Dragonflight Alpha/Beta General Discussion

[Lady Atia]

Which is absurd, and exactly the kind of "Subverted expectations" that infected writing during that time like a terminal case of cancer.
The writers should have realized that N'zoth didnt make sense as the final boss for an expansion that starts with SYlvanas burning down Teldrassil in a dark mirror of Arthas burning Silvermoon.

I think the problem was that most of the devs just wanted to tell the N'Zoth story, but they got forced to add that weird pvp plot on top. And when Afrasiabi left it was already too late as stuff like the Sadfang Cinematics aswell as the pre-patch / first patch would already have been in production/finished. N'Zoth was clearly the endboss from day one (the Aszhara video made that clear, as did Alliance questing).

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We can only hope that being free of that creep will help the current writers to tell the story they want to tell. We can only judge once Dragonflight comes out, but it looks promising already =)

[Sondrelk]

I loved what they did with her in Shadowlands. It fixed the horrible mess of "Battle for Afrasiabi".

Sylvanas' redemption is beyond absurd.
Her actions in BfA place her above Garrosh in terms of evil, and with the added info of her sending everyone directly to satan it places her among the ranks of the most evil characters in WoW.
The fact that she never explains why exactly she decided to do this outside vague "I had to", or "Good is Bad" diatribes means that you never get any insight into her frame of mind. You just have to assume she did all this because the is an idiot who didnt know any better, which clashes horrendously with her constantly being hailed as this great strategic genius.
The fact that even literally grafting an innocent version of Sylvanas onto her didnt do much for her character speak volumes on how the writers realized how badly they fucked her up, potentially even scrapping her entire questline in 9.2.

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We just need to retcon 8.3 and BfA at least makes a little bit more sense. 8.2 would still feel a bit random, but could have set a great plot for a later expansion. But... we can't turn back time, unfortunately.

If we imagine 8.2.5 was actually 8.3 and we just did Siege of Orgrimmar again then it at least marginally tracks, though really only making BfA awful writing, not awful and schizophrenic.

[klaps_05]

Arcane: its now completely opposite - its all about gaining your mana back rather than spending it. Cool concept, will probably start to work in 11.0.

Fire: with 2 outlaw rogues, you can have permanent Combustion up. even without you would be looking at super high uptime. Any aoe build around flame patch is dogshit. SKB is dogshit to play on ST. Ignite still has to be spread manually instead of automatic. So either full gimmick combust spec (but boring because no extra power like BFA) or dead spec.

Frost: None of the paths actually define what u do best as all the talents are mixed up.

Overall: mostly lazy picks of shadowlands content for all mage specs. none of the FUN legion/bfa stuff added. hope they listen to feedback and redesign the tree completely rather than going live with this version of it.

[Nymrohd]

Or it was just a "subverted expectations red herring" thrown into the chaos by Afrasiabi as another middle-finger against everyone else. We know that he didn't even planned a cohesive ending for BfA according to devs (who btw basically all hated the idea of the BfA pre-patch when Afrasiabi forced it upon them).

Do you find Afrasiabi beneath your bed every night? Does he want to boogie?

[Lady Atia]

Sylvanas' redemption is beyond absurd.
Her actions in BfA place her above Garrosh in terms of evil, and with the added info of her sending everyone directly to satan it places her among the ranks of the most evil characters in WoW.
The fact that she never explains why exactly she decided to do this outside vague "I had to", or "Good is Bad" diatribes means that you never get any insight into her frame of mind. You just have to assume she did all this because the is an idiot who didnt know any better, which clashes horrendously with her constantly being hailed as this great strategic genius.
The fact that even literally grafting an innocent version of Sylvanas onto her didnt do much for her character speak volumes on how the writers realized how badly they fucked her up, potentially even scrapping her entire questline in 9.2.

And that's the problem - "her actions in BfA". BfA fucked up her character, not Shadowlands. I will always take 9.2.5 Sylvanas over whatever we got for BfA. The only other possibility could have been if BfA Sylvanas was a Dreadlord all the time with the real Sylvanas being a prisoner in Torghast. Not sure if people would have enjoyed that either though.

[Jaggler]

What the hell is with the Mage talent trees? Meteor, Blast Wave, Dragon's Breath in the class tree, Blast Wave competing with an AoE polymorph talent?

Frost looks okayish, Flurry becoming an instant is a great move, I hated that proc because it overlapped with Fingers of Frost so often. The bottom talents are all incredibly bland and boring though.

Fire is... just meh.

Arcane seems decent, I like the new cooldown. I think they did the best job here.
__________

Fire is just boring tbh. there is like one or two talents we haven't seen before? it's not bad per se, but it's just not something i am excited about either. it's just... there. None of the lower talents really excite me tbh. Kindling is basically a "must have" and neither Fire Frenzy nor SBK are really that exciting. i like the Phoenix Flames support though.

I don't understand why they released Paladin talents with Holy being completely untouched yet. Such a weird move.

