Dragonflight Alpha/Beta General Discussion

[Ersula]

Lol what a dumb statement.

I personally have seen zero excitement about that preview. Even from the sycophants. We've reached a weird place in the fandom where both the wow haters & the wow fanboys are both openly disparaging the game, but the haters are still mocking the fanboys for not hating the game in a very specific way.

[Foreign Exchange Ztudent]

I feel like most people don't really care about this patch because the idea that Danuser has hinted throughout 9.0 has been a Thanos moment where he snaps the finger and wins. But, we know that since WoW is a game where the players always have to win that it was very unlikely for that to happen and so now we're in this weird situation where historically we should not believe that Zovaal wins or that Sylvanas wins. But then you also have the fringe ideas such as time travel being involved or Azeroth waking up and resetting the universe herself and other nonsensical theories.

The thing is Blizzard has basically used an entire expansions narrative to basically create this really convoluted way to copy a Marvel movie that took decades of movies to establish which also spent considerable amounts of times trying to make Thanos's plan understandable even if nonsensical outside of his viewpoint. Except we didn't have that with the Jailor and again this means we're just moving onwards into the abyss of nothingness.

Killing Zovaal is not satisfactory because we don't even know who Zovaal was. Certainly, I think the fact that this expansion feels like an apology for N'zoths' death and the fact the entire expansion has mimicked the storyline of N'zoth up until now.

It also doesn't help that the Warcraft Universe should be destroyed if you think in-canon of your player character. Your entire existence is pointless and used for soul fertilizer and you as a hero of Azeroth probably have vast amounts of anima meaning that you in turn will be extreme quantities of soul fertilizer to keep the Eternal Cycle going until its inevitable reset point. (Again which is further established by the Firster Ones and the even more convoluted hierarchy of godhood in The Warcraft Universe which could lead us to the inevitable Simulation Hypothesis)

Also again some of the questions posed by the Raid Bosses in Sepulcher just literally annhilates fan sentiment even more because they can't even wrap their heads around all of that.

Don't get me wrong a lot of us theorycrafters probably just hate how stupid people are and they can't level up their intelligence level to get what is going on. But at the same time, this whole ramp up in knowledge required to fundamentally understand World of Warcraft was way too rapid and again that's on Danuser for being a moron.

Honestly, I don't really care about 12 week timegate System to unlock Flying/Conduits/Double Leggos. I'm not going to engage with it, regardless. I'm just interested in seeing how this ends and to see if Danuser can even make up for the mistake of N'zoth and actually just fucking do something interesting rather than take us back to a 10.0 that will rain hellfire and brimstone from the skies from the start before we even have the System kerfuffle.

Honestly they've been hinting at Azeroth's soul so much at this point. Just do something interesting and please for the love of god take us away from Sword in Azeroth/Yrel/Turalyon/Void/Life nonsense. It's time to hit a reset button and start in the small again with all the options they have on the table for this patch.

[Sondrelk]

I personally have seen zero excitement about that preview. Even from the sycophants. We've reached a weird place in the fandom where both the wow haters & the wow fanboys are both openly disparaging the game, but the haters are still mocking the fanboys for not hating the game in a very specific way.

There simply isnt anything to be passionate about. Whether (how) Sylvanas gets redeemed, Anduin, and how Arthas will factor in are really the only things I feel players have even some passion for, and that's hardly enough to spark interest in the community.

Zereth Mortis is no Ny'alotha, a realm we have only been teased briefly, and which has still been a part of the playerbase fore several expansions, more so when you consider it the "homeland" of the Old Gods, which themselves are fan favorites.
In the leadup to Ny'alotha there were a lot of discussion on what bosses would be there, what it would look like, how it would end.
For this patch we know that Anduin will be there, and we will fight Zovaal at the end. There could be curveballs on what we defeat, but so far there is nothing to really discuss.

Once dialogue or quest text shows up there will be more though, once we can start discussing things like Sylvanas' likely redemption, or whether Arthas will be a character for questing, a raid boss, or even if he will just be mentioned briefly in the raid.

[Foreign Exchange Ztudent]

There's 3 bosses for the unknown final wing of the raid. Who are the 2 bosses prior to the Jailor?

That's one of the key questions I'm curious about because there's a few puzzle pieces that need to fit nicely into the overall picture that still aren't put into play.

Also I love how this entire expansion doesn't happen without Yogg-Saron's help and Danuser just said "LALALALALALALALALALALALAA DIDNT HEAR YOU"

Again a main issue of this expansion is that the audience have literally just been waiting for the end of the expansion due to the premise of Zovaal which is a really horrible way to setup a story because now the players will just be like "Oh, okay I wait till the end of the expansion to finally get to know what Zovaal meant".

[Sondrelk]

Also again some of the questions posed by the Raid Bosses in Sepulcher just literally annhilates fan sentiment even more because they can't even wrap their heads around all of that.

