Dragonflight Alpha/Beta General Discussion

[Chickat]

Oh, btw. Betting my tier set that the stone chad from the cinematic will be a new Magni, or at least a relevant NPC.

Pretty sure they already confirmed that anyways.

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I hope they keep him a quiet guy of few words who we get to see and interact with sometimes but who isn't constantly there talking to us all the time.

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Yeah even just slapping a few excavation areas down all through the zones so that we can at least use archaeology even if they plan on updating it later on to make it more interesting. The least interesting thing about it is the fact that they haven't actually used it for anything good since Cata.

Legion was an interesting idea with the quests, and that should be carried forward, but the minigame should be updated and streamlined. Maybe even tied to one zone in the current expansion a day, or you get double artifacts in said zone. Then they should add like 10 pets, 5 mounts, a transmog set for each armor type, and 1 of every weapon armor type not only as a transmog, but as a boa weapon on par with the first raid tiers normal mode of the xpac. Also every profession should have at least 1 recipe from it.

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Didn't Ion say in the Hazelnutty interview that they want the rep for Centaurs, Explorer's League, Reliquary and others to be like Covenants? Where you see what you will unlock once you reach that level with them.

Idk that's what the person I was responding to said. I think there's still a general lack of information at this stage. Lots of misinformation.

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Isn't that the release window then? August to December? The only expansion to release outside of that was TBC which got delayed to January.

The expansion release is when its somewhat ready. If its super unfinished in November and December they arent gonna hold it until next August.

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I am disappointed that Torghast is being left behind. The concept behind it was always great - an ever-evolving, randomized area for you to do some crazy stuff with your class. Purely cosmetic rewards. It's probably the best feature that they've added since M+ that had potential to morph into a core "pillar" of content for solo people (or group).

Just add some sort of Bronze dragon Tower that you plan to update every expac - different halls take you through different timelines and biomes and enemy types. Add more every expac. New challenges, greatly expand the rewards, etc.

More so than covenants, more so than islands / warfronts, Torghast had the most potential and a shame it's being completely flushed down the toilet.

Yeah they could have made a cool timewalking system like it, but I still stand by the idea that its better to have the core systems in great shape than to have them meh and have a new system.

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Semantics. There is nothing that says a release window has to be a short length of time. Saying "Second half of the year" is a release window albeit not very specific. As for specific time they are targeting I think it will clearly be November. Not because of past launches though. It is because Scaleface stated November release and all the rest of their "leaks" came true.

If they want November then the latest Alpha can start in next month. Even then an early June alpha would only be 5.5-6 months of testing. They need to get on the ball. Id honestly rather they delayed it 2-4 months and got it right. I can play other games and wrath classic in the meantime.

Honestly unless the expansion is 100% perfect by November it doesn't make sense to launch it this year anyways. Wrath coming out November, they will want to give that at least 2-3 months to breath.

The sad thing is the first tier of Dragonflight is going to coincide with Ulduar. Ulduar is going to get the shaft again.

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I admittedly like this because it means we now have more room for unique races that aren't rigged for traditional armor. I'd especially really like to see Nerubians come out of this. Another thing that could be cool that would come from this might be a better way of doing, say, Ethereals.

Yeah this opens the door wide open for almost any race. Im still skeptical about a 4 legged race like centaurs, but Naga wouldn't be a problem. They could show chest, belt, gloves, bracers, shoulders, weapons, helmet, tabard easily with Naga, and they could do legs too, although it might look weird.

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BFA ends with the dragons, not at all surprised to hear about the SL skip. On top of that it will probably address the sword at the end if the Azerite tease in the cinematic is any indication.

SL is not a continuation of BFA: it’s the end of the War Campaign, and if you don’t care about Sylvanas it can be skipped entirely. The only things that matter are Anduin stepping down, Sylvanas being banished and Tyrande getting a new seed... and all of that can get explained in a few NPC conversations.

I think endgame is going to be Exiles Reach - Revamped EK/Kalimdor, but for now, Exiles Reach - BFA - DF flows the best,

Yeah, a Kalim/EK that have evergreen stories. Kinda like classic wow. Stories not tied to an expansion theme. If they update the world now, they will never have to do it again.

