Dragonflight Alpha/Beta General Discussion

[Lady Atia]

For the people going "must be Microsoft influence", keep in mind that Microsoft has 0 influence until the deal actually closes sometime next year. Until then, anything that Blizzard does is on their own, or Activision's, accord.

This. Also Ion even said that it's "part of a larger reexamining of World of Warcraft's fundamentals — a process Blizzard began back in patch 9.1.5." and that patch (aswell as 9.2 and 9.2.5) was developed way before anyone knew about the Microsoft deal as far as we know.

[Cherry123]

it's funny how everyone forgot about the dragons and remembered the old news about the cross faction

[Hitei]

?
The only things wrong are that it is not 10.0 (the leaker says his informations are old) and that they forgot people from your f-list...which is easy to miss. The rest about cross faction seems completely on spot to me.

"cross faction is in. group through group finder only. "
"Players will be able to directly invite members of the opposite faction to a party if you have a BattleTag or Real ID friendship, or if you are members of a cross-faction WoW Community."

That's not missed. He specifically said "only".

[Sondrelk]

This. Also Ion even said that it's "part of a larger reexamining of World of Warcraft's fundamentals — a process Blizzard began back in patch 9.1.5." and that patch (aswell as 9.2 and 9.2.5) was developed way before anyone knew about the Microsoft deal as far as we know.

You could stretch a bit and say that Blizzard decided to reassess how the game was doing once the Microsoft deal became a possibility.
Lower level employees would almost definitely not know, but employees like Ion might have known that a Microsoft deal was on the table for a while.

[Marlamin]

You could stretch a bit and say that Blizzard decided to reassess how the game was doing once the Microsoft deal became a possibility.
Lower level employees would almost definitely not know, but employees like Ion might have known that a Microsoft deal was on the table for a while.

This isn't as likely as you think, these things are kept to a bare minimum as large mergers like these are extremely regulated/confidential (for good reason) and this definitely isn't something Ion needed to be involved for his job (or anyone at the Blizzard studio for that matter).

[Sondrelk]

This isn't as likely as you think, these things are kept to a bare minimum as large mergers like these are extremely regulated/confidential (for good reason) and this definitely isn't something Ion needed to be involved for his job (or anyone at the Blizzard studio for that matter).

Ion was just an example of a high level employee, couldn't actually remember what his title is. Kotick might have been a better example.

[ExiHext]

"cross faction is in. group through group finder only. "
"Players will be able to directly invite members of the opposite faction to a party if you have a BattleTag or Real ID friendship, or if you are members of a cross-faction WoW Community."

That's not missed. He specifically said "only".

Yeah...no. That's just nitpicking. The leaker got it quite right. Especially that there are no crossfaction guilds and that you need to go through the groupfinder i.e. you cannot invite random people from the other faction in the open world. Who knows how it was when they gained the information? IF we assume that the leak is real..which it won't be. It's just relatively spot on for a mere speculation. That's what makes me wonder.

[Sondrelk]

Only because they know killing the communities is enough to kill full on boosting in general. At least for most people, it's gonna become a lot more or a niche thing. With boosters not having as many people to sell to theyre gonna start dwindling. It'll cannibalize itself now. Basically Blizzard banned all boosting but without the shithead boosters throwing as much of a fit as they would if they just outright did it.

Banning boosting outright is probably impossible since it would very much be throwing the baby out with the bathwater considering how integral cooperative play is to an MMO.

[T-34]

Only because they know killing the communities is enough to kill full on boosting in general. At least for most people, it's gonna become a lot more or a niche thing. With boosters not having as many people to sell to theyre gonna start dwindling. It'll cannibalize itself now. Basically Blizzard banned all boosting but without the shithead boosters throwing as much of a fit as they would if they just outright did it.

I can't imagine that the people that want to be boosted will stop wanting to be boosted.
The demand will still be there. And with demand there will always be a supply.
What will change is that the market will become less competitive and less transparent and that will probably mean higher price for the customer and higher risk of being scammed. The boosting communities were/are very strict with providing the customer what he paid for.

There has always been plenty of boosting in WoW.
People just for some strange reason think that just because some bots spam adds 24/7 then there is also more boosting.
Advertising in WoW is more or less free, so there is no reason not to advertise as much as you want.

What also makes me wonder is why people have such a big hate for the boosters, who at least are competent players,
and not the pathetic scrubs that buy boosts. Those scrubs should be the ones we should despise - or at least despise more.

[Makabreska]

What also makes me wonder is why people have such a big hate for the boosters, who at least are competent players,
and not the pathetic scrubs that buy boosts. Those scrubs should be the ones we should despise - or at least despise more.

Ye, let's hate them, because they happen to be less skilled at the game. These players are not the ones that turned /trade and LFG tool into a literal spamfest by hiring randoms that spam it all day every day. That is the main issue here. People don't give a flying fuck if someone wants to take a shortcut and get boosted by a guild, this is what always happened and will happen. But this entire industry with it adverts is what pisses people off.

