Dragonflight Alpha/Beta General Discussion

[Foreign Exchange Ztudent]

I mean, is there a safer media outlet for them than T&E? And I do not mind their show but I thought they did poorly when they did Blizzcon.

I mean it is the safest option for Blizzard, there's no one else that is as devoted to Blizzard as them.

Preach refuses to play Marketing for them which is fair enough considering everything.

There's just no one else available that would play by Blizzards' crazy PR Teams ruleset.

Then again honestly I never expected we would be in the position where we wouldn't have preorders available and we're stuck with this black hole waiting period with small scraps of new info being a possibility with each new interview but mostly its just going over the same stuff and the datamining being the main course in June.

[rhorle]

Well, you're averaging about 4 posts and hour for the past 2 weeks. How much gameplaying are you doing, exactly?

I'm still subscribed and still enjoy playing the game. Though I'm starting to lose interest because of the content droughts. I'll also admit I am only subscribed because I didn't cancel my 6-month because I occasionally buy tokens and forget what month I had to turn it off by. If the expansion doesn't launch this year I'll hopefully visit this site less because I plan I stopping my subscription.

The biggest problem with WoW and its community are those who hang on just can't let go. They let the negativity fester instead of just moving on from a form of entertainment they no longer enjoy or even played for a while. You say Dragonflight looks great but you still need to find something to be negative about so you hate on developers.

[Vakir]

Communicating is one thing, being receptive is another. Dragonflight looks great.

Weren't you vehemently shitting on it a week ago?

[Makabreska]

Weren't you vehemently shitting on it a week ago?

That he was. I guess some people don't know what they want.

[Xilurm]

Preach refuses to play Marketing for them which is fair enough considering everything.

There's just no one else available that would play by Blizzards' crazy PR Teams ruleset.

They should just learn to do it themselves. And not in the same way they did the presentation for the reveal. That didn't feel real.

[Foreign Exchange Ztudent]

They should just learn to do it themselves. And not in the same way they did the presentation for the reveal. That didn't feel real.

We had Ion and Lore in front of a camera doing Q&A from 6.2 (WoD) until they ended said tradition with Shadowlands (9.0) launch. When they decided to throw away the good faith built up during the Shadowlands Alpha communication and decided to leave us in the standard "Everything's on fire and we are in our bunkers tuning knobs on Build Around Systems and Borrowed Power until Ion has to step out during the x.1 Patch lull waddling to a Safe outlet to say sorry again and x.2 soon".

(Although Shadowlands was even more egregious as Blizzards decision was to stay quiet and let the community formulate the option they would later take by Cutting & Running.)

Thankfully there's no more tuning knobs on said garbage on fire this time around and its' all about if they can fill the game "Finally" with Content after the Post-MoP Era went down this horrid direction just because of a Designer problem about how they could avoid the "Addition/Removals of Spells" that were standards every expansion which most people actually enjoyed and loved looking at MMO-Champion to see new class additions and changes. But, I mean Designer problems. Not even once.

P.N: This expansion is a dream for me we're on track away from Post-WoD design and back to where we were supposed to be after MoP. So, whatever lmao. Yeah, I don't trust these people at all and I am suspicious to everything they try to pull even if it is "good". But again, it is important to note the context here.

And yeah the PR/Marketing Team have been high for a while now. They should've received the feedback about 9.2 and then doing a Product Launch Reveal where 70% of the information required to sell to your audience is not available and you make the most normie people watching your stream think there's no content in your new product. I mean, it was dumb.
(I literally had to read interviews to be onboard with the product and was completely turned off until I read that the emptiness had a meaning on the philosophical state of the development team and their focus now on making actual game content rather than systems)

I personally think we're on a pathway to Blizzcon News in May though. I don't think we will have to struggle through these things again for a Expansion Reveal again, maybe for a few more Major Patch Reveals but at some point the dumbest Marketing Team in the Video Game Industry will get the hint. Hopefully.

[Nymrohd]

We had Ion and Lore in front of a camera doing Q&A from 6.2 (WoD) until they ended said tradition with Shadowlands (9.0) launch. When they decided to throw away the good faith built up during the Shadowlands Alpha communication and decided to leave us in the standard "Everything's on fire and we are in our bunkers tuning knobs on Build Around Systems and Borrowed Power until Ion has to step out during the x.1 Patch lull waddling to a Safe outlet to say sorry again and x.2 soon".

