Dragonflight Alpha/Beta General Discussion

[Teriz]

But it would be a missed opportunity to not include Draenai, Maghar Orcs and Dwarves. And if we get these why stop at them? Your second picture f.e. could also work super well for a Forsaken Apothecary, especially if they allow us more customizations via glyphs (or just racial customization for the Mekka/Hobgoblin like Paladins/Shamans/Druids already have).

I agree that it would be a missed opportunity, since having a class based on Draenei and Nightborne technology would be very interesting. Like I said, I certainly don't know for sure which way they would go, and it could honestly go either way. My post was more along the lines of letting people know that there's still a high chance that IF this class is implemented, it could still be Gnome/Goblin centric.

Personally, I would like to see Nightborne and Draenei tech concepts placed in a technology class. Especially Nightborne. Elven magitech could be very cool, and a way to bring elf fans over to a technology class.

Something like this is always a possibility;
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/ENH-AABW4AE8J6f.jpg

[Alanar]

Indeed, im trying my best to ignore both atm but they always seem to butt into others discussions telling they they are wrong and they should listen to them, how they haven't been perma banned is beyond me as I got 5 infraction points for just saying the T word.

Ye, it's weird I wanted to say that I have some of the guys on Ignore, but they still end up responding or insulting indirectly through some one else which.. like you said always ends in some weird T discussion. I noticed that to, for some reason, some words now give you infraction points lol.

The problem is I guess, everyone is responding to everyone here, talking about a topic always gets derailed or some one else mentioned T again and there you go.

[Teriz]

I just hope we get a new class in general, honestly. I think it's time!

That's honestly where I'm at. I didn't like Demon Hunters, and Blizzard kind of ruined Monks, so I've been tolerating Shaman for a few expansions now. I really want a new class to sink my teeth into. I was highly disappointed that a new class wasn't added in Shadowlands.

[Kiria]

Ye, it's weird I wanted to say that I have some of the guys on Ignore, but they still end up responding or insulting indirectly through some one else which.. like you said always ends in some weird T discussion. I noticed that to, for some reason, some words now give you infraction points lol.

The problem is I guess, everyone is responding to everyone here, talking about a topic always gets derailed or some one else mentioned T again and there you go.

Yeah I wont spell out the full word anymore as it seems to be a trigger word for some people so I'll just refer to it as T.

[Kiria]

I really hope in 10.0 Blizzard changes how they tell the story. I think they are very capable of telling a good one, but the -way- they are telling it isn't good.

For our box price we should get a story with a beginning and an end, with the patches being their own stories. The way Final Fantasy XIV does it is perfect. I think it could work just as well in WoW too.

Getting a handful of story, and then a 6 month cliff hanger is unacceptable, and a horrible way to tell the complex narrative Blizzard tries to pull off. It will never land well unless they can plan it out perfectly, which is impossible with how their deadlines work.

I'm really hoping 10.0 learns from this, and just gives us a complete story, or goes back to the more decentralized storytelling WoW had in pre-legion expansions. Either way, these 6 month gaps & story chunks are completely unacceptable and produce a terribly incoherent, choppy, poorly planned out story that is prone to making players lose interest.

I absolutely agree with this sentiment, I love the way ffxiv tells its stories as they are satisfying and complete as you say rather than fractured.

[CopyX1982]

I remember at the end of MoP people were excited for a potential Timewarder class based on the NPCs on the Timeless Isle. That would have been an original concept!

https://www.mmo-champion.com/threads...t-to-be-in-WoD

I saw a youtube clip of Bellular talking about a 4chan leak that was posted on the official forums, it mentions 'paradox' being the internal codename for 10.0 (apparently we'll find out why when its announced) & I recall on the Timeless Isles back in Mists seeing the timewalkers and thinking they'd make a good class, they've even have a faction standing (I believe everyone is 'neutral' with them) so, while I don't know about the validity of any leaks, well, it would certainly come out of left-field. Personally I'd like to see a new class, whatever it is, & I wanna start at 1, so I can do the new starting experience and level through northrend again.

[Sondrelk]

They really need to let the story people make more decisions on how the expansion is structured. It must be terribly frustrating to construct what is probably a very interesting narrative only to have to chop it up, scrap integral parts, present others in books or external media, and some to never see the light of day. They need to be given the freedom to tell the story the way they want to, for better or worse.