[raindance]

Yeah...no. That's just nitpicking. The leaker got it quite right. Especially that there are no crossfaction guilds and that you need to go through the groupfinder i.e. you cannot invite random people from the other faction in the open world. Who knows how it was when they gained the information? IF we assume that the leak is real..which it won't be. It's just relatively spot on for a mere speculation. That's what makes me wonder.

I mean you can’t talk to random ppl of the opposite faction in the open world. How else are you going to invite the opposite faction into your party?

The “leaker” just made a (very obvious) assumption of how cross faction grouping will work. That’s all.

I’d say the fact he mentioned it as an expansion feature instantly exposes his BS

[Szera]

There's also the possibility of cross faction guilds still coming in 10.0 but implementing it would take a lot more work/time and in the meantime they could already release the non guild stuff.

[Makabreska]

There's also the possibility of cross faction guilds still coming in 10.0 but implementing it would take a lot more work/time and in the meantime they could already release the non guild stuff.

That is the general take on it.

[Lady Atia]

There's also the possibility of cross faction guilds still coming in 10.0 but implementing it would take a lot more work/time and in the meantime they could already release the non guild stuff.

Yep. I'm sure they spaghetti hard-coded guilds to be either horde or alliance and they need to figure out how to untangle them - also with 9.2.5. hall of fame will prolly be over so it won't matter anymore. I guess the easier solution would be to just make hall of fame / rankings for communities instead of guilds, but I bet the goal will be to have cross-faction* guilds with 10.0.

[maxje98]

Are we expecting some "major" news today or the yesterday cross-faction news would be the promised news?

According to Scripe, he has been told they will announce the release date tomorrow. Don't know if this is true thohttps://clips.twitch.tv/ConsiderateA...-GyveIbNW8GQ06

[Nyel]

For the people going "must be Microsoft influence", keep in mind that Microsoft has 0 influence until the deal actually closes sometime next year. Until then, anything that Blizzard does is on their own, or Activision's, accord.

It’s not necessarily next year though. They said the deal will close in the fiscal year 2023, which already starts in July 2022. But a deal of this size might take longer than just half a year, but we don’t really know what’s been going on in the background.

[Foreign Exchange Ztudent]

I guess that's it for Warcraft News. It's a shame but at least we now have the date for when we can extrapolate when 10.0 will be Revealed which would be Stream/Video on March 22th and Reveal on the 24th/31st.

I really would've preferred a video with all the news in one-go but, I guess statements is all that WoW can get these days with how bad things have gotten. Oh well, it is whatever it is.

Hopefully 10.0 Reveal is juicy with all the other stuff attached.

[Raetary]

"cross faction is in. group through group finder only. "
"Players will be able to directly invite members of the opposite faction to a party if you have a BattleTag or Real ID friendship, or if you are members of a cross-faction WoW Community."

That's not missed. He specifically said "only".

I don't think this is fair argument.

The leak is very much correct, xfaction grouping is only happening through the group finder.
You can't directly invite the opposite faction into the group, hence Blizzard specifying direct invites in the line above.

That they are exempting battle.net services from that rule, for obvious reasons, does not dispute the leak.
Complaining about the use of 'only' in the post is just nitpicking.

[The Stormbringer]

Yeah...no. That's just nitpicking. The leaker got it quite right. Especially that there are no crossfaction guilds and that you need to go through the groupfinder i.e. you cannot invite random people from the other faction in the open world. Who knows how it was when they gained the information? IF we assume that the leak is real..which it won't be. It's just relatively spot on for a mere speculation. That's what makes me wonder.

It's not nitpicking. The supposed leaker thought it would only work through group finder. ONLY group finder. That's not what's happening here. In fact, I'm pretty sure it explicitly won't work with group finder at all, and only works with pre-made groups. So, I guess you could make a pre-made of 2-4 people, and then use group finder to fill the last spots, but that's not remotely like what they said.

They wanted to make it look like they knew what they were talking about, but due to the specificity used, they just proved they knew nothing. Had they just said "cross faction is in" then you might have an argument, but they went above and beyond that, and lost all credibility because of it.

EDIT: My mistake, I confused LFD for Group Finder. Brain not work so good. Even still, they said "only group finder", whereas you can invite people via Battle.tag, RealID, or Communities, so it still shows they don't know what they're talking about.

[Ersula]

"cross faction is in. group through group finder only. "
"Players will be able to directly invite members of the opposite faction to a party if you have a BattleTag or Real ID friendship, or if you are members of a cross-faction WoW Community."

That's not missed. He specifically said "only".

No he didn't. Where did he say this? They didn't make an official statement until yesterday & it gave the specifics right away. The interview before this was a hard "maybe" on cross-faction play.