Dragonflight Alpha/Beta General Discussion

[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.

[Nymrohd]

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.

Would definitely prefer it that way. Just don't make it something stupid as "do this specific weekly for 1 Renown". And most importantly let me grind for limited gains if I want to.

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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.

Could be that large sections of each zone are not touched during leveling and are only used at endgame.

[Sondrelk]

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.

Might be difficult to sayfor sure unless we know how many Renown you are expected to get per week, as well as what the depth of rewards is.

If we get 2 Renown each week then I feel 10 for each rep is a bit low, since it would be quite fast getting all the zone upgrades for a single reputation. 3 even more so. 1 is closer, but might conversely be a bit too punishing.

15 Renown levels for each rep at 2 Renown per week might be the sweet spot for me. It takes a while, but if you play it like intended and level one rep at a time then yo you would get the specific armor roughly around the same time you have gotten your full set of covenant armor in 9.0.


But of course, it depends on what the rewards are. A mount seems like the obvious one, but beyond that I don't know. A title doesnt seem warranted from such a trivial source, and asking for a cosmetic set, even if just ones like 9.1, might be a bit too ambitious as well.

[Jekyll]

Okay so it is over. Well here is my totally subjective take on it all:

Cinematic: Absolute dogshit. We followed stone guy for 90% and no dragons till the very end. 2/10

Feature trailer: There wasn't any. Technically the whole thing was one, but we didn't get a traditional hype video. 0/10

Story: Hard to tell at this point, but they didn't really give us a reason to go there. Not yet, anyway. 5/10

Zones: Nothing spectacular really. I mean they look good from a technical standpoint, but none of the zones scream...,oooooh I wanna be there. Also no revamped old zones and I'm a spiteful little shit who hates that Nazjatar and Nyalotha were one zones, Emerald Dream was a raid, but the Dragon Isles got to be a continent larger than Kul Tiras. So.... 1/10

Race and class: Hooo boyyyy. Nothing for old races. 1 new race that can only be 1 class, that has only two specs and is only available for the new race. God, fucking damit. I only.. ONLY give this one point cause they made it a ranged dps and a healing spec. 1/10

Dragonriding: Not gonna lie, this looks cool. Took pages out of GW2's books, and also a covenant with only cosmetic rewards. This is one thing that suggests they are learning and wanna do good. Only problem is, they really emphasized that this is not flying. So that is still the same. This feels like a Dragonflight only thing. I hope I'm wrong, but I will deduct points for this fear 7/10.

New HUD: Is this all of it? Bigger minimap and the option to move it around? This needs some research but so far it looks underwhelming. More of a fucking finally instead of a wow, how cool. 2/10

New Talent system:This is definitely cool. It looks good and you can do presets so everything a talent system needs. Untill we see what the choices are and I can see how well it is balanced I wont give it max points, but 8/10

Professions: my favorite part easily. The whole profession leveling and profession gear is straight out of Final Fantasy XIV (they would choke before admitting it though), and the crafting orders seem like a cool system. I would have liked them to make the act of crafting and gathering more fun, but this still seems the best profession system they've come up with yet. 10/10

Presentation: Super cringe. If they took out all the apologize, the presentation would have been the same lenght. If they took out all the patting each-other on the back and all the telling instead of showing, it would have been chopped down to half size or less. And they had both Ion and Danuser. 0/10.

Honestly I'm not sold yet. Like the best part for me is what I can already have in FFXIV. I don't know why I should want to go to the Dragon Isles and I don't know what I will do once I'm at the level cap beside dungeons and raids. Cool gnoll models though.

I agree with most of what you said, except for the presentation which I thought was fine-ish. 5/10. Dragonriding for me is a solid 1/10 because it's just flying but more annoying.

[Nymrohd]

Might be difficult to sayfor sure unless we know how many Renown you are expected to get per week, as well as what the depth of rewards is.

If we get 2 Renown each week then I feel 10 for each rep is a bit low, since it would be quite fast getting all the zone upgrades for a single reputation. 3 even more so. 1 is closer, but might conversely be a bit too punishing.

15 Renown levels for each rep at 2 Renown per week might be the sweet spot for me. It takes a while, but if you play it like intended and level one rep at a time then yo you would get the specific armor roughly around the same time you have gotten your full set of covenant armor in 9.0.


But of course, it depends on what the rewards are. A mount seems like the obvious one, but beyond that I don't know. A title doesnt seem warranted from such a trivial source, and asking for a cosmetic set, even if just ones like 9.1, might be a bit too ambitious as well.

If it is timegated that strictly, it's already a failure imo.

[Santandame]

The one raid at launch feels a bit meh too.

I know that's all we've gotten lately but I was hoping for a return to the MoP model - especially as we have no main threat for the expansion.

