Dragonflight Alpha/Beta General Discussion

[Jokubas]

Tinker is never gonna happen we have Engineering

Honestly, Tinker is the only remaining class idea I feel like can't be reasonably done through extra specs or "class skins."

Necromancer works just fine as an overlay for Warlock. Spellbreaker is harder because the ideas are spread out, but Paladin or Warrior (with Spell Reflection) could probably fit well enough with a thorough overlay. Dark Ranger is basically just a Hunter with some shadow abilities (and maybe zombie pets), so it's more of a spec than a full class. Blademaster should be a Warrior spec and I argued that Arms be reimagined in that direction before because Arms and Fury basically have the same theme right now and need better distinction.

Tinker, however, done right should be about Goblins and Gnomes jumping into racially themed mechs and staying that way for the duration of combat and probably as mounts. Kinda like Demon Hunter in the sense of an extremely limited but extremely themed class, but unlike any other class in the reliance on the mechs as a new mechanic. Any other races given Tinker should be chosen very carefully. Perhaps draenei/lightforged draenei due to the Warframes and their other mechs, and maybe blood elves for the blood golems.

While I could see this working in china, no way they would expect to keep their customers in the west with such a business model... right?

I might have said that ten years ago, but nowadays this sort of thing is all over the place in the West. The general idea is basically a battle pass, which seem to be increasingly ubiquitous despite the increasing criticism. I could totally see this happening. The fact that it obviously would lead to a massive controversy isn't even a reason to not expect it, because that hasn't stopped any other company.

A good example of something more in the line of seasonal content rather than battle passes that has continued on despite strong criticism is the payment model of GW2's living world. Between expansions they do updates every two to three months (well, that's their plan anyway, it always goes off schedule) that advance the story, add new maps, and give you little optional things to keep you busy until the next one. In general I'm fine with the content drops (especially since the game is buy-to-play and I can drop into these without any barrier), the problem is how they monetize them. They're free for anyone who logs in while it's the current chapter. The moment it's not, you have to buy it for a cash shop currency.

The problem is that these chapters are crucial parts of the story, yet they don't come with the expansion purchases. A huge criticism is that for any new players, the game markets it like most MMOs "oh just pick up the expansions and you'll be good to go," but doesn't tell you that the story is going to be full of colossal holes if you don't independently put up money (through a cash shop currency) for random chapters buried away in the store. Despite constantly pointing out how this is a confusing and major wall for new players getting invested into the game and story, no changes to the formula have ever been made.

Okay, I'll reword it in a fairer way.

I'm sure there are people in the writing team who actually care and spend hundreds of hours thinking of ways to move the story forward, leaving hints while keeping things vague, and setting up twists and turns. People who then read these forums and are probably hurt to see players react so negatively to their work.

But I'm also certain that some suit will look at a couple of charts, and demand that the next expansion has to be about flying monkeys, and that the current most popular character in the game has to die in the intro, throwing half of what was planned into the bin immediately, and leaving the other half not making any sense.

Yeah. I don't always make sure to get it across, but I've assumed this is how the writing works and try to be polite about it when I think about it. Not only have I heard from writers in the games industry in general that, even in story-focused games, they're treated as the least important team and made to conform to what everyone else is doing, but we know even Chris Metzen didn't have complete control. The Forsaken were created in Warcraft III as a compromise to appease other devs who wanted to be able to play Scourge characters in World of Warcraft, so that whole plotline may not exist if not for that pressure, just as one example we know about.

[TheFirstOnes]

What are you reading into to come to any of these conclusions?

"I hate it when people say this bullshit, as the Xel'naga are simply Titans, but bound to 1 Universe only, cause that's the thing they did for it, making an infinite cycle of a singular plane, with Amon existing in the Void, etc etc."

Ok...I do not mean what I say with that LITERALLY, but they would be MAYBE on that level of power, basically. But yeah, the Firim stuff is what I get in what I say...yes.

[Aeluron Lightsong]

Its highly unlikely that leak is even true.

[Teriz]

I mean that would imply ghuun had any freedom

He was a lab specimen

Do you just argue for the sake of arguing?

Origins

G'huun was accidentally created by the titans when they experimented with means to solve the problem posed by the Old Gods. They used Uldir to "try to figure out what makes Old Gods tick," including performing experiments. This led to "some creepy and weird stuff there," and G'huun is the result of years of experiments where the titans couldn't figure out how to cure this Old God disease.[11] When they experimented upon the Old Gods' unending, ravenous need to corrupt, they unexpectedly created a perfect avatar of that desire. G'huun is nothing but rot, pestilence, and decay—the ultimate parasite who cannot stop itself from consuming its host until it is gone.[12] He was locked away in the facility of Uldir, sealed with three seals:[13] Atul'nazman in Nazmir, Atul'Aman in Vol'dun, and the Great Seal of Dazar'alor in Zuldazar. The seal in Atul'Aman was destroyed by Mythrax the Unraveler long ago,[14] while Atul'nazman was damaged by G'huun's minions.[2]

http://warcraft.blizzplanet.com/blog...battle-azeroth

Hence he was imprisoned in Uldir.

