Dragonflight Alpha/Beta General Discussion

[Nyel]

This is all that matters for the overwhelming majority of people still playing or wanting to play the game. People haven't left WoW due to the scandals, and I'd wager a bit that if they said they did, they're lying or performing.

Hell, the company keeps spinning the predatory practices of hamster wheels because the players keep running on it.

Yeah, pretty sure 99,999999999% of the playerbase doesn't care about lawsuits, scandals or the work environment that Blizzard is. And that's totally fine.

[Syegfryed]

Legion lore had serious issues and handled the Legion extremely poorly. But it had such an insane amount of fanservice that you still felt compelled to follow.

Exactly, it was basically this, a lot of fanservice to cover up from it. Like giving some classes awesome lore weapons, but others receiving some shit they made up in the last second.

I will forever hate that fucking expansion for not giving us the Axe of Broxxigar and the proper Frostmourne.

Yeah, this "class fantasy" they focus rly fucked up the classes royally, like forcing frost to be dual wielding and fury to dual wield 2H, FUCKING blizzard.

[Revamp Man]

I liked legion
Not because of the lore but the fun little things

I liked the fun little artifact stories
I liked the idea of legiondaries….that we were sold at blizzcon…but 7.3 was the best.
The mage tower was awesome as a way to challenge your skills
TF can die in a pit

I still miss WoD play style for some classes though
MoP had the stories unlock after rep is cool and I will die on the hill that MoP with M+ and current emissary systems and raid systems then it would have been close to perfect

[Syegfryed]

MOP had the best class design by a huge mile, all classes and specs felt good to play, never got bored in doing content with then, pvp, pve or even world pvp.

If the class you play sucks it kills most the joy in playing the game

They cant write a basic story (Legion) nor metaphysics one (Shadowlands)


I mean in CATA we never adress the rape of alexstraza and her captivity plus we let dragonmaw joins horde and she didnt burn orgrimmar to ashes in retailation.


bruh

Thats because may give people the wrong idea of the events, as people will imagine some weird orc gangbang and that was not what happened, neither is a good topic to follow in a kid's game. The dragonmaw responsable for the event also are dead, and most today orcs were born in azeroth.

And if you didn't notice Alexstraza already forgave the horde, the current ones have nothing to do with what happened before, most of then like i said, born in the concentration camps as slaves as well.

[Wangming]

Legion lore was not that good either, neither well written, there was a lot of mistakes and shit on it, like the assassination of vol'jin and illidan our hero. Legendary random drop to me was asinine.

People were just too starved after WoD that anything remotely good was praised tenfold, and maybe it will happen again with dragonflight, they just need to not shit the bed in this one.

Oh what they did to Vol'Jin was a slap in the face. Dude got promoted at the very end of MoP, due to the nature of WoD spent the entire expansion offscreen only to die at the start of Legion to help push the Sylvanas arc foward. I'm also still bitter they just made the Emerald Dream a raid only marginally related to the expansion.

The playervase has been conditioned into accepting anything less than WoW: The actual return of Jesus, and also 1 million in your account, as falling short of its potential, so aiming for another "WoW is great again" is almost definitely not going to happen.

But I think that if Blizzard took the good parts of SL. In this case covenant reward systems/zone upgrades, Tier Sets, great vault. And combined this with a story and continent that players are more excited for, then the expansion would really shine.

The "perfect" WoW expansion is simply impossible since there are so many contradictory wants from the playerbase, so aiming for that won't work regardless. But you can make a damn good one regardless.
Especially after SL being universally reviled i don't think it's a stretch to assume we might be looking at another WoD to Legion situation where the good things are amplified by comparison to SL, even regardless of their inherent quality. Even more so when you consider how poor many of the Legion systems were, compared to how favourably it's looked upon now.

I never said it has to be perfect. I'm just asking that is "a bit better than SL" enough for all the people who couldn't suffer the wait or the mistakes and has moved on to GW2, ESO, FFXIV, BDO or Lost Ark?

Now I wasn't as sold on Legion as the majority, but I do think Blizz needs an expansion as well recived as Legion was, if they want to get some upward momentum.

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MOP had the best class design by a huge mile,

Fuck yeah it did. Everything in MoP was fun to do cause classes were fun to play. And that was before the ability pruning that slowly started in WoD and went full force in Legion. The last expansion without borrowed power. *sigh*

[Nymrohd]

I will forever hate that fucking expansion for not giving us the Axe of Broxxigar

Lol sorry but amazing how biased someone can be that they'd call the Axe of Cenarius "Axe of Broxxigar" (it's Broxigar btw).