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Okay, Ions post on itemization through seasons makes me agree a bit more with the m+ split

With that, and the other post about talents its making me feel hopeful. Usually they go radio silent. If they keep up this level of communication ill be very happy. Honestly lets say alpha is still 3 months again. What if they do a weekly Dev watercooler, and a weekly new zone art screenshot post. Just to kinda keep us updated. I would love that.

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Yeah, but IMO its ok not to resolve it during leveling, like it was that case even before with every expansion. When I first started playing it made me more interested to later go back and do those stories or research the lore online. For people that don't care about lore it's a good experience, for people that do care its also good and will peak their interest. BfA zones also present some more common azeroth threats

Unpopular opinion. I hope they increase leveling time by like 20-30%. I would want to be able to completely finish a continent, or most of it before moving on.

Maybe its time they add a newgame+ system. Idk what the rewards would be, but.

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Maybe one day they will get it right.

IN teriz's defence he got the class concept kinda close for 2 of the specs added. Just the name is weird and its missing a tank spec.

[Revamp Man]

Yeah, I made that comment when the leaks and leakers were stating that the Evoker was an Arcane mage clone that was going to cannibalize the arcane spec. No one was saying it was based on the HotS dragons (which is what it turned out to be).

Nobody said it would cannibalize arcane mage other than people speculating based on the name

The leakers said dps used arcane magic which is true

[Wangming]

Honestly if all the DF stuff is good and if they do a world revamp for 11.0 WoW might be more modern than games that released a decade after it.

I admire your optimism.

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Yeah, I think 7 months is a good guess. Starting in the summer.

Yeah pretty much. That would put us around January or February for release. Fits the speculation.

[Chickat]

Uh, the Dracthyr is WAY different than the other classes in the game. What are you even talking about?

Dracthyr are about as similar to Mages as Shamans and mages are. Shamans can use frost and fire, I guess they must be mages.
Demon hunters and warlocks use fel. Same class.

I don't get it either. The classes are vastly different.

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Wait, so... "small changes to EK and Kalimdor"... does this mean we aren't getting the full revamp they said we'd get?

When did blizzard ever say there would be a revamp?

[Revamp Man]

Better question is how do they look like a race that didn't even exist yet

How do humans look like stone bro?
How do dracthyr look like elves I mean obviously they can’t have basic humanoid features

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Dracthyr are about as similar to Mages as Shamans and mages are. Shamans can use frost and fire, I guess they must be mages.
Demon hunters and warlocks use fel. Same class.

I don't get it either. The classes are vastly different.

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When did blizzard ever say there would be a revamp?

They didn’t
People are playing mental gymnastics to find negatives

A dude in another thread watched the hazel interview and said “Ion said borrowed power is a future team problem so he must not think he’ll be there” when in reality he said future us problem.

[ImTheMizAwesome]

woke up and seen these "bulkier" options for new race and the interview, i think it was one of the first leaks and it's literally almost the same.

They really need to actually tweak the bulkier option that hey have, because well seems like they already have Option 2 in character creation.

Another thing that really sucks is only 3 pieces might be visible on the dragon and forced to that form in combat, so you will be most of the time in it.

I just hope that the dev that made those dragon forms is not like "fuck these guys, why they want any changes its literally perfect" and will be open for feedback.

[Syegfryed]

I just hope that the dev that made those dragon forms is not like "fuck these guys, why they want any changes its literally perfect" and will be open for feedback.

That is what im think is going to happen, blizzard devs are too stubborn to admit a mistake, an error or similar, we already saw of examples of the community feedback being ignored because they know better, like the azerite armors.

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You can see the difference between the two body types in the image below. Slender on the left, Bulky on the right. Credit to Portergauge on Twitter for pointing this out.

No rly, the only thing i see different is the tip of the snout and the scales in arms/legs, thats it

edit:WAIT, is the slender/bulky thing suppossed to be that tinny waist thing? LOL

[Nymrohd]

That is what im think is going to happen, blizzard devs are too stubborn to admit a mistake, an error or similar, we already saw of examples of the community feedback being ignored because they know better, like the azerite armors.

