Dragonflight Alpha/Beta General Discussion

[KOUNTERPARTS]

I feel like I have blue balls waiting for a potential announcement of something not yet confirmed, so I should have no reasonable expectation for any form of announcement on anything.


And yet... blue balls.

[Nyel]

is not like it was his plan he just was lucky

Which makes it even worse. All of his grand plot 4D chess scheming is completely relying on luck. It’s just so incredibly stupid.

[Aeluron Lightsong]

I feel like I have blue balls waiting for a potential announcement of something not yet confirmed, so I should have no reasonable expectation for any form of announcement on anything.


And yet... blue balls.

Patience grasshopper

[Nyel]

You say most but I think the last one that was 12+ was WoD because of scrapped content

Just make a short raid and a dumb story in a zone the size of Mechagon

That would take weeks of their time and delay 10.0 even further. It’s beyond me how anyone can think developing 9.3 wouldn’t slow down 10.0 even more. They need less focus on Shadowlands and more on 10.0 when they are delayed so much. And that’s exactly what we get and why we only have two content patches, because they moved resources from this expansion to the next months, heck maybe even a year ago.

[Ersula]

Folks forget most final patches are 12-14 months long. February 2022 - February-April 2023 would be entirely in character for Blizzard.

No patch has ever been longer than 10 months.

[Revamp Man]

I have this weird feeling that the overall hype will die out before they announce 10.0, the "coming weeks" could be anything between 2 to 12 weeks...

I think they want to announce the expansion ASAP, but the expansion is so early in development that they don't have much to show.

In regards to the coming weeks
With blizzard it normally means months lol

As far as the next expansion I’m certain they have at least a trailer but putting together a presentation currently is likely rough

They had the blizzconline stuff canceled and are likely holding it for the replacement which will likely be a livestream of premade videos

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No patch has ever been longer than 10 months.

I mean 5.4 and 6.2 were both over a year but that was all a shit show

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That would take weeks of their time and delay 10.0 even further. It’s beyond me how anyone can think developing 9.3 wouldn’t slow down 10.0 even more. They need less focus on Shadowlands and more on 10.0 when they are delayed so much. And that’s exactly what we get and why we only have two content patches, because they moved resources from this expansion to the next months, heck maybe even a year ago.

Do you think the same people working on patches for SL have been working on 10.0?

You realize development on it started before SL released

[Relapses]

No patch has ever been longer than 10 months.

5.4 release date: September 10, 2013
6.0 release date: October 14, 2014
6.2 release date: June 23rd, 2015
7.0 release date: July 19th, 2016

Hmm...

[Therougetitan]

No patch has ever been longer than 10 months.

I am guessing you are counting Ruby Sanctum to interrupt ICC's 12 months or 6.2.5 for 6.2's 14 months or the .5 patch for 8.3's 10 months. Which is doesn't matter. The point is that it is a long content drought the minor patches didn't help. But even if you try to ignore all that 5.4 still lasted 14 months with no content drops.

[Akta]

Which makes it even worse. All of his grand plot 4D chess scheming is completely relying on luck. It’s just so incredibly stupid.

never was a 4d chess scheming, in thousands of years he tried many ways to reach his goal until he was lucky

[AOL Instant Messenger]

The demons making a Helmet imbued with death magic, something which is not their domain at all (and later on would be one of the forces opposed to them), to control an Undead army, which they would have no control over if Ner'zhul broke free somehow and are afraid of, and to punish Ner'zhul is incredibly idiotic.

Then, you also got the issue of Frostmourne. At first, Ner'zhul crafted it somehow, even though he was entirely stationary, without a body, in the armour. Later on, it get retconned to be crafted by the Dreadlords along with the armour.

Frostmourne was always an incredibly out of place item for the Burning Legion to have. It was a remnant of the time when the Burning Legion wasn't "The Fel Army(TM)" and pretty much did anything. When the game moved onward and specialized the Burning Legion a bit more, it made more sense to move the origin of Frostmourne.

It makes absolutely zero sense for the Burning Legion to craft the strongest Death artifact ever, yet never show anything else on that level ever again.