Almost a full expansion, and we still have no idea what caused the machine of death to break, what Zovaal actually wants, how he acted before being imprisoned, or how his partnership with Sylvanas actually functioned prior to Shadowlands.
Either Blizzard went too deep into making Zovaal mysterious, or they flat out forgot to give him a personality and actual character.

It's saying something when Zovaal could have literally been an empty husk pulling a reverse Arbiter essentially, and Shadowlands would have functioned no differently.
It probably would have worked much better for Sylvanas' character as well. Trying to "ressurect" someone she thinks will help her, and end up betrayed when she unleashes the ultimate evil, at least then there would be some legitimacy to her helping us stop him other than her heart growing a couple sizes bigger after 9.1.

[Aeluron Lightsong]

Almost a full expansion, and we still have no idea what caused the machine of death to break, what Zovaal actually wants, how he acted before being imprisoned, or how his partnership with Sylvanas actually functioned prior to Shadowlands.
Either Blizzard went too deep into making Zovaal mysterious, or they flat out forgot to give him a personality and actual character.

It's saying something when Zovaal could have literally been an empty husk pulling a reverse Arbiter essentially, and Shadowlands would have functioned no differently.
It probably would have worked much better for Sylvanas' character as well. Trying to "ressurect" someone she thinks will help her, and end up betrayed when she unleashes the ultimate evil, at least then there would be some legitimacy to her helping us stop him other than her heart growing a couple sizes bigger after 9.1.

We know why, there's something in the sepulcher that will enable him to have Azeroth and basically make him the big overlord of the cosmos. Its pretty clear who harmed the arbiter, the same redish energy that came from Revandreath? Obviously, its not some big mystery. This isn't a cynical take but Blizzard usually has a simple direction when it comes to how the story unfolds.


P.S. 9.2 isn't out so there is clearly more stuff to find out.

[Syegfryed]

I guess it will be exciting to see whether we find the usual "accidental" next expansion hint, like the cloth set with the Kul Tiras map, or whatever it was that hinted at Legion.

Class changes and the possibility of mining info from the dungeon journal will be fun though.

Other than that there isn't really a whole lot to be hyped for exactly. Not because it will be terrible, but because we know pretty much everything that will go into it, and Zereth Mortis and the Sepulcher are completely new areas, so there isn't really a reason to speculate on how it will look and feel like there was for Argus, Nazjatar and Ny'alotha.

- - - Updated - - -

One of the chronic problems with Shadowlands is that the setting isn't something players know and have been hyped to see beyond the very basic broad concept.
This is another reason why we shouldn't have had the entire expansion take place here to begin with. Once we passed into the Maw and the covenant zones we knew everything worth seeing, so there wasn't another hyped location to go to afterwards.

Zereth Mortis is a completely vacous concept to the playerbase.
I have faith it will look great and capture the fantasy of going "behind the scenes" of the Shadowlands, but it would never be a location that players are itching to finally see. It will simply look good, and feel good to play in, or it won't.

i disagree with shadowlands not being popular because is new, mop was 10% new, they just knew how to do things before

they simple shit the bed with the plot, they do something only they care about, not for the people who like warcraft, bfa and shadowlands does not feel like it.

fucking thunder king was a better villain all together than the janitor

[Fahrad Wagner]

I personally have seen zero excitement about that preview. Even from the sycophants. We've reached a weird place in the fandom where both the wow haters & the wow fanboys are both openly disparaging the game, but the haters are still mocking the fanboys for not hating the game in a very specific way.

Perhaps people who are excited are just less vocal about it. I personally am excited about 9.2, and I don't consider myself to be a fanboy; I'm just waiting for 9.2 to hit the PTR so that the real fun can begin.

[Sondrelk]

We know why, there's something in the sepulcher that will enable him to have Azeroth and basically make him the big overlord of the cosmos. Its pretty clear who harmed the arbiter, the same redish energy that came from Revandreath? Obviously, its not some big mystery.

It hardly matters, and the red energy does heavily imply Denathrius did it. But why not just have that as a line in the raid? Denathrius just at some point flat out states that he has been in league with Zovaal since before his imprisonment, and has been biding his time until he was ready to strike.

As is we don't even actually know whether Denathrius only recently allied with the Jailer. We assume he was always his ally, just as we can assume he disabled the Arbiter. But we don't actually know, which is a definite plothole that it would have costed Blizzard nothing to patch up.

I mean honestly, a letter you find in Revendreth that has Denathrius order his accomplices to prepare before the Arbiter is disabled, as that would at least show that he knew the Arbiter would be offline before it happened, implicating him in the scheme.

[draugril]

Strange that no one wants to start the hype train today.

I think a lot of people have very much reigned in their expectations for the immediate future of WoW relative to years past.

