Dragonflight Alpha/Beta General Discussion

[Hugnomo]

Damn this wait is excruciating. I really want to know if we're getting any new AR/customization or not ^^''''

[guro-tchai]

Dryards... some other kind of night elf on the other side of Azeroth ...some race the looks like night elfs in the garden of life (look at Elunes son Cenarius)

most likely. we've got elves of every one of the six major powers, but NEs are not Life-infused enough. when the Ardenweald seed gets planted, i expect a heritage armor scenario with new nature-related customization options like horns, green eyes etc.
besides, their whole culture was built around preventing the next invasion of the Burning Legion. now that it's gone, their new purpose will just be copypasted from Night Fae - guarding the cycle, whatever that means.

[rhorle]

I don't even think they could add more elf races after this. What's left?

Light elves, fel elves (blood elves are cured of that), Ghost elves (from legion), Elemental elves, the various elves in withdrawal we've seen. The sky is the limit. We can even slap a magically bubble around an elves, like with nightborne, and create anything. Magical bubble on a library and we now have book elves.

But yeah elves have a little to much representation now.

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most likely. we've got elves of every one of the six major powers, but NEs are not Life-infused enough.

If we start dividing the cosmic forces into their individual affinities then that opens at least 20 types of elves give or take. As each circle on the cosmic chart could have its own type of elf. So I think Nature should be close enough to Life to count. Just like Darkfallen should cover Death and Decay instead of just Undead/Necromantic.

Who knows. Maybe the next expansion will be Revenge of the Elves and it is the same story as Dragonflight but just elves across the cosmos uniting into one force.

[ChairmanKaga]

They'll just make stuff up, like how the Dracthyr mortal form looks like a BE and human despite the fact they didn't exist

That was explained today but stay mad?

[Cheezits]

Honestly, Nelves are very much the Life elf based on pure theme, and the muscular bodies from all the running around living off the land make more sense than them being literally green or something similar.

The leaf customization made this more obvious but they should have green eye options too. Malfurion already does.

[Chickat]

The expansion is quite far along, Alpha is coming soon. This was exciting to see. Going to be looking at all the bullet points. I ended up writing a lot, so I'm going to break it up into two posts so my response is more readable. Im also happy that I was right about them doing something with the Drakthyr zone too. They never did anything else with the Demon Hunter zone, and IMO it was a missed opportunity. It could have been a sister zone to the Broken shore.

Nearly everything except obtaining gear should be account wide. So account wide reps?

Having to improve your Dragonriding skill on multiple characters wouldn't be a satisfying experience. Great to hear. It will make me want to engage with the system 100 times more if I know I don't have to do it on my alts.

The goal is to be alt friendly from the start, not something that is added in future updates. Great to hear. Usually they start fixing the expansion around the .1.5 to .2.5 patches so if there are no big issues like that at launch, they cant focus all their time on more content.

No suffering for months and then adjusting for feedback, they know people will be playing alts from week one. Same as above but great to hear.

It'll be fun to see how the dragons react to you, even Alexstrasza didn't know that you existed. How does that work? The island is apparently off the coast, but dragons fly, and pretty fast. I have a hard time believing nobody knew.

The Dracthyr starting zone will be used for more than just a starting zone. Everyone will eventually experience it. Already mentioned at the start of this post, but great to hear. If this is the case, we can count the expansions zones as 5 zones. Guessing the Drak zone will be max level content at some point. It might be smaller like Broken shore, but that's ok.

There are some "Major Factions" that we'll encounter, with a clearer and more elegant reward progression. So does this mean non reknown factions? I didn't get to listen in live. What is the context here? I speculated that there would be more than the 4 big mega factions, but not sure if that's clarification or not.

There are no current plans for a mission table. Unpopular opinion, but I liked the mission table. Not a deal breaker for me, but sad to see it go.

[wowrefugee]

[COLOR="#ADD8E6"]

Listening live, they said "major faction" is their internal name for the renown factions.

[Chickat]

And my other post.



Unlikely, but possible, to go back to use Classic dungeons for Mythic+. They don't hold up with visuals or mechanics. The team probably draws the line at Mists of Pandaria onwards. Anything older would need significant reworking. Thats pretty interesting. Imagine if they break up BRD into 2-3 dungeons and make m+ versions. That could be fun IMO.

The Art team has added an amazing array of customizations for both forms. There's a blog post in the works by the artists to talk through the options in more detail. Im super happy to see this. Between this and the promised talent tree previews it gives me some hope for more dev communication. More dev watercoolers and artcraft posts pls blizz.

The team won't close the door on a third spec, but tank is unlikely. Previous Hero classes have had Tank options, so that's pretty well covered. Sounds like a no to me, but I hope they add a spec to both Demon Hunter and Evoker in the future. I would want another ranged dps spec for evoker instead of tank or mdps but that's just me. Id love to see a Bow wielding fel ranger spec for Demon Hunters.

Shadowlands is a challenging story concept for new players. A good way to say bad haha.

Long term, convivence is paramount, so the team let people unlock flying after some amount of time in the expansion. A dev already said no to this, so either they were wrong or blizzard is listening to feedback that quickly. Either way is great. Im a fan of no flying at launch. If Dragonriding is good people will still use it some when flying is released. If not, people will just fly. Either way, the system should stand on its own, and I'm glad they arent holding back convenience just to prop their system up as they have done so many times in the past.

