Dragonflight Alpha/Beta General Discussion

[Cosmic Janitor]

I think they should just know what kind of story they are capable of telling. They should go back to smaller scales and less character drama focused, as they simply don't want to spend the amount of effort to make these kind of stories work.

The whole cosmetics thing also only works if you want to spend time in the world of the game, that is kinda reliant on story and personal activities. That their crafting system is in shambles is pretty much another thing that just drirves people away that like those aspects.

[Aeluron Lightsong]

I'm fine with some .5 patches between some of the big content patches. People will moan no matter what(Well this forum specifically. I'm too tired to go on about the .5 changes that could happen.

[Slowpoke is a Gamer]

I would argue that should make them more likely to leave. The Taureans might have had more of a voice in the Horde, but they might also have been more hesitant to leave since they were so integrated.
The Nightborne had just set foot into the door when the Horde attacked a civilian city, realistically Thalyssra should have booked way out of there. At a stretch she might still continue diplomatic relations with Lorthemar, but even he got her in by convincing them she had a lot in common. I would have imagined that could be considered q grave insult going by what the Horde commited eight after that.

Honestly at some point Blizz has to address how it feels like the factions are in a constant state of falling apart, right? Feels like we have this same conversation every speculation cycle where "well why are half these races still in these factions when they clearly hate the people at the top?"

Just going to throw this out there, reworking the 1-60 experience could give them the ground to address stuff of like "well why are the Tauren still in the Horde" or "why do the Night Elves not go rogue?"

[draugril]

Honestly at some point Blizz has to address how it feels like the factions are in a constant state of falling apart, right? Feels like we have this same conversation every speculation cycle where "well why are half these races still in these factions when they clearly hate the people at the top?"

Just going to throw this out there, reworking the 1-60 experience could give them the ground to address stuff of like "well why are the Tauren still in the Horde" or "why do the Night Elves not go rogue?"

Also, allowing cross-faction grouping would actually allow them to have narratives with, say, the Tauren being actively friendly to the Night Elves in lieu of recent developments, or allowing the Night Elves to leave the Alliance entirely (while still grouping up for gameplay purposes).

[Aeluron Lightsong]

No stop, leave the factions alone. I can swallow cross faction ingame activities(LFG, LFR yadda yadda).

[Slowpoke is a Gamer]

No stop, leave the factions alone. I can swallow cross faction ingame activities(LFG, LFR yadda yadda).

Exactly. I think people asking for Blizz to blow up the factions entirely are asking for a lot of headaches.

So the Night Elves turn their backs on everyone, alright are they now hostile to every quest hub not run by a Night Elf? Are they now the Super Hard mode for leveling because of lack of available quests?

Tauren decide to become friends with everyone? Do they now have the opposite problem where they're so flush with quests that they're the race everyone levels because they're fastest?

More likely Blizz is going to contrive a reason to keep the PvP/Questing wall where it is and just allow players to group cross-faction on their own. It was the Everquest solution, it'll be the WoW solution.

And a 1-60 revamp would allow them to just give us the contrived reason right away instead of drip feeding it to us over a decade like they've been so far.

[draugril]

Exactly. I think people asking for Blizz to blow up the factions entirely are asking for a lot of headaches.

So the Night Elves turn their backs on everyone, alright are they now hostile to every quest hub not run by a Night Elf? Are they now the Super Hard mode for leveling because of lack of available quests?

Tauren decide to become friends with everyone? Do they now have the opposite problem where they're so flush with quests that they're the race everyone levels because they're fastest?

More likely Blizz is going to contrive a reason to keep the PvP/Questing wall where it is and just allow players to group cross-faction on their own. It was the Everquest solution, it'll be the WoW solution.

And a 1-60 revamp would allow them to just give us the contrived reason right away instead of drip feeding it to us over a decade like they've been so far.

