Dragonflight Alpha/Beta General Discussion

[Eurhetemec]

Crafting & Gathering is at its core a solo experience. To which I think it's a great idea to have crafting be their stand-in for nightmare visions & torghast. The need to encourage community interaction is paramount, but for the same reason they're never going to remove LFG & queues is because they don't want to alienate players for the times when they don't particularly want to socialize.

Also you phrase it like that was the design philosophy going into it. When in actually the WoW dev's philosophy towards the new crafting system is "make it like FFXIV." They showed a mockup in the hazelnutty interveiw that they made when began developing it & it's identical to the FFXIV crafting window.

The idea that LFG ruins communities is destroyed by FFXIV anyway. FFXIV has the same mechanisms and has far more of a community than WoW did even in Wrath, before LFG. A lot of that is simply because it's more pleasant to interact with other players and feels less forced.

Re: crafting, I think you're a bit confused about the motivation. I don't think they said "Just make it like FFXIV", I think they looked at what crafting systems people actually like and why, and FFXIV was obviously a major influence, but I suspect what we'll actually get will be pretty distinct from FFXIV.

[Nymrohd]

Doubt that's necessary tbh, Artifacts are just regular weapons now with a fancy colour and Azerite armor will prob be way weaker than any lvl 60 armor so I don't see them even investing any time in it.

As for covenant that I agree with they might do something generic there.

Honestly for Covenants they might as well give them one of the later active abilities of their talent trees for free. So when you want to check Shadowlands content on your evoker you can switch to another talent.

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The idea that LFG ruins communities is destroyed by FFXIV anyway. FFXIV has the same mechanisms and has far more of a community than WoW did even in Wrath, before LFG. A lot of that is simply because it's more pleasant to interact with other players and feels less forced.

This is really the issue, the community. Several other MMORPGs have LFG features. Never seen people abused in ESO like they so commonly do in WoW if they don't speedrun everything. And I doubt Blizzard can fix that after well over a decade since 3.3

[Kiria]

Yeah, Wrathion is one of my favorite WoW characters at the moment, and I always thought Deathwing was cool because of the Cataclysm art;



Always loved this image.
Hopefully a Dracthyr skin allows me to have lava oozing out of its body.

I'm with the red flight, red is my favorite color and I love alexstrasza perfect flight choice for me.

[Gigantique]

Ngl I've made belf/human characters to lock in lore-friendly dragon names (Vitaelstrasz for red, Kairosdormu for bronze etc) and made mogs for all of them in preparation.

I might be in danger of getting overhyped over a new class.

[Nymrohd]

Eh, we don't need to choose a flight. There is no Covenant-like system, is there? I support all flights.

[Kiria]

Ngl I've made belf/human characters to lock in lore-friendly dragon names (Vitaelstrasz for red, Kairosdormu for bronze etc) and made mogs for all of them in preparation.

I might be in danger of getting overhyped over a new class.

Me too, I already have my name locked in and ready to go, I am very excited I just feel sorry for all the haters.

[Chickat]

Maybe they could test shorter season lengths with S4. Imo each raid tier should include TWO seasons of M+. And they could do something similar for raiding as well, e.g. imagine heroic timewalking that is active for the second half of each raid tier. Farm is problematic for most raid guilds; either you turn into boosters or you really start having attendance issues since outside a few people chasing BiS (and often something very specific like Sylvanas loot) most others don't really get much out of farm. We could use something alternative halfway through the tier.

I could see a 3 month season 4. early December Dragonfligh release? Possible, still incredibly unlikely IMO.

[Skildar]

Does anyone know where is this art from? Is it available yet?

I have this art on my battle.net launcher though I haven't found the original piece

[Chickat]

The right things to do:
- Get rid of renown, except for story progression probably
- Implement back valor as a currency to buy both gear and upgrades, while you get valor points from world quests and matchmade dungeons. The honor system worked well, this would be an adaption to pve.
- Add a solo queue for mythic+
- Make time runs in mythic+ optional (probably only available outside of the solo queue)

I don't think Mythic+ should get a solo queue option. I could maybe see mythic getting one, but not M+.

