Dragonflight Alpha/Beta General Discussion

[Makabreska]

There's a difference between defeating a Demon lord and defeating a literal cosmic force. Again, once you get to that point, you enter a cycle of escalation that starts to unravel the lore of the game itself. We're really pushing it in Shadowlands.

Us going against Naaru and their forces would be no escalation. We already went against a space faring army in Legion.

[Aeluron Lightsong]

There's a difference between defeating a Demon lord and defeating a literal cosmic force. Again, once you get to that point, you enter a cycle of escalation that starts to unravel the lore of the game itself. We're really pushing it in Shadowlands.

No, not really. This is really just the weirdest criticism, its close to stupid. Zovaal isn't death incarnate, metaphorically maybe but Death isn't gonna disappear after his defeat. Nor would the Light stop if we fought their Naaru master Keeper or whatever. Also the lore of the game has to be revealed, mysteries don't stay like that forever. We all get to the truth eventually.

[Sondrelk]

No, not really. This is really just the weirdest criticism, its close to stupid. Zovaal isn't death incarnate, metaphorically maybe but Death isn't gonna disappear after his defeat. Nor would the Light stop if we fought their Naaru master Keeper or whatever. Also the lore of the game has to be revealed, mysteries don't stay like that forever. We all get to the truth eventually.

No, Zovaal isnt literally death, he is however the ultimate force in the Shadowlands. There isnt a hidden layer beyond the Shadowlands unless Blizzard is going for something where the Shadowlands is not "actually" death, and is instead only the step before it.
The writers cannot go beyond Zovaal as a force of death since we already know all the leaders, and we know that Zovaal is the strongest among them.

This is not at all the same as defeating Sargeras. Even if he is what the players most associate with the Fel demons, there is still an entire cosmic realm beyond in the Twisting Nether that could have demons we have not heard of yet. Sargeras was extremely strong, and the Burning Legion is probably hte strongest force of demons in the story, but there isnt any indication that Sargeras took all demons, or that there isnt a demonic realm beyond.

[Luck4]

Because people are playing WORLD of Warcraft, not Universe of Warcraft. Yeah, venturing to other realms and dimensions is okay in moderation. However, people are drawn to Azeroth itself, and that's where the 99% of the story should be taking place. We shouldn't be planet-hopping from world to world punching literal gods in the face.

I agree with this, we shouldn't have two cosmic expansions in a row, they feel completely disconnected from the traditional world and lore, and it's so noticeable that breaks the immersion. Sometimes when I'm playing Shadowlands I don't even feel like I'm playing World of Warcraft.

If the current WoW Dev Team doesn't like to work in a game that others made, then Blizzard should kill WoW instead of butchering it further just because some devs wanna make their version of the game.

[Aeluron Lightsong]

I agree with this, we shouldn't have two cosmic expansions in a row, they feel completely disconnected from the traditional world and lore, and it's so noticeable that breaks the immersion. Sometimes when I'm playing Shadowlands I don't even feel like I'm playing World of Warcraft.

If the current WoW Dev Team doesn't like to work in a game that others made, then Blizzard should kill WoW instead of butchering it further just because some devs wanna make their version of the game.

You people moaning about the world but the Shadowlands IS part of that "World of Warcraft" The game isn't being butchered by being slightly more cosmic. We broke that rule way when the Orcs were space aliens. This criticism is hollow.


Much like any franchise it evolves and while some things stay the same but there's way more to it then just Humans VS Orcs. The disconnect you feel is self made, not Blizzard.

[Makabreska]

I agree with this, we shouldn't have two cosmic expansions in a row, they feel completely disconnected from the traditional world and lore, and it's so noticeable that breaks the immersion. Sometimes when I'm playing Shadowlands I don't even feel like I'm playing World of Warcraft.

If the current WoW Dev Team doesn't like to work in a game that others made, then Blizzard should kill WoW instead of butchering it further just because some devs wanna make their version of the game.

Dude, what? It's current devs that set the tone of the game and it's story, and they always make their version of it. They are by no means bound to any specific way or place when it comes to the setting. Asking them to kill the game, because you may not like they way it progresses is just dumb.

[Raetary]

Also the lore of the game has to be revealed

Actually no.
It doesn't.
Some things should absolutely stay unknown and hidden, not everything needs to nor should be explained away.

Revealing and explaining everything just rips out any mystic and wonder the franchise could have, which is not a good thing.

Sadly, we are past the point of keeping fundamental workings a mystery.
With the Shadowlands now explained in detail, it's gonna be very weird not to have the same happen with the rest of the forces. (particularly Life)

They opened a can of worms that should've stayed closed.

[Fahrad Wagner]

Anyway crazy idea.

