Dragonflight Alpha/Beta General Discussion

[Zankai27]

Honestly there's lots of things I did enjoy this expansion

-Bwonsamdi is a chad 110% of the time
-Denathrius is the best villain we got in it, and he actually feels like an organic extension of the Nathrezim.
-Brokers are awesome and I hope we see more of them
-First Ones aesthetic is fucking rad, and I honestly like a lot of their concepts. Kind of want to design a First Ones-themed class now...

Still, very much hoping April 19th has something we can actually sink our teeth into. Ready to go home for a while.

[Slowpoke is a Gamer]

Honestly there's lots of things I did enjoy this expansion

-Bwonsamdi is a chad 110% of the time
-Denathrius is the best villain we got in it, and he actually feels like an organic extension of the Nathrezim.
-Brokers are awesome and I hope we see more of them
-First Ones aesthetic is fucking rad, and I honestly like a lot of their concepts. Kind of want to design a First Ones-themed class now...

Still, very much hoping April 19th has something we can actually sink our teeth into. Ready to go home for a while.

It sucks when the Jailer's own death made Denathrius seem like a cooler villain then him. That "imagine what we could have accomplished together" could have screamed The Real Mastermind.

[Dragonborn]

Eh, couldn't be worse than the Sanctum of Domination cinematic. Definitely a better end cinematic than BfA and WoD. Not that it makes it any better, of course.

Would be really great if the threat he's talking about just turns out to be the other cosmic forces. His whole thing is practically the same as Sargeras, but through domination rather than destruction. Same for the Titans trying to order everything, as well as the Light and Void with their usual stuff. Not sure about Life, but maybe the players' perspective has been through Life all along idk. Basically it starts with someone being threatened by the other forces, leading them to do their thing(Burning Crusade, Domination, Ordering, etc.) and the other forces reacting to it in a similarly extreme way, leading to the cycle that we're in. That would make it so that instead of Zovaal being behind everything, it's actually all of these gods unwittingly playing each other with us being caught in the middle of it.

All of which reminds me of a whisper from Everliving Statuette that says: Hope. Betrayal. Sacrifice. Faces change. The tale does not.

[Triceron]

I thought the enemy pulling the strings was already known.


Danuser, no?

[Archmage Xaxxas]

I thought the enemy pulling the strings was already known.
Danuser, no?

this probably tracks better now that we're in the post-raid-cinematic era.

[Zankai27]

It sucks when the Jailer's own death made Denathrius seem like a cooler villain then him. That "imagine what we could have accomplished together" could have screamed The Real Mastermind.

Denathrius literally being the best character in Zovaal's own cinematic without even trying.

[username993720]

Sorry edited my last post. Anyway that applies to this as well.

The charm is kinda gone, just like the black empire for example.. we have been there and going there a second time is just not as exciting.

Like I said I could see the dream play a pivitol role with the green dragons with the whole dragon isle thing, but going there again, but with new zones out of the blue just wouldn't interest me much. Sure anything is possible, but for me the emerald dream as we know it and how we all speculated for years. All the things linked to it, were solved or fixed for the most part. The thing is.. it could have the most bizarre ideas and awesome zone disign and really cool new characters, but the problem is it would still all feel like they were made up yesterday. It was something I had and many others as critique for Sl. Even some familiar faces didn't really help.

Do I see us entering again? sure! A full blown expansion entirely on the emerald dream, when the story there is kinda over, we have been there before and would need something completely new(your concept as example) idk man, not entirely sure on that one.

Haven't you notices that they are repeating expansions lately? Draenor was extremely similar to Outland. We had a Burning Legion expansion in TBC. Faction war was done in MoP. Old Gods as well. Death was dealt with in Wrath. So, the Emerald Dream is the unnecessary one? Give me a break....

As for originality, there are a lot of inspirations already in lore that do not, necessarily, require new stuff to be made up. So, it would still be kept familiar:
https://wowpedia.fandom.com/wiki/Eme...am#Inspiration

That doesn't really answer the question. Will those still work with the veil re-closed? Though i imagine the Nekrolords and Kyrians could get us out of the Shadowlands, but will they bring us to the right point in space-time?

Remember the Mag'har?
We recruited them from the alternate reality after the Dark Portal was destroyed and closed.

