Dragonflight Alpha/Beta General Discussion

[Wangming]

Shadowbringers (announced 2018, released 2019)
Shadowlands (announced 2019, released 2020)

Endwalker (announced early 2021, released 2021)
Eternity's End (announced late 2021, released 2022)

End of Dragons (announced 2020, released 2022)
Dragonflight (announced 2022...)

Blizzard you did it again

Kinda suspicious. Granted they can't make an expansion in a few months so some of it is coincidental. But I do expect a few more Endwalker ripoffs during 10.0

[Teriz]

Well hopefully they finally break that mold and give us something cool and good and not restrict themselves to bizarre rules and restrictions the fanbase has concocted.

You really think an Arcane mage clone is cooler than a class that allows you to be like Alexstraza or Wrathion?

[KainneAbsolute]

My theory is all the mmo companies spy on each other.

[ercarp]

I don't mind if Blizzard takes a few notes from FFXIV as long as they don't bring in their infinitely long cutscenes that suck away both your time and your soul.

[Wangming]

Well hopefully they finally break that mold and give us something cool and good and not restrict themselves to bizarre rules and restrictions the fanbase has concocted.

Like how all the FFXIV jobs were previously used in the series....before Reaper. and Gunbreaker being a borderline example.

- - - Updated - - -

I don't mind if Blizzard takes a few notes from FFXIV as long as they don't bring in their infinitely long cutscenes that suck away both your time and your soul.

Hey, at least they warn you it will be long so you know when to prepare a relaxing supper to go along with the cutscenes.

[Syegfryed]

Kinda suspicious. Granted they can't make an expansion in a few months so some of it is coincidental. But I do expect a few more Endwalker ripoffs during 10.0

Suspicious is a way to say I remember the cinematic of Anduin being a literal rip-off from a Final fantasy cinematic

Blizzard always follow trends and change then if they see fit, like making Zandalar basically wakanda because the success of black panther. If dragons is the popular thing in the moment they will milk that

[horizon nowhere]

You really think an Arcane mage clone is cooler than a class that allows you to be like Alexstraza or Wrathion?

Arcane mage is already lame tbh, hopefully we don't get a clone.

[Das Thora]

I don't mind if Blizzard takes a few notes from FFXIV as long as they don't bring in their infinitely long cutscenes that suck away both your time and your soul.

I know this is probably blasphemy but I wouldn't mind XIV's cutscenes if their cutscenes always were cutscenes because they NEEDED to be cutscenes, not just because they felt like they needed to do a cutscene there. That being said I don't really trust Blizzard's writing to do it justice either if I didn't really get into Square's attempt at it (don't get me wrong, I like the story of some of the single player Final Fantasy games). Personally I'd prefer WoW to move away from big storytelling since Blizzard seems to think the only good storytelling is 'follow around [LORE CHARACTER] to see what they feel about everything' instead of telling stories about the world, cultures, civilizations, etc-- hell, even just ORDINARY people who aren't the High King or Archmages.

[Wangming]

My theory is all the mmo companies spy on each other.

So we should ask Yoshi-P for a leak? If 10.0 is a bigger more expanded 6.1, we are in for a treat.

[Shinrael]

For me, the peak of world quests was Talanji telling me that a fish in a random river in Zandalar wished for my death and I had to kill it first before it acts on its plans for murder. A close second is Nathanos laughing maniacally as I throw onions at birds.

I've been wanting to do it for ages, but it's still not possible. We can only hope Explosion of Dragons makes it easy.

Yeah man it's like a kid playing with a toy and fully immersed in whatever world they are in. Then an adult comes, takes the toy, takes its head off, shits inside, puts the head back on and gives it to the kid. And I am that kid and I wanna cry. This shit is so bad. I am gonna give an example with Ardenweald but almost every zone in the game has a quest/WQ like this: Ride this Stag and destroy the forces of the Jailer. You get on A MOST ORDINARY STAG and there is an army of enemy NPCs, Tarragrues, other elites.... and you just walk through them with the stag and spam an AoE that one-shots them. xD

1) Why does a single stag make you so OP wtf?
2) There's literally thousands of those stags in the zone, why is this one special? Or if it isnt, why is the jailer even alive if these stags are all so OP?
3) And why the hell must I the champion ride the stag? Why aren't the NPCs using it to obliterate the jailer?

Like........ what the actual fuck??? Where is the immersion in this? Where is the lore in this? Why is such a thing in the game? How can a billionaire company do something like this? And not once, literally every fucking zone.... Ride this bat, ride this tank, ride this horse, use this gun....... Do they think this is funny? Shitting on their own world and any chance at immersion for players?

