Dragonflight Alpha/Beta General Discussion

[Makorus]

nah they said in a post that they would be bringing out a blogpost about Dracthyr customization 'soon'. Idk the post but i know I saw it

I looked through all the posts I could find from the reveal period and I found nothing about any blogposts.

It's just that its not the first time I've seen someone mention that Blizzard has yet to release a blogpost they promised when I don't remember anything at all about that.

[Gumble]

Yes the goofy wings have saved me 30 AUD. There is nothing in the epic edition that is appealing to me. Bless the maker.

Yea I was kinda hoping for good looking wings that would allow me to give my Tauren big black dragon wings...... instead it looks like horrible cosplay.

Guess saving me money is a good consoldation prize.

[Makabreska]

Why do you need datamined info before the game is released? Can you really not get by without news about World of Warcraft?

Just wait for the release its not that far off.

Nope. And it is kinda weird, when you come here to the game site and to the thread about it's next expansion asking us why do we need info.

Why do people watch movie trailers and then follow production info? Just wait for the movie 4Head.

[Santandame]

Nope. And it is kinda weird, when you come here to the game site and to the thread about it's next expansion asking us why do we need info.

Why do people watch movie trailers and then follow production info? Just wait for the movie 4Head.

There are many aspects of the game to discuss on this site and this thread in particular.

You don't need to get offended. Watching movie trailers and following production info is completely different to wanting to know everything about the content that's going to be in a game before it's released. Just wait for the finished content. I would say the same to someone actively seeking out spoilers for a film before it is released.

Now that is weird.

[Skildar]

Hence the traditional no alpha/alpha club banners with people getting upset they aren't in.

We have news on what we're getting this expansion. We don't need things spoiled via datamining.

Just be patient and wait for the game to release. Your survival does not hinge on World of Warcraft news.

your message is so condescending that you completely ignore what this thread is about. People liking and enjoying the game and happy to spread their enthusiasm, nothing about spoilers.
Your survival doesn't hinge on belittling other people.

[Santandame]

your message is so condescending that you completely ignore what this thread is about. People liking and enjoying the game and happy to spread their enthusiasm, nothing about spoilers.
Your survival doesn't hinge on belittling other people.

How is it belittling others?

I've just been told it's weird that I'm coming to a site where people want to discuss datamined info(spoilers) and now you are telling me this is a place to discuss the game in general - which is something I actually outlined myself in my previous post. So which is it?

This thread is about discussing current patch as well as future SPECULATION. Speculation and wishlists are different to spoilers etc.

Also, for what it's worth one of the more prominent contributors to this thread known for their past datamining has said they intend to step away from datamining as it tends to be spoiler heavy and isn't good for the health of the game as people get burnt out early on because they know and experience too much before the actual game is released.

Says it all really, doesn't it?

[Kiriastrasza]

Really hoping we get that Dracthyr customization breakdown soon that they teased over a month ago...

This, This is absolutely the more information I'm waiting for.

I have never been in an alpha or beta for WoW so i'll never hold my breath to get it.

[rhorle]

Nope. And it is kinda weird, when you come here to the game site and to the thread about it's next expansion asking us why do we need info.

To be fair datamining is a little over the top when it comes to WoW and there are a lot of people that go over board with it. Heck I remember when a wowinsider (or whatever they became) post about cause an internet whinefest so much that Blizzard had to do multiple PR posts about how it isn't true. It was the Karazhan breadcrumb quest drop from the mission table. It was reported by the blog to a datamined attunement and required to even start the dungeon. That was false.

Can good info come from data mining? Sure. Is it all going to be worthwhile? Nope. Dev posts can cover things a lot better from a design perspective.

[Skildar]

How is it belittling others?

I've just been told it's weird that I'm coming to a site where people want to discuss datamined info(spoilers) and now you are telling me this is a place to discuss the game in general - which is something I actually outlined myself in my previous post. So which is it?

This thread is about discussing current patch as well as future SPECULATION. Speculation and wishlists are different to spoilers etc.

Also, for what it's worth one of the more prominent contributors to this thread known for their past datamining has said they intend to step away from datamining as it tends to be spoiler heavy and isn't good for the health of the game as people get burnt out early on because they know and experience too much before the actual game is released.

Says it all really, doesn't it?

read again both messages I've quoted of you and you will see that they are just attacks on the people that participate to the thread. There is nothing more than this, all I can ask you is to do away with this kind of behaviour as it benefits no discussion.

[Santandame]

To be fair datamining is a little over the top when it comes to WoW and there are a lot of people that go over board with it. Heck I remember when a wowinsider (or whatever they became) post about cause an internet whinefest so much that Blizzard had to do multiple PR posts about how it isn't true. It was the Karazhan breadcrumb quest drop from the mission table. It was reported by the blog to a datamined attunement and required to even start the dungeon. That was false.

Can good info come from data mining? Sure. Is it all going to be worthwhile? Nope. Dev posts can cover things a lot better from a design perspective.

Dev posts would be much better than the datamining spoiling quests, story and the new aesthetics.

