Dragonflight Alpha/Beta General Discussion

[deviantcultist]

You mean more than the main dragon groups?
I don’t see that happening simply because of the story but I’m also biased and want the fake Talonguard to be a thing

Dragons in fantasy, especially WoW, come in many flavors. I'd like to see something that resembles Void/Twilight, Elune/Moon or Deathwing/Wrathion kind of dragon class or at least have the spec/option to play into that.

Instead, I'm concerned they are going to make a purely Red Dragonflight class that comes across as the most basic flavor of dragon you can find in any type of fantasy. Maybe except for the "healing flames" aspect, but seriously, that's not enough depth.

[Ersula]

Genocide is clearly morally-equivalent to ~20 murders tops. Strong comparison there.

I'm sorry, you're right. Maiev merely attempted genocide buy trying to assassinate the entire Darnassian ruling order, including Tyrande & Malfurion themselves, while working for a different genocidal maniac. Not comparable at all. It totally makes sense that they're best friends now. /s

[Vakir]

I'd also like to add in that I think the conversation of spoilers has ultimately changed in the last few expansions. Blizzard has actively changed how they tell a story and seem to be very big on "We are going to tease something without ever giving a solid answer".. BFA and Shadowlands especially that has seemed unbearable.

I personally think this is a massive mistake. Blizzard intentionally tried to hide everything for this story as a "Will she/won't she" and "look how interesting and mysterious this story is" but it ultimately just made people angry.

It's very odd dealing with a story in WoW where spoilers actually matter.

No disagreement there at all.

I think if they ever DO get to a point where there's satisfying questions, answers, characterization, etc. it would just make things as a whole suffer in retrospect.

If you were told going into EW "By the way, everything stems from a bird loli at the edge of the universe made from someone with clinical depression and we're going to go there on a starship powered by friendly summons" it would sound really fucking stupid without actually getting there authentically.

[Jokubas]

They tried to*, it didn't go very well as a lot of stuff was still datamined.

I've been meaning to say, sometimes the only thing worse than everything being spoiled, is when just the wrong things are spoiled and nothing else.

It happens a lot, that the most controversial plot points or quotes get datamined while the context that makes them understandable is still encrypted.

Of course the immediate instinct might be to say "well the fanbase needs to overreact less to things we don't have the full context for", but sometimes it's good to be able to react to these things when they're still on PTR rather than live. I mean, it may be a small thing, but one that comes to mind is Khadgar saying he's never been to another world before on Argus when his trip to Draenor is one of his most defining character moments. It's nice to be able to give feedback on something like that before it's live. It's less nice when it looks like your favorite character might be getting horribly derailed, because the context was hidden when the action wasn't. ;P

[Vakir]

I mean, it may be a small thing, but one that comes to mind is Khadgar saying he's never been to another world before on Argus when his trip to Draenor is one of his most defining character moments. It's nice to be able to give feedback on something like that before it's live. It's less nice when it looks like your favorite character might be getting horribly derailed, because the context was hidden when the action wasn't. ;P

That's a good example where I'd say that, while it helps to minimize the damage from time to time, they deserve to deal with the highest extent of damage to their clout and confidence from their player base so the solution instead of being "whoopsie " is "Well, we should probably know very significant and key things about own fucking characters next time."

That being said, something like that is gonna be experienced in the PTR anyway because we need to actually test the world content. So obviously not everything is gonna be hideable, sadly.

But I'd consider that a pretty big detail. This isn't Khadgar's age being off by 2, it's a major event in his life his primary experiences are based off of. It would be like Jaina having sea sickness from never being on a boat.

[Ersula]

It's very odd dealing with a story in WoW where spoilers actually matter.

My problem is what they consider a spoiler. Actually giving us insight into these characters innermost ideas over the last 4 years would have vastly improved the experience. But we didn't have that because "spoilers."

[Mace]

I've been meaning to say, sometimes the only thing worse than everything being spoiled, is when just the wrong things are spoiled and nothing else.