(Although Shadowlands was even more egregious as Blizzards decision was to stay quiet and let the community formulate the option they would later take by Cutting & Running.)

Thankfully there's no more tuning knobs on garbage on fire this time around and its' all about if they can fill the game "Finally" with Content after the Post-MoP Era went down this horrid direction just because of a Designer problem about how they could avoid the "Addition/Removals of Spells" that were standards every expansion which most people actually enjoyed and loved looking at MMO-Champion to see new class additions and changes. But, I mean Designer problems. Not even once.

Honestly I wonder if they should just try and hire someone who has a modicum of charisma just to do the announcements. Hearthstone always seems to have at least a few people in their team that can handle the announcement.

[Foreign Exchange Ztudent]

Honestly I wonder if they should just try and hire someone who has a modicum of charisma just to do the announcements. Hearthstone always seems to have at least a few people in their team that can handle the announcement.

I just don't get why they can't hire two Community Managers who have the training and practice to be front facing and do biregular livestreams with Q&As. It's been on my mind for quite a while since Ion and Lore made the decision to just "quit" the Q&A in Shadowlands. The whole "Senior people" have to do the Interviews instead of just having the people presenting in such Q&As going back and forth internally it just seems so rigid and "old structure" to me.

And I'm not really speaking of the Dev Interviews either. I never understood the necessity of the Game Director and Senior Community Manage Leader doing it in the first place. But, hey that's Blizzard with their weird mimic of Japanese Game Company structure. It's not like they take advantage of that like Yoshi-P does for FFXIV.

This new Twitter Space thing might just be a return of the Q&A in a way, but again we'll see what its future is. Its just a bit weird that they do this and make it just a podcast listening experience now. But hey, Blizzard gonna Blizzard rather than just being front facing.

[Nymrohd]

I just don't get why they can't hire two Community Managers who have the training and practice to be front facing and do biregular livestreams with Q&As. It's been on my mind for quite a while since Ion and Lore made the decision to just "quit" the Q&A in Shadowlands. The whole "Senior people" have to do the Interviews instead of just having the people presenting in such Q&As going back and forth internally it just seems so rigid and "old structure" to me.

And I'm not really speaking of the Dev Interviews either. I never understood the necessity of the Game Director and Senior Community Manage Leader doing it in the first place. But, hey that's Blizzard with their weird mimic of Japanese Game Company structure. It's not like they take advantage of that like Yoshi-P does for FFXIV.

This new Twitter Space thing might just be a return of the Q&A in a way, but again we'll see what its future is. Its just a bit weird that they do this and make it just a podcast listening experience now. But hey, Blizzard gonna Blizzard rather than just being front facing.

Not to mention how good an opportunity it is for them to show representation. Hearthstone hit a jackpot finding a transgender developer with enough charisma to do solid presentations

[Foreign Exchange Ztudent]

Not to mention how good an opportunity it is for them to show representation. Hearthstone hit a jackpot finding a transgender developer with enough charisma to do solid presentations

That too is a curiosity. Again I think WoW has really needed a chill out point with some friendly dev faces that the audience meets on a regular basis on a livestream. We need some warmth rather than the distant coldness which fuels the anger in the audience. But yeah, I don't really expect the Marketing and PR Team to fully understand that issue about the WoW Community and why they are so surprised at the whole fanbase being so quick to be vitriolic these days.

And no the Reveal structure of 9.2 and 10.0 just feels inorganic and cold and everytime it leaves a info vacuum that is only filled by reading a bunch of interviews to sell you on the actual patch/expansion rather than marketing beats that actually just fell flat and made it seem like there's even less focus on content than the Post-MoP era.

At least with 9.2, WoWHead was on top of their game to make sure all info about 9.2 was attainable rather quickly after the Reveal led everything into chaos. But, yeah 10.0 has been a slowburn with interviews all over the place.

Not to speak of Laptopmag having a 6 part interview with just 1 part out so far and one of the parts is tied to Transmog which I am curious about.

[Ersula]

Weren't you vehemently shitting on it a week ago?

Shitting on the developers for not addressing the primary problems of shadowlands. Yeah. I don't have a problem with a WoTLK inspired continent or a dragon class; I have a problem with the developers attitude toward the game & audience. Engaging with the community & putting on the appearance of engaging with the community are two different things.