It sucks when the Jailer's own death made Denathrius seem like a cooler villain then him. That "imagine what we could have accomplished together" could have screamed The Real Mastermind.

The voice actor was hired to keep going after the initial launch just because of his awesome voice.

[AOL Instant Messenger]

The voice actor was hired to keep going after the initial launch just because of his awesome voice.

I, personally, can't wait to see a proper Cosmic War feature him front and center leading his own agenda instead of being shackled to the Bald Man. He is a much more fun and interesting representative of Death than Zovaal, and I'd rather see him leading it.

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It sucks when the Jailer's own death made Denathrius seem like a cooler villain then him. That "imagine what we could have accomplished together" could have screamed The Real Mastermind.

More personality for a main villain would be excellent—thus far, the most personality we've gotten out of an actual main antagonist is Garrosh.

[Vakir]

More personality for a main villain would be excellent—thus far, the most personality we've gotten out of an actual main antagonist is Garrosh.

Does Gul'dan count for WoD? That's about it, though.

[Teriz]

I wonder if this conflict will get resolved or amplified next expansion. The last message about it happened in 8.2. I'm interested in what Blizzard is cooking up with that, since it's been running since WoD.

[ATZenith]

We are about to 100% get an increase to on Void leaks now that the tease kinda sounds like Void Lords. Crazy how that works

[Pheraz]

Eh, couldn't be worse than the Sanctum of Domination cinematic. Definitely a better end cinematic than BfA and WoD. Not that it makes it any better, of course.

Would be really great if the threat he's talking about just turns out to be the other cosmic forces. His whole thing is practically the same as Sargeras, but through domination rather than destruction. Same for the Titans trying to order everything, as well as the Light and Void with their usual stuff. Not sure about Life, but maybe the players' perspective has been through Life all along idk. Basically it starts with someone being threatened by the other forces, leading them to do their thing(Burning Crusade, Domination, Ordering, etc.) and the other forces reacting to it in a similarly extreme way, leading to the cycle that we're in. That would make it so that instead of Zovaal being behind everything, it's actually all of these gods unwittingly playing each other with us being caught in the middle of it.

All of which reminds me of a whisper from Everliving Statuette that says: Hope. Betrayal. Sacrifice. Faces change. The tale does not.

Yes, I think at this point they could better go with some alien super evil race popping out of a portal and claiming the planet to farm resources. Or a devourer invasion. Or even the drusk

[Zankai27]

Yes, I think at this point they could better go with some alien super evil race popping out of a portal and claiming the planet to farm resources. Or a devourer invasion. Or even the drusk

I need more Drust in general. One of my favorite concepts they've introduced, and I'm sad to hear we might've been robbed of a Drust raid. Definitely room to grow there.

[Nyel]

My guess would be that they wanted to do the whole Shadowlands thing, but didn't just want to set it on Azeroth or generally have lower stakes. They wanted full-on cosmic warfare on the scale of Argus. And since making a brand new villain from scratch is almost impossible if you want it to be important they just went for the "puppet master" archetype.

I don’t know. I really think this is not how Shadowlands was supposed to be. Everything in 9.0 makes somehow sense, even if it’s just little (in the case of the Jailer), but after that it went downhill and the story became subsequently worse with each patch.

I refuse to believe that Blizzard‘s writing team is this bad, because the entire story was just terrible. Something messed up (not really talking about COVID or the scandal) their expansion plans and they had to reduce everything to 0 to just wrap it up and get it done. If this was planned all along, time to say goodbye I guess.

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Damn, I hope you're wrong.

"No Blizzard! You're not having another mysterious threat to the universe itself! You haven't even finished your first yet!"

If there are Void Lords, there must be Void Overlords, too. Looking forward to them!

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At this rate, it seems that:
- Sargeras is in prison.
- Azshara is missing in action.
- Nzoth and the other old god are destroyed?
- I guess that Zovaal can be turned on again hahah

I think we are going to ally with all the villains in the future to face the true enemy.

Which would basically render all previous expansions useless. Thanks but no, Shadowlands did enough damage to the lore.