[Grimbold21]

I think the interesting question is whether or not what you're getting from these factions meaningfully impact your character, i.e, will rep gear be crap again.

[Chickat]

They did directly say that Dragonriding was needed so as to deal with how huge the islands are. And let's not discount how larger than their surface area vertical zones can end up being, especially with plenty of overhangs and caves.

Yeah, the island could potentially be as small as Kultiras or Zandalar, but with the verticle space twice as big. Its not just about width, but height as well. As long as the height has more playable space that's great.

Also, Idk if I'm alone in this, but I'm super hyped about bigger zones with empty space. We haven't had something like that since WoD. Every zone since WoD has felt like it was crafted with every inch having a specific purpose, and while that works, it makes them feel small and not real. Its okay to have a few hundred yards with nothing their. Maybe there is a lake in a big field. Theres a rare in the middle and some animals grazing around it and drinking from it. Thats it. Nothing else. Thats FINE. It also adds more farm spots for skinning etc. Some of my fondest memories of Wrath were going out into the wastes of Storm Peaks and skinning all the herds of beasts. There wasn't much there but that, but it makes the world feel real and lived in.

[Skildar]

It's partly bias, I won't discount it, but I also think that pound for pound 5.1 had the most story quests at reputation breakpoints. Not just between say, honored and revered but at increments through. That or they're just the most memorable. I like the Klaxxi as well, though I'll admit I only got around to Golden Lotus after giving up on it fairly late in. Suramar is one I appreciate and can't criticize, but also was storywise not my cup of tea, I think it's only fault is that it's solely story, with no gameplay reward peppered in at the increments.

It's nice to see I'm not the only one with found memories of 5.1. In way it's what's happening with 9.1 and 9.2 but it felt more natural as you are the one to give it pace instead of the game forcing it.
I'm not disliking the pace of these later patches at all, but I don't see the point of reputation if not tied to interesting story bits or specific unique rewards. And if the focus moves toward storytelling again, I'm definitely going to like this.

[Chickat]

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

They said maybe in the future, but just for Dragon Isles for now. Sure its probably borrowed power in the open world, but it wont add anything to the dungeons, raids or instanced pvp.

[Sondrelk]

If it is timegated that strictly, it's already a failure imo.

I dunno, it's Renown, so you know that the grind is just for thso who want it quickly, and later it will be made easier.
You will need stuff to do at endgame afterall.

[Chickat]

Greens have been druids since day one as well. They pretty much created druidism.

Sure druids too, but it would feel weird to have a dragon turning into a bear etc. But sure why not.

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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.

Oh yeah, I'm sure it will work as a mount outside of the new zones, but it wont function like it does in DI.

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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.

Oh something else no one mentioned is that there are new furbolg models too. They didn't show them, but they said they are part of the creatures of the isles. One can assume they will get a new model too. What does that leave unupdated in the old world at this point?

[Sondrelk]

The one raid at launch feels a bit meh too.

I know that's all we've gotten lately but I was hoping for a return to the MoP model - especially as we have no main threat for the expansion.

I am pretty sure every expansion after TBC has only had one raid at launch. They just stopped designing the second one during the Alpha/Beta, and instead made it part of the X.1 PTR instead.

[Chickat]

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.

Eh, I think 8-9 months is better considering the are revamping talents and a lot of other core systems. At LEAST 7 months.

My guess is Alpha in June after 9.2.5 is on live servers.
Beta in September.
Prepatch in Feb 2023.
Launch in March 2023.

[ercarp]

I feel like at the bare minimum this expansion needs Allied Races

They added an Allied Race, it's called Dracthyr. Certainly doesn't feel like a whole new race with all the reused assets...

[Shadochi]

First of all, how is Dragonriding a borrowed power? What power are we actually getting? And its borrowed power because it only works on 1 continent? But previous Borrowed Powers worked everywhere in their time.

Dragonriding is more of a limited availability system. I suspect they are doing this limited to Dragon Isles to see if they can rework (finally) how mounts work and if it goes good later on DF or a later expac they would expand the animation suite to everything. (Probably not the whole thing about upgrading your mount stats and customization)

I just hope that because we are getting dragon riding that doesn't mean we will have less cool regular dragon mounts

[Santandame]

I am pretty sure every expansion after TBC has only had one raid at launch. They just stopped designing the second one during the Alpha/Beta, and instead made it part of the X.1 PTR instead.

MoP had 3 spread over 2-3 months.

Cata had 3 too i believe.

Same with Wrath.

WoD broke the cycle.

[Shadochi]

They added an Allied Race, it's called Dracthyr. Certainly doesn't feel like a whole new race with all the reused assets...

What are all the reused assets? I mean I at most I see a reused rig/skeleton base with new animations and everything else new.