[Sondrelk]

Oh what they did to Vol'Jin was a slap in the face. Dude got promoted at the very end of MoP, due to the nature of WoD spent the entire expansion offscreen only to die at the start of Legion to help push the Sylvanas arc foward. I'm also still bitter they just made the Emerald Dream a raid only marginally related to the expansion.



I never said it has to be perfect. I'm just asking that is "a bit better than SL" enough for all the people who couldn't suffer the wait or the mistakes and has moved on to GW2, ESO, FFXIV, BDO or Lost Ark?

Now I wasn't as sold on Legion as the majority, but I do think Blizz needs an expansion as well recived as Legion was, if they want to get some upward momentum.

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Fuck yeah it did. Everything in MoP was fun to do cause classes were fun to play. And that was before the ability pruning that slowly started in WoD and went full force in Legion. The last expansion without borrowed power. *sigh*

It depends on what you mean by "small improvement".
Not having droughts could be considered a small improvement, but would absolutely make SL almost a completely different game in terms of quality. Same with having a theme and continent that more players care about. A small improvement, but one that pays massive dividends.

Combine these two and you get an expansion that I think most players would have considered to top Legion in terms of quality.

[Revamp Man]

Things we know for sure
The name is Dragonflight

Things that are very likely true
The art
Dalaran involvement even via pre patch
Lordaeron and silver moon story
New class

[Nymrohd]

Fuck yeah it did. Everything in MoP was fun to do cause classes were fun to play. And that was before the ability pruning that slowly started in WoD and went full force in Legion. The last expansion without borrowed power. *sigh*

I do not blame BLizzard for this though. Here is the thing. For MoP gameplay to be possible, you need to accept a decent amount of homogeneity among classes. MoP classes were fun cause everyone had all the tools they need to play the game; you had utility, movement speed (and at least some casts available while moving), defensives, self heals in every spec. Every time I've tried to argue for a return to that on any community forum I have been shouted down with extreme prejudice by the community. Oh many people say they love MoP's class gameplay. But they refuse to acknowledge where the success stemmed from.

This is really a central design philosophy that Blizzard has clearly taken a side about. ANd it has nothing to do with homogeneity. Rather it is about defining specs through their strengths, not their weaknesses. Everyone had a similar base skillset and specific strengths so everyone got to sign at their niche and everyone also had the ability to counter encounter design. IN an environment like MoP, you can freely throw ANYTHING at the players because they have the tools to handle it. And that lets gameplay feel far more dynamic. Many mechanics that nowadays are out of your hands and handled by a raid wide cd would be handled individually back then.
And M+ would have been a completely different beast with MoP class design.

Legion sort of gave us something similar. Because while the base specs were often limp noodles, simply by having to fill in all those artifact passives they ended up giving everyone multiple tools they'd normally be lacking.

[Revamp Man]

I do not blame BLizzard for this though. Here is the thing. For MoP gameplay to be possible, you need to accept a decent amount of homogeneity among classes. MoP classes were fun cause everyone had all the tools they need to play the game; you had utility, movement speed (and at least some casts available while moving), defensives, self heals in every spec. Every time I've tried to argue for a return to that on any community forum I have been shouted down with extreme prejudice by the community. Oh many people say they love MoP's class gameplay. But they refuse to acknowledge where the success stemmed from.

This is really a central design philosophy that Blizzard has clearly taken a side about. ANd it has nothing to do with homogeneity. Rather it is about defining specs through their strengths, not their weaknesses. Everyone had a similar base skillset and specific strengths so everyone got to sign at their niche and everyone also had the ability to counter encounter design. IN an environment like MoP, you can freely throw ANYTHING at the players because they have the tools to handle it. And that lets gameplay feel far more dynamic. Many mechanics that nowadays are out of your hands and handled by a raid wide cd would be handled individually back then.
And M+ would have been a completely different beast with MoP class design.

Legion sort of gave us something similar. Because while the base specs were often limp noodles, simply by having to fill in all those artifact passives they ended up giving everyone multiple tools they'd normally be lacking.

