Dragonflight Alpha/Beta General Discussion

[Nymrohd]

I would play the shit out of moonkin if they were playable and looked like that.

In my dream version of WoW, Kaldorei are their own faction including Night Elves, Furbolgs, Wildkin and Children of Cenarius. And maybe Dark Trolls.

[Local Ardenweald Faerie]

Shall be here sir

The first three letters... t72... those will forever be etched in my mind like the Youtube url dQw4w9WgXcQ

I remember the salt. Oof.

[Clbull]

Here is my guess for Dragonflight.

Plot:

The Champions of Azeroth emerge from the Shadowlands and are met with grave news. Zovaal's attacks on Azeroth's world soul have ripped apart the planet's landmasses, causing a schism far worse than the Shattering. Worse, the Naga had seized the opportunity to mount a full scale invasion of the land, annexing much of the planet. Stormwind and Orgrimmar have fallen and the Alliance and Horde have effectively disbanded with all its leadership stuck in the Shadowlands.

Knights of the Ebon Blade fight against countless hordes of Naga to keep the Citadel defended. When all hope seems to be lost, Alexstrasza swoops in and blasts the Naga hordes with searing dragonfire. She and her Red Dragonflight ferry the remaining survivors to the Dragon Isles where they are met by Magni Bronzebeard - it is there that they learn that Alexstrasza is the only remaining Dragon Aspect and had been working on bringing as many survivors as she could to her sanctum.

Magni laments that Azeroth's world soul had been mortally wounded and that there is no hope of saving her. Bolvar then has a sudden thought. "Let's go to the Caverns of Time and fix the timeline," he exclaims, only for Alexstrasza to shake her head.

"The Naga control Tanaris. They besieged the Caverns and slain Nozdormu!"

Bolvar sighs. "We must take those caverns back. They're our only ho..."

"We're struggling to hold out here," Alexstrasza snaps. "If we leave, the Dragon Isles fall, and so does everybody else!"

All of a sudden, a portal opens up behind them and a familiar face emerges along with a legion of black and white drakes... it's Murozond.

Everybody draws their weapons, ready to beat back the intruder, before he clicks his fingers and stops everybody in their tracks, freezing them in time. Only Alexstrasza is unaffected.

"Came to finish the job? Then go ahead! Strike me down! But I won't go down without a fight."

"Calm yourself, Alexstrasza," Murozond bellows. "We are not here to fight. We are here to help you."

"Help? You tried to change history for the worse!" she snapped. "You tried to kill Thrall, to kill Medivh, to kill Arthas, to surrender Azeroth to the Burning Legion!"

"We were trying to save her!"

Alexstrasza stops, speechless at what her nemesis had said.

"Azeroth is our only hope. We are here to help you save her. Let us guide your forces through the timelines."

Murozond clicks his fingers again, and the room returns to normal. Everybody lowers their weapons.

"Are you sure this is a good idea?" Khadgar asks.

"We have no other choice," Bolvar replies. "Champions, to arms. We must venture forth through the passages of time and save our world!"

Everybody cheers, and the World of Warcraft: Dragonfight logo pops up.

Features:

• Level cap increased to 70.
• New starting zone experience, level from 1 to 70 in the Dragon Isles, which features 7 distinct zones.
• Endgame focused around time travel to various zones across Azeroth's history.
• Mythic+ seasons are more frequent and now feature a rotation of dungeons across all points in WoW's history: from Classic to Dragonflight.
• Timewalking is a permanent feature.
• Chromie Time (to return to Classic or Shattering-era Azeroth and level in any past expansion) remains available for players who already have a max level character.
• Talent system overhaul. Talent trees are brought back, except every class has a shared tree for all their Specializations.
• New Hero Class: Tinker (Mail DPS/Tank.)
• New specializations for each class, aside from Druid: Rogue (tank), Hunter (tank), Shaman (tank), Mage (healer), Death Knight (ranged DPS), Paladin (ranged DPS), Warlock (tank), Demon Hunter (ranged DPS), Warrior (healer) and Priest (tank.) Every class can either tank, heal or both.
• Race/Class combinations abolished. Any race can now be any class.
• Factions are abolished, as the Alliance and Horde have broken apart. These players can now play with each other without restrictions.
• Arena and Rated Battleground overhaul with solo queue matchmaking.
• Seasonal raid rotation, with a mix of past and current raids tuned to max level, with new affixes.

