Dragonflight Alpha/Beta General Discussion

[Zankai27]

So what're we feeling about therewillbedragons leak right now?

As it stands, the general content sounds *fine*, but lack of anything new to play, particularly a class or race sounds annoying. We've already gone so long without one.

On the other hand, the only thing that seems to make it stand out is calling current implementation of cross-faction, and for a supposed play-tester they seemed to know a lot about what was planned and what probably wouldn't make it into the game (when they talked about additional off-role specs for pure DPS classes).

Honestly IF those off-role specs made it in I'd be more inclined for it, but otherwise, meh.

[Holdodlig]

So what're we feeling about therewillbedragons leak right now?

As it stands, the general content sounds *fine*, but lack of anything new to play, particularly a class or race sounds annoying. We've already gone so long without one.

On the other hand, the only thing that seems to make it stand out is calling current implementation of cross-faction, and for a supposed play-tester they seemed to know a lot about what was planned and what probably wouldn't make it into the game (when they talked about additional off-role specs for pure DPS classes).

No new race / class is fine if they focus on ways to make new relevant endgame content. The current problem with WoW is not how the current classes are played, but what's your max level routine and the simple fact that we've been doing the same things since vanilla.

Last time we had a new battleground was in 7.3.5 and it was a good thing, but since the BG scene is currently dead they should really focus on a way to boost back this side of pvp.

[Izalla]

Even though a lot of these "leaks" would suffice as solid speculation, none yet feel like a real leak. At least not imo.

I'm still vaguely nervous that the one that described the exact way cross faction is being implemented, four days before cross faction was announced, was more than just a lucky guess. I don't like the way that one sounds, it's just boring and samey...

[Holdodlig]

I'm still vaguely nervous that the one that described the exact way cross faction is being implemented, four days before cross faction was announced, was more than just a lucky guess. I don't like the way that one sounds, it's just boring and samey...

Crossfaction was a safe bet. On interview, when Ion said 10 times no to something and then start consider it, it's as if he said this was going to be a feature. In his last interview, he started saying "If Jaina and Thrall can fight together, why can't we ?". It was the red flag for crossfaction.

[Izalla]

Crossfaction was a safe bet. On interview, when Ion said 10 times no to something and then start consider it, it's as if he said this was going to be a feature. In his last interview, he started saying "If Jaina and Thrall can fight together, why can't we ?". It was the red flag for crossfaction.

Oh yeah plenty of people were guessing cross faction. This guy was just veerrryy specific about how it would be implemented, what limitations there would be, and he was exactly right.

[Teriz]

And it's hilarious to consider everything dragon-related hinting to a dragon island themed expansion when the dragons have been around almost every plotline of WoW since Vanilla. I fail to find an expansion where dragons didn't play an important role at one moment or another. You can't just take anything related to dragon and say it will hint to something in the near future.

I think you can't see the obvious problem with this clue. You can basically explain why this mechanical dragon was added to the store and to the anniversary event without tying it to a potential dragon island expansion when you simply couldn't with other teasing mounts since they were too far away from their current expansion's design :
>Mechanical dragon fits the Mechagone theme. Even if the official two lines of lore of this store mount doesn't tie it to Mechagon, the marketing around it does and perfectly explain why the mechanical part of the mount is more important than the fact it's a dragon.
>The lore behind the steamscale incinerator doesn't bring anything linking to dragon island. It's just a random "mad gnome doing gnome stuff" which again ties more with Mechagon storyline than dragon island.

The lore behind the Steamscale Incinerator is a callback to the original Dragon Soul, which was created by a Goblin inventor called Meklo. Further, like the demon being placed inside the Steamscale to power the mechanical dragon, the original name for the Dragon Soul was The Demon Soul. So, obviously the lore behind the Steamscale is related to actual dragon lore, not Mechagaon simply because it's mechanical. The lore behind the Steamscale is literally creating a dragon soul.

>The TMD model was added two patch prior to its addition to the game with various other remade models such as the vanilla ram models. Back then, I even considered this to be a hint to a world revamp.
>As you said, the old mechanical dragon model was only used for a trinket proc and not for a battle pet. Bringing it as a pet for the anniversary was an easy choice for Blizzard and a good way to make this model available as a battle pet.

You're assuming again. Why would of all things a mechanical dragon be a good idea for an anniversary pet? Further, if the goal was to commemorate a trinket proc (lol) why would you give it a high res skin that resembles the Steamscale Incinerator mount and not the trinkets you're supposedly commemorating? Further, if your goal was to commemorate vanilla trinkets, why would you bring this back as a pet instead of a trinket? Your explanation here simply doesn't make sense.

