Dragonflight Alpha/Beta General Discussion

[Wangming]

Housing and Bard class + revamp: yasssssss. Team Revamp finally winning the guessing game!

Yeah, three great stuff. As meh as I am about Dragons and Tinkers, this actually sounds quite compelling, not gonna lie.

I'm not even a huge Worgen fan and I would literally live in Gilneas if they ever reworked that city/area. People love the atmosphere of that zone. Just look at any RP guild on Alliance, most of them are based on "retaking Gilneas".

Same here. I'm not really a big fan of werewolves (although worgen at least have a pretty original lore) but the dark victorian aesthetic is amazing. And don't get me started on the muuuusic.

[Fahrad Wagner]

You'll take my slum bar hiding a group of kingmakers trope from my cold dead hands

Don't get me wrong, the quests were good, the location though? Meh!

[Wangming]

It's also worth noting that season 4 is messing with scaling raids all being relevant. If they wanted to move to a system where ilvl/gear was the main point of growth ans the expansion itself is a mix of vertical and horizontal progression then both testing the raids that way and then also removing the leveling chore it would make sense.

Yep, makes sense.

[huth]

Well there are songs like: "Fucked with an Anchor" or What the Fuck is Wrong With You" that can be used to hurt people. In fact the latter w as a boss battle theme in DMC.

Watch Carbot's last Lost Ark video.

[SunspotAnims]

The description of the Dragonflight's leak is interesting given the recent discoveries that have lined up with it but my main argument against it is how extremely off the mark it was in predicting the dates of the expansion's announcement. I can't think of a reason why an announcement would be planned for February and then delayed by an entire two months.

When you aren't looking at it with confirmation bias, it is still totally possible that the leak just got very lucky with a handful of predictions.

[Makabreska]

10.0 will be Light vs Void and it will be a huge battle on Azeroth.
Blizz is trying to trick us.

Soooo where is this "10.0 is in august 2023" source?

[ro9ue]

Nah, most of the features in that leak sound really bad. Dragonsworn as a skin for Shamans? Removing leveling in an MMO? Four (pointless) "micro classes"?

A developer is most likely just messing with us because they saw that leak and know we got our eyes on literally every single thing they move, touch, or change even slightly in the PTR.

There are other forms of leveling.

Leveling in WoW is archaic and holding WoW back, no similar game in 2022 has this tedious infinite level cap expansion. Most either use an account wide level cap paragon progression system (you still have bars to fill), or use ilevel as vertical progression and just squish that, then have some sort of supplemental seasonal XP bar. The developers arent going to just endlessly extend level cap and squish down over and over. Honestly it's insane it went on as long as it did.

ESO and Destiny 2 both have better systems to replace leveling. They're probably going to use something along these lines.

[huth]

There are other forms of leveling.

Leveling in WoW is archaic and holding WoW back, no similar game in 2022 has this tedious infinite level cap expansion. Most either use an account wide level cap paragon progression system (you still have bars to fill), or use ilevel as vertical progression and just squish that, then have some sort of supplemental seasonal XP bar. The developers arent going to just endlessly extend level cap and squish down over and over. Honestly it's insane it went on as long as it did.

ESO and Destiny 2 both have better systems to replace leveling. They're probably going to use something along these lines.

It's an integral part of the gear design. They can't easily do away with it without changing gear design as well.

I'd disagree that old is inherently bad, as well. Leveling systems are still commonplace in RPGs because they work.

[Arcinatoss]

Soooo where is this "10.0 is in august 2023" source?

their ass, probably.

[Khaza-R]

There are other forms of leveling.

Leveling in WoW is archaic and holding WoW back, no similar game in 2022 has this tedious infinite level cap expansion. Most either use an account wide level cap paragon progression system (you still have bars to fill), or use ilevel as vertical progression and just squish that, then have some sort of supplemental seasonal XP bar. The developers arent going to just endlessly extend level cap and squish down over and over. Honestly it's insane it went on as long as it did.

ESO and Destiny 2 both have better systems to replace leveling. They're probably going to use something along these lines.

I could easily see them doing away with leveling. And actually I think the renown system was a test for it.

With scaling, leveling no longer serves any purpose other than to increase ilvl and gate certain content. Both of those things can be achieved by renown and already are in some ways in SL.

