Dragonflight Alpha/Beta General Discussion

[huth]

They're literally styled to look like each other. With runes & all. Sorry that contradicts the absolute asspull of "We hid Frostmorne on a planet to keep it away from the guy we were also really sure would never escape the maw" lore. We regret to inform you this wasn't actually the planned explanation since the beginning.

Which was not the story in any incarnation so far. Where did you even get that nonsense from?

[AOL Instant Messenger]

I could just as easily say the Kyrian are just a bad retcon of Odyn's influence on the humans.

That's true, though. It also contradicts Chronicles' suggestion that Spirit Healers originally were Odyn's Val'Kyr.

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Maldraxxus suffered from the unnecessary Scourge retread elements that have zero explanation. You've an overlap between two competing concepts, one of the fleshy undead landscape where the remains of past battles and the giant dead body you're on is part of this warrior culture and then the WC3 Scourge aesthetic that makes zero sense. Why do the Liches look Egypt-inspired, why do the necropoli look like the ones we've seen up to now? Hell, why are there necropoli at all? It's not how the zone's organic appearance is modeled and it doesn't even have an in-story explanation. It's shallow pandering.

That I've got to agree with as very interesting—it's a shame we didn't get much more in terms of aesthetics than "Scourge 0.5", which is a little irritating. It would be very interesting to see more of it, since it is unequivocally the most fun of the afterlives, and most interesting next to Revendreth.

That said, it's by far the most creative zone conceptually and I like it for the same reason it pisses a lot of people in this thread off and that it's the only one that actually does something inventive with the idea of being an afterlife and how things there wouldn't be the same if transposed to real life. On Maldraxxus, everything is undead in the sense that its soul and the physical body it inhabits are detached and its purpose is to hold off invasions against forces that are just as inhuman like the Void and the Legion. And in fighting these things no matter what horrific bullshit you cook up, it has no moral implications because your side doesn't really die on their own and the enemy invaders are all various abominations and demons. Hence being able to dedicate yourself to making plagues, since biological/chemical warfare is fine where you're at and they're effective and why nobody takes anything going on very seriously. Why would they? Death is a slap on the wrist, the worst thing that can happen to you is that your current body gets destroyed so you have to inhabit another one.

But take all of the above and apply it to the living world and suddenly you're talking something very different. Stitching dudes up in Maldraxxus is no big deal, they can stay fully aware and even be buddies and their souls are detached already so they don't feel too much, the Constructs Margrave refers to himself in the plural for this reason. Stitch dudes up in reality though and it's horrific torture that they feel every bit of because they don't just respawn and raise them into undeath and this isn't their natural state as someone who's already passed, they suffer from the detachment of their spirit while being trapped in a rotting form that they feel every bit of. Even other realms of the Shadowlands fit into the same bit, since you go from the Constructs themselves, who're having a ball, to the kyrian and stewards and the like who've had eyes and tongues they don't get back torn out or piled in mass graves. It's an intentional bit of dissonance that even comes up in some of the side books on how this makes Maldraxxus massively fucked up every time they go on the offensive since all that that's a laugh in its own ecosystem turns into a war crime fiesta when actual living people are involved.

The entire expansion is a little fucky with this. They never seem to understand that this is the afterlife, not normal life—it seems more like you live twice, once potentially forever (partially dependent on which afterlife you go to) and once on Azeroth, as opposed to once and then your consciousness exists forever or you are resurrected in a perfect state like any real-life religious belief and metaphysics states. It simply takes a lot out of the concept of an afterlife to say "lol it's just like life 2" as opposed to being something either unfathomable to the living or something which entails perfection and immortality, like a Christian-style resurrection or Heaven.

Curiously, the House of Constructs alone seems to specifically be what you're thinking of, where the people of Maldraxxus are actually completely immortal and seemingly indestructible—we see the souls removed from the constructs, suggesting that they're not dependent on them.

I'd say one thing that I do hope they do is go back to the idea of souls going to the Light directly as a common theme. It would be nice to fix some of Shadowlands' impact on the story by having people actually start entering the Light directly more often.

