Dragonflight Alpha/Beta General Discussion

[Nymrohd]

They would have to do something to support an entirely new class there. Imagine a new player trying to do Legion with the new class, no weapons anywhere & relics you can't use. Also you can't do the overall story because its done through order halls.

Why would they? They removed the legendary questlines from MoP and WoD. Heck they could just create a new heirloom weapon for each of those classes and give that for free instead. Would be a chance to give them one decent mog. But I find it extremely unlikely they'd give full orders and full artifact weapons.
AS for the story; no, the leveling story of Legion is getting the Pillars which is entirely done through zones. The Class stories are separate as is X'era's smaller storyline.

[SniperCT]

I think 4th spec would just piss off people playing the ones that don't get it. Like can you imagine being a demon hunter with two specs and seeing 5 classes that have four?

I don't know who suggested it before here but a sort of shared spec is more likely. I mean we already have Protection, Holy and Restoration that share a name and a theme. Just take it up to a next level and make Dragon Knight a spec you can select both for Warrior and Paladin. A spec that would be completely the same for both of them.

Or, like I said, make them the new endgame progression system. One that will hopefully stick.

Thing is, we are so caught up with the discussion of mini-classes that we ignore the term wasn't even used in the original leak. It can be a lot of things in the end.

permanately give us a dragon form and dragon abilities as a form of alternate advancement? Could work, but this is blizzard and they're allergic to carrying systems over even when a lot of players really like it. (and yet carry over the systems players hate, go figure)

They would have to do something to support an entirely new class there. Imagine a new player trying to do Legion with the new class, no weapons anywhere & relics you can't use. Also you can't do the overall story because its done through order halls.

Make it a hero class that starts at 50 or whatever. Something you have to unlock with a higher level character, so they don't have to do the legion work because you already have a character that can/has done that.

[Wangming]

Ooo, that would be a cool way for overlapping themes between classes. It'd help with endgame alt restrictions for new specs/classes should the player want to reroll.

I know this is a weak argument but Hearthstone did experiment with cross class cards with the Gadgetzan expansion.

[Varodoc]

For once I agree with you. I don't think the void elves will be as prominent and you think, but its obvious Xal'atath will play some kind of roll in the dragon Isles expansion. Im sure valves will also be present, but they wont be front and center key plot characters IMO.

When Varian came back in WoTLK and resumed his position as High King, Humans kicked Dwarves and any other race out of the spotlight and became the sole "figurehead" of the Alliance. So much so that, when Cataclysm is released, the new intro explicitly mentions that the Humans of Stormwind "led the Alliance to victory" in the War against the Lich King.

It is thus reasonable to infer that the Lightforged and Ren'dorei, with their leaders taking the spotlight, would become the new "main force" of the Alliance, so to say...

Concretely, what this means, is that we'd be seeing a lot more Lightforged and Void elf NPCs in questing zones, as opposed to the generic "Stormwind Footman" NPC we've all become accustomed to.

Really, it's a shame that so few people here talk about this unprecedented change for the Alliance, where for the first time there is a non-Stormwind character at the absolute top.

[Nymrohd]

This is exactly what I want and what I think the game badly needs. Seed the foreshadowing necessary for bigger bads in the future of course, but lets go back to a vanilla/tbc approach for a bit.

BfA actually did that and I think did it great in 8.0. Kul Tiras and Zandalar each had an extensive storyline that you worked through while leveling with a fairly impressive capstone (Zandalar Forever & Uldir/ Siege of Boralus). The stories were complete and done well. Sure the Zandalar story left plot hooks open but none of them were urgent (Talanji finding about Bwonsamdi)

Like, Zandalar could have been its own xpac easily (so could Kul'tiras but I cannot see any possible way to allow Horde there when I could see Alliance allowed in Zandalar).

[Nyel]

I don't know why 4 micro classes would be better than one "real" class. It just feels very weird. And for sure you can have the Dragon Knight and Chronomancer be Dragon-themed and therefore be a class. Minstrel and Tinker maybe not so much, but those two clearly go together.

I'm really not a fan of one-spec classes. Demon Hunter already feels lazy.

[Wangming]

I don't know why 4 micro classes would be better than one "real" class. It just feels very weird. And for sure you can have the Dragon Knight and Chronomancer be Dragon-themed and therefore be a class. Minstrel and Tinker maybe not so much, but those two clearly go together.

I'm really not a fan of one-spec classes. Demon Hunter already feels lazy.

Well, worst case scenario, they will be like Blue Mage in FFXIV. Ten levels below max level, can't use matchmaking, essentially a class for open world content. Stupid broken ass abilities that can one shot enemies. A sort of not quite class that is unburdened by such silly constraints as meta. Can't be a main, but fun as an alt.

[therumblings]

Ten levels below max level, can't use matchmaking, essentially a class for open world content. Stupid broken ass abilities that can one shot enemies. A sort of not quite class that is unburdened by such silly constraints as meta. Can't be a main, but fun as an alt.

That sounds ridiculous and not something meant for WoW, it would make much more sense to just add a new class in that case.

[zernie]

So... is there anything left that didn't originate as a robot, dragons & gods included?

[Nymrohd]

So here is an idea.

