Dragonflight Alpha/Beta General Discussion

[NikolaiShade]

Huge WoW news in 30 minutes or so? According to Towelliee I've heard...

btw where are the news?

edit: I could have been a little bit sarcastic

[Jeryl59]

Ye, the same Mannoroth and Archimonde that sent orcs on a happy little rampage across Azeroth. And hey, Grom just killed Nelves demigod! If you think everyone would go "all is forgiven lol" then you don't know how people operate.

There are precedents in real world : France / Germany for example. We had 3 successive wars in the span of a century. Yet, I can go and casually stroll in Berlin without an issue. I live in a place that was almost razed by the Nazis and now Germans can come without being attacked or anything.
You really think it would be different in a fantasy world that went full "Draenor is free" love fest just after a bloody campaign?
It would be even easier after a revamp with a small timejump.

Would all players like it? Probably not. But it is time to let the factions die. Past time even.

[Sondrelk]

But, we're not talking about "everyone", we're talking about heroes and adventurers.

So it's fine that Stormwind citizens don't want to see an orc in their streets, NPCs should have factions. But players shouldn't, because they're not the norm, they're the exception. Unique individuals who save others from threats that are often caused by such prejudices, usually by working together with individuals from races that their compatriots would despise.

To clarify, I'd keep certain reputations and zones race-specific, but completely remove the link between playable races and "playable factions", to essentially destroy the latter. Orcs are not welcome in Teldrassil, but Tauren are (or, would be, if the tree hadn't burned, but you get my point).

Would also be a good opportunity for some neat NPC interractions.
Maybe the Teldrassil refugees yell or emote at you when you run past them if you play a Horde character, or Silver moon guards grumbling if you run past as a Night Elf.

[ChairmanKaga]

It really truly jumped the shark in ICC. Literally storming the Lich Kings keep but hey lets throw in faction nonsense because it totally makes sense for all of these high ranking strategists to waste resources on a petty nonsensical fight while actively inside of ICC.

I find it bizarre players expect lore unity amongst massively different species when humans don't even operate this way.

[Radioactive]

Would all players like it? Probably not. But it is time to let the factions die. Past time even.

Yup.
Letting the factions die doesn't mean ending any potential future conflict or epic war. Au contraire, it will only allow us to experience new tensions, new stories.

In the long run, it could also bring new features for PvP, like X vs Y vs Z for new BGs instead of Alliance vs Horde.
That's a simple example, but that will bring new gameplay opportunities, new story opportunities.

[Nyel]

Is there a possibility that the next expansion was already leaked?

Did you see the Empire of Dragons logo?

I‘m just bringing this up until it becomes reality.

[therumblings]

I'm assuming the Empire of Dragons logo is fake since the person who posted it never gave a source unlike the Shadowlands logo leak which IIRC was from an email?

[AOL Instant Messenger]

we've gotten a lot of good news this week, hope they can keep it going.

"We've decided to charge all repair bills to your real-life credit card so you don't have to farm for gold anymore!"

Inb4

[Slowpoke is a Gamer]

btw where are the news?

edit: I could have been a little bit sarcastic

Best I can guess is he meant the interview dropping confirming that Blizz is still looking at cross-faction guilds.

[AOL Instant Messenger]

Also this part:


the phrasing is interesting to me. They're not opposed to being like "We learned our lesson and totally won't do it again" in the past but I don't think they've ever been upfront about it being purely out of stubbornness and a refusal to change. I think 10.0 might be about to do some massive changes. We'll see how it pans out but there's a lot more meat to all of this than their usual corpo speak.

They're definitely being more upfront and earnest than they usually are.

[huth]

I find it bizarre players expect lore unity amongst massively different species when humans don't even operate this way.

You don't have to be unified to realise that you should probably refrain from actively fighting one another.

Yup.
Letting the factions die doesn't mean ending any potential future conflict or epic war. Au contraire, it will only allow us to experience new tensions, new stories.

In the long run, it could also bring new features for PvP, like X vs Y vs Z for new BGs instead of Alliance vs Horde.
That's a simple example, but that will bring new gameplay opportunities, new story opportunities.

