Dragonflight Alpha/Beta General Discussion

[Teriz]

That's amazing. Great work!

Someone posted this on 4chan without explanation. He stated that he work at Blizzard. Probably fake btw

He's about 5 hours too late.

[Hitei]

Someone posted this on 4chan without explanation. He stated that he work at Blizzard. Probably fake btw

Probably should have attempted this BEFORE we had the logo confirmed fanmade.

Also, lmao that is very obviously just the dragon isles concept art copy pasted into the background, would not bother reverse image searching even if it wasn't already debunked by the logo.

[AOL Instant Messenger]

Like I'm not saying that the story now is good actually, I don't think it's that bad personally but then again I've never considered the Warcraft story to be all that great in the first place. They definitely have some amazing storytelling but the story itself I don't think has ever been anything special. BFA and SL to me are them recognizing that it's always been tropes and trying to break that mold while at the same time trying to appease the players that think anything that takes more than one questline to understand all of the story is bad storytelling.

I just think that super online lore obssesed nerds aren't actually good at giving alternate story ideas that work better than what is already there. Both because it's always so convoluted that you have to ask why it's complicated for complicated sake and also becauae Warcraft just isn't set up for that sort of story.

If you look at the widely accepted best stories in the franchise they're almost always just fully derivative not original ar all stories with a Warcraft skin. That's why Blizz should just go back to that because clearly them trying to tell a story over multiple expansions and patches isn't something the playerbase can handle especially when it's not a story that's particularly better than anything they've done in the past.

I definitely agree with the idea that Blizzard is going a little too far out-of-bounds with how they're trying to subvert the tropes so much, but I frankly don't think they're doing it as much as you're suggesting. The only things that have been interesting in this expansion are the Denathrius retcon and the geometry theme (which only really makes since if you like philosophy of religion or theology—people who aren't part of a certain religious clique may have trouble understanding it), and the rest has been fairly banal—the attempt at moral philosophy with Sylvanas is pretty mind-numbingly bad, given that we already had Blizzard do a very good (for the standards of something so cheesy) moral conundrum plot with Arthas' Culling of Stratholme.

Still, being trope-y doesn't mean it has to be bad. Again, Culling of Stratholme was a very good use of a very traditional storyline. I also would say they did their best to avert some tropes, even if it was just trading one reference for another—"Look! King Arthur is actually Elric of Melnibone!" is still a very fun twist on it. "Thanos ... but ... Thanos" isn't so interesting—no villains before now were just robotic MacGuffin-seekers. I really think a good, interesting plot could be done with this—even a subtle one. We've, again, seen subtlety before in the Culling of Stratholme. We've seen Cosmic Horror done adequately with Ulduar. I don't think that the plot is that inherently bad, nor do I think viewers wouldn't get it. I honestly think players would fully understand something that makes them think a little bit more about what's going on. Again, we've seen plenty of interesting and sincere debates on the Culling of Stratholme.

They're not at all all derivative—the Triumvirate was interesting and not very similar to anything we've ever seen before, Arthas still took good advantage of the storylines we've had before, War of the Ancients etc.—the lore is based on cheesy tropes, but that doesn't mean it's entirely derivative. You're thinking of this too cynically. There have been good plots befor and it's not wrong to expect something more.

[Revamp Man]

I think you're reading too deep into it. I'm not a fan of "the door is just red lol" interpretations, but I do think this might be a little closer than they were suggesting. They didn't subtly, carefully foreshadow an expansion with something that has figurative or metaphorical ties to the existing themes—they released mounts that seemed nonsensical at first but became immediately retroactively obvious when connected with a zone's aesthetic.

sylverian dreamer
No way that tied to shadowlands and it’s flavor mentions the dream

When we got the zones it did make sense but we also have to keep in mind devs are more often trying to make cheeky references nowadays. The main thing that made me see wonderland was the red queen and white queen

[Skildar]

Someone posted this on 4chan without explanation. He stated that he work at Blizzard. Probably fake btw
--snip--

love the bad timing XD

[Teriz]

I don’t use the steamscale because it wasn’t the last mount.

