Dragonflight Alpha/Beta General Discussion

[Chickat]

They're not that hard to believe. They've said several times that DH was hard to come up with even 2 specs for. If they want to give players more class fantasy (one of the absolute most in demand features) while not forcing a concept into something that doesn't work it makes a ton of sense.

Personally I think that Dragonflight leak is either THE leak weird sounding stuff and all or we wont get one past the name.

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They need to move to 3 year expansions. It would solve literally all of the issues with them not having enough time to pump out a Legion sized expansion everytime.

So what, 5 tiers and 8 or 9 patches? 7 months in between raid tiers. 3.5 months in between patches. .5 patches have the raids again?

10.0- March 2023 (raid)
10.1- July 2023
10.1.5- October 2023 (raid)
10.2- Jan 2024
10.2.5- May 2024 (raid)
10.3- August 2024
10.3.5- Decmber 2024 (raid)
10.4- April 2025
10.4.5- July 2025 (raid)
11.0- March 2026.

Although, I still think 4 tiers and 2.5 years is best.

Cut .4 and .4.5 out and launch the expansion September 2025.

[Revamp Man]

But why?
It gave us the chance to speculate

think of it this way

if Dragonflight wasnt leaked
if the art photos didnt exist

would the announcement be worse??

[Harbour]

Tbh, i doubt the mini-classes because of how weird and out of nowhere the theme choices are.
Chronomancer healer is an ancient Mage Healer request from playerbase, right.
But Minstrel and Dragon Knight are the what?

Im not even talking about Tinker - the class with only DPS spec while there is an infinite potential for both Tank and Healer specs is THE dissapointment.

And all of that while ignoring the most popular things people wanted - Blademaster, Holy Paladin RDPS spec, Shadow Hunter, Shaman Tank, Warlock Healer Spec etc.

Weird.

[WowGlyphs]

I want the glyph system revamped for more customization.

[Jokubas]

And all of that while ignoring the most popular things people wanted - Blademaster, Holy Paladin RDPS spec, Shadow Hunter, Shaman Tank, Warlock Healer Spec etc.

Weird.

To be fair, that's what happened with Allied Races.

No Wildhammer Dwarves. Void Elves invented out of nowhere instead of High Elves. Lightforged Draenei as an entirely separate race despite being defined by basically a single different skin color and a different horn option. Not trying to be cynical, just that we have a precedent of a big feature making some odd choices when much more obvious and popular ones were right in front of them.

I want the glyph system revamped for more customization.

With some druid form stuff already on the barber, I'd just love to see the barber expanded to any character customization, even class stuff.

[Nyel]

Eh, I don't think we need 5 specs. 4 is perfect, and 3 is passable. If its 3 the dps spec better be ranged. WoW has never added a rdps spec in almost 20 years.

3 specs based on the Dragonflights doesn't make much sense though. That's why I said 5 and that's why I said that would show their ambition.

[Marlamin]

But why?
It gave us the chance to speculate

There's datamining that allows us to speculate from and there's datamining that ends up being straight up spoilers. The latter kind sucks and is why datamining is getting harder in general. Blizzard should be focused on fixing that kind of datamining and not making all of datamining harder.

[ercarp]

10 days to go! (If you're in the EU.)

Can't believe how many times many of us have been in this exact spot before. So many years and expansion pre-announcement seasons later, are we finally about to get an updated Azeroth with evergreen content? I hoooope so.

Elwynn Forest in the visual fidelity of Stormsong Valley would be so cool.

Once you're 60, you're part of the "endgame phase" of the world like everybody else. So you can receive a world quest to kill Murlocs in Elwynn forest. Collect 20 Grom's Blood in Ashenvale. Purge a village from the Scourge in Lordaeron. Can't wait!

It would be neat but I just don't see a world revamp happening until after we've dealt with the Void Lords. I think revamping Azeroth after the Cosmic Saga has been closed off will make the most sense as then we can return to more humble worldbuilding without worrying about the threat of a Purple Space God In Space™.

[Fiercelord]

I hope there will be a revamped glyph system and let it have new UI tabs like mounts/pet/transmog and expand barbershop more

(edit: sorry that the photos are huge)
I am praying for this:

[Lady Atia]

I hope there will be a revamped glyph system and let it have new UI tabs like mounts/pet/transmog and expand barbershop more

(edit: sorry that the photos are huge)
I am praying for this:

Why, just why did they change the shadowform from Legion to BfA? Looks horrible now especially if you see them next to each other.

[Fiercelord]

My Shadow Priest is still my main and I'm tired of this lava lamp smoke. 7.3 was my favorite since it fit Void Elves the most, but plenty of people wish to have the old school one so making every single one we had a choice at barbershop would be awesome. Similar to how druids can choose their forms.

[Nymrohd]

Why, just why did they change the shadowform from Legion to BfA? Looks horrible now especially if you see them next to each other.

Someone probably complained loudly enough. Wish they actually dared to use surveys.

[Chickat]

3 specs based on the Dragonflights doesn't make much sense though. That's why I said 5 and that's why I said that would show their ambition.

But that would mean 2 specs of the same type. You don't need more than 1 mdps, rdps, healer, tank. It makes more sense to mix the flights up into 3 or 4 good specs rather then spreading them thin into 5. Just my opinion.

[Nymrohd]

3 specs based on the Dragonflights doesn't make much sense though. That's why I said 5 and that's why I said that would show their ambition.

That's why I suggested 4 specs (one of each type) and the flights being stances that modify FX for base abilities and change cooldowns.

