Dragonflight Alpha/Beta General Discussion

[Varodoc]

also nothing in this game resembles a concentration camp. Dont compare turning into a cool zombie anything like the holocaust, thx

Eh, I'm pretty sure that, in your quest throughout the years to white-wash Sylvanas and the Horde and paint the Alliance as the villains, you made that comparison with the Alliance internment camps.

[Foreign Exchange Ztudent]

I am pretty certain the citizens of Lordaeron didn't just want to become Seedlings out of the kindness of their heart and their pleas for you to bash their skulls in. But, hey I guess this is the world we live in now where we are trying to chill the fuck out and go "Achsually you can't compare that" meanwhile Twitter is continuously trying to unmask "problematic" people and pointing a finger at how the World of Warcraft playerbase is awful and needs to be subjugated to T-1000 Machine Learning Beep Boop for punishment instead of using live humans cause Bobby wants to save a few millions in operational costs to have human customer relations.

When it comes to the "Hood", Earthbound censored and altered that in the North American release of it in 1995. So yeah, this isn't "news" in that sense. It's just funny to me how the comparison brigade thinks that the problem doesn't become illogical real quick when you start to just look over everything in the Warcraft universe. There are plenty of things in-game still that are extremely problematic and they haven't changed that for a myriad of reasons. At least for now, until we get actual datamining and our periodic WoWHead virtue signalling articles.

Also again the entire franchise is problematic from a settings perspective, regardless of what anyone feels. But, the developers realized that with Warcraft 3 and hence why we had a pretty strong Anti-Racist plotline that continued into World of Warcraft.

[Slowpoke is a Gamer]

I mean you say that, but really, why is it there at all? It's horribly bleak even by Forsaken standards in Vanilla, and the game makes no effort to acknowledge how immesnely fucked up it actually is.
I mean, it isnt even used to parody The Great Escape or somesuch, it's just massively evil for no better reason than to show new Forsaken players that they are definitively the evil ones. That is, before you start going further into the Horde stuff and learn that you are actually just misunderstood or something.

- - - Updated - - -



You generally do not hear about people who are traumatized by their beloved treehouse being burned and their entire family being killed. You do however hear stories about kids being harassed by men in white hoods.

Context matters here. The hoods looking like the ones used by the KKK is far more damning on the company than the genocide stuff. No reputable journalist is going to claim that Blizzard supports the bombing of a town because such a quest exists in the game, they might however argue that Blizzard are idiots for making white robes with pointy hats that looks eerily similar to the KKK.

That camp (and also the spider-bears south of it) were a huge part of why I was for years calling Sylvanas as a future raid boss.

[huth]

How about the "many threads of one rope"? If Varian, for instance, was killed in our world by Fel magic, his soul was undone, it didn't go to the Shadowlands. But how about the Varian "threads" from other dimensions or alternate realities? Sure some of them should be in the Shadowlands?

Same goes for Sylvanas. She's "our" Syvlanas, but she isn't dead dead, are there other Sylvanases at the moment in Shadowlands, that have died already in their worlds?

What about Bolvar? Anduin? When another Anduin dies, does he just join the already dominated Anduin?

The entire story of the expansion is a hole. Shithole, to be exact.

They should just have had alternate selves as seperate souls. The Shadowlands are infinite, so the question of why we don't meet them is easy, and they'd have avoided all those other issues.

[Grimbold21]

also nothing in this game resembles a concentration camp. Dont compare turning into a cool zombie anything like the holocaust, thx

I didn't, quote the correct poster.

[UndedoKoleda]

The example he should have used was Draka. And the Devs already explained even if a soul is severed that doesn't make it two separate entities. Souls are quantum entangled. The Jailer having a piece of your soul only gives him a tether to it. And losing a piece of your soul only means you are stuck in the emotional state you were when you died. IE Sylvanas & Uther. The point is they've been acting out of hurt & betrayal.

Fel magic didn't undo Varian's soul, it undid his body AND essence.

Essence as described by the devs, because it wasn't in the game, is essentially your Shadowlands body. Essence is the result of residue accumulating around your soul as anima passes through it. A lot of residue gives you a strong, material body, while just a little residue gives you that wispy, ethereal form you see on souls: Without Essence, souls are invisible. You can destroy Essence but you can't destroy a soul. If you essence is destroyed your soul still exists but its returned to the Twisting Nether like the canon said before shadowlands: This is what happened to Garrosh & Varian.

What... are you even talking about?


Fel is fueled by drawing life from living beings and consuming their souls, utterly destroying them in the process. - As source is cited the first Chronicles.