You kind of have to use the Steamscale because like the Sylverian Dreamer it was a 6 month promotion AND Blizzard released its companion pet in Shadowlands which was also a mechanical dragon using the same skin. Also both dragon mechs had distinctly dragon lore, and they sort of merge the huge Goblin/Gnome thematic hints in BFA with the draconic hints in BFA.

[Revamp Man]

Unless we have confirmation the new scarlet leader pushing the false heir is a guy

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You kind of have to use the Steamscale because like the Sylverian Dreamer it was a 6 month promotion AND Blizzard released its companion pet in Shadowlands which was also a mechanical dragon using the same skin. Also both dragon mechs had distinctly dragon lore, and they sort of merge the huge Goblin/Gnome thematic hints in BFA with the draconic hints in BFA.

We don’t have to because it wasn’t the last release
The sylverian dreamer was the expansion mount so it added to the pattern

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love the bad timing XD

But what if the guy that claimed to make it in photoshop saw it on 4chan and came in to try and debunk it because they are a blizzard plant???? FOR THE SCALE GUARD!!!!!!!!

[Teriz]

We don’t have to because it wasn’t the last release
The sylverian dreamer was the expansion mount so it added to the pattern

What was the last release? Also the Sylverian Dreamer was added long before Shadowands was announced, the Steamscale Incinerator was added long AFTER Shadowlands was announced.

Also what does it being the last release have anything to do with anything?

[AOL Instant Messenger]

That's amazing. Great work!



He's about 5 hours too late.

Also, it probably would have been debunkable just from the fact he directly copy/pasted the original Dragon Isles concept art – which is seemingly unrelated to this idea – into the frame.

[Hitei]

sylverian dreamer
No way that tied to shadowlands and it’s flavor mentions the dream

When we got the zones it did make sense but we also have to keep in mind devs are more often trying to make cheeky references nowadays. The main thing that made me see wonderland was the red queen and white queen

It's always going to be very difficult to gauge an expansion as a whole on a mount. That said, you can successfully guess bits. Sylverian dreamer is tied into the druidic/night aesthetic, and sylverian reinforces that with the wood/forest aspect--and we got a zone that was heavily tied into those things. You might not get Broken Isles and Legion from the runesaber, but saber + arcane did evoke highborne (Arcane using Night Elves), and we got 1-1.5 zones of that.

Based on the fox-cat, I feel really confident in guessing that one of the new zones in the next expansion will be a Vermillion Redoubt/Eversong Woods style, autumnal forest. It will be very magical, like the summer/fall palette version of Ashenvale or Moonglade. Lots of little sprites and weird magical creatures like the foxcat, the phoenix birds used for the skyblazer, etc.

[AOL Instant Messenger]

sylverian dreamer
No way that tied to shadowlands and it’s flavor mentions the dream

When we got the zones it did make sense but we also have to keep in mind devs are more often trying to make cheeky references nowadays. The main thing that made me see wonderland was the red queen and white queen

Ardenweald being a zone in the expansion that only makes the mount make sense retroactively =/= subtle symbolism or references like a "red queen/white queen" thing. I highly doubt they're going to be that subtle in hinting at that theme. Most likely, it will be related to the theme of zone or a new animal that will either be new or only make sense in connection to any other idea in retrospect.

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It's always going to be very difficult to gauged an expansion as a whole on a mount. That said, you can successfully guess bits. Sylverian dreamer is tied into the druidic/night aesthetic, and sylverian reinforces that with the wood/forest aspect--and we got a zone that was heavily tied into those things. You might not get Broken Isles and Legion from the runesaber, but saber + arcane did evoke highborne (Arcane using Night Elves), and we got 1-1.5 zones of that.

Based on the fox-cat, I feel really confident in guessing that one of the new zones in the next expansion will be a Vermillion Redoubt/Eversong Woods style, autumnal forest. It will be very magical, like the summer/fall palette version of Ashenvale or Moonglade. Lots of little sprites and weird magical creatures like the foxcat, the phoenix birds used for the skyblazer, etc.

Could even be Quel'Thalas, but I figure that a new Dragon zone based around Vermillion Redoubt is possible, too. Both sound pretty.

