is an unknown at this point).

As an example, let's say two people want to raid as Evokers in the same guild. Person A just got beta access yesterday while Person B does not wind up getting beta access at any point. If we go with the rumored 10/25 10.0 pre-patch date, Person A has had 7 1/2 weeks of extra access to Evokers that Person B hasn't. Extrapolating that out to the rumored release date, Person A would have had 11 1/2 weeks with the Evoker while Person B had 4. While a lot will no doubt be made up for by gearing once DF is out (as well as time off of work on first release), that's a major experience difference to make up for by the time the first week of raiding comes out.

Given all that has to be looked at in a beta test, it may well be worth that temporary evil to ensure Blizz can control the size of their testing pool & get eyes where they are needed. However, when you have a new class coming into the game alongside a randomized invite pool as well as a raiding player base that tends to narrowly focus people into how much they are helping the team right now, it seems feasible to me that Blizz is unintentionally giving some players an advantage towards first tier Evoker raiding.

[enigma77]

Random question which I fully disclose may be slight bitterness coming from my own lack of a beta key: does Blizz's beta invite setup give an unfair advantage for certain players to be Evokers during the first tier of raiding? This is presuming that we don't have Evokers in the 10.0 pre-patch PTR (which is an unknown at this point).

As an example, let's say two people want to raid as Evokers in the same guild. Person A just got beta access yesterday while Person B does not wind up getting beta access at any point. If we go with the rumored 10/25 10.0 pre-patch date, Person A has had 7 1/2 weeks of extra access to Evokers that Person B hasn't. Extrapolating that out to the rumored release date, Person A would have had 11 1/2 weeks with the Evoker while Person B had 4. While a lot will no doubt be made up for by gearing once DF is out (as well as time off of work on first release), that's a major experience difference to make up for by the time the first week of raiding comes out.

Given all that has to be looked at in a beta test, it may well be worth that temporary evil to ensure Blizz can control the size of their testing pool & get eyes where they are needed. However, when you have a new class coming into the game alongside a randomized invite pool as well as a raiding player base that tends to narrowly focus people into how much they are helping the team right now, it seems feasible to me that Blizz is unintentionally giving some players an advantage towards first tier Evoker raiding.

Evokers will be in the pre-patch. Conduits and Legendaries for them have been datamined.

[AngerFork]

Evokers will be in the pre-patch. Conduits and Legendaries for them have been datamined.

Pre-patch, yes. They already mentioned them as an early access bonus. But not necessarily the PTR for the pre-patch.

[Kiria]

Evokers will be in the pre-patch. Conduits and Legendaries for them have been datamined.

Pre patch is too far away still ; ;

[draugril]

Are you sure? I think the Archive department is in charge of Company records, not game lore. I think they probably have a point person at best.

https://wowpedia.fandom.com/wiki/Sean_Copeland

[Avikur]

Pre-patch, yes. They already mentioned them as an early access bonus. But not necessarily the PTR for the pre-patch.

I can't remember, were DH's in the pre patch PTR for Legion?

[Alanar]

And as always No beta invite for me.....

I wonder how many we gonna get of this. As always mostly means second time or something like this>.>

[AngerFork]

I can't remember, were DH's in the pre patch PTR for Legion?

Don't 100% recall, but I don't believe they were. I think Gnome Hunters were opened for that PTR however. I did find this link with people talking about how they weren't available at that point on the PTR, so I suspect they weren't.

[Kiivar86]

I really wish I could find whoever it is at Blizzard that keeps making the LFR tier set green and just...convince them to maybe not do that.

(I suppose Nathria's tiers weren't all green at least)

[loras]

Except the skies aren't clear. The storm is there, but an explanation is being demanded of the clouds forming in the manner that they do, when the story would really rather be focusing on the storm and the heroes' struggles to endure it. So to speak.

