Dragonflight Alpha/Beta General Discussion

[Teriz]

The Shadowlands aren't hell. Bastion is quite heaven-like. Both things are death.



I think the border is sci-fi-y, but that's subjective. But the background is straight up space.

Background is void, and I agree that the border looks sci fi/metallic.

We have recent examples of dragons for both themes;

[Raetary]

???
The Shadowlands logo is silver and white. That’s something you’d relate to heaven, not hell / death.
.

Heaven IS death.

And idk what damn world you live in, but in this reality death is very much predominantly protrayed in a black and white color scheme in almost all forms of media.
From the 'Light at the end of the tunnel' to the grim reaper and his bones and visible skull.

Hell, the Horsemen of Death is white.

The SL logo's color scheme makes perfect sense thematically, and literally as it plays into the name.

[Nyel]

Heaven IS death.

And idk what damn world you live in, but in this reality death is very much predominantly protrayed in a black and white color scheme in almost all forms of media.
From the 'Light at the end of the tunnel' to the grim reaper and his bones and visible skull.

Hell, the Horsemen of Death is white.

The SL logo's color scheme makes perfect sense thematically, and literally as it plays into the name.

Sorry, just no. We had no idea what the Shadowlands are. We had no idea that it’s a happy place too. The Shadowlands aren’t heaven either. It’s a grey area and everything we know now about the Shadowlands can’t be projected onto the logo right before it was revealed.

Which is exactly the point I try to make. The Shadowlands logo before the official reveal made no sense at all. What you attribute to the logo now was nothing we knew before the expansion announcement. (This obviously is exaggerated)

That’s why people ruling out the theme of the logo just yet when we know nothing about the expansion simply doesn’t work.

[Archmage Xaxxas]

The Shadowlands logo doesn’t resemble anything in the Shadowlands. It’s showing the broken veil above Icecrown.

And space? It resembles the sky with stars. I don’t get any space vibes from that, but I’ll give you that. Makes not more or less sense than the Shadowlands logo.

Nyel, big fan of your fake leak passion as you know, but careful not to disparage your judgment trying to make a point not worth making.

Shadowlanda logo has Domination metals trapping it which we associate with ICC and death.
the logo says "Shadowlands" which we associate with death.

The colors are probably picked from the reveal cinematic. That's how I was able to believe it wasn't fake once we saw the Bolvar pic. Same sunset/sunrise/Maw orange color against the clouds and shattered sky.
That, and the Arbiter decorations, were about the only things that we couldn't assume were Death related.

[Soulwind]

Background is void, and I agree that the border looks sci fi.

We have recent examples of dragons for both themes;

I'm not saying those things don't exist in WoW, because pretty much everything does at this point.

I'm saying people don't associate dragons with space (void, starry sky, whatever...) or sci-fi, and even if the expansion would focus on Void Dragons specifically, they wouldn't mix those themes in the logo they're branding their product with.

[Nebron]

My main gripes with the Empire of Dragons logo (aside from it being kind of ugly, but the Shadowlands one isn't much better) are:

- The missmatch of themes: Blizzard is usually a lot clearer with their products. They have to sell this expansion to people who have never heard of WoW. Mixing darkness (Void), sci-fi (Naaru) and a classic fantasy trope (Dragons) doesn't seem like a good marketing decision.

- The name: What is the Empire of Dragons. People are talking about Wrathion gathering an army, or a hidden group of Void Dragons. Neither of those things are an empire. If there was such thing as an Empire of Dragons, we would have heard of it from Alexstrasza, Ysera or Kalecgos, no? And if whatever society of dragons is in the expansion isn't quite an empire, they probably wouldn't call it that, and it definitely wouldn't be the name of the expansion.

So either the logo is fake, or both the theme and story of the expansion are a stretch from the get go. Admitedly, Warlords of Draenor was quite the stretch, but at least it had a consistent theme.