What if we got a class that is also a race? Wrathion helps a batch of Chromatic whelps hatch, a leftover experiment by Nefarian. You can play a whelp, shift between multiple forms (your chosen humanoid form, an HD whelp or small drake form and a hybrid combat form like the one Hearthstone Mercenaries created for Wrathion). You can also tap into your Chromatic heritage to shift between colors and tap into different powers. Your race is also your class, you have a combination of powers tied to the dragonflights with physical dragon powers though most powers depend on your active color (think stance dancing). SO you could have some powers that are very specific to your active flight while others are always active and some just are modified (so you can only use time abilities when Bronze, wing buffet with every spec, while breath is available to all but has a different damage type and secondary effect).
Multiple specs (could have as many as four tbh to cover all roles).

[Wangming]

That sounds ridiculous and not something meant for WoW, it would make much more sense to just add a new class in that case.

Trust me it got the same reaction in FF. And a lot of people are still salty it isn't a regular class. But many others enjoy the sheer riddiculousness of it all and hope that many other "limited jobs" will be released. Not everything is for everyone, but everything is for someone.

[Baedril]

Well, worst case scenario, they will be like Blue Mage in FFXIV. Ten levels below max level, can't use matchmaking, essentially a class for open world content. Stupid broken ass abilities that can one shot enemies. A sort of not quite class that is unburdened by such silly constraints as meta. Can't be a main, but fun as an alt.

Is there even a place for that in WoW? You already scale extremely well against lower level enemies and raids, the only utility/benefit that would have in WoW would be solo-ing the last expansion's raid when that's still hard for max levels, I guess?

[therumblings]

Trust me it got the same reaction in FF. And a lot of people are still salty it isn't a regular class. But many others enjoy the sheer riddiculousness of it all and hope that many other "limited jobs" will be released. Not everything is for everyone, but everything is for someone.

The WoW culture will never accept something like that, because people will lose their minds online and complain it's just a quest gimmick like when you turn into Terokk or Huln and get 3 new abilities for that quest.

[zernie]

Frankly I think there's enough races/classes as it is. Adding a new class is such a huge time sink, I'd prefer for them to focus on the plot quality, mechanics, and revamping the orld world.

[therumblings]

Frankly I think there's enough races/classes as it is. Adding a new class is such a huge time sink, I'd prefer for them to focus on the plot quality, mechanics, and revamping the orld world.

It's been way too long without a new class, and judging by the previous two expansion's quality, not adding a new class doesn't change anything.

[Nyel]

If micro-classes are real, I think it's likely they are a continuation of Blizzard's ongoing pursuit of maximizing their output with minimal input.

I think it started in BfA with the shared raid sets (4 "tier sets" take less work than 12). Then it continued in SL with the shared covenants (4 "class order halls" take less work than 12). Now it might continue in DF, since 4 shared micro-classes take less work than 12 new specs a full new class, and so on. It probably also lets them separate the "choose your Flight" experience from the class abilities found on the micro-classes.

It's pretty much like the Elite classes of GW2, but several classes share theirs in WoW.

Like, maybe the micro-class is simply a handful of extra abilities and then some passives you can tweak.

As a X and Y you can now also be a Z, which lets you still use your existing toolkit but also a few extra abilities.

You arrive in Uldorous, and discover a few "class trainers" for these micro-classes. You approach and they give you a quest. Do the thing and discover the lore, then boom unlock your Minstrel UI. Come back a little while later and do a new quest to unlock a new ability.

Not sure if I would like this approach honestly. It's like allied races (talking about something like Void Elves, not unique new Allied Races), but way worse.

[Nymrohd]

I know this is a weak argument but Hearthstone did experiment with cross class cards with the Gadgetzan expansion.

Oh HS has experimented far more heavily outside that expac with dual classing. We had dual class heroes in a lot of the solo content, had Diablo as a Warrior/Warlock in Duels for a long while, had multiple dual class cards in Scholomance.

[Wangming]

Is there even a place for that in WoW? You already scale extremely well against lower level enemies and raids, the only utility/benefit that would have in WoW would be solo-ing the last expansion's raid when that's still hard for max levels, I guess?

In WoW? Definitely. In the WoW community? I have my doubts. Every time something remotely innovative is suggested they end up wailing "nooooo my basic ass gameplay from almost twenty years agooooo"

The WoW culture will never accept something like that, because people will lose their minds online and complain it's just a quest gimmick like when you turn into Terokk or Huln and get 3 new abilities for that quest.

Yeah, what he said.

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Oh HS has experimented far more heavily outside that expac with dual classing. We had dual class heroes in a lot of the solo content, had Diablo as a Warrior/Warlock in Duels for a long while, had multiple dual class cards in Scholomance.

Good point. The challenge is to translate it into WoW gameplay someway.

[therumblings]

Blizzard needs to tread carefully when innovating, but I think they need to return to the basics right now more than anything. MoP or Legion is obviously a good model, I'm not sure what's been happening or why they feel the need to tinker (pun intended) with the models that work so well.

[Luck4]

Touching a bit on the possible late release in the summer of 2023, I think people need to understand that WoW will be on rock bottom by the end of 2022, so there's no need to rush, what Blizzard truly needs is an expansion that's good enough to bring in both former and new players.

Having confirmation of a more grounded theme is good, but we also need good gameplay and lore. I dearly hope Blizzard tries a "Legion comeback", otherwise, I think not even Microsoft's money will be able to resurrect this franchise without releasing a brand new game.