Dragonflight Alpha/Beta General Discussion

[therumblings]

We can't get it soon enough, people whinging about Dracthyr not looking good to them is bordering on being as annoying as high-elf/anti high-elf ever was, and it's taking so much focus away from other talking points.

I still like them somewhat, but their full customization is going to either really sell me or lose me. I'm just hoping for emphasis on dragon customization rather than it being a glorified druid/cooldown form.

[Nymrohd]

I think they are all on suicide watch after essentially announcing an expansion that says "we were wrong for two years"

This is the one thing I don't get. People keep saying Ion has a huge ego. Ion comes off as fairly apologetic for any failures by his team. Yes, part of it is probably PR speak but at least the attempt is there. When they appear, they admit they fucked up.
You know who never admits to any fault with his work in this team? The lore team. They acted so in the past with perhaps the exception of the Stonetalong incident. And nothing changed when it comes to their perception of how well they are doing with the change to Danuser.

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I still like them somewhat, but their full customization is going to either really sell me or lose me. I'm just hoping for emphasis on dragon customization rather than it being a glorified druid/cooldown form.

Yeah this is what I am waiting for. And honestly what I am hoping is that Visage form can get a lot of draconic customization. They went for scales and horns on the face already. Imagine if they could just make it a human/elf with draconic features and just let you fight in either form. Give it claws/talons (which you can hide with glove mog), tail and wings and I don't need to ever try the derpy gecko form.

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they are pushing all the nerfs right now
some in my team dont really likeit but im assuming they are doing it for season 4 prep

Yeah I think this level of nerf usually comes when HoF closes. Seems early. Probably very frustrating to people who were progressing well on Mythic.

[therumblings]

Different race forms for visage form would also be nice, but I'm primarily interested in the draconic form, they really need to nail that the most.

[plz delete account]

Different race forms for visage form would also be nice, but I'm primarily interested in the draconic form, they really need to nail that the most.

Bjoramier if the expansion goes well will you reclaim your birthright?

[therumblings]

Bjoramier if the expansion goes well will you reclaim your birthright?

If you mean Lordaeron, then yes Though I doubt the 9.2.5 stuff in Tirisfal will be Alliance related.

[Nymrohd]

Seems more you can also buy the mats with the order. Also, didn't Hazzikostas say you do not need to play raids to craft high level items? One of the major changes to the new crafting system accounced was that crafters simply could farm their asses of instead of having to play in premade groups. Which is something i do not believe before i see it. The devs are all about gatekeeping endgame crafts behind premade group content.

Nope, if anything is soulbound, the one who the item will be bound to will need to provide it. Otherwise why would they need the system, you could just make the items involved BoE. The point is to allow crafters to make things with other players' soulbound reagents for them.

[Dracullus]

Nope, if anything is soulbound, the one who the item will be bound to will need to provide it. Otherwise why would they need the system, you could just make the items involved BoE. The point is to allow crafters to make things with other players' soulbound reagents for them.

Beware, Hazzikostas is cunning one. He says BoP, but he means BoE. WoW token is his religion. When you think he's about fun, he awaits in the shadows with another timegating and solocontentdestroying scheme.

Isn't that tauren guy hilarious.

[Nymrohd]

Beware, Hazzikostas is cunning one. He says BoP, but he means BoE. WoW token is his religion. When you think he's about fun, he awaits in the shadows with another timegating and solocontentdestroying scheme.

Isn't that tauren guy hilarious.

Btw I do wonder what will happen to WoW Token prices with Diablo Immortal. It is after all part of Battle.net Balance. The arbitrage margin for buying WoW gold illegally then using it to buy Tokens has usually been very high. I am not sure how many people use that for HS but we are having a new entry with a very different niche that can affect pricing. It probably will not be felt as strongly in US/EU as it will be in the Asian servers.

[Nyel]

We can't get it soon enough, people whinging about Dracthyr not looking good to them is bordering on being as annoying as high-elf/anti high-elf ever was, and it's taking so much focus away from other talking points.

I mean when the supposed main feature of the expansion sucks... I guess people are allowed to complain. And even if it's an early state. Dracthyr Evoker looks terrible. Animations, effects, movement, spells... it's just the epitome of "meh".

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Different race forms for visage form would also be nice, but I'm primarily interested in the draconic form, they really need to nail that the most.

I think making them less "cute" and more fierce / intimidating would help a lot already.

[Nymrohd]

My last impression was they allow to contribute mats you get anywhere, and the crafter may add his soulbound mats from raids or rare drops in general. You know, Joe casual goes to farm 10,000 gnome hides, and brings it to the crafting auction house, where raiding andy offers his services to create "The big axe of the raiding tauren", which needs both the 10,000 gnome hides and the slimey jar from that new big baddie in Hazzikostas new fun raid.