See this is the issue. Races are not people. They are entire races. It started in Wrath but got worse ever since; specific characters are meant to be the hooks for entire races, even when several of their storylines are entirely personal. Nothing Liadrin does in Legion has to do with the blood elves. The actual Blood Elf lore in Legion is for the fire mage artifact. Not even Thas'dorah since that scenario is focused on the Legion itself and Alleria to an extent. We do not explore the history of the Doomhammer to retrieve it, we don't even go to Outland; it's all in Deepholme. Tuure is strongly linked to Draenei history but we don't find out it was left in Karabor and try and find it in the Black Temple with Akama; we find it in the same spaceship used for 2-3 other artifacts. I could go on for several of your examples.

So the fact that you are making these parallels is problematic.

This too is sad :/ Legion was great in a lot of ways but it could have been so much more

[Teriz]

Suspicious is a way to say I remember the cinematic of Anduin being a literal rip-off from a Final fantasy cinematic

Blizzard always follow trends and change then if they see fit, like making Zandalar basically wakanda because the success of black panther. If dragons is the popular thing in the moment they will milk that

Yeah, and take it a step further by allowing their players to play literal dragons in their game. Especially when they already have the abilities and mechanics already in place.

[Wangming]

Suspicious is a way to say I remember the cinematic of Anduin being a literal rip-off from a Final fantasy cinematic

Blizzard always follow trends and change then if they see fit, like making Zandalar basically wakanda because the success of black panther. If dragons is the popular thing in the moment they will milk that

Yes, but that's a thing. Heavensward was released in 2015. They had ample time to rip it off and replace all the emotional weight with rule of cool nonsense.

But as much as I like to laugh at the similarities between the basic premise of Shadowbringers and Shadowlands, they had far less time to copy it. Unless they really do have spies.

[Teriz]

Arcane mage is already lame tbh, hopefully we don't get a clone.

Why would Blizzard create an arcane spec clone and cannibalize Mages or create a generic chronomancer when they have popular concepts from their games that are dragon-based and unique?

[Syegfryed]

Yes, but that's a thing. Heavensward was released in 2015. They had ample time to rip it off and replace all the emotional weight with rule of cool nonsense.

But as much as I like to laugh at the similarities between the basic premise of Shadowbringers and Shadowlands, they had far less time to copy it. Unless they really do have spies.

Pretty sure they have some info about each other, i remember one dev saying everyone kinda knows everyone or someone close to other.

Like, there must be plenty of freelancers who work on both companies, or someone who left one to other, they would end up knowing stuff.

It reminds me a bit of e-sports teams and players, or even real sports like football where people who work on it would have inside info of other teams by sharing contats

[Tiradon]

Man I'll be missing the in-depth panels from Blizzcon around the time of a new expansion.

[Lady Atia]

Good morrow hype thread =)

Let's go over the new leak, right?

This is another 'leak' from reddit I haven't seen posted here. u/BlizzconMurloc
Hey.

The info I have is from mid-January, things might have changed, improved, or been scrapped since. Keep that in mind.

1) There is a new race that is a cross between a Vrykul and a dragon.

2) A new class called the "Envoker". Ranged DPS spec, and a healing spec. I just know the healing spec uses healing flames ala Red Dragons.

3) Dragon Isles are 4 zones total. One is covered completely in ice and snow. Beware what lies frozen under the ice.

4) Azshara has made her way to the Dragon Isles and is a reluctant ally for a portion of the leveling.

5) Wrathion is not Wrathion.

6) There is a Scarlet Crusade dungeon, featuring Calia Menethil's trans son. Hence the confusion about the 8.3 books saying she has a son and us knowing she has a daughter. You will hear A LOT about this during the presentation on Tuesday.

7) Uldaz houses the only tool powerful enough to usher in the void lords. Not Wrathion has a keen interest in this tool.

8) Alexstrasza unites the Dragonflights as one, becoming the Prime Dragonflight. And it's lead by the Council of Five Dragons. Cliché, I know.

9) A Windrunner bites the dust.

10) Player Housing is in, and works pretty much like the Garrison. If you wanna put a table in your room, you got 4 slots where it can go etc. It works like Garrison plots, essentially. No trade chat in your house, you can't queue up for dungeons, search for parties etc in your house either, it is completely instanced and is not meant to be your hub at all. To do anything other than sit AFK, you gotta leave your house. No one else can see your house unless you grant them permission to visit. You can only have your house be in one of the new Dragon Isles zones. Lore characters come to visit your house and bring gifts once a week.