[Nymrohd]

I don't think Mythic+ should get a solo queue option. I could maybe see mythic getting one, but not M+.

Truth be told, never understood why base Mythic doesn't have a solo queue.

[deucecorp]

The idea that LFG ruins communities is destroyed by FFXIV anyway. FFXIV has the same mechanisms and has far more of a community than WoW did even in Wrath, before LFG. A lot of that is simply because it's more pleasant to interact with other players and feels less forced.

Re: crafting, I think you're a bit confused about the motivation. I don't think they said "Just make it like FFXIV", I think they looked at what crafting systems people actually like and why, and FFXIV was obviously a major influence, but I suspect what we'll actually get will be pretty distinct from FFXIV.

Blizzard was heavily focusing on dismantling communities year by year.
I find utterly pathetic that community guild perks were introduced with Cata. Then at the end of the same expansion with the greatest Dragon Soul raid, they took out the soul: LFR, nuking raid IDs. Then flex raiding in MoP for the exact same purpose.

In WoD they tried to suffocate us with single player, top boring garrison chores.

Legion? Dev team finally was pushing everything 130%.. Community? People were wandering between guilds back and forth in hopes of progress boost/free loot. Guild main tanks went pugging Wednesday morning and skipped the evening guild raids. Pug raids were the same, people wandering back and forth, joining/leaving same pug 3 times.. Most of them just disbanded after a single wipe.

BFA/SL already felt like they fired the old devs and they put a secret clause in the new guys' contracts "you only do 70%, these gonna be filler episodes, take out everything what they liked, dumb down all".
Pugs are better though, now they don't disband instant usually and don't go AFK that much. People getting accustomed to the puglife aspect and perform a bit better.

Guilds NOW? Mythic raiders only. Besides them there are the "we used to raid months/years ago, wanted to recruit, but we didn't really succeeded so we just M+ together sometimes" type of guilds. Literally no one else lol

edit: You don't necessarily have to agree with the above, but don't even try to defend Blizz. They can code what they want to. A boss script or a system bringing together communities. Not apart.

[Chickat]

I think that crafting as they described it can take over for Valor. What I would like is for the Vault to get even more options. Originally at Blizzcon they said that Torghast would also let you unlock Vault Gear. Imo they should find a way to get Vault gear from doing things in the world. This would add a Valor-like weekly activity for all characters without forcing instanced content. If LFR can grant options from the Vault, so should emissaries or non-rated pvp.

Imo there should be a world quests vault reward too, but also valor for options. Bring back a soft version of titanforging , so I guess warforging. Max +10 item levels.

World Quest Max ilev at factions Exalted. 350(360 titanforged)
Wold Quest normal Max vault reward. 370
World Quest Max vault titanforged reward 380

Say complete 10 world quests a week, 25, 50 for the 3 slots. Gives casual outdoor players a progression system on top of the new valor. If the player doesn't like the item they get, they can pick 250 valor to go towards the new weeks cap. 1000 btw. Callings reward 100 valor. Individual World quests reward 10 valor. 100 WQ to cap, 70 if you do 3 callings. 30 if you do all 7 callings.

Dungeon finder rewards 100 valor, max 500 per week earnable. Can spam all 5 in a row if you want. Mythic+ dungeons reward 150 valor per dungeon.


Lfr Item level 355 (375 tf) 100 Valor per wing.
Normal Item level 368 (378 tf) 50 valor per boss.
World Boss item level 375 (385 tf) 150 valor for killing weekly world boss.
Heroic raid Item level 381 (391 tf) 65 valor per boss.
Mythic raid item level 394 (404 tf) 75 valor per boss.

Bring back item upgrades along with a valor vendor. You can not upgrade an item if it is already titanforged by +10. If it is only +5 you can upgrade it once.

Every item in the game has 2 upgrades.


Valor gear item level 385. Depending on the slot takes anywhere from 1-2 weeks to get a piece. 900-1750 valor per slot. Deterministic. 395 with upgrades.
Once your gear is complete you can spend 750 valor to buy a socket for an existing item.



