Dragonflight Alpha/Beta General Discussion

[Makabreska]

Shareholders love iteration. Whether it's good iteration is irrelevant.

Eh, no. They do not care about nitty gritty. They just want money. You do not see "we changed this and that system" in quarterly update.

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Well here's another hard to swallow pill for you. Specs are not fashionable and neither is the Holy Trinity. You don't really have healers anymore, just DPS classes with support abilities that aren't just self targeting.

That's a gross over exaggeration.

[therumblings]

Despite getting spoiled with earlier than normal leaks last week, I still hunger for more

[papajohn4]

Yeah we have option to fight dragons, demons, conquer and defend land but no, let's rotate a chair for ten hours straight and move a cabinet from one wall to another over and over again. Jesus Christ.

yea tell that to ffxiv players that spend hours to customize their homes... also housing items crafted by professions are the best sellers! Not to mention limited items from events and such that people go crazy about! Or items need "exalted" reputation to get. Housing will open so many gameplay activities from professions to rep farm to rare boss drops..

[ercarp]

Despite getting spoiled with earlier than normal leaks last week, I still hunger for more

Same. Wish I could just fast-forward to April 19th already...

[pacotaco]

Despite getting spoiled with earlier than normal leaks last week, I still hunger for more

Spoiled how? We only got the title and a blurry photo of a promo image of Aleztrasza xD

[therumblings]

Same. Wish I could just fast-forward to April 19th already...

I know that as soon as we are all well fed on WoW news, we will instantly start craving more future news like when the beta is starting and when the release is, but I so enjoy leak season and the expansion announcements. I am just greedy

[papajohn4]

Well here's another hard to swallow pill for you. Specs are not fashionable and neither is the Holy Trinity. You don't really have healers anymore, just DPS classes with support abilities that aren't just self targeting.

the most popular MMOs have trinity... Trinity is the most popular system players want. I like to heal and tank and thats why I never liked games like GW2...

[TomatoBisque]

Core issue? Half of people coming for launch stay only first month (or months). Do you think they will come when expansion will be presented as glorified patch? Not to mention that on your main you will have to do campaign anyway, so nothing will change there. It's all about appearance, just like with level squish.

If anything, we should push Blizzard for more and more quality of life stuff for alts, since leveling 10 levels is often shortest part of preparation. And yes, it works, although slowly. Every expac launch is minor setback, but when we look on last patch situation, easily SL>BfA>Legion when we talk about alts.

Alt catchup is so easy in 9.2, the only way people could be complaining about it in my mind is that they haven't actually done it. You hit 48 or 50 or whatever and go to SL content, you select threads of fate and pick your covenant, get the renown catchup and level however you want. By the time you hit 60 your renown will also be well past 60, which fully unlocks your soulbind. You also have the 200 ilvl conduit catchup, and you can send over a bunch of 226 BoA gear and soul ash/soul cinders (which are in turn purchasable for Cosmic Flux on your main, which if you're playing the patch at all you have far more than you know what to do with). You either run a dungeon or quick torghast wing to get your legendary recipe, or just buy it from Rendle for Soul Cinders (again, you can get this from your main), get a legendary at whatever ilvl works for you (they're pretty cheap on any decently populated realm).

Doing just "walk here and talk to a vendor" and running a single normal dungeon after hitting 60 can easily put you at 230 ilvl with 60+ renown and ilvl 200 conduits. That's not gonna get you into mythic raiding, but it puts you at a perfectly reasonable spot to start doing M+ (which drops 236 at a +2) or LFR/Normal (LFR drops 239/246).

And this is all assuming you are a solo player, if you've got friends and/or a guild it's way easier to get gear.

Honestly, I'm not sure how much easier they could make it, the basically free BoA gear you get is already pushing up pretty close against the entry level gear from M0/LFR, and you even get stuff at that quality from rares in ZM.

[therumblings]

Spoiled how? We only got the title and a blurry photo of a promo image of Aleztrasza xD

Spoiled as in, treated to one of the earliest legitimate leaks, with such a long time until the announcement. Not spoilers for the plot or anything

[Raxacorico]

Every single action combat MMORPG has the exact same gameplay and that is sending 5+ enemies at you so you can aoe them down with cleave attacks. That is not what is appealing to me, sorry. The only MMO with different and imo better combat system was Wildstar, and I truly hope it does come back one day. It has to.

[therumblings]

The closer we get to the 19th, the longer the wait feels!

[Dracullus]

Blizzard needs to stop trying to fix things that aren't broken.

Yeah, some people here just want some different game in Warcraft universe. Correction, story also completely sucks for them, so I have no idea what they want.