And let's go a step further; The lore behind the TMD, found in the Caverns of time near Chromie is this;

Dragons come in all types of temporal classification -- timeless, time-lost, and even infinite.

Nothing about trinkets or anniversaries or callbacks to Vanilla, again we're dealing with lore that is all about dragons.

Again, the mechanical aspect of the dragon is enough to make this mount not be a clue worth considering as it was released when a mechanical themed zone was actual content. We don't know much about the dragon island yet, but I doubt Blizzard will add a gnome themed or a mechanic themed zone here considering Mechagon and half the Shadowlands have this mech vibe.

There's one point where I totally agree with you tho. It's the simple fact that Blizzard could have done any mechanical animal for the store. Yet, they chose a dragon. But it's something explained by the recent store bundle : The store already have a lot of dragon related content and it's something that sells well.

The Steamscale was released long before the Dragon Bundle, and the TMD wasn't even part of said bundle, nor was it a part of the store. Also, the idea that we should be dismissing the Steamscale simply because we went through Mechagon is a rather poor argument, especially since the mount was not even in Mechagon. We encountered Void-based dragons at the end of BFA because we were dealing with N'Zoth, and we got a Void-based dragon mount for our trouble. Should we completely dismiss the Voidwings and offspring of Venoxia as well, or does this just apply to mechanicals?

Also, I find it rather odd that you're acting like there's one mechanical dragon here, there's two. So let me reiterate; Blizzard released two mechanical dragons during the height of hint drops for 10.0, both items linking heavily to dragon lore and history, while also being mechanical in nature. What does that mean? I have absolutely no idea, but it would be absolutely crazy to completely dismiss these two items simply because we can't figure out how they could fit in a possible expansion we know little about beyond a general theme. What we do know is that they're both dragons, and the next expansion is supposedly about dragons.

[Revamp Man]

I’m still focused on the scarlet crusade rising again
Regardless of what 10.0 is this storyline seems like something coming soon because of the way they describe their plan which requires Anduin to be absent and turalyon to find a reason to keep the throne. They have also had talia and Calia *cough* mother and daughter *cough* in the story unnecessarily which only serves to help the blind connect the dots.

Now I believe that the heir the scarlets have is a black dragon or at least their leader is because they like to meddle with humans and this is the biggest way to do so plus it gets to mess with Wrathion by toying with his favorite mortals.

Add in the bottom of the EoD logo which looks kinda like deathwing’s jaw if you wanna be super tinfoil and you have an antagonist

[Slowpoke is a Gamer]

You dont stop do you?

Hey Ren'dorei are great. They deserve to finally get the story payoff we expected in early BFA.

[Tyrien]

Even though a lot of these "leaks" would suffice as solid speculation, none yet feel like a real leak. At least not imo.

Ofcourse none of them are real. Anyone who has paid attention to how Blizzard operate over the past few years would know the only true leaks came in the days leading up until the reveal.

And this has mainly been because of the live events each time like Blizzcon and struggling to keep things under wraps.

The 10.0 reveal is most likely going to be a virtual event, which we haven’t had for an expansion reveal before, so I fully expect there to be no actual leaks at all until then, and if there is a leak, it will be some image uploaded to their website or something along those lines. This is how Shadowlands was leaked, and even then it was the day before announcement and the images gave no context at all (pic of Bolvar and artwork of Bastion) and seemed all too random to make anything of it. It certainly won’t be a detailed explanation like some of these leaks are. The days where we get leaks like those are over imo.

The main thing though is that in the past few expansions, the ‘leakers’ on the whole manage to get the themes correct. After Legion, there were lots of South Island/Old God type leaks. After BFA, lots of Shadowlands and afterlife type leaks and now after Shadowlands, lots of dragon and world revamp type leaks.

So if anything, although these aren’t actual leaks, the fan base are pretty good at figuring out the general direction of the story going forwards. So I wouldn’t be surprised to see some of these ‘leaks’ being along the right path but I do not believe any of them are real.

[THC BANDIT]

It's always the same shit every damn time. The same people argue how X literally cannot be under any circumstances be Y because of Z reason. I see it in all the arguments here. I see some of the same exact people from pre-BFA's announcement that argued against the yet-to-be-revealed Allied Races because "VOID elVES MAkE nO sENSE" and they'd just "come out of nowhere".

if Empire of Dragons is legit, it could mean anything. It could be for something they haven't shown us yet. It could be for whatever the hell they want. ANY lore-based reasonings why things can't happen from our perspective are basically meaningless. Especially if they're from the lens of pre-announcement.

