Dragonflight Alpha/Beta General Discussion

[Skildar]

FF14 experimented with trusts (npc party members) in an 8-man trial (think onyxia without the trash) for the first time in Endwalker and it went pretty well. But the story trials only drop things like mini pets and triple triad cards, not actual loot.

Prior to that, the trust was only in the story dungeons. And the dungeons all drop loot but nothing endgame. A lot of people like to farm for pets and the like with the trust system. But endgame doesn't use the trust system at all.

The important thing with this is basically... farming cosmetics plus getting to see the story without randos screwing with you. That was the whole point of the trust system. In WoW, it would be nice to go through the raids (and it wouldn't be easy since AI can be ... interesting), but without having to deal with other playerss.

For example, replace LFR with a trust NPC system where you can have NPCs replace the raid members. Anything that lets you see the story of the raid (and expansion) without having to worry about the logistics of raiding.

ok so in wow it could translate into going to a raid wing with only npcs and at the end getting a battle pet. I'm not sure people will then be encouraged to go do the raid with players. But I've always felt this way toward LFR and yet blizzard is fine with it, so I guess I'm not the best to judge this kind of need/answer.

Just from my standpoint, blizzard should deliver solo activities but never at the detriment of encouraging group ones

[ercarp]

I'm one of those weirdos that like to play MMOs for the immersion of being transported into another world where I'm surrounded by other players going about their business. It makes the world feel alive (and also why I don't really get anything out of single-player games anymore; they feel dead without other players).

But when it comes to interacting with any of these people... I try to avoid it as much as possible lmao.

[KayRule]

Dire Maul in Northern EK lmao.

Makes sense cus of the Ogres in Alterac

[Das Thora]

Makes sense cus of the Ogres in Alterac

Besides, Dire Maul wasn't the original name for the place in Feralas.

[Chickat]

Man I’m glad Teriz is gone; I don’t think he could handle the possibility of a Minstrel class or of Tinkers only having a DPS spec

Im sure he's lurking and raging right now.

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If it's related to the prior jobs he did, probably a major transmog redesign.

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I doubt they'd redo creation after htey just redid creation.

Yeah, the achievement and transmog UI could both use some streamlinging and fresh paint.

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Could be almost anything...

- General UI rework/improvements? (Please rework the Guild UI because the "improvements" of BfA only made it worse imo.)
- Housing interface? (Doubt...)
- More changes to character creation UI?
- A better Group Finder interface? (Would be about time because imo it looks dated.)
- UI elements for applying class skins? (This is pure hopium, but you never know.)

It has to be a pretty big thing with a lot of UI elements because I don't imagine Jeff would make a tweet hyping everybody up for a small rework of something relatively simple.

Housing would probably need a ton of UI, so I'm copiuming its that.

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Also... His tweet has a cat emote! The implications behind this subtle hint are MEOWSIVE!



I hate that I typed this.

This is definitely for the red dragon zone.

Or maybe its to replace the lynx model in Quel'thalas lamo

[cocomen2]

Ah the bionicle crossover we've always wanted

Lmao, please god NO!, atleast make it CYBERTRON, for cool sound effect.

[Chickat]

Doesn't seem too far-fetched. Especially if we get another big leak before April 19th.

Idk, but this thread seems more active than SL and BFA threads to me. I feel like there's more hype for Dragons than War or death.

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I'm very much thinking housing here. Of all the options open, that seems like the one that would best fit with WoW & would require a ton of UI work.

Dyes feel like something that could maybe work going forward & would need a ton of UI work, but given the amount of raid armor in the past where Blizz recolored armor between levels, dyes would be a bit weird for past content. Transmog seems unlikely if for no other reason than the WoW transmog system is pretty highly thought of thus far. There may be too many restrictions, but compared to something like FF14 or SWTOR it is light years ahead. Character Creation could use more, but Blizz just improved that system a great deal.

Yeah, Housing would require a massive amount of UI work.

[Vynestra]

If dragonflight doesn't have housing I imagine it'd be in 11.0, while it's something people have been asking for, for a while, it definitely feels like it's been asked for -a lot- only more recently, which doesn't give blizzard the time to react. They're pretty slow with major features, see: cross-faction instances.

It usually takes them a few years to add it to the pipeline, and if they only added it to the pipeline in shadowlands, it will not be ready for 10.0. It takes so long for them to design major features.

[TomatoBisque]

on what language realm are you playing to be facing these situations? In french realms, most guilds are the same for multiple expansions. Some die some get created, but most last for a couple of expac at least.