[Sondrelk]

i disagree with shadowlands not being popular because is new, mop was 10% new, they just knew how to do things before

they simple shit the bed with the plot, they do something only they care about, not for the people who like warcraft, bfa and shadowlands does not feel like it.

fucking thunder king was a better villain all together than the janitor

MoP had the faction war stuff to carry much of it. The expansion started with faction war, and ended with faction war. You didnt go to Pandaria and then faff around there ending with Lei Shen as the final boss, you went there and had the story build up to Garrosh going insane.
The final patch didnt have a raid that was new to players, with possible bosses that noone knew about. It was in Orgrimmar, with almost all Horde NPCs as possible suspects for raid boss.

[Foreign Exchange Ztudent]

I mean we all know once we get that initial Arthas datamine, things are going to heat up.

[Sondrelk]

I mean we all know once we get that initial Arthas datamine, things are going to heat up.

Definitely. A new model for Arthas is very likely, and ill surely spark quite a bit of discussion so long as it isnt accompanied with text that immediately removes him from the story again.

[KOUNTERPARTS]

For what exactly? It feels like 9.2 preview came and went and players already moved on from it. There’s little to no buzz about 9.2, no matter where you look. Players just seem to be genuinely disinterested.

Yeah I can't imagine why a developer update would have no buzz about it. I can only imagine what will happen when the official preview for the patch comes out.

[Cherry123]

well not this week... FF14 theory looks legit

[Syegfryed]

MoP had the faction war stuff to carry much of it. The expansion started with faction war, and ended with faction war. You didnt go to Pandaria and then faff around there ending with Lei Shen as the final boss, you went there and had the story build up to Garrosh going insane.
The final patch didnt have a raid that was new to players, with possible bosses that noone knew about. It was in Orgrimmar, with almost all Horde NPCs as possible suspects for raid boss.

Thats because the plot was good

its the example of they knew how to do things back then. The selling point was pandaria, new land, new people, new magic, but the faction war was an excuse to explore it. We start with the faction war in jade forest then immediately encounter the pandarens and start to helping then. they tried to copy that with Bfa but end up being garbage.

Mop could have ended with lei shen or exploring the sha and y'sharj, SoO was not necessary and def was one of the low points in the expansion.

Shadowands had something we were already teased, the land of the death, the spirit realm, they just shit the bend with plot and ambiance, the only thing that felt like the land of the death imo was the night elf zone, who could be one of the aftelives we would expect, the rest? never herd of a vampire and Greek afterlife with blue humans before. Retcons and new crap lore to make look like this is the endgame since warcraft 3 didn't help to make people hooked either

it would be best imo if they went full bananas and made shadowlands as 9 circles of hell

[Sondrelk]

Yeah I can't imagine why a developer update would have no buzz about it. I can only imagine what will happen when the official preview for the patch comes out.

Last week was the official preview. It gave pretty much exactly the same amount of info that we would usually get. Certainly a whole lot more than the 9.1 preview with its two static screenshots of some Korthia NPCs.

There might be more in-depth previews of specific features like the Cyphers or the raid, but last week was exactly what one would expect from a preview.

[Foreign Exchange Ztudent]

I really do hope they don't leak the last 2 bosses prior to the Jailor. No info, no Journal leak. But, I guess historically that has not happened in the past even with Ra-den.

Besides there's probably going to be something datamineable that leaks the identities anyways.

Last week was the official preview. It gave pretty much exactly the same amount of info that we would usually get. Certainly a whole lot more than the 9.1 preview with its two static screenshots of some Korthia NPCs.

There might be more in-depth previews of specific features like the Cyphers or the raid, but last week was exactly what one would expect from a preview.

I genuinely doubt that Blizzard Entertainment in this current situation will step outside to the public again until 10.0 announcement at TGA or after Jailor Cinematic Release in Feb-March.

[Veya30]

It hardly matters, and the red energy does heavily imply Denathrius did it. But why not just have that as a line in the raid? Denathrius just at some point flat out states that he has been in league with Zovaal since before his imprisonment, and has been biding his time until he was ready to strike.

As is we don't even actually know whether Denathrius only recently allied with the Jailer. We assume he was always his ally, just as we can assume he disabled the Arbiter. But we don't actually know, which is a definite plothole that it would have costed Blizzard nothing to patch up.

I mean honestly, a letter you find in Revendreth that has Denathrius order his accomplices to prepare before the Arbiter is disabled, as that would at least show that he knew the Arbiter would be offline before it happened, implicating him in the scheme.

Renathal states that Denathrius started the drought during the main questing in Revendreth. It’s heavily implied as the reason for the first failed rebellion; Renathal saw thru his Master’s lies.

When you watch the Arbiter cinematic it’s a red spell that hits her. Denathrius doing it makes more sense than Argus coming thru to be judged or Xavius.

[HateTrain]

Wrong thread/