Dragonflight Alpha/Beta General Discussion

[Ivarr]

I think the new options do not come because the subs dropped, but because the management changed.

Though management likely changed because the subs dropped. The sexual predation on the workfloor is just a pretext to obfuscate a failing product.

[Slowpoke is a Gamer]

Though management likely changed because the subs dropped. The sexual predation on the workfloor is just a pretext to obfuscate a failing product.

May want to reverse those two events.

The failing product should have rolled Ion's head an expansion ago, it took the sexual predation on the workfloor for them to finally do anything about the team.

[Ivarr]

Aye I can live with that. Maybe there's even a confounding factor where the failing product made it harder for employees to put up with the sexual harassment.

[Pheraz]

May want to reverse those two events.

The failing product should have rolled Ion's head an expansion ago, it took the sexual predation on the workfloor for them to finally do anything about the team.

Yeah. Ion was soooo sure that covenants and travelling between disconnected islands were cool ideas. Now with 9.1 were you are only in the maw, torghast and sanctum of dominiation Sl makes at least sense theme-wise. For me it was obvious that the theme will flop the moment I saw the announcment but oh well! Hire me ;D

Seriously, Ion needs to step down from his leading position and do something he understands. I've read he knows how to make hard bosses?
This tweet is so funny xD xD xD https://twitter.com/valarynn/status/1243965416944345090

[Dracullus]

May want to reverse those two events.

The failing product should have rolled Ion's head an expansion ago, it took the sexual predation on the workfloor for them to finally do anything about the team.

BfA broke Cata's sales record with 3.4M, SL broke BfA's record with 3.7M, which was this "failed" expansion again? Do you think bosses evaluate Ion's work from amount of bitching in fan forums?

[Cosmic Janitor]

This tweet is so funny xD xD xD https://twitter.com/valarynn/status/1243965416944345090

The argument was always stupid.. especially after they made 3 dirty dozen void infused belfs (and I'm being generous) into a faction. Literally Velfs are a small group of researchers that were exiled from the sunwell..
But let's not derail the thread with this too much, there is a dedicated one for that topic.

[username993720]

But now that we are in the SL, we should be experiencing the same thing Jaina did.

I don't think we're going to have a huge timeskip but a year or two passing makes sense.

If we are to experience what Jaina experienced, we would turn out older, but Azeroth would have barely changed. That's what you don't get. Time passes quicker in the Shadowlands, not slower.

Derek looks nothing like calia, other than he is a human. Calina is in pristine condition with light filled eyes etc, Derek is a rotting human from the bottom of the sea (which was bogus obviously, given how long he was down there...).

Are you kidding?

"In Battle for Azeroth, his corpse is quite intact despite having spent nearly thirty years underwater.
The [Cursed Eye of Paleth] may be the reason Derek's corpse was in an almost pristine state after being thirty years underwater, similar to how the corpse of Captain Halyndor is still intact."

He is not rotting in any way. They've changed his model from Forsaken to Human, if you haven't noticed.
He got the same preserved grey skin as Calia Menethil (same as Nathanos) and white, glowing eyes (even though he was not raised by the light). They are, clearly, of the same race and Blizzard introduced these two so the potential race would have a male and a female equivalents.

Tbh you don’t see them at all lol

Shush, logic isnt taken well to 'round these parts.

There you go:

[Revamp Man]

If we are to experience what Jaina experienced, we would turn out older, but Azeroth would have barely changed. That's what you don't get. Time passes quicker in the Shadowlands, not slower.



Are you kidding?

"In Battle for Azeroth, his corpse is quite intact despite having spent nearly thirty years underwater.
The [Cursed Eye of Paleth] may be the reason Derek's corpse was in an almost pristine state after being thirty years underwater, similar to how the corpse of Captain Halyndor is still intact."

He is not rotting in any way. They've changed his model from Forsaken to Human, if you haven't noticed.
He got the same preserved grey skin as Calia Menethil (same as Nathanos) and white, glowing eyes (even though he was not raised by the light). They are, clearly, of the same race and Blizzard introduced these two so the potential race would have a male and a female equivalents.





There you go:

I meant you don’t see zombies
Because they don’t exist
It was a joke

[username993720]

I meant you don’t see zombies
Because they don’t exist
It was a joke

Zombies, literally, walk upright:

[GR8GODZILLAGOD]

Zombies, literally, walk upright:

Fucking Abominations walk upright.

