Dragonflight Alpha/Beta General Discussion

[Santandame]

To be honest I think it would be better than Tanaan or BS to give it to us in 10.1 (patch that might or might not have a zone).

Since every player experienced Tanaan and BS, but the starting zone will be limited to Dracthyr, so less people would've experienced it, and furthermore players would see it less since they wouldn't do it on x number of alts. I assume we might also get some evil black dragon lair there where we fight to reclaim black dragon eggs for Wrathion.

But why?

You can bet the majority of players will experience it at least once just to try the new class and race out. Some just to see the new zone and story there.

Just give us something new instead. Reusing that zone is just cheap.

[Wangming]

I'd expect more Zereth Mortis-y approaches. Instead of just going through a zone and finding a rare, or a chest to loot, it'll be like finding a sealed door in a cliff wall that has hidden switches to open it that have to be looked for, or a cave with jump puzzles, or an NPC having a problem who asks you to go get something from nearby, nost as a quest but just as a dialogue.

Yeah exactly like this.

[Sondrelk]

I really don't like this forced concept of a storyline while questing. They deliberately opened this up in Legion just to go back to it in SL and DF? Lame.

With a set levelling oath you can have escalating threats, and more effectively teach players the mechanics of an expansion, as well as ensure an actual narrative progression.

And besides, unless you have several accounts you only need to do it once, so it isn't like it really matter all that much whether you see unknown zone #1 or #2 first, you will probably not have gotten a grasp on which on you like or dislike levelling in anyways.

The current system is the best of both worlds. The narrative progression of the old levelling, and the freedom for alts of the newer.

[Chickat]

I really don't like this forced concept of a storyline while questing. They deliberately opened this up in Legion just to go back to it in SL and DF? Lame.

But its good. They can tell a much better story with a focused narrative this way. The story for Legion and BFA was all over the place. You can still do them in any order for alts.

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With a set levelling oath you can have escalating threats, and more effectively teach players the mechanics of an expansion, as well as ensure an actual narrative progression.

And besides, unless you have several accounts you only need to do it once, so it isn't like it really matter all that much whether you see unknown zone #1 or #2 first, you will probably not have gotten a grasp on which on you like or dislike levelling in anyways.

The current system is the best of both worlds. The narrative progression of the old levelling, and the freedom for alts of the newer.

Yeah, I don't see any downsides personally.

[Sondrelk]

But why?

You can bet the majority of players will experience it at least once just to try the new class and race out. Some just to see the new zone and story there.

Just give us something new instead. Reusing that zone is just cheap.

Everyone saw the Broken Shore during the Legion pre-patch, but you had it for 7.2 just fine.

Just have some extra areas open when you return, or some new enemies or means of transport.

[Shadochi]

But why?

You can bet the majority of players will experience it at least once just to try the new class and race out. Some just to see the new zone and story there.

Just give us something new instead. Reusing that zone is just cheap.

Exactly, meaning that the starting zone will be performed around once per player. While Tanaan and Broken Shore were completed way more than that per player because of it being mandatory for alts for some time (if you dont use the MoP skip for Tanaan, Broken Shore was also in prepatch before any skip)

[Chickat]

Also I looked at the list of posts per user in this thread, and I made top 20 again. yay.

Im gonna have to start shitposting if I want to end up In the top 10.

[Shadochi]

IMO the leveling order for zones and then threads of fate is the best approach to leveling. Upside of Legion and BfA style could be less bottlenecking in zones but honestly for SL I dont remember having a bottleneck

[Sondrelk]

Also I looked at the list of posts per user in this thread, and I made top 20 again. yay.

Im gonna have to start shitposting if I want to end up In the top 10.

Where can you see this list? I feel Iike I wasn't massively active, but would be curious to see if I am wrong.

[Nyel]

But its good. They can tell a much better story with a focused narrative this way. The story for Legion and BFA was all over the place. You can still do them in any order for alts.

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Yeah, I don't see any downsides personally.

Was the Shadowlands story really better because of that? I'm not sure about it. All of the Covenants could have worked in their own way without a set order. It really didn't matter much as the "mysteries" where not that mysterious (where's the Anima?).

Doing Revendreth first or Bastion last could have worked as well as the NPCs still were bound to their own zone, it was just the overarching narrative that was losely connected.

[Chickat]

Where can you see this list? I feel Iike I wasn't massively active, but would be curious to see if I am wrong.

You are in the top few lol. Go out to the Dragonflight forum and find this thread. click on the green number that shows the number of posts. 52800ish posts. itl show u a list.

[Marlamin]

Also I looked at the list of posts per user in this thread, and I made top 20 again. yay.