Raiding andy then sells his service for a large amount of gold Joe casual got from buying and selling a token. Joe casual gets the shiny bop Item from the raider then, the raider gets the money.

Sounds like a compensation of the recent boosting changes.

no they did not say anything like that, they said the exact opposite. The item is bound to whoever the soulbound materials are from. There is absolutely no reason why they'd need an entirely new UI for what you are describing given that you are effectively describing a BoE item made with BoP materials which is something we have had before and needs no investment in UI. But hey, we'll see who is right when it goes up (I am).

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I mean when the supposed main feature of the expansion sucks... I guess people are allowed to complain. And even if it's an early state. Dracthyr Evoker looks terrible. Animations, effects, movement, spells... it's just the epitome of "meh".

Is the main feature of the expansion the Evoker? I always thought the main feature of any expansion is . . .the expansion? You know the Dragon Isles continent? That's why I am buying the expac. The only time a feature really seemed impressive enough to feel even bigger than the actual content was MAYBE Legion with the artifact system/class halls (which by itself provided as much content as at least a couple of zones). If anything else would be considered a main feature it would be something that affects the largest number of players and that would be the full talent revamp on a level we have not had since MoP (though to be fair, Legion did effectively fully revamp almost every spec in the game).

[Polybius]

I wonder if they ever will do blizzcon again. Considering how critical even long time fans of the company have become recently. And it is at least obvious to me the developers cannot really handle harsh criticism.

Instead of broadening their views, it becomes narrow. Instead of listening to their players, they troll them. Instead of caring about player agenda, they create a "community council" made out of opportunists as a PR stunt.

It’s been a long time coming imo. Since its inception they slowly coddled a rude bunch, smelled their own farts, ignored large swaths and it really showed at their conventions. Glad I never went.

[Nymrohd]

It’s been a long time coming imo. Since its inception they slowly coddled a rude bunch, smelled their own farts, ignored large swaths and it really showed at their conventions. Glad I never went.

At the same time, a properly run Blizzcon where they can show to insiders how much they've changed would be the best PR for them. Still it must be insane pressure on multiple departments.

[rhorle]

The buyer of the work order will have to provide any and all BoP reagents.

The way Blizzard has talked about it implies that they can provide a portion, or all, of BoP reagents and a crafter can fill that order. So if I only have 9/10 a crafter can fill the order with 1 of their own and 9 of mine.

https://warcraft.blizzplanet.com/blo...-and-tina-wang
Tina: One aspect of that work order system that I’m really excited about is that it can include a soulbind material. So you saw in the deep dive, like I can as a player say, I’m waiting and I get a bunch of materials. Some of them are soulbound. I can include those materials and some money and put them up on this work order system that’s almost like its own type of auction house, and then have a crafted crafted.

We don’t want players to just simply be able to best buy the best items with gold; and this work order system gets around that...

[Nymrohd]

The way Blizzard has talked about it implies that they can provide a portion, or all, of BoP reagents and a crafter can fill that order. So if I only have 9/10 a crafter can fill the order with 1 of their own and 9 of mine.

https://warcraft.blizzplanet.com/blo...-and-tina-wang
Tina: One aspect of that work order system that I’m really excited about is that it can include a soulbind material. So you saw in the deep dive, like I can as a player say, I’m waiting and I get a bunch of materials. Some of them are soulbound. I can include those materials and some money and put them up on this work order system that’s almost like its own type of auction house, and then have a crafted crafted.

We don’t want players to just simply be able to best buy the best items with gold; and this work order system gets around that...

He does say "Some of them are soulbound. I can include those materials". So not "I can include some materials". Just after that they say they don't want people to just be buying items with gold. The entire point seems to be to effectively let them drop crafting reagents as additional loot that requires a social component and engages the crafting system.

[Dracullus]

Btw I do wonder what will happen to WoW Token prices with Diablo Immortal. It is after all part of Battle.net Balance. The arbitrage margin for buying WoW gold illegally then using it to buy Tokens has usually been very high. I am not sure how many people use that for HS but we are having a new entry with a very different niche that can affect pricing. It probably will not be felt as strongly in US/EU as it will be in the Asian servers.

I think people paying regularly for Hearthstone or Diablo:Immortal will just buy stuff directly from shop, whale won't waste time to farm gold in WoW. Beside one-time spikes, WoW token price rise when:

- people have no use of their gold (not everybody raids) and buy game time or shop mounts with it, just look how price was low during BfA when we had really good gold sink (brutosaur)

- people in less developed countries (it's not like 13 euro is a lot, but there are places when it's completely trivial amount and places it's not) paying with gold for gametime, recently war forced Blizzard to do good thing and introduced local currencies for Ukraine/Kazachstan/Georgia, but also Turkey for some reason, which gives me hope more currencies with more stable and affordable price will follow.

