Dragonflight Alpha/Beta General Discussion

[Revamp Man]

What if it's something like this?

Then the new classes will be OP because in order for single spec classes to be viable they have to provide something that makes them competitive and that usually means OP

They would also have to make the class able to quest as effectively as others and that isn’t even mentioning the lore behind each one

In short mini classes screw up balance more than a new class

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I still think the northrend nercopolis image was legit and trailer is going to be Galakrond getting ress'd

That would have my attention immediately

[Vakir]

What does that even mean? What did you want the "big cover" to be? A picture of a fucking house?

???

I've never mentioned housing, though?

Typically with expansions there's a tendency to make an association of the key art with a core feature. Blood Elves and Draenei. The Lich King being the ur-Death Knight. Chen as a monk. Even Cataclysm's revamp was directly associated with Deathwing wrecking the world. This trend more or less broke with Bolvar unless you count him being backdropped by Torghast. Even WoD was defined by the idea that we were invading an unfamiliar world of savage warlords with the whole Garrison concept.

It's equally possible that leaning on the dragon theming still indicates a dragon race, dragonsworn class, etc. but forgive me for being a little bit low on the faith it's not just "pick one of five flights! Explore the Dragon Isles!" as a lazy non-starter. There's a lot of uncertainty.

You're as reliable as ever with being so defensive, though. Yeesh. At least running it through the filter of reading it in the voice of an anime girl makes it amusing.

But hey, it looks cool. /shrug

[TomatoBisque]

???

I've never mentioned housing, though?

Typically with expansions there's a tendency to make an association of the key art with a core feature. Blood Elves and Draenei. The Lich King being the ur-Death Knight. Chen as a monk. Even Cataclysm's revamp was directly associated with Deathwing wrecking the world. This trend more or less broke with Bolvar unless you count him being backdropped by Torghast. Even WoD was defined by the idea that we were invading an unfamiliar world of savage warlords with the whole Garrison concept.

It's equally possible that leaning on the dragon theming still indicates a dragon race, dragonsworn class, etc. but forgive me for being a little bit low on the faith it's not just "pick one of five flights! Explore the Dragon Isles!" as a lazy non-starter. There's a lot of uncertainty.

You're as reliable as ever with being so defensive, though. Yeesh. At least running it through the filter of reading it in the voice of an anime girl makes it amusing.

But hey, it looks cool. /shrug

... they just put major characters on the box in all those examples (Kael, LK, Deathwing, Chen, Grom, Illidan)

You are reading into something that isn't there and projecting super hard when someone points out you're being ridiculously negative

[Edlarel]

Theory time: Taking the Dragonflight "leak" at face value.

What if there's no new level cap because they're taking the FFXIV route and opening up the option for you to level every class on the same character? Go talk to somebody, do a small quest, and now you can start leveling as a 1st level mage. A little later, you want to be a tinker, or a warrior. You already have end game progression, now this lets you do it all over again, like new game +. Also, it means you get to build up your player house + transmog of all the things you want.

The single specs are there for that reason. Just keep the old classes unchanged but you unlock their "packet" in the same way you do the single spec. Want to tank on your bloodelf? level up as a warrior or DH.

Crazy, but not an impossibility

[ro9ue]

Then the new classes will be OP because in order for single spec classes to be viable they have to provide something that makes them competitive and that usually means OP

My link here is my thought that the 1 spec classes are actually just shared 4th specs. As in Paladin, Warrior and Death Knight get Dragon Knight as a 4th spec.

[Vakir]

... they just put major characters on the box in all those examples (Kael, LK, Deathwing, Chen, Grom, Illidan)

You are reading into something that isn't there

Hey, if they actually put in an iota of effort and deliver on the level of something like Mists or Legion, all the better.

I'm hardly the first person to verbalize the concern of Covenants 2.0 as a defining feature feeling like a looming possibility.

I'd argue Alex lore-wise also isn't particularly compelling at this stage in the game, but, well, they have a tendency to totally upend the status quo in X.0 pre-patches anyway. So anything is on the table for something to go down.

