Dragonflight Alpha/Beta General Discussion

[PhillyCheese]

The playerbase of WoW likely skews older than other newer games, ergo they aren't as interested in playing with dolls and dollhouses.

If BFA and SL taught me anything about the playerbase its that anyone with a social media account cares about everything BUT the gameplay.

Also, there is a shocking amount of younger players. The game isn’t as dated as people think.

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Is today the day? Sylvanas goes to the FUCKING MAW???

Today is the last day we will see Sylvanas for a long time. Hopefully we can all move on.

[Catastrophy349]

Is today the day? Sylvanas goes to the FUCKING MAW???

Put her on ice.

[therumblings]

Is today the day? Sylvanas goes to the FUCKING MAW???

Hopefully, unless the cinematic is something entirely different and we got baited.

[Sondrelk]

Just give me a random instanced Island in the middle of nowhere to edit the terrain and place buildings around and that will satisfy me.

Would have loved if we used the islands from the island expeditions to create player housing if that is at all possible.
You start by placing a port from which you arrive by boat, then a house. Afterwards you can start changing stuff to really make the island suit your wishes, maybe even adding other NPC houses in different styles.

Then you just ensure that you don't add too much actual utility to the base. Maybe the ability to go to different ports around Azeroth if you complete some arbitrary requirements, and otherwise the best you get is an inn and basic vendors.

Adding actual content to the housing would just make it more difficult to reuse, and you definitely don't want to place it somewhere tied to a specific expansion. Ideally it should be strictly tied to Stormwind/Orgrimmar or the areas immediately outside them.

It would almost definitely be more work than it's worth, but it would be a pretty great version with some good evergreen features that could be expanded upon as we go. Maybe you gain some Ny'alotha doodads from completing Glory of the Ny'alotha raider for instance. Or Dwarf assets from being exalted with the relevant factions.

[PhillyCheese]

Hopefully, unless the cinematic is something entirely different and we got baited.

I’m actually wondering how much asshurt there will be over it not being a real cinematic. I’m starting to prefer the in game ones with HD character models and animations, they look really good (like the Pelagos and Kleia hug, though he looked too shiny).

The cinematics are starting to look washed out and fake to me.

[Catastrophy349]

Let's just hope (ium) that the Epilogue is more than just a Sylvanas circle jerk and an actual conclusion to the Shadowlands story, too.

[PhillyCheese]

Let's just hope (ium) that the Epilogue is more than just a Sylvanas circle jerk and an actual conclusion to the Shadowlands story, too.

The covenant stories ended in 9.1, I would like it to be more than just the trial event though. We still need to turn on the forge of afterlives, Calia and Sylvanas need to interact ONCE, etc.

If it’s just the trial there will at least be some good gossip text from all the NPCs there which include the Windrunners, Voss and Calia.

Very long maintenance today so maybe it’s bigger than expected?

[Soulwind]

That would be the dream of many people I'm sure, but that gets really close to fully UGC (user generated content) and I don't see true UGC happening in WoW until Blizzard is done with the game.

I think a more realistic approach would be to have a flat circle, surrounded by an invisible wall.

You could choose which zone your house is in (maybe even have two or three locations per zone, literally copying the map and using it as a glorified 3D skybox), with client-side (those untargeteable NPCs that they've been using lately) fauna roaming outside the wall.

Inside, you'd choose one building from a list. That would just be placed in a predetermined position, garrison-style. But the building would come empty, and then you'd have the "place your stuff anywhere" tool to populate that bubble, with a maximum amount of items allowed. If you want an empty house and 100 chairs around it, that's your thing.

They'd just need to store the chosen zone, building and the IDs of those items, with their coordinates within the map.

[Catastrophy349]

The covenant stories ended in 9.1, I would like it to be more than just the trial event though. We still need to turn on the forge of afterlives, Calia and Sylvanas need to interact ONCE, etc.

If it’s just the trial there will at least be some good gossip text from all the NPCs there which include the Windrunners, Voss and Calia.

Very long maintenance today so maybe it’s bigger than expected?

Long maintenance is due to stupid oceanic server BS.

We are getting Epilogue AND Mage Tower today. I just hope servers are up sooner than the actual maintenance time.

[Revamp Man]

To be fair, customizing your character that you see every second you're logged on appeals to most players (perhaps just not Ion). Customizing a house does not appeal to every player. I wouldn't say they are equivalent in that regard.