[Jokubas]

My Shadow Priest is still my main and I'm tired of this lava lamp smoke.

I'm baffled that we're this many years after Transmogrification and Shadow Priests still spend their entire playtime obscuring their customization. It's funny because Shadow Form is more reliable than so many other toggles in the game, and normally I would be thankful for that (a lot of other toggles will turn off when zoning or other common things and it's annoying to remember to turn back on), but for Shadow Priest it means I only ever see a shadowy purple silhouette and not the character I worked so hard to level and earn appearances for.

There are other ways to sell that we're infused with shadowy power without obscuring our character the entire time we're in the spec, and they could probably look cooler, too.

[Fiercelord]

An Outland-like expansion in the Twisting Nether. While this certainly dips its feet in cosmic lore, it's in the old school way like TBC. Destroyed planets, energy beams in the sky, and all that is present. But no Gods, no creators of the creators, no sources of the cosmic forces or whatever. Just us hopping between ruined civilizations. A little bit of Guardians of the Galaxy.[/LIST]

I feel like K'aresh would be a perfect planet for this. Destroyed homeworld of Ethereals (at least they could make parts untouched and not destroyed)

[Jokubas]

By all means, have cultists try to summon Void Lords. Let the Infinite Flight attempt to mess the world up. Have some faction of Light worshippers go bananas for a bit. Give us a dungeon set within the Emerald Dream. All of that is fine. Sprinkled cosmic lore on top of the normal stuff.

This sort of reminds me of the upcoming plot point about how the Scourge will always be out there and always be a threat, except it doesn't make any sense. No one is making any new Scourge, and their leader and their leader's secret controller are both dead and long gone.

What we should have, isn't the Scourge inexplicably always being a threat, but that there are other people willing to take advantage of the situation. A new villain who finds some artifacts abandoned from these wars and creates their own cult building upon these ideas, but without having to be an escalating continuation of them.

Similarly, I think the Burning Legion can stay gone, but that wouldn't stop some other ambitious demon lord out in the Twisting Nether from creating their own crusade, and maybe having different goals and methods of carrying them out. You don't need the Burning Legion to return or for some Fel Lord behind Sargeras in order to have a new threat prove their own worth while still taking advantage of existing lore and beloved concepts.

I could easily, easily come up with a dozen interesting expansion concepts based on ordinary and non-cosmic lore (just sprinkled with it), including:

I've expressed disinterest in other side of Azeroth plots before, but the specifics aren't the point here, and I'd generally be for any of the ideas you listed. I've seen some people who aren't even necessarily fond of the escalation feel that you can't just come back down from it so easily, but I think these plots would go over just fine. I mean, my favorite parts of Battle for Azeroth were exploring Zandalari culture and investigating the mystery of some witches in a creepy wood, not the world-ending stuff (although the Visions of N'Zoth and some other little details like that were certainly cool).

[ercarp]

A bit of a rant coming up, but I don't think the "Cosmic Saga" needs to be concluded at all. If anything, Blizzard should take a note from Shadowlands that cosmic lore is fucking terrible. Don't finish it, just step away from it. Abandon it. Let it simmer in the background and occasionally mention it in an in-game book.

I mean, I agree with everything you're saying here, but I don't think Blizzard is the type to change course in response to player feedback. They're too proud for that. Remember Mission Tables? Reviled universally by pretty much everyone, but they're still in the game because Blizzard stubbornly wants to make them work, even though we all know they never will. And don't even get me started on Azerite Armor or Covenants.

And all of this arrogance about their flawless design is only magnified when it comes to their storytelling, which they must genuinely believe to be the best in the industry. When they created that whole cosmic chart thing for Chronicles, they had already decided "this is the story we want to tell", and Shadowlands just proves us that they're only working to tick off all the cosmic boxes with each new expansion. Shadowlands didn't feel like a natural progression of the story, it was more of a "guys, we need to come up with an expansion for the cosmic force of Death, how do we do that?" and then they just brainstormed a bunch of shit in one afternoon and called it a day.

[delphiskye]

I guess to be fair, my favorite part of Shadowlands was the new customization and the new leveling (I finally have alts!) and neither of those things have anything to do with "Shadowlands", so my favorite parts of "Dragonflight" may not have anything to do with the name either and make it sort of irrelevant.

I couldn't begin to guess. Wasn't something like this added to Orgrimmar as well? It seems meaningful, but also sort of inexplicable.

They did?

I really wouldn't mind this. I'll admit it's kinda selfish, but as much as I think Demon Hunter benefited from coming out in 2016 rather than 2007, the game is almost 18 years old. I would 1000% take a smaller version of something I've always wanted now, with the hope that it could maybe be expanded later, than wait another 9 years for the "right expansion".

yeah there is an arrow shop where the barber shop was and the barber shop got moved to other side of the middle entrance confused me alot

[Nyel]

But that would mean 2 specs of the same type. You don't need more than 1 mdps, rdps, healer, tank. It makes more sense to mix the flights up into 3 or 4 good specs rather then spreading them thin into 5. Just my opinion.

I mean technically it could be a class that consists of:

- Tank
- Usual healer (Shaman, Monk etc.)
- "DPS" healer (Discipline Priest)
- Ranged DPS
- Melee DPS

Or the Dragon themed class could have a very unique "Support" (Green / Bronze Dragonflight themed) spec (which, even if a lot of people say does not work in WoW, could work if done right), instead of the "DPS" healer spec.