1. As you have already pointed it out: there was no such concept like 'Warlords of Draenor' before WoD actually happened.
2. Battle for Azeroth was pretty lame, I remember very clearly the trademark leak, that neither I, nor anyone else really could believe that such a bad name could be an expansion title - it meant literally nothing at the time... and to be honest, it means nothing today. Pretty vague, didn't even grasp the concept of that expansion, whatever it was.
3. Shadowlands - how many times this name has been dropped in the WoW lore before the launch? It's a genuine question. Not so many, I believe. Shadowlands was rather a concept of for theories rather than well-established place in lore.
4. Empire of Dragons? Never heard of it, it's absolutely made up. But on the other hand - Dragon Isles: 'it is only in Battle for Azeroth that the first canonical mention of the Dragon Isles was made' - (source: https://wowpedia.fandom.com/wiki/Dragon_Isles). Thus, I wouldn't pay attention whether any Empire of Dragons exists as of today. It may come to existance with a launch

I really appreciate the quality of Empire od Dragons logo, but I too believe that it's a bit too dark and has little to nothing in common with dragons apart from the title. I'd expect at least the borders to somehow indicate the dragon theme.
When you look at Shadowlands logo, the colors kinda make sense - white and black, life and death. Very basic concept. And to be honest, I do like it's uniqueness, but that's just personal artistic preference. And EoD logo is 100% void, which would rather point to void-themed expansion.

If this logo is legit, I'd expect the lore to start with Dragon Isles / Dragon Aspects / dragons progenitors - to eventually revolve around the Old Gods/ Void Lords - a bit meh for me I'd much prefer to go 100% dragons.

[Gloriandus]

[Aeluron Lightsong]

mmm I don't think so.

[Nyel]

Nyel, big fan of your fake leak passion as you know, but careful not to disparage your judgment trying to make a point not worth making.

Shadowlanda logo has Domination metals trapping it which we associate with ICC and death.
the logo says "Shadowlands" which we associate with death.

The colors are probably picked from the reveal cinematic. That's how I was able to believe it wasn't fake once we saw the Bolvar pic. Same sunset/sunrise/Maw orange color against the clouds and shattered sky.
That, and the Arbiter decorations, were about the only things that we couldn't assume were Death related.

Again, I am not doubting the arguments that are made now for the Shadowlands logo. With our recent knowledge all of it makes sense. But please rewind back to October 2019 when the Shadowlands logo was leaked. We pretty much debunked it at first. Nobody was talking about domination magic back then, because nobody could make that statement during that time - the domination magic was hardly known, if at all.

We associate Shadowlands with death, yes. Which was the only thing we knew about that place back then. That it’s a plane of the dead. So, just with that knowledge, how does a white and silver logo fit that theme? When I think about Death I think about dark colors, black and grey. Not silver and white.

You just have to bring your mind back to a state before anything about Shadowlands was known. And then ask yourself if you think that the logo fits something called Shadowlands.

I‘m not against anyone denouncing Empire of Dragons as fake. I‘m denouncing these arguments (like the logo has too many themes going on or that there is no clear reference to dragons) that some use, because they are poor in retrospect. Right now the logo might make not much sense, but it’s in no way different to the Shadowlands logo right before it was announced.

- - - Updated - - -

I like this a lot. I don’t believe it though. Wouldn’t Dragonflights be capitalized in the same way as Scourge and Void?

[Revamp Man]

Just take a closer look at the letter T in warcraft. Or at the top globe-y thing not being nicely round. Some side adornments are just copy pasted naaru parts. Im also pretty sure someone explained it in detail with pictures and red circles a long while ago.

If you look at the pieces on the side you will see that it does not match up with the ones that people compare them to

They are similar but far far far from identical

[Kiivar86]

"a desperate world burdened by unceasing strife and paranoia"

So business as usual then? I mean if you can't call the last decade or so Azeroth's been through (or hell, the last half century) unceasing strife, what would count?

[Revamp Man]

My main gripes with the Empire of Dragons logo (aside from it being kind of ugly, but the Shadowlands one isn't much better) are:

- The missmatch of themes: Blizzard is usually a lot clearer with their products. They have to sell this expansion to people who have never heard of WoW. Mixing darkness (Void), sci-fi (Naaru) and a classic fantasy trope (Dragons) doesn't seem like a good marketing decision.