Stop overanalyzing a logo. The same people did it pre-Shadowlands too, some arguing "tHeY CaN'T MAKe A SHaDowlanDs ExPANsIoN It'd jUst be GREY eVERyWhERE" like they have a single creative bone in their bodies.

The devs make whatever they feel like, and like always, they'll justify it however they want. Don't overanalyze the Void or lack thereof, we don't have the full picture, if it's even real, so any criticism from that front is pretty useless.

It's because these people are ill.

[Dracullus]

Of course you can't dismiss leak by how unlikely it sounds, in every expac Blizzard takes something from lore and expand it. At some point Outland were desert wastelands, Northend frozen wastelands, Broken Isles at best something like Azsuna (more like Broken Shore), SL grey wastelands, Pandaria literal joke. If 10.0 is dragon related, they can do literally whatever with dragon lore.

But we can dismiss leaks by how detailed they are relatively far from annoucement. When you see leak, just imagine how easy it would be from Blizzard to track source and how fucked would be that person. If someone is stupid enough to do precise leak, he use thread like this when it moves 50 pages a day, not make separate thread to put him on spotlight.

In general expac usually leaks when they prepare Blizzcon, with all that chaos and 3rd party involved, that's why it's double hard on online event - but as 9.1 show us, not impossible, someone always can fuck up. Sadly in this case leak would be so obvious it wouldn't be fun anymore.

[Makorus]

I'm still vaguely nervous that the one that described the exact way cross faction is being implemented, four days before cross faction was announced, was more than just a lucky guess. I don't like the way that one sounds, it's just boring and samey...

That's the reason why that one is, at the moment, the only one I actually take seriously.

A fancy logo doesn't mean anything to me. There's been plenty of fancy logos before.

The fact that they described the introduction of crossfaction and the limitations perfectly means there is some insider knowledge going on anyway.

[Polybius]

I'm still vaguely nervous that the one that described the exact way cross faction is being implemented, four days before cross faction was announced, was more than just a lucky guess. I don't like the way that one sounds, it's just boring and samey...

Yeah, it sounds very lackluster. The same way BFA felt when it was leaked.

[Makorus]

Yeah, it sounds very lackluster. The same way BFA felt when it was leaked.

BFA wasn't leaked.

[elbleuet]

BFA wasn't leaked.

I'm not sure about that. I just remember the name being leaked some days before the reveal.

[therumblings]

BFA wasn't leaked.

BFA was leaked, a lightly detailed post was posted to this very forum just before it's reveal, plus the Battle for Azeroth trademark/website link.

It was deleted but thankfully got preserved, you can see this was days before the blizzcon and BFA announcement and the post wasn't edited so it is authentic. https://www.mmo-champion.com/threads...0#post47807610

IIRC every single expansion has been leaked.

[Makorus]

BFA was leaked, a lightly detailed post was posted to this very forum just before it's reveal, plus the Battle for Azeroth trademark/website link.

It was deleted but thankfully got preserved, you can see this was days before the blizzcon and BFA announcement and the post wasn't edited so it is authentic. https://www.mmo-champion.com/threads...0#post47807610

IIRC every single expansion has been leaked.

Huh, I don't remember that one at all. Interesting.

[Shadochi]

BFA was leaked, a lightly detailed post was posted to this very forum just before it's reveal, plus the Battle for Azeroth trademark/website link.

It was deleted but thankfully got preserved, you can see this was days before the blizzcon and BFA announcement and the post wasn't edited so it is authentic. https://www.mmo-champion.com/threads...0#post47807610

IIRC every single expansion has been leaked.

I LOVE the Vol'jin is in an urn part of that leak, such random info that didn't make sense until the presentation, showing to us that this leak was from someone who saw the presentation or the transcript for it

[therumblings]

I LOVE the Vol'jin is in an urn part of that leak, such random info that didn't make sense until the presentation, showing to us that this leak was from someone who saw the presentation or the transcript for it

I kinda miss leaks like these. Now that SL proved logo leaks can be real, everyone seems twice as eager to make fake logos, but that being said it also adds some credibility to the Empire of Dragons logo. Also the fact we have no clue when the actual expansion announcement will be makes this leak season even dryer, since the actual leak could be months away from being posted since the norm is less than a week before the reveal.

[Polybius]

BFA wasn't leaked.

It was leaked. Posted a few days or hours before the announcement.