Dragonflight Alpha/Beta General Discussion

[Ersula]

Oh boy. This is good! http://boards.4channel.org/v/thread/...dowlands-leaks

I believe they considered rewriting Shadowlands 6 months in, when Afrasiasbi was fired. But they would have quickly realized that was impossible. They can't just abandon big chunks of quests & assets, already made, especially during Covid

[Sondrelk]

Oh boy. This is good! http://boards.4channel.org/v/thread/...dowlands-leaks

And again with that dumb Arthas is Anduins real father nonsense. It's never been a good direction for the story to go.

I do find it funny how you can immediately spot someone attempting a leak nlw by how they attempt to preface by giving a synopsis on how the work environment is in Blizzard. Every time without fail someone will start by claiming that working at Blizzard is terrible, or alternatively that it's not as bad as it seems on the outside.
I guess they want to set the scene a bit before actually starting.

Still though, love how the leaker is seemingly perfectly okay with tanking his promising new career by leaking stuff about the next expansion, no matter how minor he tries to make it seem.

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I believe they considered rewriting Shadowlands 6 months in, when Afrasiasbi was fired. But they would have quickly realized that was impossible. They can't just abandon big chunks of quests & assets, already made, especially during Covid

Lots of players don't seem to realize that. You can't actually make massive changes in a short timespan when it comes to games like WoW. Any change in story direction almost always comes before we ever even see it. The last instance I can recall of an actual mid-PTR story change was Tyrande killing loads of Forsaken instead of a couple.

[Shadochi]

Oh boy. This is good! http://boards.4channel.org/v/thread/...dowlands-leaks

Funny how the guy mentions he started in Blizz in 2011, then says that the Cata and Wrath leaks sucked as a developer. Of course could be just hearing what other people said.

As for the thread itself. Mostly just fanfiction. He says he was a developer for Blizzard, but somehow has the sales and story details during the expansion and before the beta. I see that at some point this info would be available to more and more workers. But I don't see early scripts (and 6 months before beta isn't late for rewriting. Thats still over a year till launch, as long as its not actually changing major stuff that cant reuse assets created already for the previous idea) being given to developers as they don't really need them that early. So it just doesn't make sense that he as a developer would know so in depth about it, even if he later found out that is too much detail to be just mentioned in a casual conversation.

And on the other hand as I mention, why would there be reasons for the whole company to know and be told the Subscriber numbers? I mean if that was the case we would see that number leaked every quarter, but not even the investors, who that should concern, are given actual numbers.

Tbh to me it smells like a bunch of fan fiction and doesn't make too much sense, having like 53 individual character storylines but not talking about actual SL worldbuilding that probably got scrapped.

The leak from months ago about original 9.2 being "cut" and parts spread out among Chains of Domination (9.1) and Eternity's End (original 9.3, now 9.2) makes more sense to me than this low effort fanfic.

Edit: Also I assume OP means 6 months before Alpha, not Beta. another pointer to making sh up

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Lots of players don't seem to realize that. You can't actually make massive changes in a short timespan when it comes to games like WoW. Any change in story direction almost always comes before we ever even see it. The last instance I can recall of an actual mid-PTR story change was Tyrande killing loads of Forsaken instead of a couple.

Assuming OP meant 6 Month before Alpha, and not Beta (like Expansion was already announced 6 months before Beta), I don't see an issue with rewriting storylines as most assets don't have to be dumped if the setting (zones) remain the same. I also doubt there would be that many quests made at that point. Seeing how for the past few expansions we've been getting zones (and updating assets in those zones) and questlines in waves on the Alpha. Like 6 months before alpha they probably didn't finish implementing 1 whole zone. 6 months is absolutely a large amount of time and if story is being rewritten that doesn't mean that art concepts will no longer be valid (still the same zones in SL) and that the game systems wont stay similar. So there is no reason why it would be throwing away assets or clogging development at that point.

[Sharby]

Why does every "Blizzard Insider" leak always make Blizzard look so terrible?

"We were going to put good content in the game, but the higher-ups said 'no put bad content in the game instead, we want the game to be bad.' I hate my job ."


