Dragonflight Alpha/Beta General Discussion

[Sondrelk]

Agreed on Vol'jin's death, but not so sure I agree on the UC attack. Story-wise, it made sense that the Alliance would be going after the person who called for the Burning of Teldrassil at her home city, which would be the Undercity. It was a logical next place to attack, even if the story itself wasn't all that logical overall.

I do think that Dazar'alor shows a great point where one faction lost someone while the other didn't & the world didn't fall apart. The Horde lost Rastakhan (though he obviously was going to die, it was just a question of when) while the Alliance didn't really suffer any sort of massive losses there aside from Jaina's ego. Blizz going for "balance" would have had Katherine Proudmoore die for reasons, but that didn't happen thankfully.

The problem with attacking Undercity immediately is that it undercuts both it and Teldrassil being destroyed. Neither gets time to really shine as the massive blow to the factions that it is.
By moving the attack on Undercity further into the expansion you can really linger on the Teldrassil attack, have a large amount of buildup to the Undercity attack, and then finally make that attack impactful.

By having it immediately you can't have the attack on Undercity be the Alliance retaliation that it should be, which meant that we needed another "proper" retaliation with the Darkshore warfront.


Mostly I just want to imagine a version of BfA where The Siege of Undercity is the 8.1 raid with a proper raidboss encounter against Saurfang. And in which we additionally get a Barrens warfront instead of the Darkshore one. All ending with a final raid to stop Sylvanas in Teldrassil again instead of the rushed Ny'alotha raid.

[Wangming]

I think there is art of Teldrassil showing this exact thing in the sense that there are lights in an upward spiral along the trunk showing that is how it was supposed to look. They can make the trunk and thus the tree itself much smaller if only Teldrassil and maybe some wild areas are in the canopy and everything else just spirals down around it.

Wasn't that for a scrapped idea for the movie? Back when they weren't sure it would be the first war or not?

[Nymrohd]

Oh I love Mechagon's mechanics. I could not care less about Mechagnomes or the islands aesthetics, but the systems were top notch. My ideal world revamp would be implementing systems like it across the world to give life and reason to visit zones again. The rotating guests, public work projects, the "Mechagon Tinkering" sub-profession, all fantastic things that I would have loved to see used more in world design. Contrasting with things like Nazjatars world events and vignettes, I felt 8.2 was the absolute height of the games design for outdoor zones, and was thoroughly disappointed in 8.3 and everything after.

Naz also had excellent world pvp. It helped that there was a very rewarding system behind it (the conquest grind).

I did not mind 8.3 that much. Imo what 8.3 needed was a bit more ambition and time. They could have added a third zone (Storm Peaks). And should have rotated the relevant dungeons into M+ to add variety (Halls of Origination split in two, Mogu'shan Palace and if Storm Peaks, one of the Halls).

[Wangming]

IMO, MOP was the close the game got in being balanced, exactly because different tools were available for all classes, yet with their own playstyle, i would not go far to say every calss could do everything but they had the basic mechanics made differently for each class.

Give it a few years and we will have MoP Classic servers.

- - - Updated - - -

While I don't think this was your intent, I now really want to have a dungeon take place on a Teldrassil-like tree structure, fighting trash/bosses while we climb up the tree.

Oh that would be cool.

[Deventh]

Should've put "No Evoker" in my bingo card, that's like a free hit right there.

[KayRule]

Wasn't that for a scrapped idea for the movie? Back when they weren't sure it would be the first war or not?

It was a piece of concept art released publicly back when it was a "World of Warcraft" movie and Peter Jackson was involved.

[Das Thora]

Random idea that'll never happen.

Dragon Isles is made up of 3 zones with three phases in three different time periods.
1. Modern Dragon Isles
2. Primordial Azeroth (or Kaldorei Empire time)
3. Apocalyptic Void(?) future

[Nymrohd]

Should've put "No Evoker" in my bingo card, that's like a free hit right there.

I still feel that name is just a poor choice for a class.