That's not a "plot hole". That's what I was being pedantic about, not that I was wholly disagreeing—a "plot hole" usually refers to, say, the "how" of something, or something which is not addressed. It is an actual flaw in the narrative, not the quality of the narrative in itself.

Furthermore, why use Zovaal and not Yogg-Saron, who had already been long-established and connected to a real, preexisting plotline that was being explored? He would solve the problem well enough—this also opens another connection with the Void. Wouldn't it be easy to simply say the Legion used necromancy because it is not susceptible to the Void? We've also seen no real conflict between Death and Fel up until Shdowlands showed Maldraxxus acting against them. Before then, it seemed like Necromancy was very much controlled by them—aside from Argus, we see Necrolytes originated from them.

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never was a 4d chess scheming, in thousands of years he tried many ways to reach his goal until he was lucky

That's something I agree on—I think it is odd that people seem to ignore this. Although it is true that it is an asspull they decided "AKTHUALLY HE DID THE SCOURGE GUYS!!! HE'S SUPER IMPORTANT!!!! YOU HAVE TO CARE ABOUT HIM NOW!!!", I do think that people overblow it. He didn't secretly scheme and plot the whole narrative just to get one little blonde guy to steal something.

I think it's an asspull simply because it hamfists relevancy to the Jailer. However much he is an asspull villain, he is not the retroactive super-genius. I do think that implicating him in Sargeras' corruption and the Dreadlords is what does really put me off—I honestly would be able to suspend my disbelief if it were just the Scourge, but they simply went too far. If the Dreadlords simply were revealed to have been in exile like was previously suggested until they decided "lol no actually we were working for denny", I'd probably have forgiven and forgotten this plot.

[Khaza-R]

never was a 4d chess scheming, in thousands of years he tried many ways to reach his goal until he was lucky

Yet he says stuff like :

Can your mortal minds fathom?
How long I have waited.
Every event set in motion,
Every pawn put into play.

Doesn't sound like someone who just got lucky. Sounds like someone who thought they had a calculated plan that came to fruition.

[MyWholeLifeIsThunder]

I mean, the whole "the Burning Legion made the Lich King for whatever reason" has been such an incredibly stupid plot point since forever, was a plothole in of itself since that got introduced.

That retcon actually makes the games story better. Other than that, people bitch about "Oh, the Jailer is behind everything", when before that, it was "Oh, the Burning Legion is behind everything". It's new therefore bad though.

But that's exactly the problem, not because something makes sense in the lore it automatically becomes a good narrative.

Again, the problems isn't that these events are now connected necessarily, but how they are used to basically tie up EVERYTHING *but* the Old Gods to one Singular villain's plan. Because it's literally being framed as such, a "long awaited plan finally coming to fruition".

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No it literally sounds like someone that has put countless plans in to motion waiting for one of them to land. Zovaal exists outside of time he could set an infinite amount of plans into motion because of how the Shadowlands work in that sense.

And how cool would it have been if we actually were shown this, instead of being framed as him being on top of everything? Because let's not gaslight ourselves, the "Every Event Sent in motion, every pawn put in place" clearly is trying to sell that everything is part of the same masterplan.

[Catastrophy349]

This Twitter thread is pretty neat. https://twitter.com/FaizShaikh7681/s...473536/photo/2

I honestly can't freaking wait for that AAA Warcraft mobile game. Wild Rift for LoL is amazing and I would love to see my Night Elves and Dwarves receive the same treatment (in terms of quality on a mobile phone).

Thanks for posting this tweet!

[huth]

And how cool would it have been if we actually were shown this, instead of being framed as him being on top of everything? Because let's not gaslight ourselves, the "Every Event Sent in motion, every pawn put in place" clearly is trying to sell that everything is part of the same masterplan.

Disagree. The interpretation that he set countless plans into motion and simply capitalised on the ones that worked out to his favour makes far more sense.
He previously made it clear that the Lich King thing didn't really work the way he wanted it to, so it's clear that not all plans worked out for him, and not all pawns ended up being useful.