Not asking for factions to be "blown up." Simply asking to treat them with more nuance than, "Everyone is red or blue and at the end of it all, the same people will still be red or blue." It robs any faction drama of any potency when "red vs. blue" is a foregone conclusion.

Why shouldn't the Blood Elves make amends with the Alliance?
Why can't the Void Elves visit Silvermoon?
Why couldn't the Horde have booted out the Undead after Wrathgate?
Why shouldn't the Tauren be friendly with the Night Elves after Teldrassil?
Why should the Pandaren have to pick a faction at all?

Stop overcomplicating it. At most, you play with reputation levels for RP purposes to allow certain races into certain cities. You don't block access to anything (although maybe we could use that underutilized "Unfriendly" status). As far as quest structure goes, Horde is Horde, Alliance is Alliance, and maybe throw in a few flavour quests to acknowledge any narrative developments. You don't need to get more complicated than that.

[Raetary]

Hmm, It would be nice if they gave 'hated' and 'unfriendly' rep statuses another go with CFP.

[draugril]

Hmm, It would be nice if they gave 'hated' and 'unfriendly' rep statuses another go with CFP.

Not to mention the "At War" toggle. Are you a Night Elf that still hates Tauren for some reason and don't want a little refuge on a bluff somewhere? Hit that "At War" and corpse camp Baine regardless.

Edit: It's almost as if there is potential here to give players the tools for true agency instead of having our allegiances entirely dictated to us.

[Makorus]

Still baffled that we are still arguing about Cross-Faction grouping when we had this cinematic.

Cross Faction stuff was the safest bet ever after 8.3, and yet we are still sitting here speculating about it.

I really don't understand Blizzard. That whole story arc was the perfect setup for some kind of crossfaction stuff, yet they squandered it.

[Hugnomo]

Still baffled that we are still arguing about Cross-Faction grouping when we had this cinematic.

Cross Faction stuff was the safest bet ever after 8.3, and yet we are still sitting here speculating about it.

I really don't understand Blizzard. That whole story arc was the perfect setup for some kind of crossfaction stuff, yet they squandered it.

Completely agree. That cinematic, as well as Jaina's and Thrall's after saving Baine, were so pointed towards that. And it would have fit in the wider context, considering we were in the 4th war and that would have been a sensible resolution to the narrative. Idk what happened to that. And Ion himself has recently mentioned it on twitter too.

[Raetary]

Still baffled that we are still arguing about Cross-Faction grouping when we had this cinematic.

Cross Faction stuff was the safest bet ever after 8.3, and yet we are still sitting here speculating about it.

I really don't understand Blizzard. That whole story arc was the perfect setup for some kind of crossfaction stuff, yet they squandered it.

This was the absolute low-point of the war campaign.
The content of the cinematic was fine, but the fact that nothing came out of it is absolute insanity.

They build up unity, they lament about the past, they talk about "breaking the cylce" only to NOT do that.
What the actual fuck was even the point of it?

[Makorus]

This was the absolute low-point of the war campaign.
Not because of the contents in the cinematic, but of what came after.

Nothing.
Exactly fucking nothing.

They build up unity, they lament about the past, they talk about "breaking the cylce" only to NOT do that.
What the actual fuck was even the point of it?

We didn't even get a cross-faction scenario or a cross-faction warfront like with the Broken Shore. The only thing that happened is that there were some friendly Alliance/Horde NPCs. Completely idiotic.

[Slowpoke is a Gamer]

So I decided to poke onto the PTR and check out the new Void Elf customizations and I was flying around a lot of the post-Cata expansions.

I forgot just how good the WoD and after zones look... from above. Though I remember how annoying the Legion and after zones are to navigate on the ground. Something broke with Blizzard's zone design in Legion I feel like. Like in the name of a more linear and cinematic zone flow they got rid of the traveling aspect of the game entirely. Everything's a stone's throw away from everything else, roads aren't always safe or even existant. It's like the zones are designed around you being carried place to play by an NPC, not you going there yourself now.