[Das Thora]

WoW 2 is basically never happening, because it already exists. Pretty much anything they could accomplish in a WoW 2 can be done with an expansion (albeit an extremely ambitious one), and they wouldn't have to have everyone lose all their decades worth of progress. But even without a WoW 2, this is a very real and serious problem Blizzard needs to seriously start addressing and focusing on the long term goals of WoW as a whole, because it's been around for roughly 2 decades and they need a plan to support it for just as long, and that's just from judging Everquest and how long it's been around.

What you're suggesting isn't a WoW2.

[therumblings]

What you're suggesting isn't a WoW2.

Right, I wasn't suggesting a WoW 2, because the idea is stupid to me. Why make a separate game when you have the tools to revamp the world and keep all the progress your players made in 20 years instead of alienate them in some brand new game? I don't see any need for a WoW 2, unless someone else makes a good case for it.

[ercarp]

I know that as soon as we are all well fed on WoW news, we will instantly start craving more future news like when the beta is starting and when the release is, but I so enjoy leak season and the expansion announcements. I am just greedy

Yeah, and it's gonna be an even longer wait for any other news to come out after the expansion reveal. Right now we're talking about just a little over a week of waiting, but once the expansion has been revealed, we'll be waiting months for Alpha/Beta access. That's gonna be painful (especially if the expansion genuinely looks promising, which I hope is gonna be the case).

[therumblings]

Yeah, and it's gonna be an even longer wait for any other news to come out after the expansion reveal. Right now we're talking about just a little over a week of waiting, but once the expansion has been revealed, we'll be waiting months for Alpha/Beta access. That's gonna be painful (especially if the expansion genuinely looks promising, which I hope is gonna be the case).

It will be a really long wait but I'm hoping whatever is in the announcement gives me something satisfying enough that justifies the wait.

[Nymrohd]

See, wow is fairly active in any challenging content because the mechanics force motion. Heck if we went back to an ability paradigm more similar to MoP when every skill is met by an opposing skill it gets even more active; if everyone has mobility and defensive abilities then encounters (and pvp) are tuned with the expectation that they will be used so you don't just run out; you use a movement ability to move out (and thus abilities become much wider since you have movement available) or you use a defensive to tank shit. Heck if we also got some of Legion's abilities back, we'd have abilities off the GCD to use as well. WoW absolutely can be designed to have even higher APM than it does now. We even had skill shots in the past (if I remember right, explosive shot blowing on the second tap). All the mechanics are there with little responsiveness sacrificed. Really, fluid animation and amazing responsiveness are part of why I always come back to WoW (and why I still might play Diablo 3 for a few hours when I just want to murder things). The biggest success of Blizzard is and has always been Battle.net, not their games.

[Wangming]

It doesn't matter what is fashionable in other games, it really works well for WoW, especially the combat system. Sure it could use an overhaul to some extent because of bugginess, but to completely change the game is only going to alienate 99% of players.

Which is exactly why we are suggesting a separate release instead of just messing with the current WoW. WoW can stay and follow the old paradigms. If it were up to me I would make the new modern MMO a Diablo one, cause it is has much more room for it. But I'm not going to speculate on that in a WoW thread. The point is, if they truly want to follow current trends, a simple expansion won't cut it. It will need a complete re-release. I doubt they want to go that far. But if they did, I would welcome it.

[draugril]

It's the worst part about WoW. More or less. Also how can you even think that? If new people drop WoW it's because they didn't last with the combat that braindead and mindnumbingly boring. It was enough 20 years ago, not today.

Back in 2004, it was representative of what you were "really" doing. You could imagine what summoning lightning would do, or going all Bladestorm in a pack of enemies... these days, you can actually have combat that would have been cinematic-worthy back then.

That being said, this isn't a hill worth dying on. The system is absolutely integral to the game. We may as well ask them to remove Orcs and Humans.

[Nymrohd]

It will be a really long wait but I'm hoping whatever is in the announcement gives me something satisfying enough that justifies the wait.

I'd expect that after the announcement we will also get a lot more action on the PTR as well.

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Back in 2004, it was representative of what you were "really" doing. You could imagine what summoning lightning would do, or going all Bladestorm in a pack of enemies... these days, you can actually have combat that would have been cinematic-worthy back then.

That being said, this isn't a hill worth dying on. The system is absolutely integral to the game. We may as well ask them to remove Orcs and Humans.

And really, maybe this system was chosen exactly because this level of responsiveness and fluid animation is not really possible with a system that constantly has to decide who you are facing at. Diablo also allows for target lock after all.