Loses its luster if you've seen everything before you've actually experienced it in game.

Just have alpha and beta access internal. Most people use it as an early access.

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read again both messages I've quoted of you and you will see that they are just attacks on the people that participate to the thread. There is nothing more than this, all I can ask you is to do away with this kind of behaviour as it benefits no discussion.

Thanks for responding to my arguments. People treating alpha/beta as an early access as opposed to testing shouldn't be the norm.

Detamining is also an adverse effect on the health of the game.

[Skildar]

To be fair datamining is a little over the top when it comes to WoW and there are a lot of people that go over board with it. Heck I remember when a wowinsider (or whatever they became) post about cause an internet whinefest so much that Blizzard had to do multiple PR posts about how it isn't true. It was the Karazhan breadcrumb quest drop from the mission table. It was reported by the blog to a datamined attunement and required to even start the dungeon. That was false.

Can good info come from data mining? Sure. Is it all going to be worthwhile? Nope. Dev posts can cover things a lot better from a design perspective.

It's less the datamining than the reporting that is bad. Wowhead and icyveins are both horrible journalistic sites that will create 2-3 news articles on a patchnote and many speculation (and often very wrong ones) on every piece of info they can get theirs hands on from datamining. They push people to come back to their site daily by harassing them with breadcrumbs of information and reminder of previous articles, etc. They encourage this negativity and over-analysis of nothingness

[Santandame]

It's less the datamining than the reporting that is bad. Wowhead and icyveins are both horrible journalistic sites that will create 2-3 news articles on a patchnote and many speculation (and often very wrong ones) on every piece of info they can get theirs hands on from datamining. They push people to come back to their site daily by harassing them with breadcrumbs of information and reminder of previous articles, etc. They encourage this negativity and over-analysis of nothingness

No, datamining is bad. How much datamining do you see of other major AAA games?

None.

We get trailers and maybe an occasional gameplay video which is very limited.

Its almost as if spoiling story and game environments isn't a good idea?

[boyzma]

How is it belittling others?

I've just been told it's weird that I'm coming to a site where people want to discuss datamined info(spoilers) and now you are telling me this is a place to discuss the game in general - which is something I actually outlined myself in my previous post. So which is it?

This thread is about discussing current patch as well as future SPECULATION. Speculation and wishlists are different to spoilers etc.

Also, for what it's worth one of the more prominent contributors to this thread known for their past datamining has said they intend to step away from datamining as it tends to be spoiler heavy and isn't good for the health of the game as people get burnt out early on because they know and experience too much before the actual game is released.

Says it all really, doesn't it?

Funny how people remember things differently. I remember said contributor to say they were stepping back for their own personal well being...nothing like what you're suggesting. So no, doesn't say what you're trying to imply it says.

[Santandame]

Funny how people remember things differently. I remember said contributor to say they were stepping back for their own personal well being...nothing like what you're suggesting. So no, doesn't say what you're trying to imply it says.

Their own personal wellbeing AS WELL as what you have quoted.

[Skildar]

No, datamining is bad. How much datamining do you see of other major AAA games?

None.

We get trailers and maybe an occasional gameplay video which is very limited.

Its almost as if spoiling story and game environments isn't a good idea?

I'm pretty sure it happens for a lot of games using public testing environments. Now I'm not a big fan of datamining especially when it involves story bits or even whole campaigns...
But I see no harm in testing classes, mechanics, features, etc. It should mostly be carried by QA but on many businesses you will rely on canary deployment to ensure stability and quality of product.

[Chickat]

More like next month. They're gonna give LKC chance to be tested before everyone leaves to go test DF.

They cant afford to wait till next month. Unless you mean early July. If you mean this time next month, that's really bad.

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I mean this is kinda true. Raids, dungeons and open world zones are the bare minimum of content in every expansion and we get that. But besides that there is absolutely nothing in Dragonflight. There is no progression system, there is no additional type of content, there's just nothing. The last expansion that had this little stuff was WoD and we know how that ended.

People will be bored to death by reaching max level and having no further progression anymore besides getting a higher gear score. People will abandon Dragonflight faster than any expansion before by just how shallow and devoid of "new" types of content it is. I know some are praising the back to the roots approach and it's good for the game, but not when there is exactly zero progress anymore. I am sure people that welcome the less-is-more-approach now will hate it after 4 weeks of DF because of how incredibly boring the expansion will be when there's no progress at all.

I'm still amazed how they're trying to sh*t out this expansion within the next 5 months when there has been zero communication about it in the last two months. Why were they helding back information when they are so far ahead? Something's not right. For sure it helps that the talent trees are 99% copy and paste from what we have now and Dragonriding is just restricted flying with a nice coat, but 5 months from now on until launch? Good luck with that.

I honestly think they have no intention of releasing this year. The suits wanted pre-orders started and the devs will have to delay it to Q1 2023.

