Dragonflight Alpha/Beta General Discussion

[rhorle]

He does say "Some of them are soulbound. I can include those materials". So not "I can include some materials". Just after that they say they don't want people to just be buying items with gold. The entire point seems to be to effectively let them drop crafting reagents as additional loot that requires a social component and engages the crafting system.

Blizzard has stated you can supply only some materials and that collaborative crafting will exist for rare materials. It would defeat the purpose of being able to provide some of your own items if it doesn't work for the higher up crafting things as they also said that you can have soulbound items crafted through the work order system.

From the deep dive write up on mmo-champion https://www.mmo-champion.com/content...-System-Revamp :

You can browse any of the recipes that can be crafted, pick the one you want, and include some or all of the reagents needed for the recipe, including ones that only you can get your hands on.

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Yep, they do not want people buying items with gold, they want casual gamers to hire raiders to craft them raid drop patterns. That is another step inbetween and also gives a lot of profit to the elite. The target audience Ion likes the most.

So the same as now with BoE items. This isn't a system that favors the elite and Blizzard has never said that raids will be the only source of materials. It also ignores how LFR will likely reward any BoP raid item.

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Good old gatekeeping. Now also includes money making. For both the raiders and the blizzard token sales department.

Anybody can raid. There is no gate keeping involved since materials will have quality levels and Blizzard can easily have different tiers to craft different raid level rewards.

[Nymrohd]

I think people paying regularly for Hearthstone or Diablo:Immortal will just buy stuff directly from shop, whale won't waste time to farm gold in WoW. Beside one-time spikes, WoW token price rise when:

- people have no use of their gold (not everybody raids) and buy game time or shop mounts with it, just look how price was low during BfA when we had really good gold sink (brutosaur)

- people in less developed countries (it's not like 13 euro is a lot, but there are places when it's completely trivial amount and places it's not) paying with gold for gametime, recently war forced Blizzard to do good thing and introduced local currencies for Ukraine/Kazachstan/Georgia, but also Turkey for some reason, which gives me hope more currencies with more stable and affordable price will follow.

Whales if anything lower wow token price. And when we have good gold sink they desire, it cause deflation. Imo game economy would be a lot better if all shop mounts/pets were transfered into vendor mounts for gold. But that also likely would lower interest.

Turkey has been suffering from massive inflation well before the war, plenty of players had issues paying in Euro.

I do wonder how they never went for some Battle.net shop currency to go full casino

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So the same as now with BoE items. This isn't a system that favors the elite and Blizzard has never said that raids will be the only source of materials. It also ignores how LFR will likely reward any BoP raid item. You just like to turn anything into hate to insult the devs.

I do wonder how the ilvl part will work. Seems that the items will be craftable at different ilvls/qualities. Which could lock ilvl behind higher level difficulties but also resolve it in any number of ways; could be timegated crafting reagents like it was all the way till WoD (crafted with cooldowns or obtained through specific WQs like Legion). I think it might even be from the Vault (use the Vault currency to buy certain crafting reagents).

[Dracullus]

Turkey has been suffering from massive inflation well before the war, plenty of players had issues paying in Euro.

I do wonder how they never went for some Battle.net shop currency to go full casino.

Jesus, you're right, we panic about 10% and they have like 50%. But that also show Blizz is willing to introduce currency for economical reasons, in Ukraine/Georgia/Kazachstan case it was to allow them p(l)aying at all.

[Nyel]

Is the main feature of the expansion the Evoker? I always thought the main feature of any expansion is . . .the expansion? You know the Dragon Isles continent? That's why I am buying the expac. The only time a feature really seemed impressive enough to feel even bigger than the actual content was MAYBE Legion with the artifact system/class halls (which by itself provided as much content as at least a couple of zones). If anything else would be considered a main feature it would be something that affects the largest number of players and that would be the full talent revamp on a level we have not had since MoP (though to be fair, Legion did effectively fully revamp almost every spec in the game).

Main feature = the thing that sells (or is trying to sell) the expansion. I'd say Dracthyr Evoker is exactly that, as were Allied Races in BfA and Covenants in Shadowlands.

So no, the continent is just where the expansion takes place, it's not a feature. A continent (aka new zones) is part of every expansion and therefore expected and shouldn't be counted as a feature itself.

[Nymrohd]

Main feature = the thing that sells (or is trying to sell) the expansion. I'd say Dracthyr Evoker is exactly that, as were Allied Races in BfA and Covenants in Shadowlands.

So no, the continent is just where the expansion takes place, it's not a feature. A continent (aka new zones) is part of every expansion and therefore expected and shouldn't be counted as a feature itself.

What on earth? I am not buying an expansion to play a new class, I am buying an expansion to play the new quests and instances in the new zones. That's the primary feature. That is what is always listed first, the continent itself.