Maybe just to allow some tank variance while dungeon testing? There are 5 healing specs available now, but only two tank specs. So getting holy done might just not have been a priority.

[Makorus]

What redemption lmao

[Makabreska]

Grimtotems in da house!



It seems that with these new talents they are trying to preserve all current meta builds. Not liking Sun Kings being back, on the fence with Arcane Harmony. Very specific play style, not sure how it will synergise with the rest of talents.

[Sondrelk]

I think the problem was that most of the devs just wanted to tell the N'Zoth story, but they got forced to add that weird pvp plot on top. And when Afrasiabi left it was already too late as stuff like the Sadfang Cinematics aswell as the pre-patch / first patch would already have been in production/finished. N'Zoth was clearly the endboss from day one (the Aszhara video made that clear, as did Alliance questing).

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We can only hope that being free of that creep will help the current writers to tell the story they want to tell. We can only judge once Dragonflight comes out, but it looks promising already =)

I doubt everyone had the same idea on BfA, mostly because it honestly feels like two entirely different expansion grafted onto eachother.
N'zoth being in the Azshara questline could easily just have been because they wanted to set up her character better. And the N'zoth stuff in Stormsong could also just have been foreshadowing for the full-on Old God expansion coming after, in the same way Legion didnt end with Azhara despite Azsuna being all about Naga, and both Xavius being a boss, and Tomb of Sargeras having an entire wing dedicated to Naga.

I honestly think that BfA was supposed to end with Siege of Stormwind or some equivalent faction war raid, and that sometime during development they just decided to scrap it and go for N'zoth instead.

Or maybe it really was as you said. Someone had way too much fun making the ultimate Faction War themed expansion without considering how this would clash horrendously with the planned ending, and noone decided to do anything about it.

[Jaggler]

People seem to mistake punishment for redemption.

Sylvanas barely got any redemption. She isn't hailed as a hero or even a neutral person. She helped fix up her mess and basically got a "k, thx", for it, before being sent to maw to collect souls for who knows how long. Her soul being "fixed" makes it even worse if anything because her whole being is being punished for something her broken version did.

[Nymrohd]

We just need to retcon 8.3 and BfA at least makes a little bit more sense. 8.2 would still feel a bit random, but could have set a great plot for a later expansion. But... we can't turn back time, unfortunately.

For me 8.2.5 would not have happened (or it would have been Mechagon to better pace content). 8.3 would have been the Horde besieging Stormwind in a raid similar to Dazar'alor with a couple of character deaths (maybe Nathanos and Genn?) and in the end, N'zoth comes to Stormwind Harbor, we barely manage to push him back; maybe Tyrande shows up and goes Night Warrior on his ass giving her an actual badass moment, Sylvanas betrays everyone and yeets to somewhere else and the factions enter a forced detente going into a new expansion that is entirely against N'zoth
Then we have a proper old god expac where the devs can capitalize on the horrors of the Black Empire to build faction unity and prepare us for the inevitability of cross faction gameplay. We end similarly to canon 8.3 with N'zoth getting blasted and Sylvanas breaking the helm and enter Shadowlands at that point.

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Sylvanas' redemption is beyond absurd.
Her actions in BfA place her above Garrosh in terms of evil, and with the added info of her sending everyone directly to satan it places her among the ranks of the most evil characters in WoW.
The fact that she never explains why exactly she decided to do this outside vague "I had to", or "Good is Bad" diatribes means that you never get any insight into her frame of mind. You just have to assume she did all this because the is an idiot who didnt know any better, which clashes horrendously with her constantly being hailed as this great strategic genius.
The fact that even literally grafting an innocent version of Sylvanas onto her didnt do much for her character speak volumes on how the writers realized how badly they fucked her up, potentially even scrapping her entire questline in 9.2.

Really she should have just been a Nihilist. This system is fucked, burn it all down. That would be a very understandable goal, especially given her PTSD. Sure it would not redeem her but it would explain her.
The added "I did it for love" with loved ones not sharing afterlives was just the bullshit redemption clause in her contract.

[Sondrelk]

And that's the problem - "her actions in BfA". BfA fucked up her character, not Shadowlands. I will always take 9.2.5 Sylvanas over whatever we got for BfA. The only other possibility could have been if BfA Sylvanas was a Dreadlord all the time with the real Sylvanas being a prisoner in Torghast. Not sure if people would have enjoyed that either though.

Her actions in BfA, compounded by what we see in Shadowlands.
The issue is the redemption arc in general really not working with what we are presented. Shadowlands should have at least attempted to have Sylvanas explain her position more clearly. At least then we would have some reason to believe she isnt a complete idiot.
Having her praise the virtues of free will doesnt really work when she is inside Satans prison listening to the tormented screams of those she killed.

In short, the issue with Sylvanas is that BfA made her evil, and Shadowlands made her the supreme dunce in Warcraft.
The writers probably could have salvaged it somehow by playing up Sylvanas being that idiot and that she had ended up way in over her head. But that would require actually writing her as someone flawed, which they didnt seem to be willing to do, having her be shown as this cool ranger at the end despite nothing being done to convince us she wouldnt immediately turn around and help the next supreme evil with a sob story.