In the first or second leveling zone, first day of the expansion, you gain the trust of a dragon companion that you can call upon. They initially have limited stamina and experience. So is this a young dragon that doesn't know how to fly well? Maybe they don't trust us at first so they don't listen well? It doesn't really matter I suppose, but I wonder if there is a reason why they cant fly properly from day 1?

The Dragonriding we have seen in the videos so far will be fairly early in the experience. It won't start out lame and have you work to make it feel good. Glad to hear that. I was sure that what we were shown was maxed out dragonriding. If not, it means we will be able to go even faster and do even more tricks. I was afraid it would just be a glider at the start, but doesn't look that way. Sounds fun!

Long term, allowing Dragonriding outside of Dragon Isles is a possibility. In the near term, this is an expansion specific feature, taking place in an environment built for it. Player feedback is key. Makes a lot of sense. They don't want to work on making it work outside the Dragon Isles if players end up hating it.

Cross-faction guilds could happen, but there are a significant number of technical challenges. This is cool to see too.

The team didn't carry forward most of the Shadowlands systems. There is gear, outdoor progression, and universal currencies that help to further your power progression. I smell valor? Anyone else? Might also mean the content will have to be more interesting if they cant use Artifact power to prop it up. Hopefully we see some innovation.

Tuskarr would be too powerful as an Allied Race! What context was this said under? Did it sound like they could be hinting at it being a future race, or was it obvious they were serious about no Tuskarr?


Overall fantastic interview. IM happy to see most of the changes and responses. Im starting to feel positive and hopeful for this expansion. I never felt negative, but just kinda whelmed overall. Im optimistic for the future. They just need to deliver on listening to feedback in the beta.

[Shadochi]

So did it sound like they meant there were more than the 4 factions? It kind of confused me. Or no word on that at all?

TBH it would be weird IMO if there were only 4 reps at start. Think the least we got for launch was 5 in BfA (3 leveling zones + Tortollan + Faction)? Not counting friendship reps that is

[Alexjimithing]

Don’t remember the source but I’m pretty sure it’s one ‘major’ rep per zone plus secondary reps.

[Vyomesh2]

Thats pretty interesting. Imagine if they break up BRD into 2-3 dungeons and make m+ versions. That could be fun IMO.

They should make an M+ Dungeon of the whole damn thing and put a 2.5 hour timer on it or something lol

[Aeluron Lightsong]

M+ Blackrock depths is fine. Don't even care, While you're at it have a M+ Deadmines.

[Chickat]

Don’t remember the source but I’m pretty sure it’s one ‘major’ rep per zone plus secondary reps.

Thats what I was thinking.


Guessing there are 4 major reps, with 2-4 other minor reps. Hoping they have some kind of tiller/angler/cloud serpent rep. I love fun reps like those for cosmetics only.

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They should make an M+ Dungeon of the whole damn thing and put a 2.5 hour timer on it or something lol

Legendary keystone haha. 3 houre time limit. +15 keys only.

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M+ Blackrock depths is fine. Don't even care, While you're at it have a M+ Deadmines.

I think that would be great tbh. They need to start moving outside their comfort zone with game design.

[huth]

Skyblue

Please reconsider your colour choice. This really isn't working with the default forum scheme.

[Vyomesh2]

M+ Blackrock depths is fine. Don't even care, While you're at it have a M+ Deadmines.

M+ Wailing Caverns and someone misses The Jump.

[Ersula]

I don't even think they could add more elf races after this. What's left?

I mean, I don't think it's that many. It's just that Nightborne & Void elves are the only "cross-faction" allied races because they're based on a race from the other side. Darkfallen would be the first on their own side.

Troll Descendant Races: 6
Earthen Construct Races: 6
Alien Races: 4
Furries: 5

[Throren]

Please reconsider your colour choice. This really isn't working with the default forum scheme.

Oh thank god someone said it, I was wondering why all his posts were in an unreadable colour. Didn't even know there were other forum schemes

[Lahis]

I wonder based on that if the Dracthyr gender will be changeable in Barber shop

Any character can change gender in the barbershop.

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I don't even think they could add more elf races after this. What's left?

Naga with elf-like "visage" form.

[Chickat]

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?)

I mean they know that we can easily measure the scale of the zones. I don't think they are lying. Plus the zones apparently have more diverse biomes than past zones.

Its nearly as big as Northrend apparently, so lets just wait and see. No point in calling them liars until we see proof they are lying.

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I think people pointed out they showed a little bit of a desert (bronze) zone in the preview, that isn't the 4 zones (or the Drakthyr starter zone) so that looks like a future zone, ala Tanaan or Korthia.

Other question is why did they design an entire zone just for the Dracthyr to level up 2 levels? Wouldn't it have made more sense to to do the introduction sequence in a phased version of the other zones?

They said the Drakthyr zone will be used for all players at some point. So probably like the broken shore. Patch content, or maybe launch end game zone content. Who knows.

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I think the Dracthyr starting zone will be used like the Broken Shore was for a later patch.

Yep, what I've been thinking for a week now. We got a soft confirmation today.

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Please reconsider your colour choice. This really isn't working with the default forum scheme.

Too hard to read?

I have dark mode through chrome and it looks nice on darker backgrounds.

I was only doing it to differentiate between blizzards quotes and my thoughts.

[rhorle]

Too hard to read?

https://imgur.com/a/3334JoK

Really hard to read. Just bold the text in my opinion.