Dragonflight Alpha/Beta General Discussion

[micwini]

But as we can see
That doesn’t matter

apparently not! Thank god. It would have sucked so much if the SL ending would have revealed or hinted at what is next.

[Valysar]

Let's hope that the real ending cinematic of SL is in 9.2.5 ...
(am I too optimistic ?)

[Yossarian]

Let's hope that the real ending cinematic of SL is in 9.2.5 ...

let's hope they listen MORE

gameplaywise, they certainly improved, 9.2 PTR was very openminded to players suggestions
lorewise, they are getting a lot of backlash for this dull final cinematic of a dull expansion, "well, that was fucking lame" will become iconic for Shadowlands

they MUST use 9.2.5 to address the mess they did
personally I feel so let down by 9.2 (even the announcement back in november) that my expectations for 10.0 are way lower than before, I feel a lot less excited for "what is to come"

[pacotaco]

If there is a secret cosmic power and he wasn't just afraid of imbalance, I'm already starting to wonder if that secret power is the true, true allegiance of the dreadlords. It would be a good excuse to bring Denathrius back, and his line in this flashback could be read as "it's a shame you want to tear down my master" as much as "I'm totally not going to help you while you're imprisoned, wink wink."

The awkward part to me is that we see the Azerite beam shoot from Icecrown into Torghast and then uses the glow to cut to the interior of the Sepulcher. Visually, that's communicating that Zovaal is in Torghast, which is probably just editing for the sake of the annoyingly short time most cutscenes have, but does make me wonder if Torghast's role in the expansion got moved around.

I think Torghast acts as a hijack Oribos, channeling the anima of Azeroth to the Sepulcre.

Also, it's fun how some people stil thinking on SL as a normal euclidean 3D space. It's not: In ICC we see Torghast upside-down in a hole in the sky, then we go to Oribos where we see anima going through from above (above of what?) and going down. But then we jump down to the Maw falling from above, and we see the anima flow reaching the Maw sideways (the Gorgoa River) and Torghats in the distance with a hole in the sky.

[AOL Instant Messenger]

A rather silly observation, but I noticed this and can't quite get over it. It seems implicit that some things changed during the development of Shadowlands, and the plot development has definitely taken turns internally since the end of, say, Legion—so, in that connection, what of this?



This was originally going to be a model for what some presumed to be an artificial Titan (possibly the original plan for Argus, or an artificial body for him to inhabit)—doesn't it look familiar? Admittedly, this is a loose connection, since it is untextured and there is very little to glean from the features that is reliable. The model for Zovaal also did undergo several changes since early development, so this is all very much conjecture, or even arguably very baseless.

Nevertheless, it does make me wonder what the original plan was for this giant Titan body. Of course, it could simply be that this body was used during Zovaal's redesign as a potential reference, so it may not be relevant at all.

[Sharby]

People calling WoD good lmao.

This thread has jumped the shark.

WoD Class Design/Raid Design was fantastic imo, the levelling experience was pretty good too.

The reason why WoD flopped so hard was that it was gutted content-wise and had virtually nothing to do outside of raid.

Blackrock Foundry still remains the best raid they've released to date (imo.) Also despite how unbalanced it might've been, the tier-sets/class trinkets were super cool too.

I feel like everyone that was a consistent raider would always have a fond opinion of WoD.

[Frood]

A rather silly observation, but I noticed this and can't quite get over it. It seems implicit that some things changed during the development of Shadowlands, and the plot development has definitely taken turns internally since the end of, say, Legion—so, in that connection, what of this?



This was originally going to be a model for what some presumed to be an artificial Titan (possibly the original plan for Argus, or an artificial body for him to inhabit)—doesn't it look familiar? Admittedly, this is a loose connection, since it is untextured and there is very little to glean from the features that is reliable. The model for Zovaal also did undergo several changes since early development, so this is all very much conjecture, or even arguably very baseless.

Nevertheless, it does make me wonder what the original plan was for this giant Titan body. Of course, it could simply be that this body was used during Zovaal's redesign as a potential reference, so it may not be relevant at all.

It's entirely possible that this titan experiment went on to serve as the inspiration for Zovaal. Blizzard seems to have a habit of scrapping ideas, either repurposing them or simply saving the concept for more appropriate stories that they seem to come up with along the way. For example, the Legion announcement trailer actually used the concept of a mirrored/upside-down tower. This was abandoned until it was reintroduced two expansions later as Torghast.



Combining this with your observations regarding the titan model, one could posit that Shadowlands as a story was probably conceived around the time of the Legion launch.

[Sondrelk]

A rather silly observation, but I noticed this and can't quite get over it. It seems implicit that some things changed during the development of Shadowlands, and the plot development has definitely taken turns internally since the end of, say, Legion—so, in that connection, what of this?



This was originally going to be a model for what some presumed to be an artificial Titan (possibly the original plan for Argus, or an artificial body for him to inhabit)—doesn't it look familiar? Admittedly, this is a loose connection, since it is untextured and there is very little to glean from the features that is reliable. The model for Zovaal also did undergo several changes since early development, so this is all very much conjecture, or even arguably very baseless.