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Tinker, however, done right should be about Goblins and Gnomes jumping into racially themed mechs and staying that way for the duration of combat and probably as mounts. Kinda like Demon Hunter in the sense of an extremely limited but extremely themed class, but unlike any other class in the reliance on the mechs as a new mechanic. Any other races given Tinker should be chosen very carefully. Perhaps draenei/lightforged draenei due to the Warframes and their other mechs, and maybe blood elves for the blood golems.

I think Goblin, Vulpera, Gnome, Mechagnoe, Draenei, LF Draenei, Blood Elves, and Nightborne (they have artificers like Draenei) would be the way to go.

[Jokubas]

Its highly unlikely that leak is even true.

Yeah, I don't like the fact that, despite supposedly being written by an employee, it only calls out the two most controversial figures in the forum community. It mentions the scandals, but seems to conveniently ignore that the scandals revealed that people who weren't as well known to the fans were causing lots of trouble.

Still, as I mentioned a few days ago before this topic came up, I'm dreading any business model shift for World of Warcraft. Basically every modern trend in gaming just doesn't gel with me. Not because of my principles (though they usually conflict with that too), but because they really do inherently conflict with my playstyles and how I enjoy things. If anything remotely like this happened I wouldn't leave to protest, I would leave because I legitimately wouldn't be having fun anymore.

[Shadochi]

Do you just argue for the sake of arguing?



http://warcraft.blizzplanet.com/blog...battle-azeroth

Hence he was imprisoned in Uldir.

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I think Goblin, Vulpera, Gnome, Mechagnoe, Draenei, LF Draenei, Blood Elves, and Nightborne (they have artificers like Draenei) would be the way to go.

Literally says 2 sentences earlier that he was created there, thus a lab specimen and later it became his prison.

As for the races, do Vulpera actually dabble in technology more than the regular races? Also if Blood Elves are there, Void Elves should be too as until recently they were just Blood Elves

[Teriz]

Literally says 2 sentences earlier that he was created there, thus a lab specimen and later it became his prison.

Zantheus was implying that it wasn't a prison because he was never free.

As for the races, do Vulpera actually dabble in technology more than the regular races?

Who knows? They're scavengers who take what they can get and make a living out of it. Allowing them to build mechs wouldn't be the craziest thing Blizzard has done. Personally, I would give them Junker-style tech, since it fits their racial style.

[Archmage Xaxxas]

Literally says 2 sentences earlier that he was created there, thus a lab specimen and later it became his prison.

As for the races, do Vulpera actually dabble in technology more than the regular races?

I'd say the feeling about them being possible Tinkerers is likely because of their affinity for crafting all sorts of trinkets, and efficient primitive devices.

Maybe the assumption is that they'd pick up Engineering pretty easily, due to the details, organization skills required.

That's of course trying to see beyond obvious, they're tiny lil guys that would fit in a classic Gnome/Goblin mech.

[bruxx]

Literally says 2 sentences earlier that he was created there, thus a lab specimen and later it became his prison.

As for the races, do Vulpera actually dabble in technology more than the regular races? Also if Blood Elves are there, Void Elves should be too as until recently they were just Blood Elves

I think Vulpera is fitting, their whole shtick is being resourceful and using whatever is on hand to survive, it makes a lot of sense to me that some of them would be interested in learning engineering -> battle tinkering

[Gloriandus]

Jailer could mess up Azeroth's world soul so irrevocably that we use whatever wango tango is in the Sepulcher to "fix" her but the means to do it causes the Azeroth we know to be irrevocably changed/different from the one we knew. A "gentle" cataclysm

[Revamp Man]

So the big thing against a dragonsworn class is the covenants and the “I wanna be a dwagon”

I think there’s a solution and knowing blizz going ham when they need to we might get it
Dragon race
Talonguard class
Dragonsworn system

[Luck4]

Its pretty much fits with Blizzards usual design decisions though, i can totally see it happening.

The faction imbalance is happening because of Mythic raids, if they don't enable cross-faction guilds people would still need to change their faction from Alliance to Horde to be able to raid since you can't list Mythic on Premade Group Finder before Hall of Fame is closed, and even if Mythic becomes available in Premade Group Finder on its first week, I doubt that any raid leader would like the headache to invite a member of the raid group in another faction every day through Premade Group Finder.

If people would still feel the need to change factions to do Mythic raids, then this system is pointless/useless, since it doesn't solve the problem.

[Jokubas]

Admittedly, it could be referring to the First Ones—all it really means is a reference to the "Watch and the Watchmaker" theological argument, which proves the existence of God via complexity.