You've got different guilds looking for different profiles of players. Some are hardcore, some looking to raid casually but at high level, some casually and without much pressure, etc.

I don't want to assume too much, maybe things are different on your realms but you make it sound like you haven't really given any guild a fair try and just got lazy afterwards

the demographic of this thread is not people who do organized group content

you can tell because they almost never talk about anything that affects it, the discussion instead focusing on story and single player/world content, and when it comes to leaks don't think at all about how it would impact group content (see: microclasses)

plus like, if you wanted to speculate about the stuff you see in this thread why would you do it here instead of with your guildies/wowfriends?

[Chickat]

I'm figuring wotlk classic as a stopgap before 10.0 is a near certainty. Probably some extra bonus for it if you preorder Dragonflight.

Could that launch November, or too soon?

[Dragons Are Bad Mkay]

Yeah, that's what I thought too.

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How is it WAY LESS content than tbc?

People really downplay how much TBC added.
1. 2 new races with completely unique models and animations, both with two large zones each for leveling in 1-20, and two tiers of completely new racial mounts each.
2. THREE entirely new, large cities.
3. More zones, dungeons and raids than SL added just in Outland alone, not including the stuff added in the old world.
4. Flying.
5. Heroic dungeons.
6. An entirely new profession.

[Chickat]

10.0 will be early forth quarter 2022. Expansion release in Feb 2023. That would align with their 6 month season 3 and 4 plan. As long as they start the alpha this month they're not behind schedule & it seems like they want to pull a Nintendo & launch the alpha with the announcement: That gimmick is the only reason they waited this long to do the announcement.

I could see this if 10.0 has a world revamp too. I honestly could see a 2-4 month gap between 10.0 and Dragonflight launch. If 10.0 had world revamp, profession revamp, and a new class it could easily hold the game over till launch.

[SniperCT]

I'm one of those weirdos that like to play MMOs for the immersion of being transported into another world where I'm surrounded by other players going about their business. It makes the world feel alive (and also why I don't really get anything out of single-player games anymore; they feel dead without other players).

But when it comes to interacting with any of these people... I try to avoid it as much as possible lmao.

That is 100% the way I feel. Plus MMOs evolve over time, making them feel even more alive.

ok so in wow it could translate into going to a raid wing with only npcs and at the end getting a battle pet. I'm not sure people will then be encouraged to go do the raid with players. But I've always felt this way toward LFR and yet blizzard is fine with it, so I guess I'm not the best to judge this kind of need/answer.

Just from my standpoint, blizzard should deliver solo activities but never at the detriment of encouraging group ones

In past expansions I'd do the LFR to experience the story part, and get a general idea of layout etc. Then, later in an expansion if particularly felt like it, I'd start doing normal and heroic raids. It didn't encourage me not to do the high tier raids, it only means when I don't want to do the higher tier raids I can still see it.

Personally, I like FF14's way better.

They drop the normal 8-man raid first (first 4 bosses each patch, alternating with the 24-man 'casual' alliance raids which are somewhere between LFR and normal in difficulty). You access it like LFR. But it's... way more challenging than LFR usually is. Then later during that patch cycle, like a month later, they drop the Savage version of the raid. Think Mythic. This can also be queued for ala LFR, but most people use the group finder tool rather than the random LFR tool because ...lol yeah.

And the there are the ultimate and unreal trials, which are the hardest content in the game.

Basically, raise LFR difficulty to normal raids but keep it so you can queue up, and otherwise remove normal.

And then start implementing the trust idea for the old LFR difficulty.

[Chickat]

People really downplay how much TBC added.
1. 2 new races with completely unique models and animations, both with two large zones each for leveling in 1-20, and two tiers of completely new racial mounts each.
2. THREE entirely new, large cities.
3. More zones, dungeons and raids than SL added just in Outland alone, not including the stuff added in the old world.
4. Flying.
5. Heroic dungeons.
6. An entirely new profession.

Yeah, but it was said that tbc released more than the leak.

A revamp to 1/3 of EK, Dragon Isles large zone, 2 other zones. 4 classes, housing, prog revamp etc is more than tbc added once you add it all up. Not that I think its real, but if it were it would definitely be more ambitious than tbc.

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If we get "player housing", do you think it will be true player housing in that each player can individually buy a house wherever they choose? I worry they might fuck it up and not go all the way with it and instead do a "guild housing". So one person basically gets to design the guild hall and everyone else just contributes. Hate those.

I think it will be instanced, with a few options at launch. More houses and furniture added in patches and future expansions.