Nevertheless, it does make me wonder what the original plan was for this giant Titan body. Of course, it could simply be that this body was used during Zovaal's redesign as a potential reference, so it may not be relevant at all.

Pretty sure the idea was just to have some windwo dressing for the Antorus raid with not much thought put into it. Maybe it's an artificial body for Sargeras, maybe it's one for Argus. Maybe it's Argus' actual lifeless body that Sargeras was going to inhabit. Difficult to say for sure without knowing much more than that.

[Kiivar86]

Gul'dan's plan for Illidan was to use him as a host body for Sargeras, right? So they were looking to do a host body thing in the first place.

Could be that, yeah.

[Divada]

This was originally going to be a model for what some presumed to be an artificial Titan (possibly the original plan for Argus, or an artificial body for him to inhabit)Nevertheless, it does make me wonder what the original plan was for this giant Titan body.

From what I remember I think the original encounter designers wanted the final boss fight to be huge in scale, with the Titan towering over the players. But the team couldn't get it to work/or didn't think it would end up being any fun so scrapped it.

[Polybius]

Breaking News: People are now trying to say that WoD had good writing to put Shadowlands down.

What's next, WoD actually had excellent content outside of raiding and Shadowlands is way way worse than it?

The writing started out strong but they clearly skipped huge steps. SL made the exact mistake, as if they abandoned it to work on the next story.

Hopefully this is a good sign since we got Legion after WoD.

[Bsirk]

Just some tin foil thoughts running through my head this morning. Since the Winter Queen and Elune are "sisters", does that mean that Elune is also a robot? Hmm.

[Vakir]

The writing started out strong but they clearly skipped huge steps. SL made the exact mistake, as if they abandoned it to work on the next story.

Hopefully this is a good sign since we got Legion after WoD.

My only concern is that many made similar copium assumptions about SL, between the "good expac followed by bad one" pattern that's arguably been broken plus the assumption that SL would have more due to BFA's failings when it actually had less features.

Hopefully this was a wakeup call that we need another Legion level entry, at least in terms of feature density.

[Slowpoke is a Gamer]

Next expansion is not Void, it's too soon.

They'll keep the Void Lords for the final expansion and ultimate, definitive culmination of the saga that is World of Warcraft.

Nah it's time to accept the fact that WoW is just Dragonball Z at this point.

Void will be in the next two expansions, then they'll pull the scope back and we'll fight the First Ones. Then they'll pull the scope back and we'll fight some cosmic horror that scared the First Ones into ordering the universe in the first place...

[Polybius]

A rather silly observation, but I noticed this and can't quite get over it. It seems implicit that some things changed during the development of Shadowlands, and the plot development has definitely taken turns internally since the end of, say, Legion—so, in that connection, what of this?



This was originally going to be a model for what some presumed to be an artificial Titan (possibly the original plan for Argus, or an artificial body for him to inhabit)—doesn't it look familiar? Admittedly, this is a loose connection, since it is untextured and there is very little to glean from the features that is reliable. The model for Zovaal also did undergo several changes since early development, so this is all very much conjecture, or even arguably very baseless.

Nevertheless, it does make me wonder what the original plan was for this giant Titan body. Of course, it could simply be that this body was used during Zovaal's redesign as a potential reference, so it may not be relevant at all.

Wonder if Titan bodies are made despite Chronicle describing them as immensely large. WoW has a tendency to downscale cosmic doodads to accommodate the player.

[Super Dickmann]

Nevertheless, it does make me wonder what the original plan was for this giant Titan body. Of course, it could simply be that this body was used during Zovaal's redesign as a potential reference, so it may not be relevant at all.

Honestly, a pet theory of mine in terms of irrelevant details is the reason why Zovaal changed designs so often is because they'd already done 'blue humanoid with a death theme and golden celestial accents'. That was Argus. This means that you can't really do the Jailer's chained design overlapping with the Arbiter's accents without producing something a lot like Argus. Ditto, the light blue/gold/white color scheme + old man beard is a lot like Legion's version of Aman'thul. The Bald Man we know and yawn over may be the result of design overcorrection which decided to double down on the Lich King element and prisoner aesthetic instead of taking the far more sensible approach of just not making him a generic humanoid in the first place which would have freed endless design space.

[Kiivar86]

Just some tin foil thoughts running through my head this morning. Since the Winter Queen and Elune are "sisters", does that mean that Elune is also a robot? Hmm.

I mean she had some sort of hand in the creation of the Naaru apparently, so wind chimes, robots, why not?

[Slowpoke is a Gamer]

I was wondering about that, too. Did Blizzard just make the whole Night Elf race's religion turn into robot worshipping? I'm so confused right now.

I mean let's go one more.

Are we just Robots too?

[Super Dickmann]

I mean let's go one more.

Are we just Robots too?

Yes. Humans, dwarves and gnomes are the descendants of robots made in a factory while orcs are the offspring of rock constructs created by Aggrammar.

[Slowpoke is a Gamer]

Yes. Humans, dwarves and gnomes are the descendants of robots made in a factory while orcs are the offspring of rock constructs created by Aggrammar.

I mean even under that. If the First Ones made everything and everything they made is Robots and we're everything.

Beneath the Earthern and the Rock Constructs and the Curse of Flesh are we also just Robots?