- The name: What is the Empire of Dragons. People are talking about Wrathion gathering an army, or a hidden group of Void Dragons. Neither of those things are an empire. If there was such thing as an Empire of Dragons, we would have heard of it from Alexstrasza, Ysera or Kalecgos, no? And if whatever society of dragons is in the expansion isn't quite an empire, they probably wouldn't call it that, and it definitely wouldn't be the name of the expansion.

So either the logo is fake, or both the theme and story of the expansion are a stretch from the get go. Admitedly, Warlords of Draenor was quite the stretch, but at least it had a consistent theme.

Well there are a few possibilities

1. Wrathion unites the flights into an army

2. The void flight revives the black empire

3. The dragon isles is an empire and wrathion is searching for it to empower new aspects while the void flight wants to revive the dead old god at their center (speculation that there was an old god that the others United to kill and seal away, based off story hints and the borders in chronicles that has an unnamed old god in them along with the known ones

[Raetary]

Blizzard is not gonna use a shoddily cut out, low-res image of a logo concept for their media.

[ExiHext]

Blizzard is not gonna use a shoddily cut out, low-res image of a logo concept for their media.

Yeah, at least make the effort and create a logo without the backlit title which looks like captured mid animation.

[Nyel]

Well there are a few possibilities

1. Wrathion unites the flights into an army

2. The void flight revives the black empire

3. The dragon isles is an empire and wrathion is searching for it to empower new aspects while the void flight wants to revive the dead old god at their center (speculation that there was an old god that the others United to kill and seal away, based off story hints and the borders in chronicles that has an unnamed old god in them along with the known ones

3 sounds a lot like the background of the Eternal Ones though (I mean they basically copied the Titans and called them First Ones, so it’s a possibility, but still).

[Teriz]

Give me a new class, and I'm down.

[username993720]

Mixing darkness (Void), sci-fi (Naaru) and a classic fantasy trope (Dragons) doesn't seem like a good marketing decision.

and I agree that the border looks sci fi/metallic.

What's sci-fi about the border?

[Soulwind]

1. Wrathion unites the flights into an army

Not really an empire.

2. The void flight revives the black empire

Not really an empire of dragons.

3. The dragon isles is an empire and wrathion is searching for it to empower new aspects while the void flight wants to revive the dead old god at their center (speculation that there was an old god that the others United to kill and seal away, based off story hints and the borders in chronicles that has an unnamed old god in them along with the known ones

Maybe, but then we should have known something about it. Even with it being "on other side of Azeroth" or "a secret flying continent", we've interacted extensively with the most powerful dragons, and protected the whole world with them. Either the Aspects don't know about them, which is silly, or they've kept it a secret from people they trusted their lives and planet with.

It's not impossible that Blizzard would stretch the lore like that, and it certainly wouldn't be the first time, but it'd be weird to have the brand new massive retcon as the expansion subtitle.

[Kiivar86]

Empire does not have to mean an actual physical empire, mind.

Older definitions of the word include "(Absolute) control, dominion, sway" (Wiktionary), "absolute control over a person or group" (archaic definition, from Googling "define:empire"), "imperial sovereignty, rule, or dominion" (Merriam-Webster), and "supreme power in governing; imperial power; sovereignty" (Dictionary).

Edit: And Wrathion titles himself the Black Prince, after all...

[Catastrophy349]

Not really an empire.



Not really an empire of dragons.



Maybe, but then we should have known something about it. Even with it being "on other side of Azeroth" or "a secret flying continent", we've interacted extensively with the most powerful dragons, and protected the whole world with them. Either the Aspects don't know about them, which is silly, or they've kept it a secret from people they trusted their lives and planet with.

It's not impossible that Blizzard would stretch the lore like that, and it certainly wouldn't be the first time, but it'd be weird to have the brand new massive retcon as the expansion subtitle.

I agree; however, as you already said, I wouldn’t be surprised if Blizzard decided to explain the “Empire of Dragons” as an empire on the Dragon Isles that either: A). Has long been forgotten OR B). Created in the last “whatever how many years” to explain why none of the Dragon Aspects know about it.

Tldr; Don’t push off the “Empire of Dragons” name because of the Empire in the name. This is Blizzard. They can make up whatever they want and explain it however they want.