It happens a lot, that the most controversial plot points or quotes get datamined while the context that makes them understandable is still encrypted.

Of course the immediate instinct might be to say "well the fanbase needs to overreact less to things we don't have the full context for", but sometimes it's good to be able to react to these things when they're still on PTR rather than live. I mean, it may be a small thing, but one that comes to mind is Khadgar saying he's never been to another world before on Argus when his trip to Draenor is one of his most defining character moments. It's nice to be able to give feedback on something like that before it's live. It's less nice when it looks like your favorite character might be getting horribly derailed, because the context was hidden when the action wasn't. ;P

Ofc fanbase needs to overreact, that's the main function. 101 Marketing and PR and execs can't make decisions in media projects without fan over reaction.

They intentionally do things to provoke and evoke fan over reaction. They just hope it would work to boost their product.

Doesn't always does it, aye Afrisiabi?!

[Vakir]

I don't know that EW is the best example because the final boss did turn out to be kind of stupid on a base level. It works incredibly well on a meta level because the final boss is actually despair and giving up so the WoL as hope is literally fighting its antithesis but I dont think the actual bullet point version would be much worse or better than what actually happened.

Id go with Infinity War. There was a complete leak but it sounded so very dumb as just a list and that list and seeing it play out are two very different takes on the story.

Fair point. I threw out EW because it's the primary competitor. You do need to swallow a lot of absolute nonsense to enjoy basically any FF game, though.

IW is a great example, as is Endgame. People getting a full summary of the latter would think it was disappointing, but it works better with the details and the context and the emotional resonance of actually experiencing it.

[Revamp Man]

Dragons in fantasy, especially WoW, come in many flavors. I'd like to see something that resembles Void/Twilight, Elune/Moon or Deathwing/Wrathion kind of dragon class or at least have the spec/option to play into that.

Instead, I'm concerned they are going to make a purely Red Dragonflight class that comes across as the most basic flavor of dragon you can find in any type of fantasy. Maybe except for the "healing flames" aspect, but seriously, that's not enough depth.

I see a Dragonsworn with the five main flights
Red/green for a heal spec
Bronze for tank
Black and blue for dps specs or merge the two and have a stance system

[deviantcultist]

I see a Dragonsworn with the five main flights
Red/green for a heal spec
Bronze for tank
Black and blue for dps specs or merge the two and have a stance system

I'm not sure they will dilute the class so much. It will probably be that the Dragonsworn class will be the product of a newly formed and possibly uniform Dragonflight.

We also need to think. Why now? Every class that has been added has an answer to that.

[Murlocos]

I'd also like to add in that I think the conversation of spoilers has ultimately changed in the last few expansions. Blizzard has actively changed how they tell a story and seem to be very big on "We are going to tease something without ever giving a solid answer".. BFA and Shadowlands especially that has seemed unbearable.

I personally think this is a massive mistake. Blizzard intentionally tried to hide everything for this story as a "Will she/won't she" and "look how interesting and mysterious this story is" but it ultimately just made people angry.

It's very odd dealing with a story in WoW where spoilers actually matter.

I would go so far as to say this is the largest problem with the storytelling right now. It feels like the story is constantly trying to present new mystery boxes to the player while the story itself feels nonsensical and unsatisfying, the writers tease and prod the players with "Just wait for the payoff, wait until you see what's coming!" Then when we eventually reach that payoff, it's usually very underwhelming and quickly swept aside to tease the next mystery. This does not play out well when your story is largely disliked by readers. It's even more so frustrating because the constant stringing along of these plot threads makes it impossible to write any kind of satisfying conclusion to them. The pacing of the story has become utterly breakneck with no time to rest after a triumphant victory for even a moment. Hell, Legion's ending has about five seconds of triumphant music before cutting to the sword in Silithus, and that was defeating the biggest bad of the whole series!