I'm not even a fan of Blizzard's current design choices nor their attitudes regarding their choices.


But when they include that stuff it just screams fake and is just there to make hate-watchers give it credence. The whole "9.2 was almost as bad as WoD" doesn't help either.

[Vakir]

Oh boy. This is good! http://boards.4channel.org/v/thread/...dowlands-leaks

Sounds cool but doubtful. At work so can't really go super in depth posting from phone, but for starters, Oribos was the hub from the announcement which I believe was a fair amount more than 6 months prior to beta.

[Wangming]

Funny how the guy mentions he started in Blizz in 2011, then says that the Cata and Wrath leaks sucked as a developer. Of course could be just hearing what other people said.

As for the thread itself. Mostly just fanfiction. He says he was a developer for Blizzard, but somehow has the sales and story details during the expansion and before the beta. I see that at some point this info would be available to more and more workers. But I don't see early scripts (and 6 months before beta isn't late for rewriting. Thats still over a year till launch, as long as its not actually changing major stuff that cant reuse assets created already for the previous idea) being given to developers as they don't really need them that early. So it just doesn't make sense that he as a developer would know so in depth about it, even if he later found out that is too much detail to be just mentioned in a casual conversation.

And on the other hand as I mention, why would there be reasons for the whole company to know and be told the Subscriber numbers? I mean if that was the case we would see that number leaked every quarter, but not even the investors, who that should concern, are given actual numbers.

Tbh to me it smells like a bunch of fan fiction and doesn't make too much sense, having like 53 individual character storylines but not talking about actual SL worldbuilding that probably got scrapped.

The leak from months ago about original 9.2 being "cut" and parts spread out among Chains of Domination (9.1) and Eternity's End (original 9.3, now 9.2) makes more sense to me than this low effort fanfic.

Also I love how he doesn't give anything tangible about the expansion to "not ruin the surprise. Fuck me sideways, a half decent effort from the devs would be the surprise at this point.

[Shadochi]

Just to add, based on quick google searches:
Beta: around July 16th 2020.
Alpha: Week of April 6th 2020.
Announcement: Nov 1st 2019 (damn feels like much longer with everything that happened since then and the fact that we split from the time betweenn expansion announcements being about 2 years)

And from what we've seen nothing got majorly changed storywise between the Nov 1st announcement and demo at blizzcon and the Alpha in April (5 months) or Beta in July (8.5 months) to indicate truth in this post. And I am pretty sure they couldn't pull off an announcement if they decided to rewrite the story a month before blizzcon

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Also I love how he doesn't give anything tangible about the expansion to "not ruin the surprise. Fuck me sideways, a half decent effort from the devs would be the surprise at this point.

Yeah another obvious pointer. Also the fact that he only seems to want to talk about the story in detail and none of the other stuff that actually makes the game and makes the players want to play it.

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As for people saying asset names in 9.0 pointing towars a Tros raid. No, they are pointing towards a raid in ardenweald (still my guess is that is just how they named early Nathira covenant weapons). Sure in what we got that there are Drust in Ardenweald, but from what he is saying they would be separate zones and thus it wouldn't make sense for the assets to be Ardenweald Raid but instead Tros Raid. Also working on and adding assets for a patch so early in the original development to the 9.0 branch seems weird.

[Sondrelk]

Why does every "Blizzard Insider" leak always make Blizzard look so terrible?

"We were going to put good content in the game, but the higher-ups said 'no put bad content in the game instead, we want the game to be bad.' I hate my job ."


I'm not even a fan of Blizzard's current design choices nor their attitudes regarding their choices.


But when they include that stuff it just screams fake and is just there to make hate-watchers give it credence. The whole "9.2 was almost as bad as WoD" doesn't help either.

Well as I said above, I am pretty sure they do this partially to disarm the reader. By banking on something the reader suspects to be true they can make the rest seem more credible. Secondly they need to somewhat justify why they would be willing to throw their reputation as a game designer into the garbage for no tangible gain.

If they just immediately went into leaking then those reading would start questioning things faster, like for instance why this one leak among thousands would be real.