[Vynestra]

I doubt 10.0 launches until the usual 4-6 weeks before the xpac, season 4 isn't coming with 10, it's clearly coming with 9.2.5 ptr.

[Chickat]

This is a dumb comparison. You might as well pretend the Sims being popular is somehow a marker of the attractiveness of housing in an MMO. Animal Crossing is a completely different genre of game, with completely different gameplay, played by a very dissimilar audience.

You know what makes Animal Crossing look like a complete joke? The success of gacha games. That doesn't mean adding mission table followers with cute splash art you can roll for in loot crates is an attractive feature that's sure to bring in tons of players.

Housing would be just as popular as Transmog id done right. It would attract as many players as raiding that's for sure. I think you underestimate the amount of causal players that just like to look pretty and collect things.

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for once i agree with you

Yes, that and Legendaries. I like Legendaries, just not how they were implemented in Shadowlands.

[Revamp Man]

We aren’t getting the new expansion this year
It’s behind schedule
The proof?? The live game is behind schedule and they develop the next expansion at the same time as the current one and believing that 10.0 is the only game ever in the entire history of the last two years that has always been on track and not delayed by the stuff all blizzard games were.

Expect disappointment with the UI stuff because they are excited to show us it and we only get half of what’s revealed or at least half of the features for the systems revealed

[Chickat]

Let’s assume we are going the way of uniting Azeroth in 10.0

With the cross faction gameplay coming it would suggest that we could possibly be seeing the same with the dragonflights so there is the matter of figuring out what stands in the way there

1. The bronze missing their aspect and the looming creation of the infinite
2. The blue being reunited with the lost part of their flight that resides on the broken isles and includes dragons able to breed
3. The green dealing with the loss of Ysera and her daughter taking over
4. The red and what we last saw as Alex trying to reason with what turned into the void flight
5. The black and Wrathion’s little search for the dragon isles along with more black dragons appearing in island expeditions
6. The twilight flight and where they sit now in terms of being possible allies or enemies to the overall forces of Azeroth

Wrathion is still kinda shunned by the other dragons based on BfA and we currently only have 1 true aspect so in terms of story conflict it would make sense for past enemies to return and I see 3.

1. Scarlet crusade which can easily be led by a black dragon because they like meddling in human affairs and giving themselves power.
2. Chromatus who is just sealed could easily be broken out by remnants of the twilight cult or even the infinite and since it took multiple aspects to beat him it places him at the best point to be reintroduced as a threat.
3. Galakrond who is the first enemy of the aspects and who merely lost due to his size being his biggest weakness and the map datamined all those years ago without his bones in it could support he is brought back and he would become the biggest threat due to his ability to spread undeath.

Each of these could be end bosses of raids and they all have support via different forces.

Scarlet crusade has support via black dragons and any who hate the current alliance rule

Chromatus has the twilight cult which still survives

Galakrond essentially makes his own army but I can see the infinite lending a hand

I think the first raid would be a non tier raid lasting around 4 months before the 1st tier raid comes out. Tier 1 is just local island threat raid. Not as big.

Tier 1 raid Is Galakrond.
Tier 2 raid is Infinite Dragonflight and Moruzond.
tier 3 raid is Chromatus and Xal'atath with Xal escaping and leading the way into 11.0 which is light and void.

Xal is the guldan of Dragonflight like Guldan was the catalyst for Legion.

[Dragons Are Bad Mkay]

Yeah, but it was said that tbc released more than the leak.

A revamp to 1/3 of EK, Dragon Isles large zone, 2 other zones. 4 classes, housing, prog revamp etc is more than tbc added once you add it all up. Not that I think its real, but if it were it would definitely be more ambitious than tbc.

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I think it will be instanced, with a few options at launch. More houses and furniture added in patches and future expansions.

5 EK zones aren't 1/3rd of the EK (also, Cataclysm revamped the entirety of the old world, which is way larger).
4 new zones are a lot less than TBC (12-ish?) or WotLK (9 or 10?) put out.
4 specs is just a little more than a DK.
Even indie MMOs do player housing, and garrisons show the tech is there.
Not doing leveling and just going straight to grinding for gear is less work, I don't know how you can think of that as more.

[Chickat]

And because “we are much more powerful than the threats you mentioned” will be a point I think it’s important to note that we aren’t

Storywise we lost the artifacts, we used up the heart’s power, we will lose our attachments to the covenants outside of the shadowlands.

We are no stronger than we were at the beginning of legion

Yeah we are back to WoD levels of Strength. As in we can defeat people as powerful as Archimonde/Kiljaeden, maybe Azshara, but not gods.