There are plenty of undead npcs and mobs that walk upright. The “they’re a walking corpse” excuse never made sense, especially since we’re dealing with magic anyway. If it really made sense, nothing about them would be “up” at all ;why would it be limited to the spine?

[Black Rider]

I think WoW just needs new skeletons, some new, unique ones. Old ones are too much reused.
Like too fucking much!

[arandomuser]

Many things created current situation:

1) SL, at least compared to Legion/BfA is big shift from grind to raid log, which is always bad idea (but maybe it must happen every few expacs). Overall both BfA and SL take away more and more crazy stuff invented by Legion - but many of this crazy stuff were keeping people in game, even if they complained.

Also, after they took all grind from Legion-like systems, all that is left is a shell, so no wonder many people feel systems in general are pointless. Renown/soulbinds almost fall from the sky, artifact was earned (at least on main).

2) Covid + all possible reasons that delayed launch and especially patches.

3) Too much focus on Sylvanas and taking away from players opportunity to kill her.

4) Lawsuit (duh).

5) Most funny thing - no content droughts similar to MoPs or WoDs. Even during longest one - from 8.3 to 9.0 - there was some Classic content + Blizzard manage this period very well with various buffs and changes to 8.3 + lockdown keep people in game. Last big break taken by many players (+ content creators, that have huge part in shaping general opinion) was 6.2->7.0. It's not coincidence so many have great memories from Legion launch.

I don't see anything that is caused by shareholders/Activision with exception of one thing - timing. SL should be delayed to let's say March 2021, so devs would similar progress with patches like during Legion. It would solve both 2) and maybe 5) problems. But still general design of SL and story would stay.

By the way, lawsuit explain why TBC was so rushed. I bet they either wanted push things ASAP or some negotiations with Cali took place.

your 1) point i think is so spot on and i hope devs dont give into the raid log mentality, legion was a blast, bfa was good but toned down version of it, and castle nathria was raidlog central worst raid in a long time
and asmon sneds his thousands of followers to go attack the systems guy while he plays ff14 which has waaay more systems than wow

[Tiradon]

I honestly think the big problem of Shadowlands in 9.0 was going for the raid/m+ log kind of scenario or say "seasonal log in" things like Timeless isle are very important to keep players engaged for at least 2-3 months say the least.

Like Korthia is a big step in the right direction but I hope next patch we get something along the lines of Timeless Isle.

I mean I do love Korthia and logging in every day to kill some rares in an open world alongside farming some rep + archivist codex.

[Nagawithlegs]

I honestly think the big problem of Shadowlands in 9.0 was going for the raid/m+ log kind of scenario or say "seasonal log in" things like Timeless isle are very important to keep players engaged for at least 2-3 months say the least.

Is it though? Going for a simple expansion was a good call following BFA I think.

Most of the complaints about SL aren't raidlog, it's about the setting, story and people that think there are too many systems. Not the presence of grinds or lack of endgame content, which both Legion and BFA also suffered from. There isn't enough in SL for it to be a Legion 2 which is what the fanbase now constitutes as a "good expansion" because they have played so many WoW expansions that if it isn't crazy like Legion it feels boring.

If they somehow won over everyone with the story I guarantee there wouldn't be half as much bitching about SL. And remember, the story is followed by people who don't even like or play WoW anymore so it's going to be louder.

tl;dr Regardless of it's quality, Shadowlands is "not enough" for a lot of modern WoW players and they aren't going to enjoy it regardless of the quality of its content when there's not enough.

[Revamp Man]

Zombies, literally, walk upright:

Again the joke is going over your head

ZOMBIES DO NOT ACTUALLY EXIST

- - - Updated - - -

Is it though? Going for a simple expansion was a good call following BFA I think.

Most of the complaints about SL aren't raidlog, it's about the setting, story and people that think there are too many systems. Not the presence of grinds or lack of endgame content, which both Legion and BFA also suffered from. There isn't enough in SL for it to be a Legion 2 which is what the fanbase now constitutes as a "good expansion" because they have played so many WoW expansions that if it isn't crazy like Legion it feels boring.

If they somehow won over everyone with the story I guarantee there wouldn't be half as much bitching about SL. And remember, the story is followed by people who don't even like or play WoW anymore so it's going to be louder.

tl;dr Regardless of it's quality, Shadowlands is "not enough" for a lot of modern WoW players and they aren't going to enjoy it regardless of the quality of its content when there's not enough.