[Vynestra]

So you're saying there's a chance...

A mobile game with 3 tiers of a pre-order would be a first lol, a mobile game even with a pre-order is weird.

Blizz is trying to make money, so it'll be a f2p p2w type of mobile game I'd assume. Why kneecap themselves on their mobile titles with one time costs?

- - - Updated - - -

Here is my guess for Dragonflight.

Plot:

The Champions of Azeroth emerge from the Shadowlands and are met with grave news. Zovaal's attacks on Azeroth's world soul have ripped apart the planet's landmasses, causing a schism far worse than the Shattering. Worse, the Naga had seized the opportunity to mount a full scale invasion of the land, annexing much of the planet. Stormwind and Orgrimmar have fallen and the Alliance and Horde have effectively disbanded with all its leadership stuck in the Shadowlands.

Knights of the Ebon Blade fight against countless hordes of Naga to keep the Citadel defended. When all hope seems to be lost, Alexstrasza swoops in and blasts the Naga hordes with searing dragonfire. She and her Red Dragonflight ferry the remaining survivors to the Dragon Isles where they are met by Magni Bronzebeard - it is there that they learn that Alexstrasza is the only remaining Dragon Aspect and had been working on bringing as many survivors as she could to her sanctum.

Magni laments that Azeroth's world soul had been mortally wounded and that there is no hope of saving her. Bolvar then has a sudden thought. "Let's go to the Caverns of Time and fix the timeline," he exclaims, only for Alexstrasza to shake her head.

"The Naga control Tanaris. They besieged the Caverns and slain Nozdormu!"

Bolvar sighs. "We must take those caverns back. They're our only ho..."

"We're struggling to hold out here," Alexstrasza snaps. "If we leave, the Dragon Isles fall, and so does everybody else!"

All of a sudden, a portal opens up behind them and a familiar face emerges along with a legion of black and white drakes... it's Murozond.

Everybody draws their weapons, ready to beat back the intruder, before he clicks his fingers and stops everybody in their tracks, freezing them in time. Only Alexstrasza is unaffected.

"Came to finish the job? Then go ahead! Strike me down! But I won't go down without a fight."

"Calm yourself, Alexstrasza," Murozond bellows. "We are not here to fight. We are here to help you."

"Help? You tried to change history for the worse!" she snapped. "You tried to kill Thrall, to kill Medivh, to kill Arthas, to surrender Azeroth to the Burning Legion!"

"We were trying to save her!"

Alexstrasza stops, speechless at what her nemesis had said.

"Azeroth is our only hope. We are here to help you save her. Let us guide your forces through the timelines."

Murozond clicks his fingers again, and the room returns to normal. Everybody lowers their weapons.

"Are you sure this is a good idea?" Khadgar asks.

"We have no other choice," Bolvar replies. "Champions, to arms. We must venture forth through the passages of time and save our world!"

Everybody cheers, and the World of Warcraft: Dragonfight logo pops up.

Features:

• Level cap increased to 70.
• New starting zone experience, level from 1 to 70 in the Dragon Isles, which features 7 distinct zones.
• Endgame focused around time travel to various zones across Azeroth's history.
• Mythic+ seasons are more frequent and now feature a rotation of dungeons across all points in WoW's history: from Classic to Dragonflight.
• Timewalking is a permanent feature.
• Chromie Time (to return to Classic or Shattering-era Azeroth and level in any past expansion) remains available for players who already have a max level character.
• Talent system overhaul. Talent trees are brought back, except every class has a shared tree for all their Specializations.
• New Hero Class: Tinker (Mail DPS/Tank.)
• New specializations for each class, aside from Druid: Rogue (tank), Hunter (tank), Shaman (tank), Mage (healer), Death Knight (ranged DPS), Paladin (ranged DPS), Warlock (tank), Demon Hunter (ranged DPS), Warrior (healer) and Priest (tank.) Every class can either tank, heal or both.
• Race/Class combinations abolished. Any race can now be any class.
• Factions are abolished, as the Alliance and Horde have broken apart. These players can now play with each other without restrictions.
• Arena and Rated Battleground overhaul with solo queue matchmaking.
• Seasonal raid rotation, with a mix of past and current raids tuned to max level, with new affixes.