Ah, okay. I was actually sort of interested in the idea of something behind even the First Ones. I mean, I really don't like how much this has escalated, but at this point I was morbidly curious as to what they'd do with something like that.

I meant to follow up on this when I mentioned the writers not having a lot of freedom, but there is also is a lot of subjectivity to storytelling. Personally I see a lot of modern trends in Warcraft's writing that could have been demanded from higher up, but are common enough to just as easily be something the writers plan on doing. The escalation in general, for one, is something that's pretty universal right now.

It's interesting seeing people view Lord of the Rings for the first time, and be confused or frustrated at how little magic Gandalf uses. In a lot of ways he helped define what a wizard was, but fiction as a whole, audience expectations as a whole, not just a singular work, have changed a lot since the books were written.

It's an issue I see in tabletop games as well. I recently saw a discussion where someone was wondering how they could help mundane classes keep up with the wizards. Someone brought up some "anime" techniques like blade beams or other similar feats (that are superhuman by real life standards, but considered non-magical in their respective universes) and dismissed it because it's too immersion breaking for the tabletop crowd invested more in simulation. I couldn't help notice a certain ironic elephant in the room, because wizards themselves have crossed that line, we've just gotten used to it.

Wizards are basically just superheroes these days, but they didn't used to be. Magic used to be rare and difficult. Magic required time, rituals, reagents. It was based on folklore and while it didn't expect you to think magic was real, it was often inspired by things people believed at some time. It was more than real, but there was still something grounded about it. Now wizards are just casual reality warpers, but we're not consistent about allowing that shift to apply to anyone else.

It's not always just wizards though. A good Warcraft example is comparing the Warcraft III teaser to the Legion cinematic. In the former, a single Infernal massacres a human and an orc as a strong symbol. In the latter, Varian can carve through a giant piece of solid rock with one swing of his sword. He's a superhero compared to what existed in Warcraft III.

Anyway, my point is that while I don't want to be rude to the writers, especially if something isn't even their fault, there are still things I'm not liking about the story that could be entirely intended. I don't like overly explained cosmologies. I don't like "deep" philosophical things either, because nine times out of ten it's just nonsense hiding behind complexity to look smarter than it is. I want some more grounded plots because they avoid both of those things, and more.

[Aeluron Lightsong]

Ah, okay. I was actually sort of interested in the idea of something behind even the First Ones. I mean, I really don't like how much this has escalated, but at this point I was morbidly curious as to what they'd do with something like that.

I meant to follow up on this when I mentioned the writers not having a lot of freedom, but there is also is a lot of subjectivity to storytelling. Personally I see a lot of modern trends in Warcraft's writing that could have been demanded from higher up, but are common enough to just as easily be something the writers plan on doing. The escalation in general, for one, is something that's pretty universal right now.

It's interesting seeing people view Lord of the Rings for the first time, and be confused or frustrated at how little magic Gandalf uses. In a lot of ways he helped define what a wizard was, but fiction as a whole, audience expectations as a whole, not just a singular work, have changed a lot since the books were written.

It's an issue I see in tabletop games as well. I recently saw a discussion where someone was wondering how they could help mundane classes keep up with the wizards. Someone brought up some "anime" techniques like blade beams or other similar feats (that are superhuman by real life standards, but considered non-magical in their respective universes) and dismissed it because it's too immersion breaking for the tabletop crowd invested more in simulation. I couldn't help notice a certain ironic elephant in the room, because wizards themselves have crossed that line, we've just gotten used to it.

Wizards are basically just superheroes these days, but they didn't used to be. Magic used to be rare and difficult. Magic required time, rituals, reagents. It was based on folklore and while it didn't expect you to think magic was real, it was often inspired by things people believed at some time. It was more than real, but there was still something grounded about it. Now wizards are just casual reality warpers, but we're not consistent about allowing that shift to apply to anyone else.

It's not always just wizards though. A good Warcraft example is comparing the Warcraft III teaser to the Legion cinematic. In the former, a single Infernal massacres a human and an orc as a strong symbol. In the latter, Varian can carve through a giant piece of solid rock with one swing of his sword. He's a superhero compared to what existed in Warcraft III.

Anyway, my point is that while I don't want to be rude to the writers, especially if something isn't even their fault, there are still things I'm not liking about the story that could be entirely intended. I don't like overly explained cosmologies. I don't like "deep" philosophical things either, because nine times out of ten it's just nonsense hiding behind complexity to look smarter than it is. I want some more grounded plots because they avoid both of those things, and more.

Seems like you are more prone to LOTR levels of fantasy then Warcraft in all honesty. Especially if you want to be small with Magic. Also your Warcraft III comparison is kinda dishonest a regular footman is not even close to someone like Varian who's a faction leader(Err was) and a very hardened fighter.

