Dragonflight Alpha/Beta General Discussion

[Catastrophy349]

Don't believe a WORD Morgan Day says today in his interview. However, still watch it! https://twitter.com/WarcraftRadio/st...T-ceOvm1ePW53Q

[Wangming]

April Fool's Day in full force this morning.

Looked at it closer and the undead skin tone was applied when yellow skin was selected. This is a very well made fake, but still would be fake even if it weren't April 1st.

[Super Dickmann]

The thing is, the factions had to be nuked. Not for a story reason. The factions had far more to give storywise in the long term and that is just not viable any longer. But gameplay the population of the game had shrunk significantly and poor decisions in the past meant that cross faction play was both inevitable and in no way possible to be done elegantly.

Now I insist that cross faction or the unifaction could have been done elegantly by hitting the players with a Greater Threat the size of a mallet if they had done a Black Empire expansion. Remove all subtlety and have a greater evil that is truly vile target both factions and just expose the players to the option of either saving helpless civilians from the opposite faction or just sit and watch kids get eaten or sacrificed by giant squid monsters. An alarming number of players would probably cheer as it happened but the vast majority would get shuffled into the unifaction.
Sadly that never happened. While gameplay necessitates it and Blizzard finally admited defeat (and with Blizzcon dead and most of the bros who wanted to scream For the Horde at poor Alliance fans there no longer in the company) we will move forward. If we had the population to go on with two factions without the gameplay suffering, I think they would have never went the road they did with BfA.
And yes, I do think it took them a long time to make sure cross faction was technically viable. But it's probably been a fair while that they knew and were planning around it.

As we've talked over back in BFA, faction collapse or separating the archetypal hero character from the factions to allow gameplay co-op were both more sensible ways to get to this goal and solve the problem of a dwindling playerbase. Legion has us up against the biggest bads in the setting in a war to end all wars and the premise of the Order Halls is that since the factions can't sort their shit we team up together. Whatever my grievances with the Order Halls in terms of story, what this approach does is not require the undermining of the component races and factions. There's no need to make everyone adopt the same vague honor code, remove all the Horde's core institutions, expel every character who's ever looked at another wrong, destroy the Night Elves' city and go back to wreck the entirety of the Forsaken identity and surgically chop out their leader in order to allow gameplay cooperation. The reason people are attached to these races is the cumulative investment over the years that comes with a certain set of expectations and those races and classes are the eyes through which we experience the setting. Ditching the factions while preserving racial and character variety allows you to tell more stories and still achieve your gameplay goals.

BFA however did the opposite. Throughout its interminable runtime it ground every race it touched into the same lawful good slop where every participant is interchangable with any other outside of cosmetic appearance. Then when the moment came for that to pay itself off at least from the point of view of gameplay utility by merging the factions, it backed off, leaving both the resolution of its plot and of the only gameplay objective that could explain, if never justify the steps it took storywise, up to Shadowlands. Everything in BFA built towards the Unifaction in story, with all the consequences that come with wringing out the variety and conflict out of races and characters in a game to which this is an essential selling point. All to build up towards a gameplay change that would be required to support the franchise going forward, but when it came time to pull the trigger on that change it backed off, leaving us with all the negatives and none of the positives.

As a side note, where've you been, man?

[Kiria]

April Fool's Day in full force this morning.

Yeah I gathered as I went and checked myself on the PTR. But I don't think fans would be happy with just a skin under any circumstance.

[Sondrelk]

Looked at it closer and the undead skin tone was applied when yellow skin was selected. This is a very well made fake, but still would be fake even if it weren't April 1st.

It did make me wonder though. Obviously a questline only available to hunters giving a reward for Blood Elves specifically wouldn't really work. But what would be a fitting reward that all hunters could use to show off they completed the questline? Sylvanas' bow maybe?

[Kiria]

It did make me wonder though. Obviously a questline only available to hunters giving a reward for Blood Elves specifically wouldn't really work. But what would be a fitting reward that all hunters could use to show off they completed the questline? Sylvanas' bow maybe?

No just a spell effect and skins like Warlocks got would be cool tbh, although some would love the full class experience I know I'd be happy with Class skins provided they come with new effects and skins to go along with the suggested class.

[Wangming]

It did make me wonder though. Obviously a questline only available to hunters giving a reward for Blood Elves specifically wouldn't really work. But what would be a fitting reward that all hunters could use to show off they completed the questline? Sylvanas' bow maybe?