On top of that, the material of the story itself feels like it's taking a hard shift, not coincidentally after Danuser took over as lead writer partway through Legion. The neutering of faction and racial identity, one of the hallmarks of Warcraft, in BfA was a natural setup for the completely divorced cosmological focus and setting in SL. The threats of the Jailer to "unmake reality" don't feel grounded in anything, and the patches just furthered the escalation with everything about a force beyond the cosmos and the First Ones and so on. I really do not think Warcraft plays well with this not only as the primary focus but overtaking the original feel of the setting to boot. I am worried this is less a misstep and moreso the story that the new writers want to tell but are using an established setting that's inappropriate for it.

[Sondrelk]

I'd also like to add in that I think the conversation of spoilers has ultimately changed in the last few expansions. Blizzard has actively changed how they tell a story and seem to be very big on "We are going to tease something without ever giving a solid answer".. BFA and Shadowlands especially that has seemed unbearable.

I personally think this is a massive mistake. Blizzard intentionally tried to hide everything for this story as a "Will she/won't she" and "look how interesting and mysterious this story is" but it ultimately just made people angry.

It's very odd dealing with a story in WoW where spoilers actually matter.

The problems with the writing really all stem from BfA, the lack of Jailer foreshadowing notwithstanding.
BfA came out at the tail-end, and by that consequence was likely written in the middle of the "Mystery Box" writing craze that died an ignoble death once GoT Season 8 and Star Wars 8 came out, when everyone realized that you cannot always expect to write yourself out of a hole you have made if you never considered how this would work to begin with.

BfA started with the whole Teldrassil thing, and if we (I think quite rightly) assume that this was done solely for the promotional materials, then everything fall,s into place.
Blizzard didnt properly think the logistics of this event through, not in-game, nor on a meta level. It seemed to have been intended as Theramore 2.0, just with even more opportunities for players to get invested. However because it's a character action that's wildly reprehensible the story essentially ended up falling in on itself when any morally grey undertone couldnt quite support the whole "Horde are willing participants in genocide, and don't seem interested in doing anything about it."
On a Meta level however the problem becomes how do you reconcile the player engagement into player satisfaction and catharsis? In the end nothing could quite live up to all that buildup.

In the end everything ended up being pinned on Sylvanas, which is narratively unsatisfactory, but also probably the only reasonable option the writers had left at that point. Logically the story should have ended with the Horde being forcibly dismantled, but this is clearly impossible in an MMO.
This problem ended up being carried over into SL, where Blizzard tried their damndest to finally rid themselves of the stench of BfA, but because there was nothing the story really had to sink it's teeth into the probably figured Sylvanas was the only marketable character, and they didnt seem interested in rocking the boat by taking a firm stance on whether she was reprehensible or not, which ended up with this weak ending.

SL was in many ways doomed from the start, since just like BfA, the story hinges on Sylvanas, and nothing could pick up the pieces her shattered character left after Legion and BfA.

[Jokubas]

You know, for all the drama over Sylvanas' shift over the years, I think Maiev still has the record for most inconsistent and extreme character arc.

She starts out in Frozen Throne as a well-meaning person who becomes increasingly zealous in her hunt for Illidan, to the point of leaving Tyrande for dead.

Then the RPG books say she died unmourned in the hunt, which may have been anticlimactic, but was narratively consistent with the idea of a zealot who burned every bridge for the sake of increasingly irrelevant justice.

Burning Crusade decides to use her again (an early step in the eventual mass-decanonizing of the RPG books), and suddenly treats her hunt as 100% justified for the first time ever, and basically lets her take the heroic victory in the raid.

Then she's back to being a zealot, willing to kill innocents in order to make her point about night elf society.

Then Legion swings back again, treating her somewhat as a desperate ally in a desperate time, in practice she plays out mostly like a straightforward hero and reliable friend.

I'd also like to add in that I think the conversation of spoilers has ultimately changed in the last few expansions. Blizzard has actively changed how they tell a story and seem to be very big on "We are going to tease something without ever giving a solid answer".. BFA and Shadowlands especially that has seemed unbearable.