[AngerFork]

The problem with attacking Undercity immediately is that it undercuts both it and Teldrassil being destroyed. Neither gets time to really shine as the massive blow to the factions that it is.
By moving the attack on Undercity further into the expansion you can really linger on the Teldrassil attack, have a large amount of buildup to the Undercity attack, and then finally make that attack impactful.

By having it immediately you can't have the attack on Undercity be the Alliance retaliation that it should be, which meant that we needed another "proper" retaliation with the Darkshore warfront.


Mostly I just want to imagine a version of BfA where The Siege of Undercity is the 8.1 raid with a proper raidboss encounter against Saurfang. And in which we additionally get a Barrens warfront instead of the Darkshore one. All ending with a final raid to stop Sylvanas in Teldrassil again instead of the rushed Ny'alotha raid.

I do see what you are saying here. Both were big hits & neither really got the story spotlight it deserved. Teldrassil's burning was quickly buried under how awful Sylvanas was while the Undercity attack was forgotten as soon as the Horde went into Stormwind to free Talan'ji. The problem is holding off Undercity until 8.1 also would have felt weird. "The Horde just burned down one of our home villages, so let's go talk to some sailors & get a few boats before we attack a place on our home continent."

Honestly, I think both should have been moved later. Start out with more of a skirmish in Silithus over Azerite, then start little spats all over leading into the eventual destruction of both cities.

[Nymrohd]

The problem with attacking Undercity immediately is that it undercuts both it and Teldrassil being destroyed. Neither gets time to really shine as the massive blow to the factions that it is.
By moving the attack on Undercity further into the expansion you can really linger on the Teldrassil attack, have a large amount of buildup to the Undercity attack, and then finally make that attack impactful.

By having it immediately you can't have the attack on Undercity be the Alliance retaliation that it should be, which meant that we needed another "proper" retaliation with the Darkshore warfront.


Mostly I just want to imagine a version of BfA where The Siege of Undercity is the 8.1 raid with a proper raidboss encounter against Saurfang. And in which we additionally get a Barrens warfront instead of the Darkshore one. All ending with a final raid to stop Sylvanas in Teldrassil again instead of the rushed Ny'alotha raid.

They really should have left both Naz'jatar and Nyalotha out.
And I wanted a Siege of Stormwind. If only so Horde stans could shut up about SoO.

[Wangming]

It was a piece of concept art released publicly back when it was a "World of Warcraft" movie and Peter Jackson was involved.

That could have been so freaking good. Although looking at the Hobbit, it could have gone either way.

[KayRule]

Naz also had excellent world pvp. It helped that there was a very rewarding system behind it (the conquest grind).

I did not mind 8.3 that much. Imo what 8.3 needed was a bit more ambition and time. They could have added a third zone (Storm Peaks). And should have rotated the relevant dungeons into M+ to add variety (Halls of Origination split in two, Mogu'shan Palace and if Storm Peaks, one of the Halls).

The problem is 8.3 objectively was scaled down, the original plans scrapped. Maw of N'zoth and Plunder Isle namestrings were datamined back along the same time as JunkerGnomeIsle (internal name for the load zone of Mechagon) and Nazjatar.

The Blizzcon trailer for Eternal Palace ends with a tease diving into the waters behind it, and the accidentally shipped map with the untextured N'zoth mass lines up perfectly with the trailer if you follow the camera the same way, going right to the massive Maw. They also teased that Blizzcon the end of Eternal Palace would have a similar aftermath to the Nighthold (which saw Argus come to our skyboxes), only for what we got to largely be a very vague confirmation "N'zoth" is free and NPCs telling us he has been freed. You can also find the space in the Zandalar world map, beyond the current zone walls, with the un-fatigued water where Plunder Isle was supposed to go.

For some reason a dual zone release was scrapped sometime after that Blizzcon, in favor of content largely reusing spaces and assets - which isn't terrible, and is a smart and efficient way to work when plans change - as well as scrapping two potential Allied Races.

[Sondrelk]

Hey!! Page 2222, congrats to us for getting this far! Only 278 more pages to go for that vaunted 2500. Let's try and get there before we know what 10.0 is!