You have to keep in mind the community at large is kinda stupid and will argue against their own interest if they think it is disagreeing with certain people

I mean look at the players that said covenants needed the swapping restrictions because without them then they would be forced to swap every boss

The players that said tier gear was less inventive than just giving us gear with generic procs

The ones claiming that m+ gear swapping is what held them back from their dreams of ksm

The community that sung the praise of TF from the hilltops and then wondered why they had no upgrades left in the low level content they ran


I miss my MoP monk

[Nymrohd]

It depends on what you mean by "small improvement".
Not having droughts could be considered a small improvement, but would absolutely make SL almost a completely different game in terms of quality. Same with having a theme and continent that more players care about. A small improvement, but one that pays massive dividends.

Combine these two and you get an expansion that I think most players would have considered to top Legion in terms of quality.

Sorry but doubt it. Cosmetics were subpar in SL. The anima drought was painful for a very long time and they CHOSE not to fix it until later. The new version of legendaries are among the worst things to have happened to the wow economy (and ranks 2 & 3 are the most wasteful grind in the history of wow, people just forced to throw thousands of gold of materials and reagents in the trash since those ranks are almost impossible to sell even at cost). Covenants absolutely were painful up until 9.1.5; as a Venthyr prot paladin I felt that I just should not even bother doing PvP since most of my PvP utility was just in another Covenant (and M+ was not at all fun either). The Domination socket system is one of the heaviest barriers to entry to Mythic raiding the game EVER had; catching up on Embers was practically impossible. Then Korthia's issue was not just that it was small, it was also absolutely DRAB and had no real lore. I still have no idea what we were doing in Korthia after recovering Primus' Sigil and why it mattered. Heck I have no idea what we are doing in ZM; the world quests and dailies just don't matter in any way. Why are we there outside the campaign quests? Sightseeing? Compare it with Naz'jatar were we were helping two factions or 8.3 were we were defending people from being driven insane or eaten by monsters in both zones.

And having a different theme and different continent is a small improvement??? That would have simply made it an entirely different xpac. You cannot even make comparisons when you allow such aspects of the game to be treated as variable. Yeah if SL was NOT SL it could have been great, that's the argument . . .

[Syegfryed]

Lol sorry but amazing how biased someone can be that they'd call the Axe of Cenarius "Axe of Broxxigar" (it's Broxigar btw).

i mean, its his axe, they make for him to use, am i wrong?

[Nymrohd]

You have to keep in mind the community at large is kinda stupid and will argue against their own interest if they think it is disagreeing with certain people

I mean look at the players that said covenants needed the swapping restrictions because without them then they would be forced to swap every boss

The players that said tier gear was less inventive than just giving us gear with generic procs

The ones claiming that m+ gear swapping is what held them back from their dreams of ksm

The community that sung the praise of TF from the hilltops and then wondered why they had no upgrades left in the low level content they ran


I miss my MoP monk

The thing is, I see almost no dissenting voices in favor of homogeneity in base class capabilities. Never talked about it and had at least a couple of people say that I have a point there. The community has been split in most of the other issues you mentioned though.

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i mean, its his axe, they make for him to use, am i wrong?

Just saying, it shows the bias. I get it, just finding it a bit funny.

Honestly I wanted Brox to be alive and leading the Krokul in Argus. They could have found him wounded but not dead and saved him. Argus is in the Nether so he wouldn't have aged. Would have at least given more players someone they'd want to relate to in that campaign.

[Revamp Man]

The thing is, I see almost no dissenting voices in favor of homogeneity in base class capabilities. Never talked about it and had at least a couple of people say that I have a point there. The community has been split in most of the other issues you mentioned though.

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Just saying, it shows the bias. I get it, just finding it a bit funny.

Honestly I wanted Brox to be alive and leading the Krokul in Argus. They could have found him wounded but not dead and saved him. Argus is in the Nether so he wouldn't have aged. Would have at least given more players someone they'd want to relate to in that campaign.

It’s just in the marketing

Give mages a 30% DR and a skill to cast on the move. Mages won’t complain but that’s the same thing but as long as it’s not framed like that you’ll get less backlash.

Yeah nobody wants the classes to all be the same but at the same time you’ll see arguments about how X class should have Y from classes Z

[Syegfryed]

Just saying, it shows the bias. I get it, just finding it a bit funny.
.

Isn't bias rly, its just the first name that came up in mind, i was actually going to type diamond axe first, cause is rad.