[Lahis]

AFAIR, only advertising was banned, and boosting is still allowed. Or did i miss a recent change?

How do you boost if you can't advertise and transfer gold between realms?

[Nymrohd]

How do you boost if you can't advertise and transfer gold between realms?

You can advertise on a third party location (site or discord). As for transfering gold between realms, that one is interesting. You could transfer it via commodities.

[Lady Atia]

What on earth? I am not buying an expansion to play a new class, I am buying an expansion to play the new quests and instances in the new zones. That's the primary feature. That is what is always listed first, the continent itself.

Maybe different people can see different things as important features. You are both right and wrong. A new continent, a new class, new talents, new profession revamp + gear, dragonriding + customizable drakes, new class/race combos - these are all primary features.

And no, Torghast and Island Expeditions are not suddenly "more features" than anything else, kekW.

[Nymrohd]

Maybe different people can see different things as important features. You are both right and wrong. A new continent, a new class, new talents, new profession revamp + gear, dragonriding + customizable drakes, new class/race combos - these are all primary features.

And no, Torghast and Island Expeditions are not suddenly "more features" than anything else, kekW.

Still, the most substantial amount of content by far given in any expansion IS the new continent. What different people deem as important doesn't change that fact. The lion's share of effort to create any expansion is creating the continent and instances and populating them with mobs, questlines and events. A new class or race is a scale of magnitude less work.

[Dracullus]

Still, the most substantial amount of content by far given in any expansion IS the new continent. What different people deem as important doesn't change that fact. The lion's share of effort to create any expansion is creating the continent and instances and populating them with mobs, questlines and events. A new class or race is a scale of magnitude less work.

New raids, dungeons and zones are not content, duh. Btw, next expansion you will see why Blizzard was pushing borrowed power so hard despite complains after Legion. When in 11.0 Blizzard introduce only new talent row (can't do more if they want keep this system for at least 3-4 expansions), same idiots will scream how expansion has nothing to offer for your character power.

[Nymrohd]

New raids, dungeons and zones are not content, duh. Btw, next expansion you will see why Blizzard was pushing borrowed power so hard despite complains after Legion. When in 11.0 Blizzard introduce only new talent row (can't do more if they want keep this system for at least 3-4 expansions), same idiots will scream how expansion has nothing to offer for your character power.

Please tell me this is sarcasm. Because some people are saying exactly this and mean it . . .

[Lady Atia]

New raids, dungeons and zones are not content, duh. Btw, next expansion you will see why Blizzard was pushing borrowed power so hard despite complains after Legion. When in 11.0 Blizzard introduce only new talent row (can't do more if they want keep this system for at least 3-4 expansions), same idiots will scream how expansion has nothing to offer for your character power.

Let them scream? Character power should only come from talents and gear. Everything else should be cosmetic. Just give me housing in 11.0 aswell as a visual revamp for the old zones aswell as lots of mounts and I'm happy.

[Sunge]

I only hope that they include equipment templates like other mmos like Guild Wars 2 have. The equipment manager that wow has right now sucks.

[Makabreska]

New raids, dungeons and zones are not content, duh. Btw, next expansion you will see why Blizzard was pushing borrowed power so hard despite complains after Legion. When in 11.0 Blizzard introduce only new talent row (can't do more if they want keep this system for at least 3-4 expansions), same idiots will scream how expansion has nothing to offer for your character power.

I mean, who gives a crap about those few imbeciles? Literally few days after DF reveal we got some people screaming "Where is Toghast? Where are borrowed powers? Why the zones look so bland? Who is the main villain?". You will always get these, and paying any attention to them is not the way to develop a game.

[Nymrohd]

Let them scream? Character power should only come from talents and gear. Everything else should be cosmetic. Just give me housing in 11.0 aswell as a visual revamp for the old zones aswell as lots of mounts and I'm happy.

To be fair, when the artifact system was introduced back in Legion, I don't think it was ever explicit that everything would be lost by the expansion's end.

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I mean, who gives a crap about those few imbeciles? Literally few days after DF reveal we got some people screaming "Where is Toghast? Where are borrowed powers? Why the zones look so bland? Who is the main villain?". You will always get these and paying any attention to them is not the way to develop a game.

I will say that I'd like a feature like Island Expeditions or Torghast but they didn't really manage to nail it yet. I mean if we had the amazing variety of Island Expeditions (both with the number of Islands and the possible mobs) combined with their robust reward system but with gameplay akin to Torghast (including the ability to play solo), I'd spend a lot of time there. Even more if there was some gear involved if you went for the more challenging version.

[Nyel]

What on earth? I am not buying an expansion to play a new class, I am buying an expansion to play the new quests and instances in the new zones. That's the primary feature. That is what is always listed first, the continent itself.

I'm pretty sure if you would start a poll on that topic, only a minority would consider new zones a feature.

