Dragonflight Alpha/Beta General Discussion

[Edward Wu]

Towelliee said that xpac reveal may drop as early as one hour from now. Trust our lord and savior.

It's extremely unlikely but it would be hilarious if they just unceremoniously drop the full expansion preview video and fully trust word of mouth hype from then on.

[Raetary]

Towelliee said that xpac reveal may drop as early as one hour from now. Trust our lord and savior.

Lul, yeah sure.
An unnanounced expansion reveal.

I bet they'll do it via a tweeting a gif of a dev just scrolling through a word document containing expansion info, written in comic sans.

[Vasoka]

It's Towelliee, mate. That means it's 100% true legit and indisputable. Trust the plan.

[pacotaco]

I totally agree here. Every main raid in Legion felt very impactful and build up towards the upcoming raid. Not counting Emerald Nightmare, because that was a hit and miss, but the others were excellent.

Nighthold, in itself already one of the top raids in WoW, was a perfect build up towards Tomb of Sargeras. Tomb of Sargeras continued the storyline and culminated in what leads us to Argus. It was just a very well-executed build up towards the grand finale.

That wasn't the case in BfA at all, due to various reasons: Uldir felt very detached from everything, BoD - while being a great raid - had the faction-theme and didn't fit into the overarching narrative. Eternal Palace was an okay raid, but the ending felt very, very weak in comparison to the Legion build up of upcoming raids.

Shadowlands felt samey. Castle Nathria wasn't really part of the overarching narrative at all (although Denathrius was connected to the Jailer). Sanctum was okayish I guess, but the ending wasn't very climactic either.

I find it so weird that they seem to have found the pinnacle of WoWs modern design in Legion and then just abandoned basically every good aspect of it in the following expansions.

BFA suffered from the split in content: if you only played one faction, you missed a lot of context for half the dungeons/raids.
- Uldir was the culmination of Zandalar story: Zul trying to do a coup-de-etat so he can get G'huun's favor, blood trolls in Nazmir revering G'huun as a loa and trying to release it, the Sethrak traitors releasing the C'Thraxxy so it can destroy the last seal of G'huun's prison.
- Kul'Tiras story is more fragmented in that aspect, as the common thead is just the unification of all houses, and the Crucible of Storms is just the finale of the Stormsong Valley story.

Part of it repeat on SL with covenants stories being almost stand-alone, so we don't understand almost anything of the motivations of the ones we don't pick up, nor we get to know who certain characters are.

Castle Nathria was a Jailers foothold ooutside the Maw, and we had to take it out before going to Jailer's territory.

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But why is the hype train going away from the Dragon Isles?

Doing a World Tour first?

[micwini]

Amazing work sir

[Le Conceptuel]

Thrall's short absence from the story was both planned & the entire purpose of Garrosh's storyline: Thrall's failure to craft him into his successor. If you had to choose a character that the entire *franchise* of warcraft revolves around, Thrall would be a valid answer.

Thrall's alive. Garrosh is dead. Deal with it.

So, you're essentially saying we had two expansions that were only meant to develop a character who would shortly thereafter be all but retired for Legion, the most plot-critical expansion thus far, and the character who prominently featured as the cause of the conflict in both started these plots from a Doylist perspective specifically to give development to Thrall.

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Just had a thought: I really want Timewalking Mega Dungeons. Now that we have Timewalking Raids, I don't see why not. Bring back Karazhan, Mechagon, and Tazavesh as Timewalking features.

That would be interesting. All of those were very good and generally well-received, so there is reason for it.

[Varx]

just Missing Tinkers and it'd be perfect

[Le Conceptuel]

Towelliee said that xpac reveal may drop as early as one hour from now. Trust our lord and savior.

I wonder how he'll pivot if it doesn't happen.

[Vasoka]

I wonder how he'll pivot if it doesn't happen.

I mean, like he usually does.

[draugril]

So, you're essentially saying we had two expansions that were only meant to develop a character who would shortly thereafter be all but retired for Legion, the most plot-critical expansion thus far, and the character who prominently featured as the cause of the conflict in both started these plots from a Doylist perspective specifically to give development to Thrall.

Yes. Entirely correct.

Blizzard isn't great at writing longform narratives. They do not plan in advance outside of generalities. Sequences of events aren't even written in stone. They may as well assign a number to their top twenty characters and roll a D20 a few times to see who gets focus each expansion, rather than follow any kind of internal logic.

