Dragonflight Alpha/Beta General Discussion

[Sondrelk]

Agreed. It indirectly makes the world appear smaller. Everything existing for a specific purpose ends up feeling utilitarian and it turns more into a Polly Pocket playset instead of a planet/dimension.

I get why they have to, WoW is a huge fucking game with a voracious player base, it's just something we left behind.

I think it has more to do with shifting expectations to WoW.
It used to be much more exploration focused, and things like doing raids were considered a reward for completing everything leading up to it.
Places like Deadwind pass worked because you had to run past it on the ground, which added a sense of scale to the game.

The playerbase now instead wants a much faster experience where being in any way inconvenienced and being forced to actually play the game is seen as the developers being actively malicious.

A slower more contemplative experience has essentially been made obsolete by the playstyle that WotLK pushed. That of quickly levelling mostly to make players commit to a class before going into raiding, the true WoW experience.
All the other stuff is just there to feed into raiding, as opposed to Vanilla where everything is much less focused, but in return much more varied.

[AngerFork]

Hello everyone! I’ve been following the thread closely and, given how positive the reception has been, I thought I’d pop in just to confirm that Dragonflight is indeed the title of the next expansion! However, I would also encourage everyone to rein back their expectations a little, especially concerning the “leak thread” that coincidentally guessed the title. We do have ambitious plans, but not in the same direction.

I feel like I might believe this a bit more had you ever given any sort of leak or other info that made you seem believable as a dev. As is, this strikes me more as someone cosplaying as a dev rather than actually being a dev. What can you tell us to show that you aren't just a fake & bake dev?

Also, any sort of dev I've known has always been overexcited for what they've made & surprised when it didn't hit that level, not telling people to rein their expectations back before anything is even announced. If you are an actual dev (which I don't buy atm), then that tells me you don't have a ton of confidence in the game to come.

[Nyel]

OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOR

all classes get the 4 micro classes and you can swap like a FF job.

I'd say not all classes, but all armor types.

Dragon Knight for Plate
Tinker for Mail
Minstrel for Leather
Chronomancer for Cloth

It could easily work this way. With Mage / Warlock / Priest you can unlock Chronomancer. With Shaman and Hunter you unlock Tinker etc.

[pacotaco]

It would be interesting to get a full overworld map with even expedition islands included. Sure they aren't big, but they do occupy space.

If Azeroth map was at scale, some islands already on it would be barely visible.
https://worldofmapcraft.com/

And that's how they are in-game, where scales are already warped.

[Wangming]

The thing with leaks is... either they're 100% false or 100% true. They're real, or they're not. Even a leak that guesses 100% correctly would still be false. It's a pet peeve of mine when people see leaks in hindsight and imply that it was "half legitimate" and the like. As if they inserted misinformation. No, they just guessed wrong along with guessing right. Guessed aren't legitimate at all, no matter how accurate they wind up being.

But Larper boy did say that plans are not in "that direction" That doesn't sound like some of it is right, some of it is wrong.

[Raetary]

Yeah, and they will know the stories of the variety of ethnicities races of the horde, not the enemy, lmao.

Tauren have had neutral and up to friendly relations with the nelves for ages, Trolls and belves are direct cousin races.
There will be enough stories to go around, regardless of whether they are true, false, antagonizing or inspiring.

How can they fill the blanks if they don't know? why they would know night elves myths and tales? lol

They would fill in the blanks with the information they do know.
Just like Rexxar told them about a story that he knows about.

You are acting as if the book made it out to be that those children are being indoctrinated by the evil nelf gang.
They visited a place, Rexxar knew things about that place, he told them what he knew about that place, that's all there is to it.

sure, Rexxar learn ancient night elf writing

Ah yes, because that's the only possible way Rexxar could've possibly gotten that story.
Not by exchanging information, not by conversing, but by finding old nelf texts and studying ancient darnassian!

Surely i don't have to explain how dumb that point is, do i?

Whatever, i'm done with this shit.

[draugril]

But Larper boy did say that plans are not in "that direction" That doesn't sound like some of it is right, some of it is wrong.

