Dragonflight Alpha/Beta General Discussion

[Khaza-R]

The one thing that does disappoint me is that we have not had the soundtrack release yet this close to release, like what gives? Makes me worried that they might outsource royalty free.

Both David Arkenstone and Neal Acree have confirmed they've worked on some of the music for Dragonflight. So I doubt there's going to be a drop in quality at all.

[Dracullus]

??? Legion Invasions started way before you could play Demon Hunters. The full 6 weeks if I can remember. I leveled up about 10 characters, just through invasions.

They probably intended the Dragonflight event to be active right away, but moved to the following date because the playtest was a huge disaster. Lots of games crashing.

Well, as usual you are wrong.

https://www.wowhead.com/news/the-leg...july-19-254192

[AOL Instant Messenger]

Forums, both official and unofficial, tend to be aggregations of criticism and, well, general negativity in my experience. Mostly I think that's just an unfortunate quirk of the human condition as opposed to a reflection on the overall player base or anything, though. When people are happy or genuinely enjoying themselves they don't tend to provide much in the way of feedback beyond vague statements like "it's good," or "I like it." But unhappy people tend to be voluble and go on at length about what's irritating them, and provide a lot of feedback compared to happy people - not all of it constructive, and a lot of not very helpful, either. Feedback is always a QA nightmare for developers and engineers because if the product is generally good you'll get a drip feed of middling comments which can inadvertently hide flaws or issues in your work that aren't often encountered. And if it's got problems you'll get a torrent of feedback from your users, so much so that you'll need a serious filter to get much in the way of actionable or useful info.

Forums more or less reflect this trait in people, and while there are exceptions to the rule, they're mostly just that: exceptions. I don't take forum communities as a reflection of the game community directly, as they tend to have their own subcultures and their own ways of viewing the subject of whatever the forum is about. Official forums, by and large, tend to be worse than fan forums for negativity as well, but both generally skew negative (again, in my experience).

Well, I suppose that is a fair statement. However, I am still concerned that in the instance of a backlash against general negativity in any capacity we could see a sort of stifling of legitimate criticism, as well. It is absolutely true that WoW's userbase in general has a habit of saying "no, I hate it, bad" without providing any further elaboration and often completely contradictory to prior claims made on an individual level. There is, of course, plenty of garbage to shift through, but I do think that there are times where public outcry does reflect a problem—see all the fairly-warranted bitching about the Nightborne designs, for instance. Those were hideous, I think. Similarly, everybody bitched and moaned about Covenants as a concept. Initially it was your standard forum shlock, as no data had come in regarding how Covenants actually played, but once the time came around people ended up with a fairly good understanding of the issues with the system and its design flaws.

I suppose it is partially the caustic nature of such complaints that serve to prevent Blizzard from taking them to heart, but just as much I feel like there's a degree to which they can be inattentive. Then again, I suppose there's not much use in being concerned since MMO-Champion is a user forum, as opposed to an official forum which the developers are more inclined to watch and read—this is probably why all the leaks and whatnot happen here. As a result, any feedback given here tends to be serve only as an object of further discussion among other players. Without much in the way of Blizzard oversight, inadequate feedback is less of a problem than it would be otherwise.

Still, your point is completely correct. It is admittedly true that positive feedback tends to be substantially less detailed than negative feedback, and that negative feedback is often more caustic than constructive on the internet, though I have seen a good degree of decent general feedback being given online, as well.

[Sondrelk]

https://www.icy-veins.com/forums/top...-tree-bonuses/

I still don't get why Soar cannot just be the Running Wild equivalent to Dragonriding. They talk about giving it its own niche, but it's still a downgrade over just using a regular dragonriding mount. The only benefit I can see is that your hitbox is smaller.

[Dracullus]

I still don't get why Soar cannot just be the Running Wild equivalent to Dragonriding. They talk about giving it its own niche, but it's still a downgrade over just using a regular dragonriding mount. The only benefit I can see is that your hitbox is smaller.

Doesn't it work in old content? I would say its pretty good advantage.

[Rageonit]

Doesn't it work in old content? I would say its pretty good advantage.

It does. Also one can assume that since it works everywhere, it MAY also work in future expansions. And if those expansions don't have any form of flying on release day, it will be indeed a great advantage.
Still, the perks work only in DF content, so even if Drachyrs will be able to Soar in future expansions, it will be on a longish CD.

[Lahis]

It does. Also one can assume that since it works everywhere, it MAY also work in future expansions. And if those expansions don't have any form of flying on release day, it will be indeed a great advantage.
Still, the perks work only in DF content, so even if Drachyrs will be able to Soar in future expansions, it will be on a longish CD.

Soar only works in areas where you can fly. Any future expansion with limited flying at launch will not have soar available before pathfinder comes in.

[Rageonit]

Soar only works in areas where you can fly. Any future expansion with limited flying at launch will not have soar available before pathfinder comes in.

Way to shatter my hopes!

[Lady Atia]

Soar only works in areas where you can fly. Any future expansion with limited flying at launch will not have soar available before pathfinder comes in.

After all the positivity around dragonriding I would be surprised if we ever get an expansion with limited flying at launch again. That said, we would also have thought that artifact weapons would be a thing going forwards ...

[Sondrelk]

After all the positivity around dragonriding I would be surprised if we ever get an expansion with limited flying at launch again. That said, we would also have thought that artifact weapons would be a thing going forwards ...

