Dragonflight Alpha/Beta General Discussion

[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

[ChairmanKaga]

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

It doesn't work that way in reality. Why are the fictional, hyper aggressive groups in this game expected to be?

[Alanar]

What's the point of races joining factions now? Isn't it beneficial then to remain neutral and work with everyone?

Some will likely still have an already astablished relation that will help with that. Races such as Ogres or Jinju for example.

Neutral races just suck.. with 2 main factions, its been proven already. Seeing every single race everywhere wouldnt feel good at all for that matter.

[AOL Instant Messenger]

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

Not particularly. I don't think it will be that long, but it is sensible for Blizzard to be cautious. There is no incentive for a company to sacrifice its profits—they're just rational actors who maximize their monetary gains. It's not that much of a shame that they're trying to make a profit, despite how this forum tends to go collectively wacko the moment they hear companies may want to make money.

[Nyel]

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.

The more info you give, the easier it is to spot the fake. The most believable leaks just contain very few details (except some outliers which turned out to be true).

I could make up an expansion leak in 10 minutes. I couldn’t create such an excellent logo.

[Revamp Man]

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.

You mean the themes that we spent like a dozen pages debating the meaning of

[Lady Atia]

Not particularly. I don't think it will be that long, but it is sensible for Blizzard to be cautious. There is no incentive for a company to sacrifice its profits—they're just rational actors who maximize their monetary gains. It's not that much of a shame that they're trying to make a profit, despite how this forum tends to go collectively wacko the moment they hear companies may want to make money.

I'm quite sure they will get more money from people changing their toons for cross-faction guilds than they get now from the small amount of whole guilds (!) that would change from one faction to the other.

[MabusGaming]

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.

What name? There's been nothing at all?

and if you mean empire of dragons..

[AOL Instant Messenger]

You mean the themes that we spent like a dozen pages debating the meaning of

Well, yes. That's what I'm saying. It seems odd there's so much to analyze there from the logo alone—it does seem awfully convenient that it's so excessively detailed with these little hints towards the qualities of the next expansion that it could spawn so much discussion.