Dragons were not my first pick, but I'm not going to be in denial like some.

[therumblings]

Bolvar was the cover of Shadowlands and he is barely relevant at all in the expansion, I wouldn't put that much focus on this art except for the fact it may be real.

[Kiivar86]

Bolvar was the cover of Shadowlands and he is barely relevant at all in the expansion, I wouldn't put that much focus on this art except for the fact it may be real.

The boxart for TBC was a generic Blood Elf and Draenei (though said Draenei would later become Maraad but not for a long while). Definitely looking too into things.

It wouldn't surprise me if they have art like that Alexstrasza one for each of the dragonflights.

[Vakir]

Bolvar was the cover of Shadowlands and he is barely relevant at all in the expansion, I wouldn't put that much focus on this art except for the fact it may be real.

Y'know what, that's a far better point than the other whinging replies. It means absolute bunk now.

[ro9ue]

I'm hardly the first person to verbalize the concern of Covenants 2.0 as a defining feature feeling like a looming possibility.

Honestly all they need to do is just have that be for cosmetics and story and it's fixed. It's the soulbinds, covenant abilities, etc that really fucked that system up.

[uikolertekopoku]

Original



Ai upscale
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Ai upscale 2 (best resolution but overreacting to aggressive )




Feel free to investigate

The Letters are quiet different in the Poster like the „W“ Letter and missing background on the Logo but it still can be real is the Logo from the Poster painted? It doesnt fit the styles that are on all the official logos

[IMG][/IMG]

[IMG][/IMG]

[Super Dickmann]

???

I've never mentioned housing, though?

Typically with expansions there's a tendency to make an association of the key art with a core feature. Blood Elves and Draenei. The Lich King being the ur-Death Knight. Chen as a monk. Even Cataclysm's revamp was directly associated with Deathwing wrecking the world. This trend more or less broke with Bolvar unless you count him being backdropped by Torghast. Even WoD was defined by the idea that we were invading an unfamiliar world of savage warlords with the whole Garrison concept.

It's equally possible that leaning on the dragon theming still indicates a dragon race, dragonsworn class, etc. but forgive me for being a little bit low on the faith it's not just "pick one of five flights! Explore the Dragon Isles!" as a lazy non-starter. There's a lot of uncertainty.

You're as reliable as ever with being so defensive, though. Yeesh. At least running it through the filter of reading it in the voice of an anime girl makes it amusing.

But hey, it looks cool. /shrug

Both Legion and Cataclysm who added the most amount of crap to the world total and either a new class or new races had their cover image consist of an important character staring out, ditto Chen. It's impossible to determine that WoD would have garrisons just by looking at the cover image of Grom holding an axe over his head, that's ridiculous. Knowing a (more covered up, inshallah) Alex is on the cover tells us nothing in isolation except that there's dragons in it.

Mind, I don't think either a new class or a new race have the luster they used to and Blizzard should focus entirely on rebalancing the grind and content release cadence while having the shiny object be class skins or the like.

[ro9ue]

It's hard to get a good look at the logo in that image, and it does seem odd/different from previous ones. But given the context of everything else, I'm pretty sure it's the real deal.

[therumblings]

Fake images usually get debunked pretty quickly with reverse image search and everyone hunting for them, so I'm beginning to think that may be real.

[Vakir]

Honestly all they need to do is just have that be for cosmetics and story and it's fixed. It's the soulbinds, covenant abilities, etc that really fucked that system up.

I mean having that as being the thing to focus on. A defining feature rather than just an extension of already existing stuff (like the mission board, non-linear questing order, etc.) I have zero issues with them doing Covenants again in that regard, it's actually a perfect shoe-in for having five flights with different themes. I mean "Is this going to be the blueprint for future expansions?"

Like, you watch the SL features trailer and it's like a god damn fever dream. Outside the stunning art we're accustomed to, it feels like a patch by comparison to other full-priced expansions.