I think one way they could've dramatically fixed Shadowlands is by showing how different a "war" would be in a world where everyone is, by definition, immortal. It could be like most of Maldraxxus, where we see everything's halfway between Undeath and spiritual forms, permitting a sort of weird state of infinitely recursive human wave tactics—it wouldn't be a totally new idea, given that's what early Legion essentially had us dealing with. I figure another interesting thing could be the use of constructs and Shadowlands natives—I recall long (at least nine-ten months) before Shadowlands was announced, I had my own concept of a Shadowlands-based expansion which would work with the whole afterlife thing more properly. The idea is that you'd essentially be mostly destroying constructs and undead, while the actual souls would be all around you as untargetable flavor NPCs. It would also replace "dead" as a label (in the vein of how Garrosh is "unconscious" after SoO) with varying different things based on the zone. For instance, if you killed a Wraith somehow, the flavor would be that you're returning it to the jurisdiction of the local afterlife's ruler.

[Vladier]

They're literally styled to look like each other. With runes & all. Sorry that contradicts the absolute asspull of "We hid Frostmorne on a planet to keep it away from the guy we were also really sure would never escape the maw" lore. We regret to inform you this wasn't actually the planned explanation since the beginning.

We can't even see the supposed soul crystal that makes Frostmorne a "mournblade". I present the random one-line trying to recontectualize the weapon as being part of the grand Shadowlands storyline instead of a demonic weapon like it always was.

No, seriously, what kind of short-circuit your brain had to form in order to create the line of reasoning that the Frostmourne was ever hidden on Azeroth from the Jailer? By the minions of his ally, no less?

If you are going to be outraged at the current lore, at least try to keep up with what the current lore is.

[draugril]

That is bad too.

The point is that the scourge architecture was based around the nerubians architecture, with all the whole kingdom of azjolnerub, then they make maldraxus scourge 2.0, and goes against established lore for a rule of cool temptative.

And this isn't even the Rule of Cool winning, since the Nerubian influence was way cooler than boring asspull "undead warrior afterlife" garbage.

[Alanar]

And this isn't even the Rule of Cool winning, since the Nerubian influence was way cooler than boring asspull "undead warrior afterlife" garbage.

Ye they forgot what the rule of cool was halfway lol.

Maldraxxus is 100% forgettable in that sense.

[Graden]

I haven't bought Shadowlands yet. First WoW expansion that I haven't played for a single minute.

Admittedly though, I miss this game. I'm wondering if I should wait for 9.2 or for the next expansion, where basically Shadowlands will become free.

[Slowpoke is a Gamer]

And the covenants were the other weakened OGs lol

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I mean contrary to what they say they do plan around other games

I think originally they planned to match FF14 but like everything else they got delayed and some may say “gw2 wolf no concern to blizzard” they killed wildstar with an alpha

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So let’s assume that they are super far behind on 10.0 what could we see?

Depending on some stuff like a new class we could see
Intro zone for class
Making BfA chromie time
A bunch of stills
System list
Cinematic
Preorder

If they're super behind they won't announce I feel like.

But as long as they have enough for the features trailer and a 1-2 hour talk on what the major changes are, they'll announce. Even if they don't have zone preview videos and a cinematic trailer.

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I haven't bought Shadowlands yet. First WoW expansion that I haven't played for a single minute.

Admittedly though, I miss this game. I'm wondering if I should wait for 9.2 or for the next expansion, where basically Shadowlands will become free.

I bought it, and I think I logged in once since the launch. That was to check last year's Winter's Veil gifts.

[Ielenia]

Shadowlands is not Warcrafty because it is not based on Warcraft 2/3.

Smoothbrain take.

People should really just throw all the pretense out of the window and say they hate the Shadowlands zones because they are Shadowlands zones.

They could have release Maldraxxus as Upper Plaguelands or something and people would eat that shit about because "Plaguelands? I member Plaguelands!!!"

Technically, Maldraxxus is like the Plaguelands, isn't it? The giant mushrooms, the weird ground (though Plaguelands isn't as "fleshy" as Maldraxxus), etc.

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San'layn are actually dead elves with a curse, you know, a race that existed before, unlike gothic vampires,

San'layn are okay because they're "dead elves transformed by a curse, elves being a race that existed before".
But Venthyr are not okay despite being "dead elves (and other races) transformed by the afterlife, elves being a race that existed before (along with other races)".

How do you parse those two statements at the same time without getting a blue screen?

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Honestly I didn't want to comment on this but anyway...