[Nymrohd]

I do see what you are saying here. Both were big hits & neither really got the story spotlight it deserved. Teldrassil's burning was quickly buried under how awful Sylvanas was while the Undercity attack was forgotten as soon as the Horde went into Stormwind to free Talan'ji. The problem is holding off Undercity until 8.1 also would have felt weird. "The Horde just burned down one of our home villages, so let's go talk to some sailors & get a few boats before we attack a place on our home continent."

Honestly, I think both should have been moved later. Start out with more of a skirmish in Silithus over Azerite, then start little spats all over leading into the eventual destruction of both cities.

Also, if we have a fleet to transport siege engines and a significant army to Tirisfal, why do we need Kul Tiras?

[Wangming]

Hey!! Page 2222, congrats to us for getting this far! Only 278 more pages to go for that vaunted 2500. Let's try and get there before we know what 10.0 is!

We might need another riddle or leak before that. Or a very blatant fake leak we can dissect and laugh at.

[ercarp]

Hey!! Page 2222, congrats to us for getting this far! Only 278 more pages to go for that vaunted 2500. Let's try and get there before we know what 10.0 is!

Would need a juicy new leak to discuss if we plan to go through 278 pages in 2 days.

[Nymrohd]

We might need another riddle or leak before that. Or a very blatant fake leak we can dissect and laugh at.

Eh if the mods don't mind, we can meme ourselves to 2500 in a couple of days with ease. We've done it before!

But yeah, a leak in the last two days is not unlikely.

[ercarp]

Or a very blatant fake leak we can dissect and laugh at.

Well, there's always this:

Hello there
I got mail which i cannot show you because my aunt who is working in blizzard send it to me yesterday i was in shock...
Im not selfish so i wanna to share it with you guys.
Lets started!
Expansion name:Wrath of the Garrosh
During events in 9.3 Garrosh cannot handle being dead any longer he needs to escape
But where he is?!
Yeah thats right Tel abim is where we gonna start its small but we wont stay there for long because we will go somewhere else to find where garrosh is and what he is doing.
We gonna have new continent named Dracaria its broken isles size and have mayan theme.
DH gonna have reworked started area and they will start with 30 lvl
Every race got DH
There is no covenant anymore we got something better without mindless grinding and its not an item but its in talent tab and its named "masteries" its something like old talents trees and by doing stuffs we gonna get points.
New arena
New pvp gear system No more Rng we will buy stuff again!
New bg Clash its something like ARAM in lol
New skills for every class
Modified talent trees
New profession:Carperter you will be able to craft chairs to make special furniture you will combine wood, nails etc to create a whole carpet which will gave buffs for party depending on what you combined with difrenet timber adds different stats
New Npc who gonna upgrade our gear by ilvls for new currency
Thats all i got but there is something more
Edit:
10.1 Forgotten Dragonblight is the name of 1 update and we will go to northrend for something i dont know what might be that
Varian is back with his Merely a setback! he have more powers than before
there will be new raid and at least 3 fights with him and the last form is in space and there are stars and flying dragons and something more...
P.S NO DARK RANGERS

[Deventh]

Random idea that'll never happen.

Dragon Isles is made up of 3 zones with three phases in three different time periods.
1. Modern Dragon Isles
2. Primordial Azeroth (or Kaldorei Empire time)
3. Apocalyptic Void(?) future

A very accurate leak from 2019 said Blizz had plans for a time travel expansion with Queen Azshara, after Shadowlands and Dragonflight. So might happen, you never know. (Yes, they predicted the expansion name Dragonflight way back in 2019)

[Sondrelk]

Also, if we have a fleet to transport siege engines and a significant army to Tirisfal, why do we need Kul Tiras?

The ship subplot is probably one of the worst aspects of BfA to me. We spend all that time hammering in how important ships are for the coming fight against the other faction. And then when we actually have them they are used for a grand total of 1.5 important encounters in Dazar'alor, and at the beginning of the very next patch they disappear.