The vehicle they use to deliver the story has never really changed, the story they've tried to tell, on the other hand, has.

As I have said many times before: The writingi n WoW is still good, or at least good enough in areas where they don't have to consider prior or subsequent lore.
It's when they have to write long-form narratives spanning a full expansion if not more that they struggle. And the reason is likely that it's difficult to write stuff while retconning stuff and setting up future stuff all at the same time.

While writing the Sylvanas stuff in 9.1 they had to consider the severe backlash to BfA, 9.0, and what they had already set in stone for 9.2, including the book.

[Fahrad Wagner]

I think this goes both ways. If someone wishes to discuss a topic, they should be allowed to discuss a topic. If others don't want to discuss a topic, they're more than free to discuss something else. No one is preventing people from discussing a different topic. Sitting on the sidelines huffing and puffing because others are discussing a topic you don't like is not constructive, and frankly a form of censorship. Totallynotdragons brought up a different topic (I believe it was about Lordaeron Revamp) and he was completely ignored. Why not respond to him instead of attempting to block people from talking about a class concept?

1. I'm not blocking people from talking about a class concept, I've discussed Tinkers, Bards, Necromancers and Dragonsworns plenty of time over here.
2. I wasn't targetting anyone in particular, including you or the people coming at you.
3. As you probably know from my posts here, I'm not against Tinkers and think they could be fun if done properly. What I'm saying is that some points raised against/for Tinkers have been going in a circle, to the point where it's basically "Never happening" VS "It is happening" for 5 pages straight making the conversation sterile. I just don't want this thread to become the mechanical cousin of the High Elf Thread.

As for Totallynotdragons's post about Lordaeron and a Revamp, it may sound surprising but I'm not a robot, and sometimes I miss some interesting posts to which I'd normally be interested in.

Anyway, moving on...

I saw a youtube clip of Bellular talking about a 4chan leak that was posted on the official forums, it mentions 'paradox' being the internal codename for 10.0 (apparently we'll find out why when its announced) & I recall on the Timeless Isles back in Mists seeing the timewalkers and thinking they'd make a good class, they've even have a faction standing (I believe everyone is 'neutral' with them) so, while I don't know about the validity of any leaks, well, it would certainly come out of left-field. Personally I'd like to see a new class, whatever it is, & I wanna start at 1, so I can do the new starting experience and level through northrend again.

Regarding Paradox... I just don't understand how the internal codename could leak, but not the actual name of the expansion? To me it sounds more like someone who tried to make a leak and had ideas but couldn't come up with a believable name? I don't know, I'm pretty sceptical of that one

I really hope in 10.0 Blizzard changes how they tell the story. I think they are very capable of telling a good one, but the -way- they are telling it isn't good.

For our box price we should get a story with a beginning and an end, with the patches being their own stories. The way Final Fantasy XIV does it is perfect. I think it could work just as well in WoW too.

Getting a handful of story, and then a 6 month cliff hanger is unacceptable, and a horrible way to tell the complex narrative Blizzard tries to pull off. It will never land well unless they can plan it out perfectly, which is impossible with how their deadlines / patch-shuffling / changes in schedule work.

I'm really hoping 10.0 learns from this, and just gives us a complete story, or goes back to the more decentralized storytelling WoW had in pre-legion expansions. Either way, these 6 month gaps & story chunks are completely unacceptable and produce a terribly incoherent, choppy, poorly planned out story that is prone to making players lose interest.

This 300%. I couldn't agree more.

[Syegfryed]

I really hope in 10.0 Blizzard changes how they tell the story. I think they are very capable of telling a good one, but the -way- they are telling it isn't good.

For our box price we should get a story with a beginning and an end, with the patches being their own stories. The way Final Fantasy XIV does it is perfect. I think it could work just as well in WoW too.

Getting a handful of story, and then a 6 month cliff hanger is unacceptable, and a horrible way to tell the complex narrative Blizzard tries to pull off. It will never land well unless they can plan it out perfectly, which is impossible with how their deadlines / patch-shuffling / changes in schedule work.

I'm really hoping 10.0 learns from this, and just gives us a complete story, or goes back to the more decentralized storytelling WoW had in pre-legion expansions. Either way, these 6 month gaps & story chunks are completely unacceptable and produce a terribly incoherent, choppy, poorly planned out story that is prone to making players lose interest.