[Makabreska]

Shitting on the developers for not addressing the primary problems of shadowlands. Yeah. I don't have a problem with a WoTLK inspired continent or a dragon class; I have a problem with the developers attitude toward the game & audience. Engaging with the community & putting on the appearance of engaging with the community are two different things.

And you base it only off of them not releasing Alpha or showing pictures of features. Did you consider it all may not be ready? Like, they just announced a podcast, hows is that "pretending" to engage?

[Foreign Exchange Ztudent]

I mean it is important to note that this is just a first step and sadly there's been a lot of people playing off that the communication problems are solved again talking point with the Council (Which is extremely inactive and the amount of threads not tied to the Three Pillars is very limited. ). There's like a total of 25-35 responses on the Council and there's usually 1 every week quota.

We lost the long running Q&A without any explanation or reasonings given. We were forced to watch the narrative of the Shadowlands expansion go from a cool concept to a dead wasteland in which we had to watch everyone go "Cut & Run time, guys!" and then Ion stepped out of his bunker this time with a new publication since PCGamer grew hostile in Shadowlands when he did the same shtick with BFA.

Is this Twitter Space going to be a good start? Yes, but again we have no idea if this is reoccurring or if it has a future beyond this pilot episode.

As always I have to remind everyone that the Shadowland Alpha also had this first impression of Developers wanting to engage with the audience and then once launch happened it was complete silence, jobs done we got them preorders boys.

Time to go back into the bunker until 9.1 and do 2 Interviews before we peace out before Ion steps out of his bunker to reveal the x.2 and say Sorry for the second time.

Will history repeat itself for a third time, this time being lack of content being the clear issue? With Ion stepping out for 10.2 and saying Sorry again.

I mean hell we have no confidence that they will ship 3 Major Content Patches this expansion so far.

(Not to speak of I don't trust Ion about this expansion being far ahead at all. This is the most basic safe idea they could come up with while the internal side of the company is burning, WFH was active and the production pipeline was completely shattered. Again we're stuck on a 4 Zone Island with 2 Major Patch Islands again, great success!

Maybe it leads to a good 11.0 on EK and Kalimdor but it could also be Cosmos Squash again with a Genocidal White Man and his Space Marine Queen. The latter making me grind my teeth as we dodged the 10.0 Revamp and any future chance of it ever happening again. Outside of the copium about Azeroths Awakening being hinted as 11.0)

[Aeluron Lightsong]

And you base it only off of them not releasing Alpha or showing pictures of features. Did you consider it may not be ready?

Why bother engaging on someone who is on a constant thread of negativity.

[Makabreska]

Why bother engaging on someone who is on a constant thread of negativity.

Oh, it's fascinating how they are absolutely fuming over DF, mainly because of Drakebois.

[Vakir]

Shitting on the developers for not addressing the primary problems of shadowlands. Yeah. I don't have a problem with a WoTLK inspired continent or a dragon class; I have a problem with the developers attitude toward the game & audience. Engaging with the community & putting on the appearance of engaging with the community are two different things.

This is the forum rhetoric equivalent of tapdancing around the issue and then tripping and snapping your neck.

You were bitching and moaning about there not being enough content based on misleading and incomplete data like "4 zones is less than 5!" without looking at the context of the continent being freaking Northrend sized and making wild assumptions of scaling back. We all saw it.

[Ersula]

You were bitching and moaning about there not being enough content based on misleading and incomplete data like "4 zones is less than 5!" without looking at the context of the continent being freaking Northrend sized and making wild assumptions of scaling back. We all saw it.

I never said anything like that.

[Vakir]

I never said anything like that.

So you didn't whine about there not being enough content or that there wasn't enough presented for us.

'kay. This is pointless. At least everyone is aware you have no value in your voice.

[Revamp Man]

Ok we got answers about the reason why they look humanoid and why the dracthyr are only envoker

I’m ok with the lore

[Foreign Exchange Ztudent]

4 Zones is still less than 5 though. No matter how you spin it. Makes you wonder, doesn't it? Considering the fact this is the least amount of zones, we've ever received in an expansion.

By all means, I do enjoy people who haven't even seen the zones arguing from that position of the scale of them for the Marketing Department as if anything trustworthy can be ascertained from this expansion so far. (Hint: 3 Major Patches doko?)