[Nymrohd]

It seems that with these new talents they are trying to preserve all current meta builds. Not liking Sun Kings being back, on the fence with Arcane Harmony. Very specific play style, not sure how it will synergise with the rest of talents.

While I also dislike Sun King's, combined with Tempered Flames, Pyroclasm and Pyromanic it may lead to a very different playstyle.

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Her actions in BfA, compounded by what we see in Shadowlands.
The issue is the redemption arc in general really not working with what we are presented. Shadowlands should have at least attempted to have Sylvanas explain her position more clearly. At least then we would have some reason to believe she isnt a complete idiot.
Having her praise the virtues of free will doesnt really work when she is inside Satans prison listening to the tormented screams of those she killed.

In short, the issue with Sylvanas is that BfA made her evil, and Shadowlands made her the supreme dunce in Warcraft.
The writers probably could have salvaged it somehow by playing up Sylvanas being that idiot and that she had ended up way in over her head. But that would require actually writing her as someone flawed, which they didnt seem to be willing to do, having her be shown as this cool ranger at the end despite nothing being done to convince us she wouldnt immediately turn around and help the next supreme evil with a sob story.

Or they could have held their noses and wrapped up the existing story instead of the narrative contortion that happened between 8.3-9.2

[Lady Atia]

In other news, everyone else hoping for more colours for the dragonriding mounts? Would love to get brown, teal, darker blue, pink, purple and orange tones. The current six variants look great, but I had hoped for more, especially compared to the Dracthyr.

[Sondrelk]

In other news, everyone else hoping for more colours for the dragonriding mounts? Would love to get brown, teal, darker blue, pink, purple and orange tones. The current six variants look great, but I had hoped for more, especially compared to the Dracthyr.

[IMG]

I guess they wanted to just give the six main variants to begin with.
Hopefully at least they add some more variants like plagued, iron, or infinite later. Though if I were Blizzard i would have held those colours back as rewards from content later.

Or then again, maybe they want other variants to be distinct mounts, and not just have every single dragon mount in DF technically be the same one.

[Lady Atia]

I guess they wanted to just give the six main variants to begin with.
Hopefully at least they add some more variants like plagued, iron, or infinite later. Though if I were Blizzard i would have held those colours back as rewards from content later.

Or then again, maybe they want other variants to be distinct mounts, and not just have every single dragon mount in DF technically be the same one.

You could make quite a great HD plagued one if you can set the tone of the wings (which afaik you can't right now) using the white skin tone. An updated "titanic armoured" Proto would be cool indeed though!

[Lahis]

I don't understand why they released Paladin talents with Holy being completely untouched yet. Such a weird move.

For testing and feedback.

Literally said so in the patch notes:

In this week’s build, Paladins will have access to their new Class, Protection and Retribution talent trees. While we’re still working on the Holy specialization, we wanted to bring our other specialization trees online early so we can get community feedback as early as possible. The Holy tree currently in this week’s Alpha is the existing Shadowlands’ talent tree, in addition to containing all of their other abilities. This is placeholder and not indicative of their final tree, and we will be bringing the Holy tree to Alpha as soon as its ready.

It is as if we were in some kind of test build, where things get pushed out in somewhat unfinished state for testing purposes.

[Nyel]

For testing and feedback.

Literally said so in the patch notes:

In this week’s build, Paladins will have access to their new Class, Protection and Retribution talent trees. While we’re still working on the Holy specialization, we wanted to bring our other specialization trees online early so we can get community feedback as early as possible. The Holy tree currently in this week’s Alpha is the existing Shadowlands’ talent tree, in addition to containing all of their other abilities. This is placeholder and not indicative of their final tree, and we will be bringing the Holy tree to Alpha as soon as its ready.

It is as if we were in some kind of test build, where things get pushed out in somewhat unfinished state for testing purposes.

Thank you, I've read that and the explanation still makes not much sense in regards of all the other talent trees that are still missing. I guess they could do the same with all other classes yet they chose not to. And this is the first time they've released a class in this alpha that's only halfway done, so no idea why they felt the need to do it with Paladins.

[Jaggler]

Thank you, I've read that and the explanation still makes not much sense in regards of all the other talent trees that are still missing. I guess they could do the same with all other classes yet they chose not to. And this is the first time they've released a class in this alpha that's only halfway done, so no idea why they felt the need to do it with Paladins.

Well, they feel confident with Testing protection and retribution, but not with holy. The options would be holding back the class for another week or two or at least get feedback for the already available two specs. It's quite easy really.

[Nyel]

Well, they feel confident with Testing protection and retribution, but not with holy. The options would be holding back the class for another week or two or at least get feedback for the already available two specs. It's quite easy really.

So all of the other classes that are left aren't even as much done as Paladin at this point? Because if they all have at least one spec ready and the talent tree set up they could release all of them based on this answer, couldn't they?