Yeah 10.0 will not change how they tell a story, and the story will continue being awful with the current writers

They think the way they do things is awesome and amazing, because is full of cliffhangers, wait and sees, so we can keep invested in the next chapter.

Things will not change unless they fire the writers or they get some reality check

[Lahis]

Oh wow I wasn't aware that Belves get a quest where they are fending off the scourge, do we know if its "the scourge is free since the helm broke and rampaging" or "this seems to be one of the few scourge armies remaining so we are finishing them off"?

But yeah I wonder if we will get access to the locked area of Tirisfal

Both. With no Lich King and Helm of Domination, mindless Scourge is easily controlled by the more intelligent undead, in this case some San'alayn.

[Fahrad Wagner]

I don't really think they are awful writers, I think its a mixture of the WoW patch cycle being a bad medium for telling a story, and an inability to adjust to that. To tell a narrative epic like Warcraft 3, it needs to be coherent, and ideally released in one wave.

The way they tell the WoW story is like giving you 1/4 of a movie on day 1, while planning to have a 4 part movie, then the guys upstairs tell you one day "Woops, can you make it three parts?" You adjust it to that, "No wait, 2 parts? Wait, just kidding, 4 parts... No, wait, 3 parts!"

WoW, as we know is super prone to rapid and large-scale changes in the patch cycle as we've seen in Shadowlands and WoD getting gutted. You can't tell a narratively complex story around that.

I think Danuser could tell something much much much more coherent if given the medium to do it. We need a complete story on day 1, or the story needs to be toned down and made more subtle like it used to be.

I agree the fragmentation of the story is definitely playing a role on how it is received, that + the datamining and community's toxicity, as pointed out by Marlamin earlier this week. Does this mean the story is flawless? Absolutely not, and Blizzard has done a shit job with some characters and some storylines. Does it mean the story is awful? No, and some stories were told really well.

You know I was really surprised at how I felt regarding the Pelagos storyline. When I saw the datamined info he'd become the Arbiter, I was like "Meh". Not hating it, but not into it. After doing all ZM quests and reaching Chapter 6 of the ZM campaign... doing the whole quest and actually seeing Pelagos become the Arbiter felt different, it even felt right: that made me realise what I was missing from the datamined info was actually the most important thing: context.

I believe if stories were mostly patch-contained and more protected from datamining, it would benefit greatly to the game as a whole. That, and some writers getting their crap together regarding some lore incoherence and abandoned tropes.

[Teriz]

1. I'm not blocking people from talking about a class concept, I've discussed Tinkers, Bards, Necromancers and Dragonsworns plenty of time over here.
2. I wasn't targetting anyone in particular, including you or the people coming at you.
3. As you probably know from my posts here, I'm not against Tinkers and think they could be fun if done properly. What I'm saying is that some points raised against/for Tinkers have been going in a circle, to the point where it's basically "Never happening" VS "It is happening" for 5 pages straight making the conversation sterile. I just don't want this thread to become the mechanical cousin of the High Elf Thread.
.

1&2 . And I wasn't talking about you in particular either. My issue is with people who believe that when a few people bring up a possible technology class, they suddenly can't talk about anything else, or "the oxygen is being taken out of the room". That really isn't the case, it's simply the ebb and flow of a discussion. It's the same people who will show up in a technology-class thread and demand that the thread is closed because the site is somehow being "spammed" because of one active thread talking about a class concept.

3.Well to be fair, in this particular round and round, we were talking about the history of WoW class development and what that means for future classes, not the Tinker specifically. Again, certain people overreact to that conversation and view it solely as if someone is talking about one particular class. That isn't the case. And as I said before, nothing stops anyone from talking about other class concepts. If you're responding to me though and you want my opinion about a future class, I will freely give it to you.

Beyond that, I completely agree with you that we should avoid making this into the High Elf thread at all costs.

[Shadochi]

You know I was really surprised at how I felt regarding the Pelagos storyline. When I saw the datamined info he'd become the Arbiter, I was like "Meh". Not hating it, but not into it. After doing all ZM quests and reaching Chapter 6 of the ZM campaign... doing the whole quest and actually seeing Pelagos become the Arbiter felt different, it even felt right: that made me realise what I was missing from the datamined info was actually the most important thing: context.

I believe if stories were mostly patch-contained and more protected from datamining, it would benefit greatly to the game as a whole. That, and some writers getting their crap together regarding some lore incoherence and abandoned tropes.