I personally think this is a massive mistake. Blizzard intentionally tried to hide everything for this story as a "Will she/won't she" and "look how interesting and mysterious this story is" but it ultimately just made people angry.

It's very odd dealing with a story in WoW where spoilers actually matter.

That's actually a good point. In the last couple of expansions, spoilers haven't even mattered because there's nothing really to spoil. I mean, we're having to get a novel to get Sylvanas' motivations, and the Jailer didn't get his until the ending cutscene (which could be a big spoiler, but at least is the sort of thing they've been regularly encrypting for awhile).

Unfortunately Warcraft isn't the only place I've been seeing this sort of storytelling. It seems like it's one of those trends of "I've heard something is good so I'll do it too." Honestly, for as much praise as things like "unreliable narrator" or "ambiguous, unresolved endings" get, I think they're a lot more like time travel than anyone wants to admit. In other words, in the right hands, with a story built with them in mind from the beginning, yes, they can lead to amazing stories. If not done absolutely perfectly, however, they just make an incoherent or simply unsatisfying mess that is nearly impossible to be invested in. There's rarely an in-between for such narrative concepts.

Warcraft isn't the right kind of story for that sort of ambiguous storytelling to be worth the gamble. It's heroic fantasy, and it's best when it's straightforward. That doesn't mean you can't have twists, but I think Shadowlands is proof that keeping character motivations secret until the last minute, or even beyond the last minute in the case of a novel, just leaves a story no one is excited about, not one they find enticingly mysterious.

I hope in the future that less spoiling from the datamining can mean less hiding the plot in the actual plot.

[Khaza-R]

I would love to see Dragonsworn actualized as wild class with a single spec that encompasses all 5 flights. Capable of every role (but not at once).

It could function in a way there they channel up to 3 flights at once to give a ton of combos for different playstyles rather than having dictated specs. Primary -> Secondary -> Tertiary flights they drawn power from and adapt their playstyle accordingly.

[Jokubas]

I consider that to be arguably worse than murder since it destroys the consciousness of the entity, whereas an entity that is allowed to remain in a normal, functional afterlife is conscious forever.

This is why a lot of Shadowlands bothers me. There's a lot of casual "well this soul is gone forever now" that no one seems to really treat with any weight. The fact that it's even possible to begin with is a huge existential issue for me about the Warcraft universe now, but the casual way in which it's treated just makes it worse. At best it's treated like death was before the Shadowlands, but that just highlights how strange the Shadowlands is as an afterlife to begin with.

I would love to see Dragonsworn actualized as wild class with a single spec that encompasses all 5 flights. Capable of every role (but not at once).

It could function in a way there they channel up to 3 flights at once to give a ton of combos for different playstyles rather than having dictated specs. Primary -> Secondary -> Tertiary flights they drawn power from and adapt their playstyle accordingly.

I'm still very torn about the idea of a dragon class. A chromatic single spec could be cool, but with all the dragon lore built up over the years, I do think that finding a way to do one spec for each of the flights would be amazing for roleplayers. On the other hand, there's already so much overlap between half the flights and existing classes, even that feels weirdly redundant to me. I still prefer the idea of a sort of "race template", where a dragon character is picking an existing race for their humanoid form, and an existing class out of any of the classes, and then simply gets access to dragon-specific customization features.

[Nymrohd]

BfA started with the whole Teldrassil thing, and if we (I think quite rightly) assume that this was done solely for the promotional materials, then everything fall,s into place.

The sad thing is, there were so many ways you could have had Teldrassil happen and still keep things reasonable. I could go about how I'd do it but the community, trying to figure out what might happen, came with so many alternatives that could have made sense and allowed a narrative exit out of this without villain batting an entire faction (and then having to act as if nothing happened).