Also dipped back into Stormwind and it reminded me of just how direly the old world is in need of... something, anything, to prune the number of entirely useless NPCs that exist as pre-expansion flavor and then were never delt with. It's flush with Night Elf refugees, Allied Race representatives, NPCs that I don't even remember what their purpose was. It doesn't feel like a lived-in city anymore, it feels perpetually stuck in 8.0 waiting for the story to continue. Night Elves to get a home, Worgen to get a home, new stories for some of the NPCs standing in the middle of the road to go off and do. The Old World's been revamped and then battered so many times that the entire thing feels chronally out of sync with itself at every turn. Which, if anything, is a factor of Blizzard's constant desire to do things and then abandon them, rather than resolve or continue them forward. You can't layer more Stuff :tm: on top of the Old World anymore, it's too overcrowded. You have to either give up on your big pre-expansion zone destruction, or you have to pull the Old World forward into the present properly.

[rainhard]

That was also the time where the vastly increased rare encounters, treasures, little details, achievements and references so i am guessing they traded the size and openess for detail and fullness.

[micwini]

So I decided to poke onto the PTR and check out the new Void Elf customizations and I was flying around a lot of the post-Cata expansions.

I forgot just how good the WoD and after zones look... from above. Though I remember how annoying the Legion and after zones are to navigate on the ground. Something broke with Blizzard's zone design in Legion I feel like. Like in the name of a more linear and cinematic zone flow they got rid of the traveling aspect of the game entirely. Everything's a stone's throw away from everything else, roads aren't always safe or even existant. It's like the zones are designed around you being carried place to play by an NPC, not you going there yourself now.

Also dipped back into Stormwind and it reminded me of just how direly the old world is in need of... something, anything, to prune the number of entirely useless NPCs that exist as pre-expansion flavor and then were never delt with. It's flush with Night Elf refugees, Allied Race representatives, NPCs that I don't even remember what their purpose was. It doesn't feel like a lived-in city anymore, it feels perpetually stuck in 8.0 waiting for the story to continue. Night Elves to get a home, Worgen to get a home, new stories for some of the NPCs standing in the middle of the road to go off and do. The Old World's been revamped and then battered so many times that the entire thing feels chronally out of sync with itself at every turn. Which, if anything, is a factor of Blizzard's constant desire to do things and then abandon them, rather than resolve or continue them forward. You can't layer more Stuff :tm: on top of the Old World anymore, it's too overcrowded. You have to either give up on your big pre-expansion zone destruction, or you have to pull the Old World forward into the present properly.

I think they instantly fixed this in BFA, where zones like Voldun and stormsong have a lot of wide empty space with not much going on. Legion was cramped indeed.

[shoc]

Dissolving the Alliance and Horde would be a total blow to people who have Faction-related tattoos IRL. For this reason it will never happen. There's a guy out there with a shoulder to shoulder Horde symbol back tattoo who would be too deeply affected by such a decision.

[Raetary]

Dissolving the Alliance and Horde would be a total blow to people who have Faction-related tattoos IRL. For this reason it will never happen. There's a guy out there with a shoulder to shoulder Horde symbol back tattoo who would be too deeply affected by such a decision.

I very much doubt Blizzard gives a fuck about random peoples tattoo choices when designing the game.

[Varodoc]

Dissolving the Alliance and Horde would be a total blow to people who have Faction-related tattoos IRL. For this reason it will never happen. There's a guy out there with a shoulder to shoulder Horde symbol back tattoo who would be too deeply affected by such a decision.

Good, their fault for ruining their skin with an ugly tattoo. And I can assure you, they'll regret getting a tattoo with or without faction removal.

Now imagine all the people who named their kids Daenerys or Khaleesi, that's even worse.

[Cosmic Janitor]

Ah yes, game design by appeasing overly invested mental patients of some fantasy tribal war. That sounds like the best descision.