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No rly, the only thing i see different is the tip of the snout and the scales in arms/legs, thats it

Eh look at the width of the model on the shoulders and on the abdomen. Don't get me wrong, it could be bulkier. And I hope for a lot of customization when it comes to snout, horns, spines (which we may get, we've seen plans for multiple head shapes) that can make the shape somewhat more masculine or feminine.

[Revamp Man]

I’m wondering if the “old guard” that left which led to people saying the game was doomed were actually part of why the game went downhill

One reason is because in BfA we had people who designed the weekly cache telling players they were wrong and they knew what they were doing and then in 9.2 we had a dev saying many of them weren’t around for tier sets which had only been gone for about 3 years and during that time we’ve had big turn over from old big names
“Ion is killing the game” seems to have actually been “Ion’s boss is killing the game”
Yeah I get that his boss cares about more than WoW but you are crazy if you think they don’t have influence

[Hitei]

That is what im think is going to happen, blizzard devs are too stubborn to admit a mistake, an error or similar, we already saw of examples of the community feedback being ignored because they know better, like the azerite armors.

Not making every race's male form a manly man for people who want to play manly men isn't particularly a mistake or error.

[Chickat]

lol they literally added the labels today because nobody could tell the classes apart yesterday

But I'm not saying any of that is a bad thing: You just want to argue.??? For all we know Diablo 4 is coming out after Dragonflight & World of Warcraft makes more money than the Diablo Franchise.

Literally everyone could tell the classes apart. I saw multiple posts on different forums talking about it. Guess what. Everyone was right. Its pretty easy to tell which set is for which class if you look for more than 5 seconds and hide your disgust.

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It's based on the Dragonflights; Black, Red, Bronze, Green, and Blue. It goes quite a bit beyond Arcane, Fire, and Frost. In fact, the core concept is combining the flight's powers together (Prismatics) in order to maximize effects. For example, using the Bronze's power of time to enhance the power of a Green healing spell.

As for aesthetics, Mages aren't dragons flying around with wings, hitting people with their tail, or breathing fire/arcane/healing mists out of their mouths.

I wonder if mages will lose Evocation and Dragons breath though?

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"Don't say Dragon's Breath, don't say Dragon's Breath, don't say Dragon's Breath..."

You're a little defensive: But I did always wonder why they got rid of Frostfire Bolt, really just renaming it to Flurry - I think that was the moment they decided to make Evoker a thing.

Flurry fits the theme of Frost better though. Its been what 8 years since they removed FF bolt? Maybe 6? They weren't thinking about Evokers back then.

[Syegfryed]

Not making every race's male form a manly man for people who want to play manly men isn't particularly a mistake or error.

Its miraculous how you have to go into this fallacy like this is the problem everyone have

I like how you try to use the "manly men" in the mix, less point for not saying toxic masculinity

[Chickat]

So I'm a bit confused: in the announcement video before the deep dives Ion mentions hybridization while talking about the talent revamp. Then in the IGN interview he specifically references being a ret/holy or ret/prot paladin, and again mentions that we lost the ability to be hybrids when they got rid of talent trees. But the blue post about the talent revamp specifically says that you cannot put points into more than one spec tree. So where exactly is the hybridization coming from? The "class utility" side? Doesn't that basically just give you standard abilities for the class, not let you dip your toe into more than one spec in a single build?

The class tree has a lot of abilities and passives from other spec trees.

[Blayze]

I find it funny that the creature with protective scales can't be anything other than a squishy caster.

[Chickat]

Ion.... is a very troubled man. He gets confused easily.

Really we have no idea what the talents are actually like because we haven't been able to see them yet. For this Talent revamp to be done well they might put some potent off spec abilities in the general class tree, but surely they must be very careful about what they allow. That's mostly why I've been so pessimistic about the return of talent trees: Builds are an illusion. There are loadouts the game is designed to support & loadouts that aren't. I'd love it if specs had multiple loadouts that worked but over the last 18 years that's happened very rarely, no matter what kind of talent interface they were using.