You don't even need to let the factions die. Just the godawful faction war stories. Let the fights be between diplomats and secret agents, or proxy wars between semi-independent subfactions... which is the story of most BGs anyway.

[Nyel]

I'm assuming the Empire of Dragons logo is fake since the person who posted it never gave a source unlike the Shadowlands logo leak which IIRC was from an email?

Why do you need a source? Maybe he’s the source. No idea. Additionally, we’re still missing a proper written leak for Empire of Dragons. 99/100 leaks are just poorly written stuff. Very few have actual imagery, let alone a high quality logo.

[huth]

Best I can guess is he meant the interview dropping confirming that Blizz is still looking at cross-faction guilds.

Nah, that interview dropped yesterday already, pretty quickly after the announcement.

[AOL Instant Messenger]

I dunno why but the "we want to focus on a wider range of perspectives on the conflict" made me happy. It tickled that part of my brain that remembers pre-Garrosh times, when yes there were orcs and night elves fighting openly over trees, but different orcs and different night elves came together to fight the Silithid. The faction divide done right, not these all out wars and evil warchiefs.

I'd figure that's how it's going to go from hereon out, especially since we've still got Turalyon wanting to "reclaim lost lebensraum territories" but otherwise there is not much reason for all-out war.

[therumblings]

Why do you need a source? Maybe he’s the source.

IIRC he said he got it from a discord and ignored all other questions. Seems sus to me. If it ends up being real I'll be happy though, the name is in that grey area of "might be real" and "might be fake", kinda like "Battle for Azeroth" when someone found the website url.

[The Stormbringer]

Ion's interview about cross faction on the front page. And as predicted:

Ion says the team is open to expanding the feature in the future to include things like cross-faction guilds. They want to start conservatively and grow it from there.

Also:

It is unlikely they will every do an 'all-consuming faction conflict expansion again," but stick to wider ranges of perspectives on the divide through characters, such as the survivors or Teldrassil, Genn Greymane, and the Forsaken.

Lore fanatics malding af right now.

I'm a lore buff and I think it's a great change. Why, after all this time and so many awful wars, would the Horde and Alliance decide to go all-out against each other again? I think it'll be more akin to the 'pseudo Cold War' from WoW Vanilla, with conflicts taking place in areas like BGs, specific zones, or questlines.

The days of the Alliance and Horde throwing away lives for nothing aren't at an end, but they're definitely diminished.

[AOL Instant Messenger]

Why do you need a source? Maybe he’s the source. No idea. Additionally, we’re still missing a proper written leak for Empire of Dragons. 99/100 leaks are just poorly written stuff. Very few have actual imagery, let alone a high quality logo.

It's not a particularly different source, honestly—one is "I got it in an email" and this one is "I got it in a private Discord server". Both are rather unverifiable.

- - - Updated - - -

IIRC he said he got it from a discord and ignored all other questions. Seems sus to me. If it ends up being real I'll be happy though, the name is in that grey area of "might be real" and "might be fake", kinda like "Battle for Azeroth" when someone found the website url.

To be fair, the only thing we have for it is a name and a logo. I'm not particularly more hyped about it than any other isolated logo—especially provided the only information that is explicit is "here there be dragons". The Light and Void details are interesting, but other than what can be gleaned from the logo, it's not leaning particularly away from anything else detail-wise.

The change in the logo's style mixed with the recent news does indicate Blizzard is willing to move away from tradition, though, which is interesting and probably good.

[therumblings]

I think the fact we know nothing other than the name is what makes me more hyped for it as opposed to the regular wall of text leaks that have some obvious fake bs in it.

[AOL Instant Messenger]

I think the fact we know nothing other than the name is what makes me more hyped for it as opposed to the regular wall of text leaks that have some obvious fake bs in it.

Well, obviously. I was just saying there's not much to be hyped about save for the dragons and the implicit themes in the logo, which are a little suspect—it does seem odd that the logo would be so detailed in regards to potential themes, as if it were meant to be analyzed.

[Revamp Man]

Is it awful that I’m 100% convinced they will wait a couple years before cross faction guilds to see if the race change revenue makes up for the faction swap of guilds