I had the same experience. Initially I was also "Meh, at least it isn't Sylvanas redemption or placing Bolvar or other Azeroth characters to do it" and was okay with it being an SL character. But once given the he did seem as one of the better choices. and by far better than having a vessel become it. Would've still wanted to see the outcome of Argus becoming it but that would be possible only if early in the expac.

This reminds me of how when Alpha/Beta starts I don't look into the individual storylines of zones too much, or watch almost no gameplay of them since I want to have that first experience and not just go off of WIP

[Foolicious]

Don't know if i missed it and it has been discussed already. But is anyone else disappointed in the mythic only jailer phase?
After N'zoth didn't have one and argus was very light on lore implications i had hopes for something like archimonde or mar'gok but its basically just 20% health added.

[Vakir]

Datamining really does hurt the experience. It's still possible and out there with 14 but it's only possible the day of the patch and is generally frowned upon by the community. 14, however, still has the advantage of being story focused and letting their story breathe more. I wouldn't be surprised if an expansion clocks in with a word count multiple thousands of times than WoW's. Even if it really needs an editor. Early Sharlayan was painful. To say nothing of post-launch ARR.

I don't think it'll fix EVERYTHING - Zovaal is bad with or without context and we got his cinematic at the time we were meant to, Sylvanas still ends up missing context and making little sense and requires the book - but I'll third that Pelagos' step to Arbiter was at least marginally better in context.

His voice acting though. Woof. They're all kinda stilted so I'm wondering if it's misguided voice direction for the Kyrian in general.

Don't know if i missed it and it has been discussed already. But is anyone else disappointed in the mythic only jailer phase?
After N'zoth didn't have one and argus was very light on lore implications i had hopes for something like archimonde or mar'gok but its basically just 20% health added.

One last creative missed opportunity and disappointment from our bald one is fitting.

[ercarp]

Don't know if i missed it and it has been discussed already. But is anyone else disappointed in the mythic only jailer phase?
After N'zoth didn't have one and argus was very light on lore implications i had hopes for something like archimonde or mar'gok but its basically just 20% health added.

Low-effort design for a low-effort expansion. The fewer good things SL has going for it, the better, as that will make it so much easier to sweep it under the carpet and forget about it entirely.

[Ielenia]

Getting a handful of story, and then a 6 month cliff hanger is unacceptable, and a horrible way to tell the complex narrative Blizzard tries to pull off. It will never land well unless they can plan it out perfectly, which is impossible with how their deadlines / patch-shuffling / changes in schedule work.

Cliffhangers work because they keep people interested. It get them thinking what this cliffhanger might mean for the next expansion. It's no different than an "after credits scene" in movies, like when we saw glimpses of Thanos at the end of the Avengers movie, or when we saw Nick Fury show up and tell Tony Stark he was creating the Avengers initiative.

And the story of Shadowlands is pretty much self-contained. Its overarching story started at the beginning of the expansion, and ended at the last patch of the expansion. The cliffhangers, about the undead invasion of the blood elf lands and all that are the "after credits scenes" if we are comparing this to movies.

[Catastrophy349]

Unfortunately, I can neither confirm nor deny that I don’t know what the next expansion is nor isn’t based on what I don’t know is true.

- - - Updated - - -

Who’s excited for the Epilogue: Judgement Chapter coming on Tuesday?!

[PhillyCheese]

I am going to start hedging my bets on Cata 2. The stuff in 9.2.5 is jumbled and even though it right now only looks like EK, we’ve seen a Teldrassil map change, so it may be a misdirect.

If they add a new questline for Nelves we will have our two “retake the zones” quests like Cata, we have an Emerald Drake deluxe mount which is almost the OPPOSITE of Deathwing (growth and rebirth over destruction), and there seems to be no direct plot connection between this expansion and 10.0 besides “Sylvanas didn’t come back”. Similar as to how the world got a breather inbetween Arthas and Deathwing so racial stories could move forward.

So I think smart money is on some kind of revamp. We still don’t know where all the HD human buildings will be.

[Polybius]

Afterall, the Bananas do seem to have a perculiar society:
https://wowpedia.fandom.com/wiki/Dam..._Page_(Day_87)



https://wowpedia.fandom.com/wiki/Dam...Page_(Day_512)

Banana old god confirmed.

(I miss speculating on these breadcrumbs)