[Futhark]

As much as I'm irritated by Tinker discussions, making it a shaman skin would make a lot of sense. They deploy totems, emhance their weapons, shapeshit and equip shields. Mechanically it could support tinkers. We already have technologically minded goblins as shaman. Tinker could be a sort of literal deus ex machina with elementals instead of gods.

Elementally powered machinery. This reminds me of the Bathouse concept I came up for an eventual revamp.

Elements can be mapped to physical forces pretty easily:

Earth=gravity
Fire=temperature
Water=kinetics
Wind=electricity

[Fahrad Wagner]

Something that I find particularly interesting about the Dragonflight leak:

"Balor. Halfling race dealing with primordial fel enemies (think proto-demons, like what the Shadowlands creatures are to undead)."

Whereas Balor is another classic zone we have yet to explore, the mention of a halfling race is particularly interesting... especially since they are fighting proto-demons.

In the Irish mythology, Balor is the king of the Fomorians, a group of creatures describe as hideous (sometimes demonic) giants, warriors of chaos and destruction.

Now, we have yet to have an Ireland-inspired zone in the game (Kul'Tiras doesn't dive too much into the Celtic aspect of the Irish culture), and Blizzard has a history of copy-pasting real life mythology into the game, twisting it only a little.

So, the island of Balor being home to halflings (tall humans? small ettins? something else?) fighting giant proto-demons (mirroring Zereth Mortis proto death creatures?) is something I could see.

[draugril]

I think you've got it exactly, and they will allow some sort of class swap!

I wouldn't mind that at all. I have a few character-specific titles and whatnot that I wish were on other classes and characters...

[Vakir]

I'd like for there to be more explanation than just "something happened to Dalaran textures" than just adding it to the list of support.

What does MrGM mean?

Also didn't the necropolis CG have crazy chromatic abberations that indicate some kind of post-Photoshop work?

[Wangming]

Elements can be mapped to physical forces pretty easily:

Earth=gravity
Fire=temperature
Water=kinetics
Wind=electricity

Yeah also true.

[ro9ue]

It's an integral part of the gear design. They can't easily do away with it without changing gear design as well.

I'd disagree that old is inherently bad, as well. Leveling systems are still commonplace in RPGs because they work.

Leveling systems do work and work well. What you misread was that I'm saying the way WoW does it is archaic. If you play Destiny 2 or ESO for example, you can see how they still have "leveling" but it's with account-wide Champion Point systems (ESO) and Seasonal XP (D2). These are far superior by any metric.

[Fahrad Wagner]

I'd like for there to be more explanation than just "something happened to Dalaran textures" than just adding it to the list of support.

What does MrGM mean

Also didn't the necropolis CG have crazy chromatic abberations that indicate some kind of post-Photoshop work?

Northrend Dalaran textures were played with, we don't know more other than that as far as I am aware. @Marlamin do you have more Sir Birb?

[Raetary]

Since nobody posted it, Marla clarified its something about Northrend Dalaran:
https://twitter.com/Marlamin/status/1510643137487773706

[Lady Atia]

Bingo! /10char

This and the leak does say that the new campaigns will be about the Kirin Tor and Uncrowned among others so Dalaran would serve as a hub for both.

[Fahrad Wagner]

Something that I find particularly interesting about the Dragonflight leak:

"Balor. Halfling race dealing with primordial fel enemies (think proto-demons, like what the Shadowlands creatures are to undead)."

Whereas Balor is another classic zone we have yet to explore, the mention of a halfling race is particularly interesting... especially since they are fighting proto-demons.

In the Irish mythology, Balor is the king of the Fomorians, a group of creatures describe as hideous (sometimes demonic) giants, warriors of chaos and destruction.

Now, we have yet to have an Ireland-inspired zone in the game (Kul'Tiras doesn't dive too much into the Celtic aspect of the Irish culture), and Blizzard has a history of copy-pasting real life mythology into the game, twisting it only a little.

So, the island of Balor being home to halflings (tall humans? small ettins? something else?) fighting giant proto-demons (mirroring Zereth Mortis proto death creatures?) is something I could see.

I will also point out that in the Irish mythology, Ethniu, also referred to as Ethlinn, is the daugther of Balor.

Now, that could be the missing link to the origins of Ettins (and also connect with their links to the Twilight Hammer and Twilight dragons).

https://wowpedia.fandom.com/wiki/Ettin