Honestly I wanted Brox to be alive and leading the Krokul in Argus. They could have found him wounded but not dead and saved him. Argus is in the Nether so he wouldn't have aged. Would have at least given more players someone they'd want to relate to in that campaign

Na, they would have ruined him, he had his heroic death, doing the "impossible", it was better to let him rest.

They could have used Fenris from Wc2, he was MIA after the game just like Alleria and Tyralion, but that expansion was too much alliance, no horde characters allowed in that expansion..

[Nymrohd]

Na, they would have ruined him, he had his heroic death, doing the "impossible", it was better to let him rest.

They could have used Fenris from Wc2, he was MIA after the game just like Alleria and Tyralion, but that expansion was too much alliance, no horde characters allowed in that expansion..

Alliance & Blood Elves to be fair. But yeah, they really did not make the effort to give orcs and especially trolls (really should have been more troll artifacts in the mix, was there even one?) I am not sure Fenris would have had the same impact. Plus Brox coming back would have likely completely changed the Saurfang narrative in BfA.

[Wangming]

I do not blame BLizzard for this though. Here is the thing. For MoP gameplay to be possible, you need to accept a decent amount of homogeneity among classes. MoP classes were fun cause everyone had all the tools they need to play the game; you had utility, movement speed (and at least some casts available while moving), defensives, self heals in every spec. Every time I've tried to argue for a return to that on any community forum I have been shouted down with extreme prejudice by the community. Oh many people say they love MoP's class gameplay. But they refuse to acknowledge where the success stemmed from.

This is really a central design philosophy that Blizzard has clearly taken a side about. ANd it has nothing to do with homogeneity. Rather it is about defining specs through their strengths, not their weaknesses. Everyone had a similar base skillset and specific strengths so everyone got to sign at their niche and everyone also had the ability to counter encounter design. IN an environment like MoP, you can freely throw ANYTHING at the players because they have the tools to handle it. And that lets gameplay feel far more dynamic. Many mechanics that nowadays are out of your hands and handled by a raid wide cd would be handled individually back then.
And M+ would have been a completely different beast with MoP class design.

Legion sort of gave us something similar. Because while the base specs were often limp noodles, simply by having to fill in all those artifact passives they ended up giving everyone multiple tools they'd normally be lacking.

Well both are equally important. For example back in the days all monk specs used qi points. That was their thing. I'm all for aking it away in favor of something else equally creative or unique to the class. But that was not the case for Brewmaster and Mistweaver. They just lost that. And their stances as well. And I really miss that.

Funny thing is, what you are suggesting is pretty much what they did with FFXIV and role actions. Each group role (tank, healer, magic dps, ranged physical dps, melee dps) has a set of role actions that are shared among every class. They are oGCD utility abilities. Now as a Ninja main I was kinda sad to lose our spot as king of raid utility as having a trick for every situation meshed well with the class fantasy. But it helped the long term health of the game cause now every class is good at what they do. Sure there is still a meta with a best and a worst class, but is generally much better balanced than WoW is. Granted there are also less specs to balance

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Alliance & Blood Elves to be fair. But yeah, they really did not make the effort to give orcs and especially trolls (really should have been more troll artifacts in the mix, was there even one?) I am not sure Fenris would have had the same impact. Plus Brox coming back would have likely completely changed the Saurfang narrative in BfA.

That would have been great honestly.

[Marlamin]

Things we know for sure
The name is Dragonflight

Things that are very likely true
The art
Dalaran involvement even via pre patch
Lordaeron and silver moon story
New class

I wouldn't put Dalaran in that list just yet -- they update old models like that all the time. It being so many updates is unusual but Dalaran is also one of the biggest models. Also worth mentioning nobody actually looked at what was updated yet.

[Nymrohd]

I wouldn't put Dalaran in that list just yet -- they update old models like that all the time. It being so many updates is unusual but Dalaran is also one of the biggest models. Also worth mentioning nobody actually looked at what was updated yet.

And given it is the Northrend version, more likely to be involved in some pre-expansion event than to have it move or something.

[draugril]

That would have been great honestly.

When artifacts were announced, my mind immediately went to Broxigar and the Axe of Cenarius for Warriors. If time works differently in the Twisting Nether, much like Turalyon spending a thousand years fighting demons, we could have plucked Broxigar out of his fated doom mere moments after he wounded Sargeras.