[FossilFree]

I think 9.2 has a lot of foreshadowing of a bard class. Everything is about sound, music, and speech (lyrics, singing).

[AOL Instant Messenger]

I don't know why an expansion with Undermine would be shocking. The world soul is underground, and it was attacked at the end of the current expansion. There's also links between Goblins and Black Dragons, so even a dragon-based expansion could pull in Undermine.

Simply because it doesn't feel like it's going that way, and this doesn't seem to fit with anything that's been foreshadowed up to this point. It could happen, and I'll sure be willing to eat crow if it does, but for now it seems pretty implausible.

[Revamp Man]

What was the last release? Also the Sylverian Dreamer was added long before Shadowands was announced, the Steamscale Incinerator was added long AFTER Shadowlands was announced.

Also what does it being the last release have anything to do with anything?

The final mount released before an expansion announcement contains hints about the next expansion

You know this

Also steamscale has no dragon lore just “crazy gnome added a demon soul to try and make a realistic dragon and it ate him”

I understand the reach but it would make more sense to go for the bundle over the mount

You could try to argue that the first mount after the announcement hints at the expansion after the next but that requires more work because it’s not as widely talked about like the “mount hints at next expansion”

[AOL Instant Messenger]

I think 9.2 has a lot of foreshadowing of a bard class. Everything is about sound, music, and speech (lyrics, singing).

I don't see it. That's an introduction of a motif, not strictly the establishment of a new class. For one, we don't really have anyone who's actually using that in a Bardlike context aside from sort of one boss.

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You could try to argue that the first mount after the announcement hints at the expansion after the next but that requires more work because it’s not as widely talked about like the “mount hints at next expansion”

That also just seems a nonsensical way of foreshadowing, and likely way too prone to change for it to make sense. I think that people are looking for clues where there aren't any. We're deluding ourselves and reading into things that aren't there—we don't even have the benefit of a Barnum Statement. We're doing this all on Hopium alone.

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I don't know whether to appreciate the artistry or curse you for giving hope to the dragonposters. Both is doable.

If he can do it, you can do it. Make a fake logo, Super Dickmann, and bring us hopium.

[Revamp Man]

I think 9.2 has a lot of foreshadowing of a bard class. Everything is about sound, music, and speech (lyrics, singing).

Could be interesting
It would probably have something like legion pally blessings and more support

[Dracullus]

I think 9.2 has a lot of foreshadowing of a bard class. Everything is about sound, music, and speech (lyrics, singing).

Whole Shadowlands has a LOT of music/bard references. I think we talked about it few times here.

[Three Faced Goddess]

There are true points in the post, but some bullshit in the post as well.

Anything relating to Lordaeron, the Scarlet Crusade and Forsaken? Do you know anything about this quest?

https://ptr.wowhead.com/quest=54943/...-rangers-pupil

Not just because of the Dark Ranger element, though I am curious about that. I am wondering if it acts as a prelude to a Scarlet Crusade resurgence and has any relation to the datamined fliers. Also curious if the claims of someone on twitter about Prelus being human and having human textures is true.

[Revamp Man]

I don't see it. That's an introduction of a motif, not strictly the establishment of a new class. For one, we don't really have anyone who's actually using that in a Bardlike context aside from sort of one boss.

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That also just seems a nonsensical way of foreshadowing, and likely way too prone to change for it to make sense. I think that people are looking for clues where there aren't any. We're deluding ourselves and reading into things that aren't there—we don't even have the benefit of a Barnum Statement. We're doing this all on Hopium alone.

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If he can do it, you can do it. Make a fake logo, Super Dickmann, and bring us hopium.

I’m reaching with the wonderland stuff admittedly but there does have to be a limit I agree

[AOL Instant Messenger]

Could be interesting
It would probably have something like legion pally blessings and more support

This has been said ad nauseum, but I think that a pure support class can't work. The closest we get to that are Paladins, which still have a huge amount of direct spells and a role aside from buffing. Buffing is always a sideshow and not engaging enough, I think, for a whole class to be built only around it. Paladin buffing works because you feel like you're the agent of a divine being. I don't see the same in Bards unless it's secondary to the other skills of the class—plus, CC could at least be part of it, too.