Mortal souls begin in the mortal plane: Azeroth, other worlds etc. And when they die, that soul with all its anima that it’s built up in life, crosses over into the Shadowlands. And in the Shadowlands, the threat to your existence is real. If everything goes the way it’s supposed to go, you should be able to exist for eternity; either enjoy or endure whatever afterlife you are a part of. But if something happens to your soul there, if something destroys it, that soul is gone. There is no afterlife beyond Shadowlands. That’s why stakes are real in these battles, in these conflicts. - Steve Danuser himself said that.



We’ve done some stuff that’s involved with time travel and alternate realities. What happens to those souls when they pass on? Do they go to the Shadowlands?

This is a complicated question. How do you deal with things like alternate Draenor? There was a Draka there. What is that Draka? Is she alive? Is she dead? Is she related to the Draka in Shadowlands that we see? Or is there another Draka? We know that in Warlords of Draenor, Velen of that universe died. Does that mean there is a Velen in the Shadowlands? But what about the Velen in Azeroth? All these things are very complicated questions.

The way I would have you think about it is think of a rope… If you look at a rope, it is one thing, right? It’s something that you can grab onto, you can hold it, you can see it; think of that as a character. Think of that rope as Draka or Velen.

If you look at that rope more closely, you can see there are different threads that make up the rope. There are different twines that pull together, and you can pull off one of these threads if you want. But it’s still a rope, and each of those threads you can think of as one of the realities of the character, one of the streams of time… There is a thread that is the Draka from Draenor we visited in the Warlords of Draenor. There is another thread that is Draka on Azeroth as we know her… And there are many other threads that could be other realities that we never peered into. But all of those threads at some time come together to make that rope. And remember also that, as you’ll see, that there are many characters in the Shadowlands when they refer to time, they usually say that time is not a construct of Death. Time and Death are not related. Death is about eternity, not linear time. The manner in which these threads come together, that can take a very long time from mortal perceptions. Those threads can be separated for a time, but sooner or later, they do combine to make one rope that is that character. You can think of it as the threads of that rope, all the individual threads, are just waiting. And over time, they will come together but they can exist as separate entities for a time. That still doesn’t change the fact that they are part of one rope.

Our Sylvanas and Uther are threads of the rope. So are Varian and Garrosh, the rope still exist, even if a thread in it is missing. Our thread Varian didn't make it to the Shadowlands, but there is a rope Varian in there. If a thread Anduin dies right now, he's getting part of the dominated rope Anduin in Shadowlands. If a honorable, best-warchief-in-the-history-of-the-horde died prior to SoD, he got a part of the suicidal-going-out-with-a-bang rope Garrosh.

How does any of this makes any sense to you?

[shoc]

What... are you even talking about?


Fel is fueled by drawing life from living beings and consuming their souls, utterly destroying them in the process. - As source is cited the first Chronicles.

Mortal souls begin in the mortal plane: Azeroth, other worlds etc. And when they die, that soul with all its anima that it’s built up in life, crosses over into the Shadowlands. And in the Shadowlands, the threat to your existence is real. If everything goes the way it’s supposed to go, you should be able to exist for eternity; either enjoy or endure whatever afterlife you are a part of. But if something happens to your soul there, if something destroys it, that soul is gone. There is no afterlife beyond Shadowlands. That’s why stakes are real in these battles, in these conflicts. - Steve Danuser himself said that.



We’ve done some stuff that’s involved with time travel and alternate realities. What happens to those souls when they pass on? Do they go to the Shadowlands?

This is a complicated question. How do you deal with things like alternate Draenor? There was a Draka there. What is that Draka? Is she alive? Is she dead? Is she related to the Draka in Shadowlands that we see? Or is there another Draka? We know that in Warlords of Draenor, Velen of that universe died. Does that mean there is a Velen in the Shadowlands? But what about the Velen in Azeroth? All these things are very complicated questions.

The way I would have you think about it is think of a rope… If you look at a rope, it is one thing, right? It’s something that you can grab onto, you can hold it, you can see it; think of that as a character. Think of that rope as Draka or Velen.

If you look at that rope more closely, you can see there are different threads that make up the rope. There are different twines that pull together, and you can pull off one of these threads if you want. But it’s still a rope, and each of those threads you can think of as one of the realities of the character, one of the streams of time… There is a thread that is the Draka from Draenor we visited in the Warlords of Draenor. There is another thread that is Draka on Azeroth as we know her… And there are many other threads that could be other realities that we never peered into. But all of those threads at some time come together to make that rope. And remember also that, as you’ll see, that there are many characters in the Shadowlands when they refer to time, they usually say that time is not a construct of Death. Time and Death are not related. Death is about eternity, not linear time. The manner in which these threads come together, that can take a very long time from mortal perceptions. Those threads can be separated for a time, but sooner or later, they do combine to make one rope that is that character. You can think of it as the threads of that rope, all the individual threads, are just waiting. And over time, they will come together but they can exist as separate entities for a time. That still doesn’t change the fact that they are part of one rope.

