Dragonflight Alpha/Beta General Discussion

[Nymrohd]

I don't see why you wouldn't be able to take your dragon out of the isles? All they said was that you would use it for flying 2.0 in the Dragon Isles, not that it was somehow tied to that continent specifically.

I am going to go out on a limb and say that if you summon your dragon outside the Dragon Isles then it will just function like a normal mount, similar to how Pocopoc can be gained as a battle pet that keeps all your customizations outside ZM.

Wait the battle pet keeps the customizations? Did not check it!

[Chickat]

And now we settle in for our 10000 year stasis wait for Beta.

Yeah we got 6 or 700 pages in the last week and now itl probably only be a few hundred till beta. Its normal. Thread will get 2-5 pages a day.

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Daily Quests sucks, this should've been a lesson learned in Mists of Pandaria, since then we never had way too many Daily Quests to do, WOD introduced a single Daily Quest, which didn't work, then Legion introduced World Quests, which are awesome, but in BFA they started adding Daily Quests for some reason, and in Shadowlands they made World Quests worse and added even more dailies, especially in Maw/Korthia.

I really don't understand why they love Daily Quests so much...

Anyway, an expansion without borrowed power with dailies would be better than Shadowlands/BFA since I consider Mists of Pandaria which had many dailies quests better than these last expansions.

World quests are cool for generic stuff, but Dailys can work a lot better for certain things IMO. idk I enjoy a limited number of dailus. I think a 50/50 split is about right.

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There’s a 0.1% chance that Dragonflight launches in November, come on. If so, when are they going to release WotLK Classic, which they’re already capitalizing on? They dedicated a good amount of time yesterday towards Classic and WotLK which celebrates its 14th anniversary in November. I just don’t see Dragonflight coming out sooner than late Q1/23.

Its possible Scale hard a Nov release date and thought it was for Dragonflight, but its for wrath classic?

[Raetary]

Well in ENd Time Murozond seems to have been successful and the timeline does not collapse. Heck we intervene and steal the Dragon Soul and the timeline does not collapse. Well of Eternity still makes no sense. If we steal the Dragon Soul, how do all the events related to it happen? How do the Dragonmaw enslave Alexstrasza? If that doesn't happen, the entire timeline should collapse; the orcs are destroyed in naval combat, Gul'dan never finds the Tomb of Sargeras and everything changes.

Didn't we (or rather, the bronze) put it back at the same point in time we took it from after we were done?

[Wangming]

Yeah we got 6 or 700 pages in the last week and now itl probably only be a few hundred till beta. Its normal. Thread will get 2-5 pages a day.

Nah. As soon as alpha servers are up they will be datamined to hell and back. We will be able to talk about the sweet new models. Like unironically the new Gnolls look cool. If I knew how to do that I would create a Classis server with all the visual updates. Like Brill looks new but has the old quests. The character models are the post WoD or even post SL models. The Greymane wall design is from Cataclysm and so on.

[Varodoc]

This expansion is what you can call the "Calm before the Storm", so to say.

This expansion is the fun filler slice of life How to Train your Dragon meme expansion.

11.0 will be the real deal and will involve Alleria, Turalyon, the Lightbound, the Naaru, the Void Lords, all we've talked about.

But that's fine! After all, every story needs its filler every now and then

[Ilir]

Btw is Dragon Riding the borrowed power of Dragonflight? Did they ever clearly say if we can take our dragon out of the Isles?

Don't have the source at hand (it's on wowhead) but they did say that for now dragonriding is only in the dragon isle. Tho I don't see how hard it would be to implement it afterwards to the rest of the world.

I'm still hyped that many hours after the reveal. I love the new class/race so much. The dragonriding customisation is really impressive and the website does say "millions of possibilities" so having my very own unique dragon is something really cool.

Now they need to bring "chocobo races" with that system and it would be so so fun.

I like the new zones, gives me that vanilla-cataclysm-LK vibe and I'm here for it.

I am absolutely disappointed by the lack of pre-order tho.

[Sondrelk]

Yeah we got 6 or 700 pages in the last week and now itl probably only be a few hundred till beta. Its normal. Thread will get 2-5 pages a day.

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World quests are cool for generic stuff, but Dailys can work a lot better for certain things IMO. idk I enjoy a limited number of dailus. I think a 50/50 split is about right.

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Its possible Scale hard a Nov release date and thought it was for Dragonflight, but its for wrath classic?

I guess it all depends on how long until Alpha begins. Could be in the next few weeks, could be sometime in the summer.

