Dragonflight Alpha/Beta General Discussion

[Catastrophy349]

Oh, boy. Here we go. 10.0!!!

[Nymrohd]

It tells more about you going to the length to post to call my post "bitching" than anything. The concern in my post is valid, unlike your bitching. Isn't this whole thread about speculation? Are you passing around some approval rating on what players may or not be concerned/speculate about? Do you not think that having the focus on whether the new UI will be reliable is more important than your petty nagging?

Your concern is not valid because it is baseless

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Oh, boy. Here we go. 10.0!!!

They uploaded a new 10.0 build?

[Nyel]

Honestly I am not sure what to think about whoever leaked those during the NDA. On one hand the right thing would be for them to be found and at the very least banned from any future Blizzard (or even MS) press event (if not held in breach which may include fines or more). On the other hand, maybe Blizzard wanted things leaked to keep the hype up? And it's not like the leaker profited from the leak since they did not get any traffic from it. Still feels unfair to all the people who also have access to this information and are respecting their contracts.

So no, I don't want more leaked images because that may well mean that Blizzard will be more constrained in future press events and we end up getting less information instead.

Why would this be needed apparently two days before Alpha? And why wouldn't they just generate hype by releasing a blog for Evoker or new talent trees? I really do not think that Blizzard enforced this, but they might be content with it. Whoever leaked this will not be part of any disclosed testing anymore though because it was done so foolishly.

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They uploaded a new 10.0 build?

No. Just the usual 1000% hype frenzy.

[Trumpcat]

Your concern is not valid because it is baseless

It is valid, because it addresses an indication that the UI clutter is being hidden rather than being solved.

[Nymrohd]

Why would this be needed apparently two days before Alpha? And why wouldn't they just generate hype by releasing a blog for Evoker or new talent trees? I really do not think that Blizzard enforced this, but they might be content with it. Whoever leaked this will not be part of any disclosed testing anymore though because it was done so foolishly.

Oh yeah I did not mean they made someone leak. Just that they might be unconcerned if someone leaked a few images because more hype for their product and nothing problematic was shown. Now if the leaker had given us a few screenshots of some Cyberpunk-level glitch things would be different. But we got a couple of screenshots showing beautiful environment and a fairly sleek UI.

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It is valid, because it addresses an indication that the UI clutter is being hidden rather than being solved.

What indication? That's why I am calling it baseless. We are seeing a snapshot of the UI of an idle character.

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No. Just the usual 1000% hype frenzy.

I remember back when we just spammed memes which was far more fun than this . . .
But people complained and the mods stopped the fun. They should go work for Blizzard.

We did not even have a Subway roster of Dragonflight characters Just the train.

[Varodoc]

Perhaps it should be reminded around here that the orcs can claim they are "omggg different!!! from the old horde!!!" all they want, it won't ever change the fact that their capital was named after the war criminal and dictator of the Old Horde who condoned, for instance, the raping of Alexstrasza and her brood.

Going with your logic we should condemn all germans, or in recent times all russians, right?

No one says they should forget about it, but hating people who just happen to be from the same nation is bullshit.

If the Germans named their capital after Hitler? Yes.

That it doesn't bother Alexstrasza that the capital of the Horde is named after the butcherer who weaponized her brood is just another case of Horde white-washing.

[Grimmy17]

Morning everyone

Seems we've descended into a rather odd topic whilst I was at work... Perhaps best to get back to the speculation of the thread rather than the back and forth about the past!

If Alpha comes out tomorrow is the usual expectation that we would see a public-facing build today or could it all be under wraps fully until Alpha?

[Albertillo]

Looks like in one day you guys have written 100 pages. Anything important happened? Haven't seen anything in the front page

[Catastrophy349]

Oh, boy. Here we go. 10.0!!!

I wrote this because the chat was becoming toxic: focusing on political/historical banter versus WoW 10.0 stuff.

[Nymrohd]

Morning everyone

Seems we've descended into a rather odd topic whilst I was at work... Perhaps best to get back to the speculation of the thread rather than the back and forth about the past!

If Alpha comes out tomorrow is the usual expectation that we would see a public-facing build today or could it all be under wraps fully until Alpha?

I don't think anyone knows. Blizzard does seem to make an effort to encrypt more. In the past yes, I'd expect a build that is fully dataminable. Sure what would be playable would be limited but within 3-4 days there would be private sandboxes running that let you explore the entire continent and probably all the early raids and dungeons, a massive amount of datamined models, gear, quest lines and for those who are willing to delve deeper, tons of spells and items that could hide even more information.
I think some of this will still be true; we will get sandboxes so screenshots of everything will be available fast (and if you are willing to look for it, you will be able to fly around the zone and explore). We will probably get a lot of models but perhaps some of the more crucial models will stay encrypted (things like models that show specific characters transforming like with Ysera corruption, dungeon and raid bosses). I also think we'll still get the items and spells. And I hope we do not get the strings with quest lines for reasons I've explained multiple times in this thread.

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I wrote this because the chat was becoming toxic: focusing on political/historical banter versus WoW 10.0 stuff.

I would like WoW lore to work. I used to be passionate about it, now I am at most cynical and mildly interested. For the Lore to work we need it to make sense. Denying reality rarely helps a world make sense (unless you are doing Call of Cthulhu!).

[Trumpcat]

...

What indication? That's why I am calling it baseless. We are seeing a snapshot of the UI of an idle character.
...

The indication is that the clutter is there, hidden with the arrow. And the base of the concern is the current default UI which is strongly lacking. Therefore, I hope, as I said in my post, that we will see the combat information relied to the player. It is a hope, because we don't know at the moment whether or not it will be. The issue I have isn't with the screenshot in particular, but with the UI redesign - will it be sufficient, can we get rid of UI addons? It's funny how you and that other poster jumped on my post for the screenshot being an idle player, which I noted, instead of its substance which is the UI redesign.