Personally
The story is crap
“I will never serve” following her serving for the entire last two expansions
The thanos knock-off
The covenants working together but still hating each other

The systems are all designed to slow players down and are disguised under “meaningful choice” because conduit energy makes it meaningful somehow

Callings don’t reward anything meaningful outside of gold

Domination gear is generic tier sets with extra steps because they realized “we don’t wanna lock multiple gear slots” was BS but still wanted some form of “see we did it better” because they are stubborn assholes
And the last 3 expansions had an intro skip but not now

There’s only so many times that I can get excited for a game when they take years to fix problems that were already solved

[Sondrelk]

Is it though? Going for a simple expansion was a good call following BFA I think.

Most of the complaints about SL aren't raidlog, it's about the setting, story and people that think there are too many systems. Not the presence of grinds or lack of endgame content, which both Legion and BFA also suffered from. There isn't enough in SL for it to be a Legion 2 which is what the fanbase now constitutes as a "good expansion" because they have played so many WoW expansions that if it isn't crazy like Legion it feels boring.

If they somehow won over everyone with the story I guarantee there wouldn't be half as much bitching about SL. And remember, the story is followed by people who don't even like or play WoW anymore so it's going to be louder.

tl;dr Regardless of it's quality, Shadowlands is "not enough" for a lot of modern WoW players and they aren't going to enjoy it regardless of the quality of its content when there's not enough.

I feel the problems are mostly down to the story and setting not being conducive to player engagement. It is interesting to go to teh Shadwolands and stuff, but it feel very distant from WoW normally, which prevents the game from feeling like a part of WoW so much as a sidething. The story is also not that great either, and while that could be mostly forgiven in previous expansions this expansion cannot really lean back on the same things BfA did with seeing stuff players knew about and wanted to see like Nazjatar.

The covid delay of 9.1 is also a massive hit of course. By this time we should be looking forward to the 10.0 reveal on Blizzcon and at worst being bored by 9.2, instead we are still in 9.1 with no idea what 9.2 will be.
All of course compunded by the fact that players are not really capable of even having fun debating the story since the turns are mostly nonsensical, and what we do have just raises further questions. Future speculation is also mostly moot since there isnt enough of a thread between the stuff we care about and the stuff in SL, which means we are left completely in the dark. There isnt for instance the frevent speculation from BfA on a possible Defence of Stormwind raid or similar, since the pieces needed to come up with and be engaged by such ideas are absent.

[Nagawithlegs]

I feel the problems are mostly down to the story and setting not being conducive to player engagement. It is interesting to go to teh Shadwolands and stuff, but it feel very distant from WoW normally, which prevents the game from feeling like a part of WoW so much as a sidething. The story is also not that great either, and while that could be mostly forgiven in previous expansions this expansion cannot really lean back on the same things BfA did with seeing stuff players knew about and wanted to see like Nazjatar.

That's the biggest problem with the setting and hopefully the heritage quests/9.1.5 quests remedy this by showing what is happening on Azeroth during this. We have some hints that this might happen (the datamined dark ranger questline in Tirisfal that may be foreshadowing the Scarlet Crusade, for one) but no hard confirmation.

I think part of the reason why they chose SL as a pocket dimension setting is so they can completely hide Azeroth until they're doing making it HD, but the problem is that people really want to see Azeroth again and aren't really hype to ignore it for 2~ years. Blizzard are constantly showing they don't understand how impatient people are and they are insane if they thought Nelf fans for example would really be cool with no confirmation of a new capital city for 4 years.

The sooner they announce/show HD Azeroth the better.

[Makabreska]

Fucking Abominations walk upright.

There are plenty of undead npcs and mobs that walk upright. The “they’re a walking corpse” excuse never made sense, especially since we’re dealing with magic anyway. If it really made sense, nothing about them would be “up” at all ;why would it be limited to the spine?

Abominations kinda have to walk upright, they are basically spherically shaped. You ever seen hunched ball? :v

[username993720]

Again the joke is going over your head

ZOMBIES DO NOT ACTUALLY EXIST

Yes, they do.
Everyday when you go and return from work.

[Polybius]

BfA broke Cata's sales record with 3.4M, SL broke BfA's record with 3.7M, which was this "failed" expansion again? Do you think bosses evaluate Ion's work from amount of bitching in fan forums?

If investors haven’t cared now they should. Specifically, MAUs that are active and not merely subbed. It’s easy to let a sub run, streaming services prey on this. But customers eventually cancel their service. Inactivity is a good measurement to predict how many players they keep, and how to proceed in keeping them active for the next quarter.

Right now they’re in a bit of a pickle. Stars are aligned against their favor.