- - - Updated - - -

This is why a lot of Shadowlands bothers me. There's a lot of casual "well this soul is gone forever now" that no one seems to really treat with any weight. The fact that it's even possible to begin with is a huge existential issue for me about the Warcraft universe now, but the casual way in which it's treated just makes it worse. At best it's treated like death was before the Shadowlands, but that just highlights how strange the Shadowlands is as an afterlife to begin with.

It's especially egregious given that this was a common example of how the Legion was so monstrous. The fact that the Legion powered its war machine by sacrificing people and literally burning their souls for fuel fed into the nihilism of it all. In Shadowlands things just happen. During the zone questlines, there is enough investment for us to feel sad. Yet in the overarching story, things are so superficial that those details just slip through.

[Khaza-R]

I'm still very torn about the idea of a dragon class. A chromatic single spec could be cool, but with all the dragon lore built up over the years, I do think that finding a way to do one spec for each of the flights would be amazing for roleplayers. On the other hand, there's already so much overlap between half the flights and existing classes, even that feels weirdly redundant to me. I still prefer the idea of a sort of "race template", where a dragon character is picking an existing race for their humanoid form, and an existing class out of any of the classes, and then simply gets access to dragon-specific customization features.

Kind of why I would prefer it be something unique. Nothing against concepts with each flight having its own spec but as you said, a lot of them are redundant probably other than bronze and black.

I totally get people wanting the class fantasy. I don't see why a dragon class couldn't implore heavy racial aesthetics like DHs do. I'm guessing the story arc of Dragonflight is going to be unity over division anyway.

[Catastrophy349]

It bothers me that people want, yet again, more melee dps/tank classes. Literally every single new class we got (DK/Monk/DH) had a melee dps/tank spec. How about a ranged dps ONLY class or a ranged dps and healer ONLY class.

[Zankai27]

Kind of why I would prefer it be something unique. Nothing against concepts with each flight having its own spec but as you said, a lot of them are redundant probably other than bronze and black.

I totally get people wanting the class fantasy. I don't see why a dragon class couldn't implore heavy racial aesthetics like DHs do. I'm guessing the story arc of Dragonflight is going to be unity over division anyway.

Not to shill for myself, but I came up with a concept (in my sig) for a Dragonsworn that leans *towards specific flight inspiration for 3 specs, but still utilizes tools and abilities from all of them. And then a 4th spec with more of a Chromatic angle and Dragoon inspiration

It bothers me that people want, yet again, more melee dps/tank classes. Literally every single new class we got (DK/Monk/DH) had a melee dps/tank spec. How about a ranged dps ONLY class or a ranged dps and healer ONLY class.

While my Dragonsworn isn’t strictly that, and has tank/healer/spell DPS/melee DPS, I’m quite proud of my spell DPS spec if you haven’t taken a look

[Jokubas]

Kind of why I would prefer it be something unique. Nothing against concepts with each flight having its own spec but as you said, a lot of them are redundant probably other than bronze and black.

I totally get people wanting the class fantasy. I don't see why a dragon class couldn't implore heavy racial aesthetics like DHs do. I'm guessing the story arc of Dragonflight is going to be unity over division anyway.

There's just so many ways it can be done I honestly can't guess how it'll turn out, which is why I didn't mark any of them on the bingo card guesses last night. I mean, while I think there's a good chance we'll get some way to have playable draconic characters next expansion, the question of how to execute it might even get Blizzard to compromise. I wouldn't even be surprised to see it done entirely through some sort of Dragon Covenant system, and just be a little more robust than the Shadowlands ones in that way.

It bothers me that people want, yet again, more melee dps/tank classes. Literally every single new class we got (DK/Monk/DH) had a melee dps/tank spec. How about a ranged dps ONLY class or a ranged dps and healer ONLY class.

Well for me, I want classes based on their flavor, not their mechanics. I mean, I still want them to have a fun playstyle, but I want Spell Breaker, for instance, because I want Spell Breaker, not because I want it to be melee DPS/Tank, but if that's how it turns out I'm not going to care.