I feel a 6 month Alpha/Beta cycle is about correct, so if it starts very soon we might see Dragonflight before the next year.
Not exactly the most likely option given how little we have seen though, but this was a very different reveal to begin with.

[Nymrohd]

World quests are cool for generic stuff, but Dailys can work a lot better for certain things IMO. idk I enjoy a limited number of dailus. I think a 50/50 split is about right.

The problem with world quests imo is not inherent to the design but with individual world quests themselves as well as their presentation.
a) with BfA and especially with SL several world quests do their best to waste your time. All world quests should take roughly the same amount of time with rewards scaling by difficulty. Yet there have been world quests that you can complete in under a minute and others that take well over 10. No world quest should involve 3-5 steps.
b) they need to make sense. "Kill this rare" world quests have been completely ridiculous so many times when the rare targeted is some poor neutral beast and the voice over remains the same with the one used for a deadly demon
c) they sometimes are just added for variety without matching the area. In early 8.2 PTR the amount of world quests was somewhat smaller. I don't know if they listened to feedback or saw the metrics but they then added the tortollan dailies there near the end of beta. Almost none of those make sense in the context of the zone, with the particularly eggregious example of a quest with a voice over about taking supplies before the naga get them which has you kill manta rays that drop their pre-cooked flesh . . .

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Didn't we (or rather, the bronze) put it back at the same point in time we took it from after we were done?

Did we? Not in game. Is there some gossip text with Nozdormu taking it from Thrall and then taking it back in time?

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I guess it all depends on how long until Alpha begins. Could be in the next few weeks, could be sometime in the summer.

I feel a 6 month Alpha/Beta cycle is about correct, so if it starts very soon we might see Dragonflight before the next year.
Not exactly the most likely option given how little we have seen though, but this was a very different reveal to begin with.

I think the talent revamp needs to go through multiple cycles of focused testing.

[Santandame]

I feel like the expansion announcement was that bare bones that there's nothing really to discuss?

I actually think some systems are a good idea. Just not brand new ones. Give us back Essences from BfA at the very least? Essences were a decent addition during BfA.

There's so many easy wins Blizz could have gone for here, i don't understand why they didn't go for some.

Expanded character customisation

Timewalking as a permanent and expanded feature

Allied Races - we have so many options we could have easily!

The Jailer's gauntlet version of Torghast themed around Bronze Dragons with iconic bosses from WoW's history.

Return of Essences from BfA, which despite the negative feelings towards BfA, Essences were a great addition.

Only four zones? Feels very underwhelming. Hopefully they're bigger than Shadowlands, BfA, Legion zones with a lot of world content.

And what on earth is this Mythic+ season idea with only 4 current Dragonflight expansions for that season? That is terrible. Just give us all of them with permanent Timewalking on a 2 week rotation with those dungeons added to the mythic+ pool.

We want MORE choice, not less. Variety is the spice of life.

I hope all of this is reported to Blizzard on mass and they listen.

This expansion has so much potential but if it stays on course like this it'll sink faster than Shadowlands.

What even is there to do at max level aside from raids, mythic+, pvp and the new dragon riding? This feels like a return to WoD's raid or die.

[Grimbold21]

I forgot one thing before. One of the biggest selling points of DF is Nothing.

Yep, no convoluted systems, just simplicity.

Make whatever we'll have to do account wide and we're good to go

[Pheraz]

Speculating about later patches in DF

Since I think there is a pattern of having 70-90% of the xpac in region A and then the rest in endgame-region B could be seen since some xpacs, maybe we go to DF for some classic fantasy / healing vibes, then some big shit emerges on lordaeron where the dragonflights are really helpful? So "we" can still have our civil-war / light goes evil xpac
They mostly always mix up themes.

[Nymrohd]

And what on earth is this Mythic+ season idea with only 4 current Dragonflight expansions for that season? That is terrible. Just give us all of them with permanent Timewalking on a 2 week rotation with those dungeons added to the mythic+ pool.

As an older player and a tank I am so very happy I will only have to learn 4 dungeons. I'll spend some time exploring the older dungeons they add on my own before launch so I can have the routes and pulls for those down on release.
Imo M+ needs more variety for sure but also need a smaller pool of dungeon and multiple seasons. No reason a M+ season has to last as long as a raid season; they could have double the seasons for M+ and just rotate things more often.

[Santandame]

As an older player and a tank I am so very happy I will only have to learn 4 dungeons. I'll spend some time exploring the older dungeons they add on my own before launch so I can have the routes and pulls for those down on release.
Imo M+ needs more variety for sure but also need a smaller pool of dungeon and multiple seasons. No reason a M+ season has to last as long as a raid season; they could have double the seasons for M+ and just rotate things more often.