My assumption would be the classes? Larps McGee said we'd be getting no classes, but here we are (as a community) getting hyped for four-plus-change new classes. I'd be lying if I said I didn't want to believe.

[Dioporco]

That scale is completely off. Northrend is less than half the size. Lordaeron would be incredibly huge, especially for it's supposed type of government. Arthas would have had to travel for weeks to get places, not days. All the expedition islands, as well as Zandalar and Kul Tiras, are also excessively large.

Looks like the creator just went with what "sounds right" without actually checking how big that would really be. Like G. R. R. Martins 700 foot wall. Lordaeron is nearly the size of the US on that map. Dalaran would be over 50 miles diameter.

it just made by a wow cartographer, i guess that a random poster on mmo c is right.


rofl




you are probably drunk because this is the size of "lordaeron"

[Wangming]

My assumption would be the classes? Larps McGee said we'd be getting no classes, but here we are (as a community) getting hyped for four-plus-change new classes. I'd be lying if I said I didn't want to believe.

Well it is true that 4 new specs and 3 new skins is a lot. But people want their new toys and an apology presented in the form of a content rich expansion with regular patches.
TBC added two new races
Wrath added a new class
Cata added two new races
Mop added a new race and a new class
WoD added neither
Legion added a new class
BfA added 8 new races
SL added neither...
DF has to add something again.

[Dioporco]

https://azerothatlas.net/

if you want to play with the interactive map, the °size° is from game maps real size and the KM legend is a mix from lore/book

[Nymrohd]

The city could easily move back to Northrend.
Hell in Legion we saw it go from Northrend to Karazhan to the Broken Isles in one questline.

The city is supposedly constantly on the move.

[Vakir]

I think it has more to do with shifting expectations to WoW.
It used to be much more exploration focused, and things like doing raids were considered a reward for completing everything leading up to it.
Places like Deadwind pass worked because you had to run past it on the ground, which added a sense of scale to the game.

The playerbase now instead wants a much faster experience where being in any way inconvenienced and being forced to actually play the game is seen as the developers being actively malicious.

A slower more contemplative experience has essentially been made obsolete by the playstyle that WotLK pushed. That of quickly levelling mostly to make players commit to a class before going into raiding, the true WoW experience.
All the other stuff is just there to feed into raiding, as opposed to Vanilla where everything is much less focused, but in return much more varied.

Without question. That's kinda why I described the community as voracious. Everything is in service to chasing the furthering on the endgame treadmill with minimal hiccups. I loved Legion but it just reinforced it. Everything now is defined around its relationship to player power or being "real content."

[AngerFork]

My assumption would be the classes? Larps McGee said we'd be getting no classes, but here we are (as a community) getting hyped for four-plus-change new classes. I'd be lying if I said I didn't want to believe.

Personally, I'm expecting somewhere in between. The actual expansion never quite lives up to the hype people generate in their "leaks", in part because it's easy to throw out something that's pure candy. Adding in two healing specs alongside a new DPS & Tank in four separate classes is a major ask, especially alongside things like housing & new class skins. That would be a massive undertaking & a lot of extra work going forward. But it's also pretty easy to disregard what ol' Larp-n-Lie over there is saying, given that we aren't getting any specifics from them.

My guess is that if the Dragonflight leak we got was legit (big IF, still not sure I buy it), some of it is based on old information & some of it may have been pared down since then. He had the wrong announcement date, so it's not like that leak is spot on as is.

[ercarp]

I made this as a rough concept of what I think the Dragon Isles should/could look like. I know it's not super innovative as it basically just combines the obvious ideas all into one, like having one zone for each dragonflight and including a Titan Facility (which is something everyone already expects).

If I had more time, I could have tried to flesh it out with more info about raids, dungeons, quest hubs, etc. but I also don't think I'm very good at coming up with ideas like that. My only wish is that we get more Caverns of Time type stuff if there's a Bronze dragonflight zone.



EDIT: Also, in hindsight, I'd probably swap the locations of some of these zones. Like maybe Blue dragonflight's zone should be in the center so the snow makes more sense (?) and Bronze dragonflight's zone should be where I placed the Green dragonflight's zone.