Mind, I don't think either a new class or a new race have the luster they used to and Blizzard should focus entirely on rebalancing the grind and content release cadence while having the shiny object be class skins or the like.

I've come to not trust on any conceivable level that cutting down work in one area actually improves output in another. If it wasn't for SL being what it was, I'd still have a gut feeling that each expac is made by two different alternating teams even if I know it to be absolutely false.

Expansions that have had objectively less have delivered on what they did have with a poorer quality. So I don't really look at it in those terms that cutting one thing improves the rest. Legion was crammed with content but still balanced that content and its cadence better than WoD or SL. But fair enough.

Also, people, the datamined armor means the Alex picture is pretty likely to be legit. There's no fake images to trace back.

[Frood]

I'm going to be "that guy" and say that this is a red herring. It's just a bit too suspicious for me. Some thoughts:

· The JS file in question has been minified—except for the part with the Dragonflight name, of course. This suggests they really wanted us to find it.
· From a coding perspective, it's slightly odd that the listOfProductIds has been defined as var instead of let or const. The comments might also suggest it being a red herring (for now), and that it may change later.
· The A, NS and SOA records that exist for dragonflight.blizzard.com do not exist for shadowlands.blizzard.com or any other name I could think of.
· The leaked snapchat screenshot floating around shows art that might be real but seems hastily arranged and composed. This would also be the first time they abandon well-established design traditions such as the logo's general silhouette and the backplate behind the expansion name. In my opinion, the logo from this leak definitely doesn't match Blizzard eye for detail. My guess here is that it's someone riding on the JS leak. The CMYK test pattern is a nice touch, but perhaps too convenient. Clearly, a lot of effort has been put into establishing this photo and make it seem like an actual leak from a creative professional. The logo also seems purposely obfuscated to hide or excuse its lack of detail.

Blizzard has changed a lot in the past year, and seems to have given devs more room to play around. Maybe this is the case for front-end devs too. I also doubt they would make such an obvious mistake after the last time, where the Bolvar image was literally found by changing one word in an URL to another. I honestly think we're being bamboozled, but it could be awesome if I was wrong.

[ro9ue]

Fake images usually get debunked pretty quickly with reverse image search and everyone hunting for them, so I'm beginning to think that may be real.

Yeah and that Alexstraza image is nowhere to be found. We can't see the detail, but just from what we have it looks extremely well done / professional level and does fit the current MO to cover up some of their women more. Anyone is free to look up fan art of Alexstraza - I did to look for that image - and well... yeah she's generally not so armored.

If you're a betting type, I think you can safely go in on this leak.

[therumblings]

but it could be awesome if I was wrong.

It would be pretty awesome if this is a bamboozle and it would be pretty awesome if it's real, in my opinion. This is just pure fun leak seasoning.

[Revamp Man]

So the dragon behind Alex seems new
Purple with some bling on the horns

Then we take into account Alex’s gear being red and white with gold and black which might mean she has some connection to the newly rebuilt scarlet crusade

But tossing that aside the dragon looks like a twilight dragon which based on BfA stuff is very possible. So I’m going to assume that the big bad threats will be
Galakrond
Scarlet crusade with their black dragon leader
Chromatus
Twilight hammer cult

Galakrond could easily be set up as the first raid tier with scourge back up

Twilight dragons try to join the forces of Azeroth but the infinite keeps interfering and we create moruzond and he goes off into the timeline where we killed him probably toss in Xal

Chromatus could be the unintended consequence of the scourge being unchecked which leads to his body being freed from stasis and thus healing itself and he’ll probably want to gain more power

Scarlet crusade is easy enough. By weakening the alliance and using their forces then the leader and daughter of Onyxia can get her revenge and conquer the puny mortals who have doomed themselves

[ro9ue]

I'm going to be "that guy" and say that this is a red herring. It's just a bit too suspicious for me. Some thoughts:
<snip>

I think there's room for a 5% chance they put those comments into their code, hoping for someone to find it for April Fools and forgot to take it out. 5% might be too generous though.