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Please tell me this is sarcasm. Because some people are saying exactly this and mean it . . .

Raids, dungeons and zones are content and not features.

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Btw, next expansion you will see why Blizzard was pushing borrowed power so hard despite complains after Legion. When in 11.0 Blizzard introduce only new talent row (can't do more if they want keep this system for at least 3-4 expansions), same idiots will scream how expansion has nothing to offer for your character power.

I agree here.

I think borrowed power itself wasn't bad. The problem was the constant reset for borrowed power systems. If they would have developed something with staying power instead of three different systems for three expansions the situation would be entirely different.

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To be fair, when the artifact system was introduced back in Legion, I don't think it was ever explicit that everything would be lost by the expansion's end.

Yep, this. Pretty sure people were not expecting to lose everything after Legion. This was the huge shock that came with borrowed power each and every time. And that's the reason why the first weeks / months of an expansion from pre-patch to the first patch usually feel awful when it comes to character progression. You started at 100%, where then brought down to 0% and slowly tried to climb back to 100% throughout the next patches. Horrible experience. Legion -> BfA was way worse than BfA -> Shadowlands though.

[Lady Atia]

To be fair, when the artifact system was introduced back in Legion, I don't think it was ever explicit that everything would be lost by the expansion's end.

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I will say that I'd like a feature like Island Expeditions or Torghast but they didn't really manage to nail it yet. I mean if we had the amazing variety of Island Expeditions (both with the number of Islands and the possible mobs) combined with their robust reward system but with gameplay akin to Torghast (including the ability to play solo), I'd spend a lot of time there. Even more if there was some gear involved if you went for the more challenging version.

And that's why the artifacts still worked out as the best "borrowed power system" - simply because we didn't know until the end that it was borrowed power. Originally people thought it was just the new norm going forward, hence you had all the hype. Than BfA showed us that Borrowed Power would be the new thing each expansion and it felt bad. Covenants f.e. .... when they were announced we already knew that we would leave them behind once 10.0 hits. Why should anyone be invested in it knowing it has a date of expire on it? They really need to continue to focus on evergreen stuff that stays relevant forever if they want to get people back.

[Dracullus]

Please tell me this is sarcasm. Because some people are saying exactly this and mean it . . .

Do I really have to?

I mean, who gives a crap about those few imbeciles? Literally few days after DF reveal we got some people screaming "Where is Toghast? Where are borrowed powers? Why the zones look so bland? Who is the main villain?". You will always get these and paying any attention to them is not the way to develop a game.

Depends. If Asmon (or somene who earned influence over years) agree with some imbecile, it affects whole community and put pressure on Blizzard. Just look at "make loot matter" thing in 9.0. From minor things I remember how I was making fun of Asmon complaing about not looting staff and daggers on his warrior main. Few days ago I leveled new char and saw leather armor drops from rares on my DK... xD.

Thankfully Blizzard didn't listen to other genius ideas like removing LFR.

I agree here.

I think borrowed power itself wasn't bad. The problem was the constant reset for borrowed power systems. If they would have developed something with staying power instead of three different systems for three expansions the situation would be entirely different.

10.0 will be more praised than 8.0/9.0, but this will come with cost in the future. 8.0 was horrible, but 7.0 and 9.0 had clear and consistent path. Both made different mistakes though - Legion ultra grind, SL giving everything like candies, making whole system dead weight.

Good solution would be grind, but account-wide grind and making these powers always useful in the future - let's say artifact/legiondaries always useful for mage tower, legion m+ and timewalking raids. But now their hands are tied. We will need at least one full expansion complaining about "no progression". I expect it very soon into 11.0, during SL people forgot about all good changes in like 5 minutes.

[Nymrohd]

10.0 will be more praised than 8.0/9.0, but this will come with cost in the future. 8.0 was horrible, but 7.0 and 9.0 had clear and consistent path. Both made different mistakes though - Legion ultra grind, SL giving everything like candies, making whole system dead weight.

Good solution would be grind, but account-wide grind and making these powers always useful in the future - let's say artifact/legiondaries always useful for mage tower, legion m+ and timewalking raids. But now their hands are tied. We will need at least one full expansion complaining about "no progression". I expect it very soon into 11.0, during SL people forgot about all good changes in like 5 minutes.

Well BfA has different systems in each patch which was . . . special. I still think Essences are the best system though, mostly because it allowed for a lot of horizontal progression. But then again, Essences are the closest system to talents.

[Lady Atia]

Well BfA has different systems in each patch which was . . . special. I still think Essences are the best system though, mostly because it allowed for a lot of horizontal progression. But then again, Essences are the closest system to talents.

Essences? You mean the weird things that didn't even gave us anything for customization (unlike Artifact Weapons which atleast became transmog options), which will prolly stop working in timewalking in 1-2 expansions down the line? Yeah. Totally great system that wasn't a total waste of ressources.