11) Black Market Auction House rework. Now works like an actual auction with real-time bids. "Going once, going twice..." You can't just pay gold cap and walk away anymore. Every item is up for one hour. One item per hour. More items added, mostly Naxx 40 stuff. Corrupted Ashbringer, Atiesh (Sold 5 fragments at the time) and Elite PvP gear from past expansions.

12) We find out who is trying to kill Chromie in the "Deaths of Chromie" scenario. Hint: People won't like it.

13) There is a focus on cinematics in Dragonflight. They want more content people can "react" to online, react videos are a good way to get attention to your game. Note: In-game cinematics.

That's all folks, happy Easter.

1) Wouldn't mind that at all!
2) Either scaleface is right, or the leak stole it from here haha
3) 4 zones seems to be small but I guess the leak implies a Lordaeron revamp too?
4) I would love that. They did something similiar to Zul so why not.
5) Dreadlord confirmed? I hope if it turnes out to be true that we will rescue the real Wrathyboy down the line.
6) Sounds good, although I wouldn't call it trans. Having a female pretenting to be a male heir is something of a trope but pretending to be a male for political reasons isn't the same as feeling trapped in the wrong body, but I guess we will see how they present it. Btw, where have I read that "Calias son is a trans" rumour again? Was it here already?
7&8) Five torches to light our way!
9) NOOOOOOOOOO
10) Sounds boring, I want freedom like in Sims, not Garrisons 2.0 - lets hope they iterate on it if this is true.
11) Sounds awesome as long as the new system isn't supporting goblins anymore? Also I would literally kill for Atiesh!!!
12) Is it .... us? Noooo. NOOOOO!
13) I love ingame cinematics so this gets a big YES from me!

[Luck4]

I believe the reveal tomorrow will be like this:

1.) John Hight talks, tells everything about how great Shadowlands was and that they learned from the past
2.) Ion Hazzikostas takes over, and does a one hour monologue about how great mythic raiding is.
3.) Ion Hazzikostas does another one hour monologue about how great mythic+ dungeons are
4.) Steve Danuser tells us everything about how Sylvanas farms the Maw with her new friend, Anduin
5.) Ion Hazzikostas tells us everything about new systems in 10.0, which will be all about renamed Covenants, the new mission table and how he saves the game by removing gearing from World Quests.
6.) Steve Danuser tells us why Alexstraza wears full armor now
7.) Ion Hazzikostas once again mentions raids and how great he thinks they are
8.) Steve Danuser finally tells us how the story evolves and why Chromie plays a major role. Well, and Sire Denathrius. As he thinks players like him that much.
9.) Ion Hazzikostas once again mentions mythic+ and how great he thinks it is
10.) Ion Hazzikostas tells us a lot about new raids and new dungeons
11.) Jeremy Feasel tells us everything about world questing and why we will have to send all those gnomes into the fire
12.) Steve Danuser concluded, tell us that we may prepurchase now.

LMAO, this was a fun read. Thank you!

[Wangming]

I know this is probably blasphemy but I wouldn't mind XIV's cutscenes if their cutscenes always were cutscenes because they NEEDED to be cutscenes, not just because they felt like they needed to do a cutscene there. That being said I don't really trust Blizzard's writing to do it justice either if I didn't really get into Square's attempt at it (don't get me wrong, I like the story of some of the single player Final Fantasy games). Personally I'd prefer WoW to move away from big storytelling since Blizzard seems to think the only good storytelling is 'follow around [LORE CHARACTER] to see what they feel about everything' instead of telling stories about the world, cultures, civilizations, etc-- hell, even just ORDINARY people who aren't the High King or Archmages.

WoW wasn't really designed to tell stories. It was there to fuck around in the world you know FROM the stories. But between SWTOR and FFXIV it became apparent that you can have a focus on stories and it can be cool. So Blizzard tries to do that. And it doesn't work very well.

[Chevallier]

A revamped UI with full customization/movement of ALL UI elements (a la FF14, etc), and baking in some of the popular addon functionality (Bartender, Bagnon, coords, auto-vendor, better transmog/mount/pet/collectible filters, etc.), 4k textures, better font rendering with improved drop shadows would be much welcome. I could dump most of my addons.

Why would they spend ressources on revamping UI when everyone is using ElvUI anyway, does not make much sense to me.

[horizon nowhere]

Why would Blizzard create an arcane spec clone and cannibalize Mages or create a generic chronomancer when they have popular concepts from their games that are dragon-based and unique?

Yeah I totally agree. Maybe scaleface was exaggerating when he said that his first thought was we already have mages. That could just mean the new class has a cool ranged spellcasting spec/s.