Yeah a skin an eyecolor update for only Night and Blood elves that can only be unlocked by hunters, is suuuper weak. Something more would be needed.

[Sondrelk]

Yeah a skin an eyecolor update for only Night and Blood elves that can only be unlocked by hunters, is suuuper weak. Something more would be needed.

On the flipside I wonder whether the the Belf questline will give this dark ranger cosmetic to Belf hunters who complete it, same as how Belf paladin who complete it seemingly get the red and black recolor of the Antorus set.

[Khaza-R]

Oh my lol. What did they do.

Between Ybarra's stream comments and the April's fool jokes its like they feed on the trollishness of a certain class's fervent followers.

[Deventh]

Wow, can't believe they confirmed Tinker. Wonder how Dark Ranger fans are dealing. Hope too many of them don't kill themselves.

You're really cringe.

- - - Updated - - -

That's a pretty damned harsh thing to say... If anything the April "FOOLS" joke neither confirms or denies Tinkers.

Actually, it confirms that Tinkers are 100% not coming in the upcoming expansion and most likely for several expansions after.

[Kiivar86]

The April Fools patch notes reminds me of the one from back before the Draenei were revealed and the April Fools reveal of wisps for the Alliance's new race.

I mention this because I remember Blizzard's E3 booth (their last one) being photographed a few days before and all the Draenei artwork as well as shots of in-game Draenei, but with no context, so people went "wait, the wisps were a clue! Wisps killed Archimonde and other eredar surely, so maybe they're possessing eredar corpses!"

Ah, makes me laugh all these years later.

[Harbour]

Tbh, Tinkers being mentioned on April Fools post gave me a gut feeling they are ACTUALLY gonna announce them on April 19 like "Ha, you didnt expect THAT, right? Look how cool are they!"

[Lady Atia]

Yeah, boring is the word. I mean in BfA Sylvanas was a villain you could hate. Really hate with a passion, especially in how bad she made the Horde look. And you could hype for Azshara and N'zoth because they have been long-rumored and requested baddies for a long time now.
Zovaal on the other hand? It is very hard to care about him either way. It took us till 9.2 to learn if his plan would affect us at all.

But maybe I don't want to hate Sylvanas? She was one of the few great female characters we had since WC3 and randomly turning her into a shit villain without any other reasons than "she is eeevil now" in BfA was the biggest fuckup of that Afrasiabi dude and I'm glad he's gone. And I'm glad they fixed her with the Sylvanas novel tbh.

[Deventh]

Tbh, Tinkers being mentioned on April Fools post gave me a gut feeling they are ACTUALLY gonna announce them on April 19 like "Ha, you didnt expect THAT, right? Look how cool are they!"

[Shadochi]

Tbh, Tinkers being mentioned on April Fools post gave me a gut feeling they are ACTUALLY gonna announce them on April 19 like "Ha, you didnt expect THAT, right? Look how cool are they!"

did you read their description? Its bards

[Revamp Man]

But maybe I don't want to hate Sylvanas? She was one of the few great female characters we had since WC3 and randomly turning her into a shit villain without any other reasons than "she is eeevil now" in BfA was the biggest fuckup of that Afrasiabi dude and I'm glad he's gone. And I'm glad they fixed her with the Sylvanas novel tbh.

It depends on what you consider fixed
The wrath gate thing is weird like that
“Oh I would have celebrated if we killed Arthas but since we didn’t I must be conflicted with the collateral damage” that’s just saying she’s ok with awful things if she gets what she wanted

[Revamp Man]

It's not if she gets what she wants in that case its. If we kill Arthas then the cost is worth it but its only worth it if we kill Arthas.

Yeah and she wanted to kill Arthas

[ercarp]

I wish someone would just drop the real leak already. I've been going through all the ones we've seen so far and I don't think a single one of them sounds particularly credible. I'd be extremely surprised if one of them somehow ended up being true.

At least a week or two from now, the chances of someone posting the real leak should increase somewhat as we draw closer to the expansion reveal date.

[Revamp Man]

Incoming time skip

In the book the jailer tells Sylvanas that years could have passed in the time it took her to get revived by the valkyr

This would explain why khadgar was talking about feeling the years when he was supposed to be in his fifties

[ercarp]

This would explain why khadgar was talking about feeling the years when he was supposed to be in his fifties

Someone needs to put this misconception to bed, lol. Khadgar has been hanging out as a raven in Oribos since pretty much the launch of SL.