[Lahis]

We are about to 100% get an increase to on Void leaks now that the tease kinda sounds like Void Lords. Crazy how that works

Void Lords attack from the Dragon Isles!
Even fits the pre-vanilla concept art with the Old God temple!

[Shinrael]

We are about to 100% get an increase to on Void leaks now that the tease kinda sounds like Void Lords. Crazy how that works

I'm 100% convinced that the bigger threat Zovaal was talking about is The Crooked Serpent/whatever gave birth to the Devourers and pale orcs on Draenor (a 7th force beyond Void and co). Bellular recently uploaded a speculation video about that and when I watched the cinematic I was like "omg so spot on".

[THC BANDIT]

I'm pretty sure we are.

Dragon Isles or Undermine would be my guess. Maybe both of them at the same time.

Its everyones guess and you wont get tinker.

[AOL Instant Messenger]

I'm 100% convinced that the bigger threat Zovaal was talking about is The Crooked Serpent/whatever gave birth to the Devourers and pale orcs on Draenor (a 7th force beyond Void and co). Bellular recently uploaded a speculation video about that and when I watched the cinematic I was like "omg so spot on".

For the Pale, that was the Void.

[Jokubas]

I don’t know. I really think this is not how Shadowlands was supposed to be. Everything in 9.0 makes somehow sense, even if it’s just little (in the case of the Jailer), but after that it went downhill and the story became subsequently worse with each patch.

It's really hard to tell. I mean, I'm pretty sure we know the expansion didn't turn out the way they intended. We seemed to have lost the non-plot patch (to clarify, I mean how most expansions tend to have a patch that does a little detour from the main plot, like Ulduar setting aside the Scourge to deal with Yogg-Saron, or the Thunder King setting aside the war and the sha to deal with Lei Shen), but even the initial content is extremely inconsistent.

Right off the bat the story can't seem to make up its mind if the Jailer's real name has been lost to time or is common knowledge. The announcement trailer (until the end) and launch cinematic also showed the Jailer chained up like the Runecarver, only for him to be walking around freely in the expansion with no one ever questioning this. What I'm trying to say is that, from the beginning it felt like the expansion was working from three different drafts of the plot simultaneously.

Of course, that isn't to say any individual writer is that bad. Personally, I keep imagining someone on the team who had or knew of a really good plan for the expansion only to see it cut up like this and massacred by these overlapping drafts, and I feel really, really sorry for them. Like I've said before, I believe that this story really was built on leftover ideas from the past. An Ask CDev answer from 2011 said that Arthas and Ner'zhul were both holding back for some reason, but refused to elaborate as to why. Unfortunately, Zovaal using the Forge of Souls is one of the only times it's actually shown that he was planting seeds in past plots (and I legitimately wonder if the soul grinders were meant for something like this all along, because they were conspicuously unexplained despite being the set pieces of the dungeon), but I can imagine other ideas existed and it's super frustrating to anyone on the team who knew that and it didn't make it into the game.

However, reworking the story on the fly is a consistent problem for Blizzard. This isn't the first time there's an interesting setup, and sometimes even a dramatic payoff, but the problem is that by the time we get from the former to the latter, retcons have ensured that they don't actually line up anymore and the emotional investment is just gone.

I'm even more fascinated by that Jailer concept art now more than ever. That concept art makes way more sense with Zovaal's now-complete character arc. He was an Arbiter who was willing to sacrifice anything (even everyone else >_>) to save everything. He started out as a good guy and seemed to have continued to see himself that way. The more classical godly artwork for him actually makes perfect sense. I'm starting to wonder if the only reason he didn't end up looking like that is because the writers were overruled by suits who demanded that they capitalize on the Lich King's popularity by making Zovaal look like a cheap knock-off, despite it making absolutely no sense for his history or character.

Part of me really wants to see a real, not just PR, post-mortem someday, but the other part of me is worried it'll be depressing thinking how much better it all could have been.

[Slowpoke is a Gamer]

We are about to 100% get an increase to on Void leaks now that the tease kinda sounds like Void Lords. Crazy how that works

After all the speculation we're gonna end up right where we thought we'd be all along.

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Void Lords attack from the Dragon Isles!
Even fits the pre-vanilla concept art with the Old God temple!

Okay I'll throw one more wrinkle into it.

The Old God temple is related to Xal'atath.