The Problem with Maldraxxus is of cosmological nature, allow me to explain: Bastion can be compared to the Elysium Field of greek mythology (Elysian Hold anyone?) so we can presume is where "good" souls go; Ravendreth is camparable to Purgatory where not so evil souls go to "cleanse" themselves of their sins; the Maw is Hell, Tartarus or whatever you want to call it, so "unredeemable" souls go here; Ardenweald is a sort of antechamber to return to nature, cycle of life and seasons (Winter Queen); then we get Maldraxxus. It's a bad retcon of the Nerubian influence on the Scourge, doesn't cover any classical afterlife function and has a strong dissonance between the theme and the feel (cool-looking undead monsters and you play with fetch with them, come on).

Edit: btw the purpose of Maldraxxus in the SL is to host, harbor and train worthy "fighting" souls to train them in some sort of great Army of the Afterlife, basically the whole norse afterlife in a nutshell, something they already used with Odyn and the Halls of Valor.

Maldraxxus, IMO, embodies the viking concept of "Valhalla": an afterlife where warriors who died in glory go to revel and fight for more glory. The problem with is that Blizzard felt that they had to shove in the "undead/Scourge" theme somewhere, and Maldraxxus apparently got the short straw.

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Indeed, Arthas having the Frostmourne was pure a wow retcon/change

"Frostmourne" is just a name. Are you going to say that Arthas mourns as well because of the sword? I can give you a long list of weapons with elements in their name (such as 'frost', 'fire', flame', etc) that don't give elemental abilities to the wielder.

Getting frost powers is a retcon.

[Cherry123]

Hope for a good 9.2 Arthas trailer, this is the last chance to introduce him.

[Sondrelk]

I haven't bought Shadowlands yet. First WoW expansion that I haven't played for a single minute.

Admittedly though, I miss this game. I'm wondering if I should wait for 9.2 or for the next expansion, where basically Shadowlands will become free.

Depends on what you want out of WoW.
If it's a coherent narrative about characters and concepts you care about, then probably not.
If it's instanced dungeons and raids then it's not a noticeable downgrade from previous expansions despite the final bosses of raids being too long.

If what you want is to gather cosmetics, mounts and titles then congratulations, Shadowlands is the perfect expansion.


The main, ultimate drawback of SL are the droughts that have been choking the game slowly and painfully.
Story that is normally boring becomes a slog.
Annoying raid bosses become insufferable.
Boredom with the zones becomes all the more acute when you have spent way too much time there.

SL is an average if slightly divide expansion that got crippled by Covid. Even the best expansions WOw could offer would have suffered the same.

If you can avoid the drought though then I think anyone would have a decent enough time.

[Aeluron Lightsong]

I haven't bought Shadowlands yet. First WoW expansion that I haven't played for a single minute.

Admittedly though, I miss this game. I'm wondering if I should wait for 9.2 or for the next expansion, where basically Shadowlands will become free.

Its not as bad as people put it but make your own judgement(even if I disagree with it immensely).

[Fahrad Wagner]

I haven't bought Shadowlands yet. First WoW expansion that I haven't played for a single minute.

Admittedly though, I miss this game. I'm wondering if I should wait for 9.2 or for the next expansion, where basically Shadowlands will become free.

It's not as bad as people paint it to be, I came back to the game this week and I had a fair bit of fun with the story and Korthia. Is it all I wanted it to be? No. Is it all rotten? Certainly not.

[Makabreska]

I bought it, and I think I logged in once since the launch. That was to check last year's Winter's Veil gifts.

Money well spent!

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I haven't bought Shadowlands yet. First WoW expansion that I haven't played for a single minute.

Admittedly though, I miss this game. I'm wondering if I should wait for 9.2 or for the next expansion, where basically Shadowlands will become free.

It has it's fun. It's more of the same, new raids, new dungeons, new powers enabling new builds.

[Slowpoke is a Gamer]

Money well spent!

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It has it's fun. It's more of the same, new raids, new dungeons, new powers enabling new builds.

Way I look at it, there was a time prior to the beta where I was considering getting the Digital Deluxe.

Suffice to say I'm not preordering the next expansion no matter what they dangle in front of me until I see how fucked the Beta is.

[Archmage Xaxxas]

I haven't bought Shadowlands yet. First WoW expansion that I haven't played for a single minute.

Admittedly though, I miss this game. I'm wondering if I should wait for 9.2 or for the next expansion, where basically Shadowlands will become free.

The experience is worth the box price. However, this was the first time (as a ritual-expack-launch-player) I've even remotely felt it was a question worth asking.

SL was "Yea that's worth it I suppose, nice."

Other expacks I guess this is just all anecdotal/circumstantial of course, but it wasn't even framed that way in my head.
More just "Heck ya this is a blast" lol

But I'd still buy it again now and live the content through again gladly, it's not really bad, I just didn't find it beyond amazing or anything. Some nostalgia was seeded for later!