[Wangming]

Well as I said above, I am pretty sure they do this partially to disarm the reader. By banking on something the reader suspects to be true they can make the rest seem more credible. Secondly they need to somewhat justify why they would be willing to throw their reputation as a game designer into the garbage for no tangible gain.

If they just immediately went into leaking then those reading would start questioning things faster, like for instance why this one leak among thousands would be real.

Also after the whole "employee driven to suicide by sexual harassment" fiasco, no decent person would believe them if they said everything's fine in the office.

[Foolicious]

Another leak heavily inspired by a post from wowhead and popular youtubers. If they would at least wait a week or so, so it wouldn't be as obvious :/

[Trumpwonumad]

Oh boy. This is good! http://boards.4channel.org/v/thread/...dowlands-leaks

Best part was

>592414172 #
We have spent more time on 10.0 than the entirety of shadowlands. The leaks for Cataclysm and Wrath sucked as a developer. I'm glad i'm working in a better place now but i still don't want to post a bullet point list of things we worked on to ruin the surprise.

But no tinkers. We honestly have never understood the obsession. High Elves we get but something about tinkers drives people on the forums crazy.

[Sondrelk]

Also after the whole "employee driven to suicide by sexual harassment" fiasco, no decent person would believe them if they said everything's fine in the office.

Which is why it's kinda pointless to state. So one has to assume they say it just to get those reading it into the right mindset of accepting hte leaks by saying something that those reading will assume is true to begin with.

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Best part was

>592414172 #
We have spent more time on 10.0 than the entirety of shadowlands. The leaks for Cataclysm and Wrath sucked as a developer. I'm glad i'm working in a better place now but i still don't want to post a bullet point list of things we worked on to ruin the surprise.

But no tinkers. We honestly have never understood the obsession. High Elves we get but something about tinkers drives people on the forums crazy.

Yeah that was some premium bullshit as well. Noone who worked for Blizzard, or indeed anyone who even play the game and isnt already hating Tinkers would understand why playerss want them, or expect them to be in the game. Battle for Daar'alor literally had High Tinker Mekkatorque in a giant mechsuit. Pretending like tinker are not a tried and tested part of WoW by this point is just being willfully ignorant, they have literally been a part of the game since Warcraft.

[Trazzle]

Pretending like tinker are not a tried and tested part of WoW by this point is just being willfully ignorant, they have literally been a part of the game since Warcraft.

Right? I get that Tinkers aren’t everyone’s cup of tea but the theme/fantasy/aesthetic has been a part of the franchise from WC2 and on. Both factions exhibited an advancement in tech with in inclusion of goblins and gnomes, get over it people.

[Vakir]

A technological advancement and then ANOTHER on top of it in BFA. Frankly it was the best time to bring them out in the first place. Turncoat Dark Rangers or some form of newer Death-themed class in SL all the same. Still not sure what could be holding things back from such comparatively feature light expansions, particularly SL. That's why it's hard to keep hopes up about new classes in the first place.

[Marlamin]

So PTR servers are already on 9.2.5 (but no client build out yet) and might have been for a few days now. Another step closer!

[Fahrad Wagner]

So PTR servers are already on 9.2.5 (but no client build out yet) and might have been for a few days now. Another step closer!

I really hope we get it by next week!

[Valysar]

I really hope we get it by next week!

Today, you mean 8)

[Vakir]

I know we've seen builds on Fridays, but it's pretty rare, right?

[Fahrad Wagner]

Today, you mean 8)

That would be even better, although Friday first builds are pretty rare so... we'll see!

Also I just remembered this interview from Danuser, that I mentioned in my original post on this thread:

https://wowhead.com/news/french-comm...terview-319261

"Death had influence in Azeroth long before Ner'zhul became the Lich King. Perhaps one day we will learn more about the Nerubians and their origins."

I swear to God, if this was a tease to an underground expansion...

[Slowpoke is a Gamer]

If there is a 9.2.5 build pre-10.0 reveal I'd expect it to be just a bunch of class changes for now.

I've got a feeling in my jibblies that any story content is gonna be too spoilerific to include even encrypted.