Dragonflight Alpha/Beta General Discussion

[Sondrelk]

Say it with me.

They are not replacing Stormwind and Orgrimmar as faction capitals.

There will never be an expansion in which Stormwind is in the hands of the enemy, and Alliance players are relocated to Ironforge.

Any leak that even remotely hints at the notion of a change in faction capitals is automatically disqualified and put in the trash bin.

Exactly, if MoP didnt have the balls to actually make Orgrimmar hostile to the Horde despite it supposedly being actively hostile to dissidents then I fail to see how it would be different for Stormwind.

At most we will see the same as what happened to Orgrimmar. Stuff will be weirder than usual, NPCs will be accosted on the street, and maybe with the ability ot rescue them, and some guards will be snarky. Then we will get a dungeon, or raid, or whatever that has us go into a completely hostile Stormwind with the explanation that while we were somewhere else the complete takeover happened, and that when we return everything is back to normal.

[Aeluron Lightsong]

It's just the crowd I see defending time gate and grind systems the most on the offical forums. They always push this weird " wow was always about grinding to be good nonsense" and without fail they never have even normal cleared. They make up about 90% of posts claiming to be mythic raiders.

I had some fun with classic but it had a been there done that feel to it. I got around it by playing a rogue since I played caster back in the day. TBC... I wanted to love tbc but it felt like a game I had already mastered and beaten.

Because timegates have always existed in wow. Its just part of the genre, you can't have a game with no timegates, this includes you can't rerun raids over and over again, that is a timegate.

[Log Cabin]

Say it with me.

They are not replacing Stormwind and Orgrimmar as faction capitals.

There will never be an expansion in which Stormwind is in the hands of the enemy, and Alliance players are relocated to Ironforge.

Any leak that even remotely hints at the notion of a change in faction capitals is automatically disqualified and put in the trash bin.

Does anyone even care? SW and ORG became ghost towns once players had the AH mount and no longer needed to return to them. Only the horde used org back in BFA and that was only because the pyramid was so fucking awful to navigate people avoided it like the plague.

[Makabreska]

Does anyone even care? SW and ORG became ghost towns once players had the AH mount and no longer needed to return to them. Only the horde used org back in BFA and that was only because the pyramid was so fucking awful to navigate people avoided it like the plague.

Not really. Every day I see crowds in Trade District.

[Lahis]

Not really. Every day I see crowds in Trade District.

Only because the game brings over every player across all realms in the region who is in the city.

On realm basis there are only few people in the cities.

[Makabreska]

Only because the game brings over every player across all realms in the region who is in the city.

On realm basis there are only few people in the cities.

Ok, so they are still not ghost towns.

[Sondrelk]

Does anyone even care? SW and ORG became ghost towns once players had the AH mount and no longer needed to return to them. Only the horde used org back in BFA and that was only because the pyramid was so fucking awful to navigate people avoided it like the plague.

It's not about whether players really "need" the faction capitals. Certainly from a storytelling and gameplay perspective the idea that a city is not accessible is pretty interesting as a concept. Many epic RPGs have done something similar to absolutely stunning effect.
The problem is that this is an MMO, and removing players ability to enter a city based on honestyl pretty arbitrary point in a story is pretty difficult to make work.

Should Stormwind being overrun be something you see all the time? One would argue yes, since otherwise its really not that different from it just looking that way in a raid.
Should it be time-limited? If yes then you are really limiting the story if you want it to be relevant in the future, and for that matter you could just as easily make it a scenario.
What happens to stuff that is distincly set in Stormwind? There are quite a few quests that take place, start or end there. Do you move them somewhere else? What about new players? Do you start them at Ironforge instead?

The problem with making an important city like that hostile is that this is an MMO. Had it been purely single player then it would not have been an issue at all, but an MMO has other concerns that are detrimental to that kind of storytelling. It's the same logic that makes it so Blood Elves don't leave the Horde and join the Alliance, despite it being perfectly logical after TBC.

[Postmasters]

Because timegates have always existed in wow. Its just part of the genre, you can't have a game with no timegates, this includes you can't rerun raids over and over again, that is a timegate.

There is a difference between time gates like boss resets and time gates of " do over a month of something to be relevant outside of content you enjoy".

The fact you think the two are interchangeable is just depressing.

[Lahis]

Ok, so they are still not ghost towns.

Crossrealm people might aswell be NPCs. They're not any part of your economic bubble.

[Postmasters]

Crossrealm people might aswell be NPCs. They're not any part of your economic bubble.

Sometimes I imagine what it would of been like if blizzard actually gave a shit and merged realms rather then profiting off of realm transfers.

It's a nice fleeting fantasy.

[Nathanyel]

Sometimes I imagine what it would of been like if blizzard actually gave a shit and merged realms rather then profiting off of realm transfers.

Aren't connected realms essentially that? Also:

SW and ORG became ghost towns [...]

That depends on many factors, such as your realm/battlegroup, time of day, what type of gameplay people online prefer etc.

I for one never considered "people idling in the city" as a valid evaluation of active players (not the original point, but it's related)

[TheFirstOnes]

It seems you're the one being weirdly defensive. Hitei and huth gave reasonable explanations for what is obviously apparent.
No disrespect to the person who did the drawing, but it poorly represents how Blizzard professionals would execute it. It doesn't really get the point across as to how it would look.