[Dracullus]

Money well spent!

If I remember correctly dude once said WoW is shit since like Cata or MoP. So much time passed since then that even my niece who wasn't even born back then is old enough to not spend her pocket money on things she hate.

How the hell WoW can die when even people hating WoW (cause how the hell you judge expansion after logging ONCE, it must be deep aversion to WoW in general at this point) are buying box for 50$. xD

I haven't bought Shadowlands yet. First WoW expansion that I haven't played for a single minute.

Admittedly though, I miss this game. I'm wondering if I should wait for 9.2 or for the next expansion, where basically Shadowlands will become free.

SL will be free when WoW enter 10.0 pre-patch (unless something change, which is always possible). You will able to check whole leveling, story and solo stuff, but probably no one will give a shit about any group content anymore, especially since FOMO rewards like achievs or special mount for heroic Jailer will be gone.

Imo it's worth box price for leveling alone, maybe check few gameplays if you dig this theme. Also I don't know if free trials for new expacs still exist, but it's worth a shot to ask support for it.

[Throren]

Shadowlands for me is the first expansion since ever that I actually unsubbed during and wont play to the final patch. Just between the 5 bajillion different currencies and resources, grinds and different systems and the nose dive that was the story and lore....on top of a 55+ hour work week and social life. I just couldnt do it anymore.

So Im hoping 10.0 is something that might make me interested in diving back in. Honestly what ZoS is doing with ESO's latest chapter is exactly what I want from wow. They recognized that each chapter and dlc focused too much on huge world ending plots. So this newest one is focusing on smaller local domestic problems and politics and such. No huge demonic invasions or comic level plots and threats. Thats what I hope we get from WoW, something smaller scale and grounded, though I know that will likely never happen.

[Dracullus]

Shadowlands for me is the first expansion since ever that I actually unsubbed during and wont play to the final patch. Just between the 5 bajillion different currencies and resources, grinds and different systems and the nose dive that was the story and lore....on top of a 55+ hour work week and social life. I just couldnt do it anymore.

I don't understand why people bother to put first sentence like SL was so special among previous expacs, yet they describe basically endgame of any patch. You no longer feel it, that's cool, but objectively SL has at max like 20-30% of grinds from BfA/Legion.

You won't have to grind in casual MMO focused on story, but you won't have same endgame raids/dungeons like in WoW either. And if you don't care about harder endgame, you didn't have to farm bajillion currencies anyway. But I understand that casual content in ESO could be more entertaining than casual content in WoW, that's definitely thing that should be main focus of 10.0. 'Hardcore'/progression side of WoW doesn't need big changes, just removal of some dead weight.

[Throren]

I don't understand why people bother to put first sentence like SL was so special among previous expacs, yet they describe basically endgame of any patch. You no longer feel it, that's cool, but objectively SL has at max like 20-30% of grinds from BfA/Legion.

Oh I know that bit isnt anything new to this expac. I guess its just sorta one of the straws that broke the camels back for me y'know? Like Im used to that stuff, but that mixed with everything else, and Ive always been a lore and story guy first so the way that was dumped on just put a bad light on everything. Nevermind all the stuff going on at Acti-blizz as a company. I guess IT was just a combination of everything that just sucked out the will to continue....if that makes sense. Idk, describing emotions and how stuff makes me feel is difficult xD

Im not the best at articulating my thoughts, I dont really know hwo to describe it, just something about Shadowlands just made me really feel apathetic towards the game, and Im not sure what specifically caused it. So I feel like its probably just everything thats been going on all compounded together.

[Dracullus]

Oh I know that bit isnt anything new to this expac. I guess its just sorta one of the straws that broke the camels back for me y'know? Like Im used to that stuff, but that mixed with everything else, and Ive always been a lore and story guy first so the way that was dumped on just put a bad light on everything. Nevermind all the stuff going on at Acti-blizz as a company. I guess IT was just a combination of everything that just sucked out the will to continue....if that makes sense. Idk, describing emotions and how stuff makes me feel is difficult xD

Im not the best at articulating my thoughts, I dont really know hwo to describe it, just something about Shadowlands just made me really feel apathetic towards the game, and Im not sure what specifically caused it. So I feel like its probably just everything thats been going on all compounded together.

Well, it's just a game after all. Break is always good for burnout, especially if current theme doesn't suit you.