Im gonna have to start shitposting if I want to end up In the top 10.

Christ, I can't believe 615 of my 5504 posts are in this thread. That is crazy.

[Chickat]

Was the Shadowlands story really better because of that? I'm not sure about it. All of the Covenants could have worked in their own way without a set order. It really didn't matter much as the "mysteries" where not that mysterious (where's the Anima?).

Doing Revendreth first or Bastion last could have worked as well as the NPCs still were bound to their own zone, it was just the overarching narrative that was losely connected.

Shadowlands story was bad overall. But the storyline for WoD was linear and is still the best storyline they have done for leveling ever IMO. Linear storytelling works much better if done right.

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Was the Shadowlands story really better because of that? I'm not sure about it. All of the Covenants could have worked in their own way without a set order. It really didn't matter much as the "mysteries" where not that mysterious (where's the Anima?).

Doing Revendreth first or Bastion last could have worked as well as the NPCs still were bound to their own zone, it was just the overarching narrative that was losely connected.

You also wouldn't have the agency to stop the anima draught starting in Revendreth. Again its a bad story, but the zones would have to be reworked into sinular story zones for it to work. I just think it works better overall.

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Christ, I can't believe 615 of my 5504 posts are in this thread. That is crazy.

Youve been a rather active parrot this year.

[Sondrelk]

Was the Shadowlands story really better because of that? I'm not sure about it. All of the Covenants could have worked in their own way without a set order. It really didn't matter much as the "mysteries" where not that mysterious (where's the Anima?).

Doing Revendreth first or Bastion last could have worked as well as the NPCs still were bound to their own zone, it was just the overarching narrative that was losely connected.

I think pretty much everyone agrees it was better.

You have the mystery that begins with going to Bastion, learning if the conspiracy, slowly seeing things get worse and worse, until you end with that big reveal in Revendreth.

Compare that to Legion where it all is just kinda one big soup of problems to be solved.
Same with BfA, the Zandalar storyline especially being much better if you assume a correct version of the storyline where you fix problems in Nazmir, learn of a conspiracy in Vol'dun, and then see everything fall apart in Zuldazar.

[Grimbold21]

Whatever grinds there are, they need to be account-wide, period. Reputation/Renown, Dragonriding skills, whatever baseline measures they use, they need to be account-wide.

Also, no nonsense like they had in Shadowlands where the player could not only not skip conversations between NPCs, but the player also had to go through that stuff for every character until they finally remedied that later on.

All this stuff needs to be implemented from the start.

On a different note, in regard to the UI, they need to do like Diablo and have a toggle option available. The new UI seems cool in general, but those Character Portraits didn't do it for me. Looks like smth out of a 2005 addon.

[Baedril]

Few notable quotes from the front page.

Flying in the Dragon Isles will not require a Pathfinder achievement.

A Threads of Fate leveling system for alts will be utilized in Dragonflight and Blizzard is looking into making more systems account-wide.

Blizzard also plans to provide a more in-depth open world experience going forward.

Wtf does the third point mean?

In the holinka interview they mentioned that wanted to provide more war mode incentives and create more of an active open world experience, maybe it's that? Since SL was absolutely lacking in reasons for anyone to go war mode, compared to BfA.

[Chickat]

You are in the top few lol. Go out to the Dragonflight forum and find this thread. click on the green number that shows the number of posts. 52800ish posts. itl show u a list.

Actually Sol is number 1 and its not even close. You have nearly twice as many posts in this thread as the next person. Over 2000 posts.

[Shadochi]

Christ, I can't believe 615 of my 5504 posts are in this thread. That is crazy.

I'm pretty sure if I was to roundup all the hype threads, like at least 90% of my posts would be from the 4 threads (Legion, BfA, SL and now DF)

[therumblings]

Also I looked at the list of posts per user in this thread

How do you see that again? I don't think I checked since the 7.0 speculation thread lol

[Chickat]

Whatever grinds there are, they need to be account-wide, period. Reputation/Renown, Dragonriding skills, whatever baseline measures they use, they need to be account-wide.

Also, no nonsense like they had in Shadowlands where the player could not only not skip conversations between NPCs, but the player also had to go through that stuff for every character until they finally remedied that later on.

All this stuff needs to be implemented from the start.

On a different note, in regard to the UI, they need pull to do like Diablo and have a toggle option available. The new UI seems cool in general, but those Character Portraits didn't do it for me. Looks like smth out of a 2005 addon.

Eh, it would make alts boring to have 0 grinds. I think a 100% rep buff on alts like MoP had is a better solution.