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WoD had nothing in it by later patches. Not at launch. Dragonflight is poised to set the base game up, which it should. Story, exploration, collector drive with Dragon Riding (Arguably this is the progression system since you need to train your dragon to reach new, higher areas in the zones). Dungeons and raiding to keep people busy. If the expansion patch is basic, they can push out the .X content patches faster, and we could always see new systems in those too.

Thats true.

WoD had garrisons and 1 daily fill the bar quest. Dungeons were worthless at launch. World content was light and useless. It was do garrison stuff or raid/pvp.

DF will have no bp like WoD, but will at least have M+ and world quests to help it along. There is virtually zero chance DF could be as bad as WoD.

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Yes and I already told you days and weeks ago. Instead of copying stuff like Dragonriding from other games they should rather copy their horizontal progression and improve that.

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What? WoD has exactly the same stuff going as Dragonflight: dungeons (with different difficulties), open world elite zones and raids. As of now Dragonflight offers exactly the same kind of content as WoD and nothing more. I didn't count Garrisons because they're trivial, but if you're counting Dragonriding as "content", so can we count Garrisons.

By the way, they never added a completely new progression system in a patch. They iterated on their previous expansion feature systems and improved / tweaked them, but they never went out and said "hey, here we have a completely new system for you that we kept away from the expansion feature list just because we could".

Nah, WoD had heroic dungeons and challenge mode dungeons. Neither were end game content. WoD had 1 daily fill the bar quest in an elite area and you were done. DF will at minimum still have World quests and Mythic+ dungeons, + not have the massive dev time drain that garrisons and new player models caused. DF has no chance of being as bad as WoD Like I said a sec ago.

[Bindanda]

Can't wait for November 22nd for DF to drop

Isnt that Thanksgiving week? When does that fall this year?

[Chickat]

I gave you one quite simple idea last week how they easily could keep progression going: you can still earn talent points at max level. It will take way more time and effort to get one, but you still can get them. So you can unlock more and more talents over time. Or you can earn things that add stacks to existing talents, e.g. giving talent A an additional stack so you can put two points into said talent. Now you work towards getting stacks for some (basic) talents and getting more skill points to unlock them. There you have an easy way to keep progression going on max level instead of earning nothing at all (besides new gear and new cosmetics). Because you can be sure that people will instantly complain about the lack of progression the minute they reach max level in Dragonflight.

They did mention the idea of that in an interview as well as sockets in the talent tree like the Relic slots on Artifact weapons. You could earn a boost relic to boost the power or effects of a talent. If Divine Storm is a talent, you could socket a relic in that gives it the wave effect where it shoots out in a cone dealing half damage again etc. No I'm not going to find where the info is from, I just remember it being mentioned in an interview. We will see if they end up doing something like that, but IMO its a good idea.

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I don't even consider it a full class at this point, it's a mini-class.
Two spec classes are mini classes, just because they get unique customizations / race options, doesn't change the fact that these are still classes that could've easily had a third spec.

Demon hunter isn't a class?

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Also, from the wotlk classic design:



Didn't we find datamining strings for a living world feature for retail? Maybe they are gonna add classic EK and Kalimdor to retail during Dragonflight if they follow the same design pillar? With WotlK classic serving as the initial testbed for it - maybe with a toggle for classic and wotlk Naxx?

NGL, I forgot about the living world thing. I wonder what that is? Some unannounced feature? Some kind of scenario world quest system where world quests lead into other world quests like in Gw2?

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Animation names are shared between all branches of WoW, Living World could just as well end up being a Classic thing (although I personally feel that's unlikely). On that note, there's also some new skinning specific animation names that showed up that haven't had a use either yet.

New feature. Aoe skinning. Twirl around like a ballerina skinning everything in your path.

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I think an example of what you mean is plaguefall. It exists but barely accessed for world content, so I'll give you that, you have a point there. But stuff like Freehold, Halls of Atonement and Upper mechagon? Packed with world content and visited almost daily, outside of the dungeon. And yes we do have less zones than we used to. They are also smaller in size. Especially Legion, where everything was cramped on top of that as well. Some empty space needs to exist. The worlds need to breathe. Not every m² needs to have mobs or a building or a chest.

Luickly for you blizzard agrees. The zones are larger and have more negative space in the world. You have this poi here and this poi over there with 500 yards in between them. In the negative space is a big lake that lots of animals come to drink from. No quests there, just for zone immersion, plus as a skinner areas like that are awesome. Players are rarely there, so its a skinners paradise. I love little places like that, that have niche uses.

[rhorle]

I honestly think they have no intention of releasing this year. The suits wanted pre-orders started and the devs will have to delay it to Q1 2023.

That is silly. They will release this year and the suits wouldn't have forced them to say an incorrect time just to get pre-orders. They could have done pre-orders with out giving a release time frame (or even date). It is crazy the conspiracies people invent.

[Chickat]

That is silly. They will release this year and the suits wouldn't have forced them to say an incorrect time just to get pre-orders. They could have done pre-orders with out giving a release time frame (or even date). It is crazy the conspiracies people invent.

We will see. In some counties you have to have a release date for them to be allowed to start pre-orders.