Us not seeing all the failed plans is simply a matter of there only being a limited amount of time to tell the story, so the focus is going to be on the plans that actually worked and are thus of concern to us.

[MyWholeLifeIsThunder]

No it isn't? Do you think that literally every event that humans, dwarves, gnomes, or mogu have ever been involved in is the responsibility of the Old Gods because they are connected to every character of those races by virtue of being retconned into the reason why they are flesh? Somehow, the first, second and third wars are just all retroactively part of the Old Gods' plans and don't matter, because it was the Old Gods who gave humans free will and made them what they are?

I also really, really wish you'd stop using "everything that happened" to mean "Why wearing the Helm of domination makes people evil" and "what sylvanas' endgame was"

That's being disingenuous, and you know it. When I say he's being made responsible for everything major happening, I am not being facetious or hyperbolic.

Nathrezim, Agents of Denathrius who is in league with Zovaal, are the ones that corrupted Sargeras. These eons of manipulation, that lead to the War of the Ancients, then the Orcs attacking Azeroth, so the 1st, 2nd and 3rd war because oh, the Helm was ALSO created by Zovaal. Then he starts manipulating Sylvanas, and then in Legion, the plan started by the Nathrezim comes to fruition, and Argus soul is finally used to break the Arbiter.

So the WHOLE story of the Burning Legion, thus everything they did, was a manipulation to be used as pawns for Zovaal's plans.

Only stuff related to the old gods gets out of the "everything."

As already said, it was never clear whose side the Dreadlords were on. They've been doing shady shit and had their hands in all sorts of pots since WC3. Their original characterization had them manipulating Sargeras, their retconned characterization had them working "under him" but for their own goals, the current iteration is just the exact same as both of those, but now we actually know what some of those goals were and who they actually follow.

It isn't blatantly inaccurate, but I can't be bothered to go line by line through the entirety of warcraft history with you to point out that all he infleunced were a handful of events, and that those events aren't changed by virtue of being his influence, it's just that the events had larger repercussions and motivations than originally written.

Shadowlands is literally telling us that Zovaal and Denathrius were working together all this time. It literally frames the whole Burning Legion as pawns used to fulfill Zovaal's plan of disabling the Arbiter.

That is not just "influence" it's purpose. Sargeras was totally on the blind, but Argus getting killed and destroying the Arbiter, THAT WAS THE PLAN.

It would be very different if Sargeras whole thing was just something influenced by Nathrezim. The problem lies with the fact that Sargeras manipulation by the Nathrezim WAS to create an entity like Argus and use them to disable the Arbiter and help free Zovaal.

And why does it suck's narratively? Because basically takes all the previous threats and makes them part of a previously at best obliquely alluded character, who never had ANY characterization until this very expansion.

How it's hard to get that "character that appears 25 years later in a story and that was twist behind everything" is bad writing?

[Syegfryed]

The demons making a Helmet imbued with death magic, something which is not their domain at all (and later on would be one of the forces opposed to them), to control an Undead army, which they would have no control over if Ner'zhul broke free somehow and are afraid of, and to punish Ner'zhul is incredibly idiotic.

It wasn't, rly, you talk like beings one domain can only use power of their domain, we knew for a fact Kil'jaden was a powerful magician, he would know about necromancy.

Using the necromancy and the scourge to weaken azeroth, was a good way to masquerade the legion, who would knew the demons were behind it? putting the janitor and the dreadlords into it make all the events from wc3 and alter be something dumb

It makes absolutely zero sense for the Burning Legion to craft the strongest Death artifact ever, yet never show anything else on that level ever again.

its more that the artifact gained more power as more souls it took, and the LK had enough time to control a lot of people, the power of it its was more of "being able to have a huge army" not making the LK itself a god-like entity.

There is many artifacts with similar power, like we saw in the artifacts weapons, it was just tuned down for gameplay purposes.

[MyWholeLifeIsThunder]

Disagree. The interpretation that he set countless plans into motion and simply capitalised on the ones that worked out to his favour makes far more sense.

Well DUH, it really is the better interpretation. The point is that's not how the story has framed it at any point. It's a narrative issue, not a lore one.