Crafted gear can now be mythic raid item level, but you need to get items from raids to make it.

Crafted blue gear for season 1 360. Upgradeable to 380 from world boss and mythic dungeon drops.
Crafted epic gear using raid items 380-400. Items are BoP and only drop on normal mode raids and above. You need 1 for a 380 piece, with 5 needed for an item level 400 piece. Every boss has a low chance to drop one less than 5%, but the last boss of a tier drop 1. On Mythic bosses have an increased chance to drop one, and last boss drops 2. BoP but freely tradeable by anyone in the raid.

Basically if you raid every week on normal or above, within a few weeks you can get a mythic raid level piece of gear. Limit 2 slots, 4 if the crafter.

So you will want 2 slots of crafted gear, and if you are in a 10 man raid group on heroic mode, you will be able to get enough orbs for 3 400 crafted pieces a week if you loot council them. 6-8 weeks to get everyone in the raid their crafted slots.

[deucecorp]

Truth be told, never understood why base Mythic doesn't have a solo queue.

Right point. Maybe to give a bit of chance to build together your very first team (when new player). Otherwise we could just state that M0 is the new Heroic queue.. Actually they could already take out the queue for normal dungeons at this point at max level. lol

[Ilir]

Right point. Maybe to give a bit of chance to build together your very first team (when new player). Otherwise we could just state that M0 is the new Heroic queue.. Actually they could already take out the queue for normal dungeons at this point at max level. lol

No they could not, you'd have no content to do then. The rest would be too hard for you.

[MyWholeLifeIsThunder]

it is here:
https://www.artstation.com/artwork/g8qRaK

It's really not the same XD

We have the two versions with Alex in a half twist, but I don't think he has released the front facing version.

[Chickat]

Truth be told, never understood why base Mythic doesn't have a solo queue.

Yeah its even easier today than Cata heroics were. Honestly I think a mythic+10 is as easy as cata heroics, but seems more challenging due to the timer and not having time to cc.

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Back from my slumber! And a little more excited for Dragonflight now, it looks promising!



The dryer the leak season, the better the Blizzcon my child that's what you were looking for hehe!

Shouldn't it be the wetter the blizzcon?

[Alanar]

Damn I had no idea Alleria was so unpopular.

Even bob is more popular. Varadoc really trying to make it seem she is more popular then she really is, damn thats a wild fan right there.

[Nymrohd]

Even bob is more popular. Varadoc really trying to make it seem she is popular, thats wild.

I mean Bob IS popular. Has a cool model and is one of the few Horde leaders with actual character development.

[deucecorp]

No they could not, you'd have no content to do then. The rest would be too hard for you.

Yes, you can be right. When reaching max level on my main I spam maybe 3-4 normal dungeons. That usually happens on first week of expansion and never see normal again. I shop around/craft gear and head into HC queue as fast as possible.
On alts I found I don't even have to queue normal usually just when levelling. Remember WoD? Equipping multiple BoEs at level 91.. You granted never felt the need to queue normal at level 100.

Same way I've been just ignoring the wunderbar LFR kindergarten in the past 10 years. Good for dps check and that's it. Nothing else to see there.

edit: This could be actually an opportunity to bring in some changes at max level. Keep players questing, crafting a bit and not getting burnt out fast paced of the same 8+1, 4+4 whatever number of dungeons.. Maybe you get a glimpse now why I cry for bigger changes. Or more dungeons. They cba to limit some dungeons 'hc' or 'mythic' only anymore, how they did before. SL was so dumb in this aspect: "here you are 8+1 dungeons and shut up", run them 200 times each.

[Super Dickmann]

Even bob is more popular. Varadoc really trying to make it seem she is more popular then she really is, damn thats a wild fan right there.

Varodoc has actually already beaten you because you've accepted the frame that character popularity is based on how much (erotic) fanfiction is out there on a single site. No one seriously thinks that Shaw is a more popular character among the broader playerbase than Thrall, Garrosh and Kael.