[Nebron]

Looks like in one day you guys have written 100 pages. Anything important happened? Haven't seen anything in the front page

Nothing in particular, 2 screenshots from alpha leaked (1st is a Dracthyr in human form in the main city, the other one is a hunter in a new zone, possibly Azure Span) both showing the new UI. There's a debate whether NDA has been broken by someone who got early access vs. Blizzard purposeful, controlled leak to keep the hype up - my money in on the latter.

Apart from that, some hype and expectations. And some politics obviously...

[Catastrophy349]

Tin-Foil Hat time!

What IF the Dragon Isles are SO large and designed with a ton of outdoor content?

(For the sake of having fun at 6:36 in the morning, please don’t dismiss this “idea”. Let’s discuss!!)

[Nymrohd]

Tin-Foil Hat time!

What IF the Dragon Isles are SO large and designed with a ton of outdoor content?

(For the sake of having fun at 6:36 in the morning, please don’t dismiss this “idea”. Let’s discuss!!)

Dismiss? We know the Dragons Isles are huge. They are larger than Northrend and Northrend had tons of dead space and was still huge. Modern wow does not do dead space. Even if an area is not constantly active, there will still be a reason for it to be there; an easter egg, a treasure, a small event. We know it was designed to interact with dragon riding and we know there is a separate team doing world content. If it doesn't have a lot of it I would be surprised in a very bad way.

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The indication is that the clutter is there, hidden with the arrow. And the base of the concern is the current default UI which is strongly lacking. Therefore, I hope, as I said in my post, that we will see the combat information relied to the player. It is a hope, because we don't know at the moment whether or not it will be. The issue I have isn't with the screenshot in particular, but with the UI redesign - will it be sufficient, can we get rid of UI addons? It's funny how you and that other poster jumped on my post for the screenshot being an idle player, which I noted, instead of its substance which is the UI redesign.

I get what you are saying but we don't really learn much from that screenshot. For one thing, the UI should be modular. Standard practice would also mean that the base UI should be reasonably close to what we currently have so the transition is less jarring. I share your hope that much of what is widely done with weak auras now will be available through the modules that make up the new UI system. But I still don't think a screenshot allows us to make any judgments or really furthers speculation. All we get from it is that there will be effectively be an option to filter or collapse the buff bar.

[horizon nowhere]

Morning everyone

Seems we've descended into a rather odd topic whilst I was at work... Perhaps best to get back to the speculation of the thread rather than the back and forth about the past!

If Alpha comes out tomorrow is the usual expectation that we would see a public-facing build today or could it all be under wraps fully until Alpha?

I'm gonna go with encrypted until tomorrow when this nda/embargo is probably up but I would love to be wrong!

[Albertillo]

Nothing in particular, 2 screenshots from alpha leaked (1st is a Dracthyr in human form in the main city, the other one is a hunter in a new zone, possibly Azure Span) both showing the new UI. There's a debate whether NDA has been broken by someone who got early access vs. Blizzard purposeful, controlled leak to keep the hype up - my money in on the latter.

Apart from that, some hype and expectations. And some politics obviously...

Thank you very much！Didn't know about the screenshots! I'll look for them!

[Nymrohd]

The thing is, the influencers and streamers cannot in any way convey the amount of information that datamining will. If they are not doing a public build soon after then it's effectively just an extra round of interviews. Seems like a half-decent replacement for the Blizzcon experience of actually playing demos of the game on the convention floor.

Which is fine. We will still get a lot more information. But it would also mean there is little reason to get a public build soon after and would probably mean either no public alpha and straight to beta sometime in August.

[Catastrophy349]

Dismiss? We know the Dragons Isles are huge. They are larger than Northrend and Northrend had tons of dead space and was still huge. Modern wow does not do dead space. Even if an area is not constantly active, there will still be a reason for it to be there; an easter egg, a treasure, a small event. We know it was designed to interact with dragon riding and we know there is a separate team doing world content. If it doesn't have a lot of it I would be surprised in a very bad way.

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I get what you are saying but we don't really learn much from that screenshot. For one thing, the UI should be modular. Standard practice would also mean that the base UI should be reasonably close to what we currently have so the transition is less jarring. I share your hope that much of what is widely done with weak auras now will be available through the modules that make up the new UI system. But I still don't think a screenshot allows us to make any judgments or really furthers speculation. All we get from it is that there will be effectively be an option to filter or collapse the buff bar.

That’s my point. I’ve been the one preaching and reiterating on the whole “I’ve watched all interviews, there’s an entire team working on outdoor content.” I was asking what kinds of content could they create? Dragonriding is certainly going to take form in some way (so excited for that), but what else?

[Nymrohd]

That’s my point. I’ve been the one preaching and reiterating on the whole “I’ve watched all interviews, there’s an entire team working on outdoor content.” I was asking what kinds of content could they create? Dragonriding is certainly going to take form in some way (so excited for that), but what else?

We don't know much about the story tbh which really limits what we can predict. We could have small elemental invasions taking over areas of the world that you need to beat back. We can have profession related events like with Legion fishing and MoP cooking. We could have something like a lot of world bosses instead of just one per week which spawn more randomly, have enough health so people can travel from the capital and still get to them and drop important professional reagents. We could have larger events like rebuilding specific locations in different zones by defending them from attacks, contributing profession crafts and gathering supplies.

[Nyel]

Well, they just would have to look at Guild Wars 2 and its event system which they made even bigger in later expansions. Map meta events would work really well in WoW. Besides that? Hardly anything they can do. They won't reinvent the wheel.