[Teriz]

So the big thing against a dragonsworn class is the covenants and the “I wanna be a dwagon”

I think there’s a solution and knowing blizz going ham when they need to we might get it
Dragon race
Talonguard class
Dragonsworn system

There's not enough material to create a class out of Talonguard.

The Dragonsworn system is exactly like the Covenant system; You swear allegiance to a group (dragonflight) and they give you a some token (draconic) abilities.

[Jokubas]

Sorry, I guess I went on a bit of a tangent there, so I'll try to clear this up.

Seems like you are more prone to LOTR levels of fantasy then Warcraft in all honesty. Especially if you want to be small with Magic. Also your Warcraft III comparison is kinda dishonest a regular footman is not even close to someone like Varian who's a faction leader(Err was) and a very hardened fighter.

I'm fine with Warcraft being a bit comic booky and having higher magic than the old days. I just meant to illustrate a shift in fiction as a whole. As for Varian, to be fair, Grom cleaves through Mannoroth's armor in Warcraft III like it's nothing, but then again, he was demon blood-infused at the time. Thrall was basically helpless. While an infernal is a fairly generic opponent by the time of Legion, it's still made of solid rock, something a sword shouldn't be cleaving through like it's butter. I mean it was cool, I liked that moment, but I feel like Warcraft III was just a little bit more realistic in that aspect.

If your only exposure to Middle Earth is the movies I could see why you would think that since PJ notoriously hates magic and tried to downplay it as much as possible but no a Wizard being some magical deus ex capable of whipping up exactly what the plot needs to progress has been a thing since even before the Hobbit existed.

My point is that Gandalf couldn't teleport at will, couldn't casually open a portal to Mordor to shortcut the travel. He couldn't just fly and bombard armies with explosive fireballs out of their reach. Gandalf is one of the most powerful beings in Middle-Earth, but he still had limits. Subtlety is a part of it too. Another comparison might be Star Wars. The Force was originally a subtle thing. Nudging things in favorable directions. When the Emperor unleashed his lightning at the end of Return of the Jedi, the fact that it was a visible power at all was sign of how powerful he was. Nowadays people expect the Force to be flashy by default.

But my main point wasn't that I didn't want Warcraft to be high or heroic fantasy or whatever you call it. Just that trends are trends and there are other trends in the story like the growing need to explain every inch of the cosmos that I'm not fond of.

[Aeluron Lightsong]

Long as we don't head the 40k route(Overly edgy and depressing). I'm ok and no I'm not talking about Orcs in space.


<.<

[Revamp Man]

There's not enough material to create a class out of Talonguard.

The Dragonsworn system is exactly like the Covenant system; You swear allegiance to a group (dragonflight) and they give you a some token (draconic) abilities.

Good thing you aren’t a dev because of you think there’s not enough stuff between in game and the ttrpg that’s a bit of a lack of imagination

[Revamp Man]

Not even just existing stuff but there is literally nothing stopping Blizzard from just pulling whatever class design they want out of thin air. They can make new lore thats always an option

The claws can be the melee
The scales can be the defensive
The wings can be knock back/utility/flight like the monks

That’s just from one section of the dragonsworn class but oh yeah I forgot there’s nothing about Talonguard…who you could easily say got power from Wrathion but if it’s not the dwagon race/class mix then it’s not possible because HotS determines the classes but not night warrior or anything just the engineers

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Mix red and green for healing

Bronze for tank

Blue for ranged

Black for dps

[Teriz]

Good thing you aren’t a dev because of you think there’s not enough stuff between in game and the ttrpg that’s a bit of a lack of imagination

It has nothing to do with my imagination. I do believe my class concepts prove that beyond any doubt. The issue is that there is literally no room for this "Talonguard" concept to move unless you're going the HotS route and creating a class where you're literally playing a dragon.

Think about it;

What does this class do? Are we going to make another melee class? A caster class? We have tons of those already. What makes this one special?

What type of magic/abilities will this class have? If it has fire abilities, how does it differ from the plethora of other fire-based classes out there? Mages have an ability where a literal dragon head pops out and breathes a cone of fire.

How does this class fit in the lore of Warcraft? Are they just adventurers who decide to join the dragons? Which flight would they join? Lore doesn't support the notion of a mortal being able to join multiple flights, so what would their core abilities be? Core abilities are abilities that are based on the class itself, not a specific spec. So, at the base level, what is this class about?

For me, nothing about this class makes sense beyond simply trying to find a class that fits in a dragon-based expansion. There is no lore character that suits this class, and there is zero references for such a class beyond some random NPCs with the title "Talonguard". Again, the best option for a dragon class is to base it on characters like this;



Actual dragons who disguise themselves like mortals. Examples: Kalecogos, Wrathion, Alexstraza, Chromie, Kairoz, etc.

It's the superior option in every way.