[Ersula]

I think it's inevitable, which maybe makes me partially put some faith in the microclass leak, because adding several new classes in one expansion seems like something they would do to try to bring back many players. All I really want is a brand new class with Legion/Mop gameplay and the dragon isles as the continent and I will be satisfied.

The past two expansions have basically just been legion but with its progression systems scrambled & made more complicated so you don't notice Ion is creatively bankrupt.

[draugril]

DF has to add something again.

Definitely. Another formulaic entry with no content being added that will survive the expansion would be a deathknell for me. I already sat most of this expansion out. Another like it, and I won't even bother. I'll still come here to speculate because I am invested in the franchise, but there just wouldn't be anything that engages me anymore.

[Hardwing]

I made this as a rough concept of what I think the Dragon Isles should/could look like. I know it's not super innovative as it basically just combines the obvious ideas all into one, like having one zone for each dragonflight and including a Titan Facility (which is something everyone already expects).

If I had more time, I could have tried to flesh it out with more info about raids, dungeons, quest hubs, etc. but I also don't think I'm very good at coming up with ideas like that. My only wish is that we get more Caverns of Time type stuff if there's a Bronze dragonflight zone.



EDIT: Also, in hindsight, I'd probably swap the locations of some of these zones. Like maybe Blue dragonflight's zone should be in the center so the snow makes more sense (?) and Bronze dragonflight's zone should be where I placed the Green dragonflight's zone.

Definitely looks cool! Like how all is connected here.

[draugril]

My guess is that if the Dragonflight leak we got was legit (big IF, still not sure I buy it), some of it is based on old information & some of it may have been pared down since then. He had the wrong announcement date, so it's not like that leak is spot on as is.

I don't buy it, at all. I completely acknowledge that its my own confirmation bias that wants me to believe it.

[AngerFork]

I made this as a rough concept of what I think the Dragon Isles should/could look like. I know it's not super innovative as it basically just combines the obvious ideas all into one, like having one zone for each dragonflight and including a Titan Facility (which is something everyone already expects).

If I had more time, I could have tried to flesh it out with more info about raids, dungeons, quest hubs, etc. but I also don't think I'm very good at coming up with ideas like that. My only wish is that we get more Caverns of Time type stuff if there's a Bronze dragonflight zone.



EDIT: Also, in hindsight, I'd probably swap the locations of some of these zones. Like maybe Blue dragonflight's zone should be in the center so the snow makes more sense (?) and Bronze dragonflight's zone should be where I placed the Green dragonflight's zone.

Cool design, very nice!

Out of curiosity, why did you opt for this specific map design? My initial thought looking at this is that they would perhaps line up in a similar fashion to how we see the dragonshrines aligned in Dragonblight, but this is a pretty cool design as well.

I don't buy it, at all. I completely acknowledge that its my own confirmation bias that wants me to believe it.

Heh, in that case I'll proudly share that confirmation bias with you. If I'm healing a Tinker & a Dragon Knight through a Bronze Dragon dungeon next expansion, I will be a very happy Resto Druid.

[Sondrelk]

I made this as a rough concept of what I think the Dragon Isles should/could look like. I know it's not super innovative as it basically just combines the obvious ideas all into one, like having one zone for each dragonflight and including a Titan Facility (which is something everyone already expects).

If I had more time, I could have tried to flesh it out with more info about raids, dungeons, quest hubs, etc. but I also don't think I'm very good at coming up with ideas like that. My only wish is that we get more Caverns of Time type stuff if there's a Bronze dragonflight zone.

[IMG]https://i.imgur.com/3K1cs76.png[IMG]

EDIT: Also, in hindsight, I'd probably swap the locations of some of these zones. Like maybe Blue dragonflight's zone should be in the center so the snow makes more sense (?) and Bronze dragonflight's zone should be where I placed the Green dragonflight's zone.

Not sure why Acherys is there? Feels like you added it just because it's what Legion did.

Also, as much as I like Dalaran i really don't want another expansion where it's an expansion hub. Maybe have everyone be in Loreth'aran instead.



Was pretty funny to have yet another of Deathwings secret lairs though. This has to be the third or fourth one, surely?