Artifacts would have required significant effort to reproduce in each expansion. At retooling the artifact talents every single expansion, not to mention the question of whether to never give new weapon appearances based on location again.

Dragonriding just requires resetting the talents when you go to a new area.

[Valysar]

I mean the Legion prepatch came out well before DH's and Legion invasions happened. IIRC it was released Mid July 2016 and DH's and invasions didn't happen till like Mid August lol. So its pretty standard yo.

The one thing that does disappoint me is that we have not had the soundtrack release yet this close to release, like what gives? Makes me worried that they might outsource royalty free.

Yeah no music right now is weird

[Lazarel]

Yeah no music right now is weird

Yep
Either its very good and they keep it a surprise closer to launch.... or its very bad

[Sondrelk]

Yep
Either its very good and they keep it a surprise closer to launch.... or its very bad

Alternatively they just don't have a reason to add it. Doubt anyone in the Blizzard offices are heavily pushing the importance of adding music to the Beta, especially compared to the PTR adding the login screen music.
It is afterall well over a month until it becomes important to have music available.

[Makorus]

I mean, why would they even add the music to the beta?

It's not like it needs testing. Beta is a beta, not early access lol

[Nymrohd]

I mean, why would they even add the music to the beta?

It's not like it needs testing. Beta is a beta, not early access lol

You think there can be no feedback on music? Obviously even if there is it is far too late to fix anything but people can absolutely give feedback on music and the community is large enough to have people with the expertise required to give constructive feedback.

[Aucald]

Well, I suppose that is a fair statement. However, I am still concerned that in the instance of a backlash against general negativity in any capacity we could see a sort of stifling of legitimate criticism, as well. It is absolutely true that WoW's userbase in general has a habit of saying "no, I hate it, bad" without providing any further elaboration and often completely contradictory to prior claims made on an individual level. There is, of course, plenty of garbage to shift through, but I do think that there are times where public outcry does reflect a problem—see all the fairly-warranted bitching about the Nightborne designs, for instance. Those were hideous, I think. Similarly, everybody bitched and moaned about Covenants as a concept. Initially it was your standard forum shlock, as no data had come in regarding how Covenants actually played, but once the time came around people ended up with a fairly good understanding of the issues with the system and its design flaws.

I suppose it is partially the caustic nature of such complaints that serve to prevent Blizzard from taking them to heart, but just as much I feel like there's a degree to which they can be inattentive. Then again, I suppose there's not much use in being concerned since MMO-Champion is a user forum, as opposed to an official forum which the developers are more inclined to watch and read—this is probably why all the leaks and whatnot happen here. As a result, any feedback given here tends to be serve only as an object of further discussion among other players. Without much in the way of Blizzard oversight, inadequate feedback is less of a problem than it would be otherwise.

Still, your point is completely correct. It is admittedly true that positive feedback tends to be substantially less detailed than negative feedback, and that negative feedback is often more caustic than constructive on the internet, though I have seen a good degree of decent general feedback being given online, as well.

I don't mean to imply that all criticism is pointless or given to no effect, because I don't think that's true either. Just that, due to our general nature as concerns negative criticism, we make it difficult to discern those helpful patterns or meaningful bits of critical input by dint of, in a group sense, overflowing the taps with unnecessary, self-serving, or just vitriolic and unhelpful feedback. This forum has a wealth of useful information, useful feedback, and diligently gathered data from a wealth of experiences as concerns WoW - but in order to get at it, any developer or QA technician would have to wade through a *lot* of noise (to put it gently).

[huth]

Yep
Either its very good and they keep it a surprise closer to launch.... or its very bad

There is no practical reason to include the music before launch. The sound system is working, adding more music is trivial and unlikely to cause issues.

It's not "either or" either. There's other options you fail to consider.

- - - Updated - - -

You think there can be no feedback on music? Obviously even if there is it is far too late to fix anything but people can absolutely give feedback on music and the community is large enough to have people with the expertise required to give constructive feedback.

Sure, but in that situation you might as well get that from live. There's still no point putting it into the beta.

[Nymrohd]

The sound system is working

I mean I'll challenge that since much of my feedback in the last few betas has been about how horribly they sync voice acting.

[Aucald]

I mean, why would they even add the music to the beta?

It's not like it needs testing. Beta is a beta, not early access lol

There is no practical reason to include the music before launch. The sound system is working, adding more music is trivial and unlikely to cause issues.

It's not "either or" either. There's other options you fail to consider.

I'd disagree, as I've personally witnessed bugs in how the music itself functions in-game, from zones playing the wrong songs to music overlapping in some places, failing to start in others, and 101 other possible bugs concerning it. I remember in the WotLK Beta there was a brief period with the Grizzly Hills music played in every zone, and if I recall correctly, you couldn't even turn off the music in the options menu - in that you could toggle it to disabled, but it would still play at max volume regardless. So yeah, the music does sometimes need testing, too.

[Cheezits]

I think this is pretty cool: there is an otter mount vendor who sells the mounts for various things, such as rings from dungeons, trinkets from the raid and other collectible items.

https://www.wowhead.com/beta/item=19...-traders-ottuk
https://beta.wowdb.com/spells/376879...-traders-ottuk
https://www.wowhead.com/beta/spell=3...scouting-ottuk

This is a nice way to incentivize content for collectors.