[pacotaco]

Yeah, but the point remains. I am curious about Garrosh whereabouts. He is dead, so... where the hell is he? Where are you teleported when you escape from your Shadowlands realm? Back to your native planet? (which would be Outland, BTW, I can see Garrosh making another Iron Horde there and invading Azeroth again).

Errrr, did you miss the part in Sanctum of Domination where Garrosh is kept and an entire raid boss fight mechanics work around him milking Garrosh anima, then, Garrosh being freed and obliterate himself to destroy the raid boss, leaving only dust in the ground?

[Sondrelk]

Towelliee said that xpac reveal may drop as early as one hour from now. Trust our lord and savior.

Cannot be true. Toweliee would never say anything this specific.

[Darkarath]

Errrr, did you miss the part in Sanctum of Domination where Garrosh is kept and an entire raid boss fight mechanincs work arround him milking Garrosh anima, then, Garrosh being freed and obliterate himself to destroy the raid boss, leaving only dust in the ground?

Again, that dust could be just the boss' ashes. Again, why bother to highlight Garrosh in the Revendreth cinematic, just to not interact with him at all until a boss fight, just to kill him again, after he had a decent dead in WoD. It does not makes sense to me at all that they will bring him back just for that.

[draugril]

Again, that dust could be just the boss ashes. Again, why bother to highlight Garrosh in the Revendreth cinematic, just to not interact with him at all until a boss fight, just to kill him again, after he had a decent dead in WoD. It does not makes sense to me at all that they will bring him back just for that.

Welcome to Blizzard games?

I mean, Garrosh is probably my favourite character to come out of WoW itself, but it's very clear that his story is done and over with. They brought him back simply because you and I recognize him. That's all. We're in the dead place so let's show the players another dead guy they know. Honestly, I'm surprised we got as much of him as we did.

[Kiivar86]

Same reason why they brought back Ner'zhul. Nostalgia and a way to have a few familiar names amongst a bunch of no-names we'd never heard of prior to stepping into the raid.

Where else would he go? Have we seen anything that says that souls that are extinguished or slain go elsewhere after the Shadowlands? Simplest explanation is, he's dead(er).

[pacotaco]

What if we're just completely side railed from thinking it's dragon isles because of the leak and encrypted dragon mount...

But it's actually something to do with Elune and etc?

- Celestial observer transmog in November on the store
- That feline kitty mount that has suramar / night elf vibes
- shadowlands elune stuff cutscenes recently
- maybe the encrypted emerald dragon mount is really related to all of this like Ysera / elune instead haha.

What if we've been completely wrong because of a fake leak, and the real expansion is under our nose from actual WoW hints.

Replace the Sylverian Dreamer with the blue phoenix, but yeah, I said it too, it could be Life Plane/Elune related too, as far as we know. It could be the 2 things tied-up, in the sense of Aspects getting again a power-up, but this time from the Life Panteon instead of the Order one.

[Raetary]

Honestly, i think they will combine Lifelands and Dragons into one.

That's the absolute safest bet i think, considering what we know.

[Harbour]

What if we're just completely side railed from thinking it's dragon isles because of the leak and encrypted dragon mount...

But it's actually something to do with Elune and etc?

- Celestial observer transmog in November on the store
- That feline kitty mount that has suramar / night elf vibes
- shadowlands elune stuff cutscenes recently
- maybe the encrypted emerald dragon mount is really related to all of this like Ysera / elune instead haha.

What if we've been completely wrong because of a fake leak, and the real expansion is under our nose from actual WoW hints.

I guess all this stuff was planned to go along with an actual 9.2 content, devoted to Ardenweald, Elune and Drust raid, and when Blizzard realized they have to scrap it for sake of 10.0, they took what they had back then and threw it as paid content.

[Raetary]

just Missing Tinkers and it'd be perfect

[Darkarath]

Same reason why they brought back Ner'zhul. Nostalgia and a way to have a few familiar names amongst a bunch of no-names we'd never heard of prior to stepping into the raid.

Where else would he go? Have we seen anything that says that souls that are extinguished or slain go elsewhere after the Shadowlands? Simplest explanation is, he's dead(er).

They brought Kel'thuzad and Ner'zhul and at least they made bosses out of them. They brought Kael'thas and Lady Vashj and developed them through quests. Garrosh could have perfectly been another boss if they wanted to, yet they did not make him a boss, nor we have the chance to interact with him at all, so the door is open for his return.

Where did he go? I do not know, has someone escaped the Shadowlands before? Guess that time will tell.