The plot actually sounds better than like 90% of all the leaks, but I'm not sure blizz will go the time-wimey route again. It also sounds likely too good to be true (I know its your prediction not a leak, but it just sounds well above what blizz would write). lol

I do love an xpac where the alliance and horde have fallen.

[Raetary]

The cinematic trailers have never been dialogue heavy, i don't get why peoplea are expecting the 10.0 one to be different.
Even Sadfangs cinematic series was just a collage of short one-liners.

[Sondrelk]

anyone who rages about borrowed power but wants specs to be totally changed every other expansion is a buffoon

if you only have an ability for one expansion before it's taken away, how is that any different from a "borrowed power" ability like artifacts or covenants

Or for that matter, Tier Sets. The original quintessential borrowed power. It changes your spec to varying degrees, preferably in a noticeable way or it's a shit tier set. You need to farm it possibly for weeks unless you are a dedicated Mythic guild that can clear 3 difficulties a week. And once the tier is over it goes straight in the bin, barring exceptions like Legion where you had it for a bit longer.

[TriHard]

My main issue with Galakrond and Chromatus remains that Blizzard sucks at making huge raid bosses feel fun. Really, very few games ever manage that. Maybe Shadow of the Collosus and Monster Hunter.

While they've been fucking up a lot lately, I do think they would manage to do right by those raids at this point, there's tons of ideas they can just YOINK from FF14's big boss fights as well

[Nymrohd]

Or for that matter, Tier Sets. The original quintessential borrowed power. It changes your spec to varying degrees, preferably in a noticeable way or it's a shit tier set. You need to farm it possibly for weeks unless you are a dedicated Mythic guild that can clear 3 difficulties a week. And once the tier is over it goes straight in the bin, barring exceptions like Legion where you had it for a bit longer.

Heck the last tier set before borrowed power was Hellfire Citadel's and those were pretty much like getting an extra top level talent.

[Ersula]

Y’all are nuts. The covenants ARE the “shakeup” you’re looking for, to make the classes a little different each expansion. Y’all too busy nerd raging at “borrowed power” to see it, though.

I thought it would be cool if the Covenant System continued over multiple expansions: The covenent symbol could fit right next to your faction symbol on the character selection screen. But by 9.1.5 it was clear its really is just a borrowed power system. I'd be fine if the Dragonflights are our covenants in 10.0 but don't make their abilities be class specific so balancing them doesn't take up the majority of development time.

[Syegfryed]

The first three letters... t72... those will forever be etched in my mind like the Youtube url dQw4w9WgXcQ

I remember the salt. Oof.

don't bother, people already evolved into uploading again so the url changes

[Nymrohd]

don't bother, people already evolved into uploading again so the url changes

Is it weird that I love that song?

[Ersula]

New starting zone experience, level from 1 to 70 in the Dragon Isles, which features 7 distinct zones.

Now this seems possible. I don't see them creating a new starting zone experience when they just created Chromie time & exiles reach in 9.0, but the idea of letting everyone start in the new area if they want is definitely possible. But it would definitely be like Threads of Fate where you need to play through the new campaign with a level 60 first. Otherwise people who are already 60 will resent having to go through the same questline as the fresh level 1s.

Mythic+ seasons are more frequent and now feature a rotation of dungeons across all points in WoW's history: from Classic to Dragonflight.

Their point of saying "4 seasons, 6 to 8 months" per expansion, made it sound like that was the plan for the immediate future. 2 dungeons per expansion, going backward from WoD. But obviously not Classic. Those aren't in the game anymore. But definitely the Cata & MoP versions of those Classic dungeons.

Timewalking is a permanent feature.

They have to centralize the endgame content in some way, so don't expect the Heroic dungeon queue to sample from 100+ dungeons. Timewalking weeks will certainly still exist.

Talent system overhaul. Talent trees are brought back, except every class has a shared tree for all their Specializations.

That...basically sounds like what we already have.

Race/Class combinations abolished. Any race can now be any class.

I like this as a solid expansion feature: Paladins, Shaman & Druids would need a bunch of new racial assets, but if they commit to that it's extremely possible.

Factions are abolished, as the Alliance and Horde have broken apart. These players can now play with each other without restrictions.