It was more understandable back in Cataclysm, when the world actually was in the midst of a global apocalypse that had a very present, very visible effect on Azeroth during the whole elemental planes breaching reality sort of thing. But even then, there comes a point where scrutinizing the realism of a volcano sprouting in the middle of Ashenvale gets a bit much. And WoW's story has not had such a heavy front-and-center focus on changes to the environment itself since then.

I'm not saying these aren't things that WoW could theoretically be doing 'better', I just think that there is such a thing as giving too many shits. And derisively comparing the unexplained geology, climate, and ocean/weather patterns of an island rife with magic that hasn't seen the rest of the world in ten thousand years, to a silly gag in a different instance of children's media, is probably a few shits too many. In my opinion, anyway.

Yeah, except that the world being treated like a senseless children's drawing is exactly what has went wrong so often. Why is the sun shining in the middle of the storm; why is it so damn full of self-contradictions?
And yes, you can always say it's "just" this or "just" that, yet you end up with a mismade patchwork full of inconsistencies.

The world is the canvas, nobody is asking for it to be flawless, all that is asked to cover up the glaring flaws and close the holes. It's not even hard to do and it literally upgrades it all from "Is this a joke?" to something that is cheesy but can be taken to be well intentioned.

And that volcano is exactly the sort of bullshit we're talking about here, adding something so senseless and thoughtless is like cooking a meal, adding a turd to it and then acting offended that people say they'd rather not bother with it like that.

I would turn blind eye to it, but the problem is that these things don't go away, they add up, ultimately affecting near everything. It's a bit like how Uldum being a joke zone was so immersion breaking back then that it really put people off of the lore even more. Such cynicism then has the opportunity to seep into everything.

[SoundOfGuns]

Im just here because i got to let it out somewhere how absurdly bad the character design for the dracthyr is. Im dying of laughter. PEOPLE ARE GETTING PAYED FOR THIS. HAH.

[loras]

I think some explanations are very much there to exist...

1. Northern EK has Quel'thalas and whatnot. So it's not like things simply "get colder" there also. And Kalimdor especially has different climates as well. Pandaria has Kun-Lai Summit ffs....

And 2. The Dragon Isles specifically are just having an elemental resurgence also, so it's not at all crazy that the climates there are somewhat strange lol

Oh, and 1 last thing...

North = Colder and South = Warmer has never been an argument for WoW. Let's not pretend that was ever the case.

Silithus and Stranglethorn beg to differ (Krassarang too perhaps, come think of it), also altitude and/or magic is used to explain i.e. Winterspring and Kun-lai, or rather Hyjal in the case of the former as Winterspring seems the less unnatural variety, whereas Hyjal is more comparable to Eversong Forest's eternal magical springtime (or rather: Eversong is an arcane magical imitation of Hyjal).

[Vasoka]

Im just here because i got to let it out somewhere how absurdly bad the character design for the dracthyr is. Im dying of laughter. PEOPLE ARE GETTING PAYED FOR THIS. HAH.

What, you don't like the scalies?

[loras]

What, you don't like the scalies?

I don't think the scalies approve of that shit either, it just looks off.
I mean i don't think that's a case of preferences, even pidgeons can identify styles of art and see when something is off. Hiding behind excuses doesn't change that.

[Makabreska]

I don't think the scalies approve of that shit either, it just looks off.
I mean i don't think that's a case of preferences, even pidgeons can identify styles of art and see when something is off. Hiding behind excuses doesn't change that.

You asked many pigeons about their opinion on Dracthyr?

What are you even trying to say now? That Dracthyr are fundamentally wrong on same basic, natural level and people who like them are wrong? Fkin please!

[Makorus]

"Noooooo, the dracthyr are not orcs with wings!!!!!!!!!!!!"

[Kiivar86]

On the flip side, my impression of the dracthyr improved as I got to play one in alpha. Not sure I will play one in live (if only because I'm not enamored with evoker) but I went from "Meh" to "pleasantly surprised how much I like this character."

To each their own.