You have never been able to switch quickly and for free beofe with the old talents, so people just had 1 pve and 1 pvp build. Now that its free and quick to switch, and the fact that you can have dozens of loadouts, people will be able to have a loadout for every situation, and a wacky fun loadout just for niche cases.

[Hitei]

Its miraculous how you have to go into this fallacy like this is the problem everyone have

I like how you try to use the "manly men" in the mix, less point for not saying toxic masculinity

"This model really needs to be big and bulky! Why are they so skinny? They'd be perfect if they had a big stocky neck, a huge square chest with massive shoulders! Here is some art of big men with rippling muscles, they should be like that!"

"W-what do you mean I want manly men!?"

[Chickat]

Can't wait for them to remember the sword only after the Titan is born and be like "uh. UH. We left it there because she'll use it."

They left it there because its dozens if not hundreds of miles tall. No a soul on Azeroth has the power or strength to remove it. It would have to be a titan, or something of that scale. Plus if we did remove it it would cause another cataclysm.

[ercarp]

Credit to keyboardturn on Twitter for pointing this out.

Earlier I made a post pointing out that the Dracthyr and the new Incubus model share a skeleton, but it turns out it's actually even older than that, going back to the Winged Eredar models on Argus:





I'm only pointing this out because people were speculating that the Dracthyr model was made first and used for the Incubus. But I think this should put that theory to bed as I don't think they've had the Dracthyr model in hibernation since ~2016.

But as I said before, the fact that they use an older skeleton is all the way at the bottom of my list of complaints/concerns about the new race. So it's far from being a deal-breaker, although it does make the race seem a bit cheaper for me.

[Chickat]

I hope they keep him a quiet guy of few words who we get to see and interact with sometimes but who isn't constantly there talking to us all the time.

Yeah, I imagine he will be like a titan keeper. Kinda like mother in bfa. Very little dialogue, but whats there is important.

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woke up and seen these "bulkier" options for new race and the interview, i think it was one of the first leaks and it's literally almost the same.

They really need to actually tweak the bulkier option that hey have, because well seems like they already have Option 2 in character creation.

Another thing that really sucks is only 3 pieces might be visible on the dragon and forced to that form in combat, so you will be most of the time in it.

I just hope that the dev that made those dragon forms is not like "fuck these guys, why they want any changes its literally perfect" and will be open for feedback.

I think we might be able to convince them to let us wear bracers and legs too.

It does make sense to not have helms, weapons, boots, gloves, cloacks though.

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That is what im think is going to happen, blizzard devs are too stubborn to admit a mistake, an error or similar, we already saw of examples of the community feedback being ignored because they know better, like the azerite armors.

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No rly, the only thing i see different is the tip of the snout and the scales in arms/legs, thats it

edit:WAIT, is the slender/bulky thing suppossed to be that tinny waist thing? LOL

Yeah for once I agree with you. Its not far enough, but the fact that they have a second body type option at all is a good sign. They may be willing to push it a bit further.

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I’m wondering if the “old guard” that left which led to people saying the game was doomed were actually part of why the game went downhill

One reason is because in BfA we had people who designed the weekly cache telling players they were wrong and they knew what they were doing and then in 9.2 we had a dev saying many of them weren’t around for tier sets which had only been gone for about 3 years and during that time we’ve had big turn over from old big names
“Ion is killing the game” seems to have actually been “Ion’s boss is killing the game”
Yeah I get that his boss cares about more than WoW but you are crazy if you think they don’t have influence

Ion took over in what Shadowlands or BFA? Either way, its possible they already had concepts too evolved to change much. Lets see what happens in Dragonflight. If they refuse to listen still it might be a lost cause. But yeah, I think some of the old guard caused a lot of problems too.

[Nachtigal]

Im pretty sure they said it starts at level 5 and you alternate between spec and class talents every level. You get 5 spec and 5 class talents from 60-70 to spend.

So 65 talents. 33 class talents and 32 spec talents. Thats my guess.

I haven't seen anything about it, do you know what interview it was mentioned?