The developers made it clear the cross-faction play will be as non-invasive as possible. Even saying they specifically are not doing this. At least in the fiction of the game the factions will always be a thing; Only now the players can choose to be contentious objectors.

Seasonal raid rotation, with a mix of past and current raids tuned to max level, with new affixes.

That did make it sound like this was their goal when they were talking about Mythic raiding with affixes. Applying the Mythic+ formula to raiding and I personally would love it if they lower the difficulty of normal & heroic raids to the same difficulty level of normal & heroic dungeons & remove LFR completely. They also made it sound like their long-time goal is to apply this system to older raids.

[Vakir]

anyone who rages about borrowed power but wants specs to be totally changed every other expansion is a buffoon

if you only have an ability for one expansion before it's taken away, how is that any different from a "borrowed power" ability like artifacts or covenants

The problem with Covenants is what we were saying since the word go about the fact that they discourage build variety, pigeonhole decisions into certain forms of content, and are impossible to balance, plus punish you if you prefer a certain aesthetic over what's optimal. They're fine if they launch in the 9.1.5 state if they do any further ones.

In the case of borrowed power as a concept, I think the reason people sour on it is that when done poorly, which it has been 2/3 of the times they've done it, it feels really bare-bones before you get far into it in some cases and only starts to feel like a complete class later into the progression.

Artifact Weapons to me worked because you got your core traits pretty quickly that directly modified how abilities functioned and they seemed very class-specific and impactful compared to what are just some numbers adjustments in the case of Conduits and non-class specific modifiers in the Soulbind trees that feel bland. Just like Covenants, you get an active ability from the very beginning, and unlike Covenants, it's properly themed and a lot of the class was built around it.

Azerite Armor similarly started locking a lot of the interesting stuff much faster than the actual artifact weapons did and the traits were less interesting on launch. Essences were a welcome change, as was altering how many rings and what their overall flavors were on the armor themselves.

I think the biggest reason people crap on Borrowed Power is how poor the presentation was in older systems. If they front-load it more to make player specs feel more fluid earlier in the expansion and don't pull a Covenant lockout like they did in SL, I think people will be less sour on it.

I'm gonna +1 Tier Sets being a good way of handling it, too. In fact, something like the Creation Catalyst being a concept introduced earlier in an expansion and available sooner might be a nice way to make Tier Sets being gradually added to gear as a form of "borrowed power," with a drop off happening between Seasons to mix up how specs play each tier of content. Obviously, adding tier bonuses to pieces would have to be easier/quicker as a result, but it also means you'd need to re-add it to new upgrades you obtain as you do it.

[Houle]

Shall be here sir

I know exactly what this is, even without clicking the link.
The good old days, when people thought Azshara and/or N'zoth would get an entire addon dedicated to them alone.
*sigh*

[Izalla]

I can't wait for pandaren to be relevant again with the new addition of Jim Firepaw!

[Local Ardenweald Faerie]

I can't wait for pandaren to be relevant again with the new addition of Jim Firepaw!

Were I not mute I would've woken up the house laughing so hard at that last night.

Jim Firepaw is my new favorite character

[Vakir]

I'm honestly going to be disappointed if they don't add a Jim Firepaw NPC.

He can do an explosive kick on a dragon nest.

[Skytotem]

Now I'm just sad, remember when we got text from Ji saying he wanted to punch a dinosaur at the start of BFA? And we thought they might actually use him for... something?

[Sondrelk]

Heck the last tier set before borrowed power was Hellfire Citadel's and those were pretty much like getting an extra top level talent.

Those might have been a bit of an outlier in how shockingly good they were, but they are also the only time I legitimately felt bad about losing borrowed power, and consequently really felt that I grew weaker as I levelled.
Normally I don't really notice it that bad. I get weaker, but not in a way where there is a sharp cutoff like when I had to abandon my MM 4-set. I just treat it like the enemies growing stronger faster than I cna gear up, but that one time in Legion was absolutely horrible.

[Izalla]

Now I'm just sad, remember when we got text from Ji saying he wanted to punch a dinosaur at the start of BFA? And we thought they might actually use him for... something?

Maybe he will accompany his relative Jim to the Dragon Isles and they can punch some dragons together. "I'm gonna punch that dragon in the face!"