Whales if anything lower wow token price. And when we have good gold sink they desire, it cause deflation. Imo game economy would be a lot better if all shop mounts/pets were transfered into vendor mounts for gold. But that also likely would lower interest.

[rhorle]

He does say "Some of them are soulbound. I can include those materials". So not "I can include some materials". Just after that they say they don't want people to just be buying items with gold. The entire point seems to be to effectively let them drop crafting reagents as additional loot that requires a social component and engages the crafting system.

Blizzard has stated you can supply only some materials and that collaborative crafting will exist for rare materials. It would defeat the purpose of being able to provide some of your own items if it doesn't work for the higher up crafting things as they also said that you can have soulbound items crafted through the work order system.

From the deep dive write up on mmo-champion https://www.mmo-champion.com/content...-System-Revamp :

You can browse any of the recipes that can be crafted, pick the one you want, and include some or all of the reagents needed for the recipe, including ones that only you can get your hands on.

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Yep, they do not want people buying items with gold, they want casual gamers to hire raiders to craft them raid drop patterns. That is another step inbetween and also gives a lot of profit to the elite. The target audience Ion likes the most.

So the same as now with BoE items. This isn't a system that favors the elite and Blizzard has never said that raids will be the only source of materials. It also ignores how LFR will likely reward any BoP raid item.

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Good old gatekeeping. Now also includes money making. For both the raiders and the blizzard token sales department.

Anybody can raid. There is no gate keeping involved since materials will have quality levels and Blizzard can easily have different tiers to craft different raid level rewards.

[Nymrohd]

I think people paying regularly for Hearthstone or Diablo:Immortal will just buy stuff directly from shop, whale won't waste time to farm gold in WoW. Beside one-time spikes, WoW token price rise when:

- people have no use of their gold (not everybody raids) and buy game time or shop mounts with it, just look how price was low during BfA when we had really good gold sink (brutosaur)

- people in less developed countries (it's not like 13 euro is a lot, but there are places when it's completely trivial amount and places it's not) paying with gold for gametime, recently war forced Blizzard to do good thing and introduced local currencies for Ukraine/Kazachstan/Georgia, but also Turkey for some reason, which gives me hope more currencies with more stable and affordable price will follow.

Whales if anything lower wow token price. And when we have good gold sink they desire, it cause deflation. Imo game economy would be a lot better if all shop mounts/pets were transfered into vendor mounts for gold. But that also likely would lower interest.

Turkey has been suffering from massive inflation well before the war, plenty of players had issues paying in Euro.

I do wonder how they never went for some Battle.net shop currency to go full casino

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So the same as now with BoE items. This isn't a system that favors the elite and Blizzard has never said that raids will be the only source of materials. It also ignores how LFR will likely reward any BoP raid item. You just like to turn anything into hate to insult the devs.

I do wonder how the ilvl part will work. Seems that the items will be craftable at different ilvls/qualities. Which could lock ilvl behind higher level difficulties but also resolve it in any number of ways; could be timegated crafting reagents like it was all the way till WoD (crafted with cooldowns or obtained through specific WQs like Legion). I think it might even be from the Vault (use the Vault currency to buy certain crafting reagents).

[Dracullus]

Turkey has been suffering from massive inflation well before the war, plenty of players had issues paying in Euro.

I do wonder how they never went for some Battle.net shop currency to go full casino.

Jesus, you're right, we panic about 10% and they have like 50%. But that also show Blizz is willing to introduce currency for economical reasons, in Ukraine/Georgia/Kazachstan case it was to allow them p(l)aying at all.

[Nyel]

Is the main feature of the expansion the Evoker? I always thought the main feature of any expansion is . . .the expansion? You know the Dragon Isles continent? That's why I am buying the expac. The only time a feature really seemed impressive enough to feel even bigger than the actual content was MAYBE Legion with the artifact system/class halls (which by itself provided as much content as at least a couple of zones). If anything else would be considered a main feature it would be something that affects the largest number of players and that would be the full talent revamp on a level we have not had since MoP (though to be fair, Legion did effectively fully revamp almost every spec in the game).

Main feature = the thing that sells (or is trying to sell) the expansion. I'd say Dracthyr Evoker is exactly that, as were Allied Races in BfA and Covenants in Shadowlands.

So no, the continent is just where the expansion takes place, it's not a feature. A continent (aka new zones) is part of every expansion and therefore expected and shouldn't be counted as a feature itself.

[Nymrohd]

Main feature = the thing that sells (or is trying to sell) the expansion. I'd say Dracthyr Evoker is exactly that, as were Allied Races in BfA and Covenants in Shadowlands.

So no, the continent is just where the expansion takes place, it's not a feature. A continent (aka new zones) is part of every expansion and therefore expected and shouldn't be counted as a feature itself.

What on earth? I am not buying an expansion to play a new class, I am buying an expansion to play the new quests and instances in the new zones. That's the primary feature. That is what is always listed first, the continent itself.