If that's the case - shorter mythic+ seasons, then I'll concede and get behind that.

[Chickat]

For me the main issue with renown is how it was gained. Two weekly quests, both of which were crap. Should have been zone wide objectives like the ones we got in 9.1 and 9.2 (Patterns within Patterns) that awarded Renown. They could have kept progression partially locked by making you only able to turn in the souls quest once per week to a single Covenant (though early on anima completely limited how much you could advance anyway).

I think all implementations of story unlocks at different levels of reputation were good; you may be a bit biased because of the faction nature of that particular rep. The Mogu invasion of the Golden Vale, slowly awakening the Klaxxi to end up in that disastrous assault of the palace, getting to know more of the farmers of Halfhill and improving your farm not to mention the Suramar campaign; all were excellent imo. What really helped was that several of these reps allowed a bit of a grind. It always motivated me to farm around for treasures and gifts or whatever other rep token was there when I was close to a breakpoint so I could see the next part of the story. This is my issue with Renown; we are most likely going to be completely on a timegated track.

I feel like reknown might be a bar foe each level. 1000 rep gets you 1 reknown. Max 50 reknown at launch. Every 10 reknown you get new story quests for each rep. Patches either add new reps with their own reknown, or expand and add 20-40 new reknown levels to earn new things and continue the story.

[Nyel]

Yea.. it got mentioned again by redshirtguy as well.

Idk about it all, I meab it would surely peak my interest more, but i gave up already.

Why would they keep this a secret? To create another peak of interest? I just don’t see any reason to hide this from the huge expansion announcement when the announcement itself was very… lacking with features.

Pretty sure one or two allied races would create way more interest than a new race-class that has been deemed ugly or unfinished (justified or not) by a huge part of the playerbase already.

[Shadochi]

Speculating about later patches in DF

Since I think there is a pattern of having 70-90% of the xpac in region A and then the rest in endgame-region B could be seen since some xpacs, maybe we go to DF for some classic fantasy / healing vibes, then some big shit emerges on lordaeron where the dragonflights are really helpful? So "we" can still have our civil-war / light goes evil xpac
They mostly always mix up themes.

Honestly what I suspect is that if we don't get the Dracthyr starting zone as a zone available at max level is that they will just add it as a zone in 10.1, a patch slot which historically might or might not have a zone. We also might get to learn that some islands in the DI are still shrouded for whatever reason and they are later patch zones.

But I am still unsure about DI max level content due to not having a specific max level zone, its not like its scrapped/delayed since they didn't mention it like WoD and tanaan jungle.

As for M+ I hope they bring previous dragon theme dungeons as the other 4 dungeons per raid (Nexus and such) and not have it be just from recent expansions that had M+

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Also to rewind a bit, so far it seems like none of the cash shop mounts or pets was borrowed from DF? I mean even the dragon pack wasn't hinting to DI since we also got the cat pack IMO.

[Nyel]

Not having a dedicated endgame zone is such a huge misstep. We need something new and fresh when hitting max level. And that’s what endgame zones are for. It’s so dumb to delay this until 10.1 or even 10.2.

BTW, I love that they revisit Uldaman. Such a cool dungeon.

[Santandame]

I feel like at the bare minimum this expansion needs Allied Races, added frequently throughout the expansion.

If Blizz are so determined to stick to Dracthyr being Evokers only then it would be wise for them to appease players who want to play dragon esque characters but not the Evoker playstyle.

Throw in either Drakonids or the Cataclysm Dragonmen as an Allied Race.

Other go to choices should be Tuskarr(easy win), Furlbolgs(easy win), Vrykul(EASY win), Gnolls and Centaur.

[Nymrohd]

If that's the case - shorter mythic+ seasons, then I'll concede and get behind that.

Not sure it is sadly. I agree that just 4 new dungeons for 6+ months is crap. BUt I really think they should just fit 2 M+ seasons for each raid tier, perhaps divided at the .x.5 patch. THey could rotate at that point.

[Santandame]

Not having a dedicated endgame zone is such a huge misstep. We need something new and fresh when hitting max level. And that’s what endgame zones are for. It’s so dumb to delay this until 10.1 or even 10.2.

BTW, I love that they revisit Uldaman. Such a cool dungeon.

Agree wholeheartedly. I fear they'll pull a Tanaan Jungle and give us the Dracthyr zone as patch content.