It's fan art...

[Aeluron Lightsong]

Sometimes I imagine what it would of been like if blizzard actually gave a shit and merged realms rather then profiting off of realm transfers.

It's a nice fleeting fantasy.

This accusation that they don't care is just false, stop saying they are.

There is a difference between time gates like boss resets and time gates of " do over a month of something to be relevant outside of content you enjoy".

The fact you think the two are interchangeable is just depressing.

Thats what catch up mechanics are for and if Blizzard let players do as much as they want when they want, they'd burn themselves out.

[Makabreska]

Crossrealm people might aswell be NPCs. They're not any part of your economic bubble.

Ok, but they are STILL not a ghost towns. That's what I am discussing.

[Alanar]

Does anyone even care? SW and ORG became ghost towns once players had the AH mount and no longer needed to return to them. Only the horde used org back in BFA and that was only because the pyramid was so fucking awful to navigate people avoided it like the plague.

That seems weird.. no one really went to others levels of the piramid. It was just that everyone was on the level where the portals were, getting lost on one level seems really stupid.

I for one liked the piramid and it was no hassle for me to use the portal, you could even mount inside lol.

I hoped the actual city was going to be used more.. shame they used it only for a couple of intro quests and bamm deserted. Zandalar was beautifull and very deep in lore. The city felt even more empty afther the king died.

- - - Updated - - -

Aren't connected realms essentially that? Also:



That depends on many factors, such as your realm/battlegroup, time of day, what type of gameplay people online prefer etc.

I for one never considered "people idling in the city" as a valid evaluation of active players (not the original point, but it's related)

Its more about.. reasons why you would be there, realm pop etc is one of the factors, but a motivator is much more important.

One thing that would have been cool if the city gets updated more with every patch, show us our progress or villagers who tslk abput current events. The cities feel empty for different reasons. Even day to day dailies or fun things you can do why you should be there is needed imo.

But with that said.. maybe switch things arround and let Silvermoon shine or let Gilneas be the main hub. Both very cool cities who are lost in time.

[Foreign Exchange Ztudent]

Who cares if no one plays the game, the game will be sustained for decades off of WoW Tokens and 6 month Sub Traps. It only requires a playerbase of 100K (Which is never going to happen due to how spiky WoW is and there will be always 1 million+ idiots who are too addicted to give up) to be managed. WoW does not need content, it just needs to put up an illusion of content until they can sell you another expansion preorder.

When 10% of the playerbase controls the entire playerbase, there isn't much fight to be put up anymore.

[Alanar]

Who cares if no one plays the game, the game will be sustained for decades off of WoW Tokens and 6 month Sub Traps. It only requires a playerbase of 100K to be managed. WoW does not need content, it just needs to put up an illusion of content until they can sell you another expansion preorder.

So slowly die out is your ideal situation?

[Dracullus]

Ok, but they are STILL not a ghost towns. That's what I am discussing.

If you play on high or bigger server, actually check their names. You will be suprised it's mostly your server + some tourists from other shards, people here want to sell story that it's all players from region mashed together.

Also - want really know how many people are active on server? Go to Korthia on reset day. AFK in city is pointless since we have discords, twitch, M+ and more activities in open world.

[Foreign Exchange Ztudent]

So slowly die out is your ideal situation?

I mean it is painful to say, but being happy and content with what is delivered to us at this point is sadly the only way forward to cope. Again we will still have our base content with Raids and Patch Islands that we're well accustomed to. But, I don't think we're ever going to see a shakeup in terms of what the patches will contain going forward.

But, at the end of the day.. You have to stay positive under these circumstances and again I think the only genuine positive thing is that Shadowlands backlash is during a period where Warcraft still does not have its mobile games in play.

I'm mostly just shocked at the fact that the corporation cared so much about Playtime Metrics that they wanted to drive their players out of the game entirely. It has to have been somehow tied to employee performance. I'm genuinely baffled that the entirety of the playerbase have been reduced down to farm animals to be toyed with for eternity.

The last hope is vape man himself and I'm at the point where I don't even believe in anything after Blizzcon 2019 and how disastrous it is to rewatch it in retrospect. Nor how pro-corporate laden the Blizzcon Online in 2020 was and how infuriatingly it was all about consumption and how "good they are" morally prior to the lawsuits.

Certainly, I still stick along for the ride because the dopamine rush of false hope is genuinely great and the Classic Project is enough to sustain my love for this franchise forever. I also just enjoy how fucking crazy the plot went during this expansion and the theorycrafting is pretty fun if not completely out of the level of any normal person to care about.

Also again it can't always be night, right? At least I hope I'm wrong. I don't want to be right at all, I want people who play Retail WoW to have fun and not be just a number in a spreadsheet and a wallet to be emptied by the company.

I want the developers to create more and have a production pipeline that can satisfy the demand of content and also provide more content to the playerbase while also having much friendlier and better relations with both the community but also with the developers being able to see eye to eye and come to understanding and compromise.

The bleak darkness of the Minimum Viable Product is one that terrifies me as it shows the hypercapitalism failure state on full display except it's in our game and we can not protest it or really do anything about it at all.

[Soon-TM]

So slowly die out is your ideal situation?

I think it's called 'Managed Decline' in corporate jargon.