I don’t get the “not ion” comment

The dude has been lead during the best changes to transmog

Like is blaming him just a meme now??

Lightsabers are too rare must be because ion prefers Star Trek

[Fiercelord]

Looking forward to a new build (hopefully) tonight! Bring on the customization pls

[Catastrophy349]

Looking forward to a new build (hopefully) tonight! Bring on the customization pls

Between now and the next 3 weeks until the expansion announcement, I am certainly looking forward to: 1). Today's Mage Tower and Epilogue chapter 2). Any potential "real leaks" or "more likely leaks" the closer we get to April 19th 3). Any new builds on the 9.2.5 PTR that could hint toward fun stuff to come!

[Revamp Man]

I am disappointed that we never got the new soulbind and conduit stuff they talked about in the 9.2 video

They said “we want more horizontal progression” and one would think that meant more soulbinds which makes sense because each covenant has a major character that we would end up binding with and then we could end with the leaders

Instead we got…here’s 2 more passives and “empowered” conduits

[Skildar]

They would've easily been able to answer most of the questions you put up by now.

It's always a trade-off, therefore if they haven't been able to answer these dilemmas yet it really means that it wasn't easy to begin with. Their first goal with WoD garrison was way more ambitious than what we ended up with in terms of location. Though limiting it to a single phased spot for everyone enabled to craft more comfortably events and features around the garrison.

I don't feel like they "abandoned" it as much as they faced technical and design constraints that they probably haven't solved yet in order to get back on housing.

People should stop seeing blizzard as a bunch of idiots that don't understand how their game works. They spend their week designing and crafting new gameplays and stories. I'm pretty sure they would love to get a version of housing into our hands. But we don't want this version to be half good, we will not enjoy it, we want them to aim for some well thought out housing that will take us time to discover and give us many opportunities to play with it, to fiddle with its limitations and to showcase the community's creativity, etc.

There is a lot surrounding such a feature technically and lot of expectations to satisfy

[Marlamin]

It's always a trade-off, therefore if they haven't been able to answer these dilemmas yet it really means that it wasn't easy to begin with. Their first goal with WoD garrison was way more ambitious than what we ended up with in terms of location. Though limiting it to a single phased spot for everyone enabled to craft more comfortably events and features around the garrison.

I don't feel like they "abandoned" it as much as they faced technical and design constraints that they probably haven't solved yet in order to get back on housing.

People should stop seeing blizzard as a bunch of idiots that don't understand how their game works. They spend their week designing and crafting new gameplays and stories. I'm pretty sure they would love to get a version of housing into our hands. But we don't want this version to be half good, we will not enjoy it, we want them to aim for some well thought out housing that will take us time to discover and give us many opportunities to play with it, to fiddle with its limitations and to showcase the community's creativity, etc.

There is a lot surrounding such a feature technically and lot of expectations to satisfy

I don't think they're a bunch of idiots, but I do think the constraints they hit with garrisons in WoD, and WoD in general, were largely preventable and they should've seen them coming (which they have learnt from to an extent now, at least in terms of not overpromising too much or showing things too early on). I don't actually expect we'll see player housing soon for the reasons you mentioned, but I hope they'll consider it down the line, if only to make a nice place where our characters can retire as the game winds down.

[Alixie]

Goodbye, Sylvanas. Have fun in Hell.

In other news, I welcome Calia, Queen of the Forsaken.

[manypillars]

I don’t get the “not ion” comment

Ion notoriously doesn't (or didn't) transmog his (known) character's gear. This could be because he expressly wants others to see the mythic gear on his character, like the raiders during BC who would AFK outside the AH in SW/Org for people to admire them.

[PhillyCheese]

Messed around on PTR and they did indeed get rid of the Forsaken refugee NPCs in Orgrimmar. They are almost completely gone except for the heirloom vendor and the quartermaster, who are humorously sitting on top of the gate still but WITHOUT the props they used to have around them.

I hope they do the same with the Nelf/Worgen refugees in an upcoming build... any mention of Kalimdor actually.

[Khaza-R]

I don’t get the “not ion” comment

The dude has been lead during the best changes to transmog

Like is blaming him just a meme now??

Lightsabers are too rare must be because ion prefers Star Trek

https://worldofwarcraft.com/en-us/ch...anis/Gurgthock

That would be why.

[PhillyCheese]

https://worldofwarcraft.com/en-us/ch...anis/Gurgthock

That would be why.

Interesting that he seems to not be playing this patch, but he's probably fully onboard with 10.0.