He previously made it clear that the Lich King thing didn't really work the way he wanted it to, so it's clear that not all plans worked out for him, and not all pawns ended up being useful.

Us not seeing all the failed plans is simply a matter of there only being a limited amount of time to tell the story, so the focus is going to be on the plans that actually worked and are thus of concern to us.

And THAT'S why it is an issue of framing and characterization, because nothing on the way he acts or presents himself... even suggests that. That's why he sucks as a villain as well.

Like, we could have gotten that if, imagine, Zovaal was actually elated that this was the one that worked.

No, instead we get the boring thanos "this was inevitable" characterization where he pretends it was all part of his plan.

[Jokubas]

@Jokubas fantastic breakdown of the logos.

Thanks. In all these leak seasons and fake fan logos I had never really looked at the real ones in such depth before. It was fun noticing all the little details I never had before.

I was saying not that long ago about how I didn't really know what to say until we got something like the Kul Tiras textures, but the logo discussions have been good enough for me. I didn't even like Empire of Dragons when we first got it, but the more we dissected it, the more I started to appreciate the details in it as well. I thought the theming in its border was more common, too, before I went back and looked at the older fakes and realized how much simpler they were by comparison.

Even that Origin of Dragons logo has interesting elements to it, for me, and I'm curious as to the story behind the decisions. The "W" and "C" are more or less the normal Warcraft letters. but the rest of them have been subtly changed. First, all of them have been sized up to match the "W". Then, while the bottom half of them is more or less the normal font for Warcraft, the upper halves have been changed to be flat on top. Also, the "A"s now connect to the following letter, which is a neat touch. There's a simple effect and blurry texture on the letters, and the Origin of Dragons pairs poorly with it, but I don't mind the font/design itself.

I'm also trying to enjoy this while I can because I'm not exactly looking forward to any dragon-focused expansion myself.

The Shadowlands leak looked impressive (and looking back on it, we didn't really get anything like the building shown in it, did we?)

I wondered about this myself awhile back and did some comparisons. It's actually pretty close to some of the buildings in Bastion, it's just that the concept art creates an impression that doesn't match what's in game.

The concept art, at least to me, looks like the magical mirage of a palace in the middle of a desert, but it's actually just one of the Kyrian structures floating over the grassy fields that have a sandy-gold cast to them. If I recall, the building's design is actually matched fairly closely to a location in game, but most Kyrian structures tend to be these weird sort of facades, which is not what you'd assume from the concept art.

And how cool would it have been if we actually were shown this, instead of being framed as him being on top of everything?

To me, this is the biggest disappointment of Shadowlands. There's a lot of things I wish were done differently, but when it comes to Zovaal's plot, we really needed to see what he was involved in. Retcon or no, it would have felt so much more powerful to actually see how the context of old events was being expanded. There was a lot of controversy over how little we knew about what the villains were trying to achieve, but we also didn't really learn anything about how they got to where they were which should have been fair game. I was really looking forward to us examining these old plots and loose threads through a new lens, but for the most part we're left to assume.

[huth]

And THAT'S why it is an issue of framing and characterization, because nothing on the way he acts or presents himself... even suggests that. That's why he sucks as a villain as well.

Like, we could have gotten that if, imagine, Zovaal was actually elated that this was the one that worked.

No, instead we get the boring thanos "this was inevitable" characterization where he pretends it was all part of his plan.

Or, you know, he could just point out the times when it didn't work. Besides, with this approach it was inevitable and part of the (overarching) plan. Fire a shotgun enough and eventually you'll hit something. That doesn't make him not an opportunist, though. It just means his grand plan was largely based on trying everything and going with what happens to work out.

You're pretty much just ignoring everything that contradicts your assumptions then claim there is no evidence to the contrary.

[Akta]

Yet he says stuff like :

Can your mortal minds fathom?
How long I have waited.
Every event set in motion,
Every pawn put into play.

Doesn't sound like someone who just got lucky. Sounds like someone who thought they had a calculated plan that came to fruition.

none of the quotes confirm your opinion lol , if anything this confirm what i say