Our Sylvanas and Uther are threads of the rope. So are Varian and Garrosh, the rope still exist, even if a thread in it is missing. Our thread Varian didn't make it to the Shadowlands, but there is a rope Varian in there. If a thread Anduin dies right now, he's getting part of the dominated rope Anduin in Shadowlands. If a honorable, best-warchief-in-the-history-of-the-horde died prior to SoD, he got a part of the suicidal-going-out-with-a-bang rope Garrosh.

How does any of this makes any sense to you?

Which one of those ropes can I hang myself with

[Foreign Exchange Ztudent]

Everything became a question and there are no answers just more questions.

[huth]

Our Sylvanas and Uther are threads of the rope. So are Varian and Garrosh, the rope still exist, even if a thread in it is missing. Our thread Varian didn't make it to the Shadowlands, but there is a rope Varian in there. If a thread Anduin dies right now, he's getting part of the dominated rope Anduin in Shadowlands. If a honorable, best-warchief-in-the-history-of-the-horde died prior to SoD, he got a part of the suicidal-going-out-with-a-bang rope Garrosh.

How does any of this makes any sense to you?

I don't think you got Anduin correct. The whole rope-thing only applies once they die and go to the Shadowlands as souls. Anduin, to the best of our knowledge, hasn't done that yet, and neither has Sylvanas (well, technically she has but was then de-roped and kicked back).

[Soon-TM]

"This is fun."
"This is not fun."

These are both subjective "ideological" examples of feedback. And they are the two most important pieces of feedback to which a video game entertainment developer should be listening. Neither can be determined by data or metrics.

I'm sure that warfronts in BfA had really high engagement numbers, especially at the beginning of the patch, when they dropped free HC raid ilvl gear. They were so "successful" that at least one was cut off already during BfA, and they were completely removed in SL (i.e. no similar feature but adapted to the SL story, unlike e.g. Visions -> Torghast).

[Aeluron Lightsong]

I don't think you got Anduin correct. The whole rope-thing only applies once they die and go to the Shadowlands as souls. Anduin, to the best of our knowledge, hasn't done that yet, and neither has Sylvanas (well, technically she has but was then de-roped and kicked back).

I think he's obessing over the rope comment or just completely misrepresenting it.

[Nerovar]

Which one of those ropes can I hang myself with

Actual god tier response.

[GR8GODZILLAGOD]

Which one of those ropes can I hang myself with

Fuck, that's sig worthy.

[huth]

Which one of those ropes can I hang myself with

Please only use your own soul rope, otherwise there's a Hell of Paperwork waiting for you.

[Ersula]

How does any of this makes any sense to you?

Hey I'm just trying to collaborate the original rules of this universe with Dansuer's retconning. He's making it sound like the mortal planes have timelines, but the Shadowlands don't. So if the Garrosh we knew is only the worst version of him, why does he get the worst possible punishment? And then annihilation? And why is this universe *designed* in such way that Varian got the same treatment?

Wow it's almost like Sylvanas was right & the rules of this universe are bullshit

Dansuer in the same interview is explaining permadeath & infinite timelines. Apparently your soul getting destroyed isn't "real stakes" actually because theres infinite timelines where hes still alive.

[Chickat]

Maybe au copies of the same person are rare and only manifest with meddling in the timeways? Would make a little more sense. I know there is the whole line about garrosh being the worst in our time, but it would be easier to retcon that than try to make sense of how the shadowlands works.

[Kereberus]

Okay so where are the leaks about Allied Races. I know you guys have them hidden

[Ersula]

Okay so where are the leaks about Allied Races. I know you guys have them hidden

Tired 9.2.3 allied races: Necrolord, Venthyr, Sylvan & Kyrian

Wired 9.2.3 allied races: Forsaken elves, Venthyr & Automa

People are asking for allied races but Venthyr are far more popular than the other 3. And it makes more sense if the Venthyr alone follow Denathrius lead & leave the shadowlands to explore the universe, instead of all the Shadowlands races. Forsaken Elves already have an intro cutscene & they made Automa that specifically use the human rigging despite having several humanoid varieties of Automa already.

Alliance: Forsaken Elf (Night Elf variation) & Automa (Human variation)

Horde: Venthyr (Nightborne variation) & Forsaken Elf (blood elf variation)

[Zers Editor]

So, here's one of the scripts found:

10_ZM_Saezurah_Awakens_STM
The first numbers qualify for the expansion number.

Any guesses?

[Nyel]

So, here's one of the scripts found:

10_ZM_Saezurah_Awakens_STM
The first numbers qualify for the expansion number.

Any guesses?

Saezurah is Azshara after her identity change. And she finally awakens!

Guess ZM stands for Zereth Mortis? Why would it be something related to the next expansion?