What if we're reading too deep into "Living" as in the Cosmic Force Life and not as much into the idea of "Living" as in evolving and changing. Like what if "Living World" is meant to imply that the "world" (EK/Kalimdor let's be honest) is going to evolve over time on a larger scale. Like it'll have actual seasonal changes or something.

That my friend, is exactly what I was thinking a few days ago. What if the devs made World of Warcraft a "living world"? Seasons, events, zones evolving with the storyline and all that jazz. Basically building up the foundation for all the future years.

[Sondrelk]

That my friend, is exactly what I was thinking a few days ago. What if the devs made World of Warcraft a "living world"? Seasons, events, zones evolving with the storyline and all that jazz. Basically building up the foundation for all the future years.

Really it's what Blizzard should have done after TBC, but I guess noone expected the game to go on as long as it did.
Making the base game better is definitely a good choice though. Updating the old world, or generally adding reasons to go back to old zones would do wonders for future expansions.
I have said before, but WoW is such an old game by now that Blizzard could easily mine full expansions worht of content just based on old content barely anyone remembers.
Just consider for instance how few players go back to Desolace, or the Badlands. Consider all the zones in the game and Blizzard could easily do a thing where one zone a week is important and easily use an entire year to cycle through everything.

Really what Blizzard needs to do is beef up Timewalking. Make it something that players really look forward to. With Legion Timewalking being added next week we are at a point where each individual Timewalking rotation will be available twice a patch. If you add some randomization to this to make each Timewalking slot slightly different from each other, then old content can be stretched out to last for years.

[Makabreska]

Actually no.
It doesn't.
Some things should absolutely stay unknown and hidden, not everything needs to nor should be explained away.

Revealing and explaining everything just rips out any mystic and wonder the franchise could have, which is not a good thing.

Sadly, we are past the point of keeping fundamental workings a mystery.
With the Shadowlands now explained in detail, it's gonna be very weird not to have the same happen with the rest of the forces. (particularly Life)

They opened a can of worms that should've stayed closed.

I mean, and then we got plenty of complaints like "Jailer is a shit villain, we don't know anything about him". Also, let's not pretend keeping a mystery should apply to how current realm and it's denizens work. If you don't explain, people will not know wtf is going on and you wont fully introduce new aspects to the story and world. Blizz always done that. Like, in minutes of us arriving in Pandaria we got exposed to Shado Pan, Sha, general Pandaren philosophy. Then as we level we discover Thunder King, Mantids and Yaungol.

[Luck4]

You people moaning about the world but the Shadowlands IS part of that "World of Warcraft" The game isn't being butchered by being slightly more cosmic. We broke that rule way when the Orcs were space aliens. This criticism is hollow.

This is interesting because I didn't feel disconnected in Outland, Draenor, or Argus, and that's because we see organic connections such as Orcs and Draenei civilizations there, a similar case can be seen in the Emerald Dream when we go into a place where we see the roots of something already known. Shadowlands on the other hand have only weak connections like Maldraxus or the Kyryan in Bastion, but even these were changed so dramatically that doesn't bring any resemblance from either Wrath of the Lich King or Warcraft III Scourge Campaigns.

[Varodoc]

This is interesting because I didn't feel disconnected in Outland, Draenor, or Argus, and that's because we see organic connections such as Orcs and Draenei there, a similar case can be seen in the Emerald Dream when we go into a place where we see the roots of something already known. Shadowlands on the other hand have only weak connections like Maldraxus or the Kyryan in Bastion, but even these were changed so dramatically that doesn't bring any resemblance from either Wrath of the Lich King or Warcraft III Reign of Chaos.

That's because orcs and ogres and draenei and eredar and demons have been in the lore for ages. They weren't asspulled into existence like the Covenants. Hell the entire Shadowlands were originally just a ghostly version of Azeroth.

It actually surprises me that some people don't understand such a simple concept.

[Makabreska]

This is interesting because I didn't feel disconnected in Outland, Draenor, or Argus, and that's because we see organic connections such as Orcs and Draenei there, a similar case can be seen in the Emerald Dream when we go into a place where we see the roots of something already known. Shadowlands on the other hand have only weak connections like Maldraxus or the Kyryan in Bastion, but even these were changed so dramatically that doesn't bring any resemblance from either Wrath of the Lich King or Warcraft III Scourge Campaigns.

Maldraxxus architecture is very similar to Scourge. And ye, of course we wont see many connections in SL, when barely anything drips from there to Azeroth. But does it mean Blizz shouldn't try creating brand new worlds with stuff we haven't seen yet?

[Raetary]

I mean, and then we got plenty of complaints like "Jailer is a shit villain, we don't know anything about him". Also, let's not pretend keeping a mystery should apply to how current realm and it's denizens work. If you don't explain, people will not know wtf is going on and you wont fully introduce new aspects to the story and world. Blizz always done that. Like, in minutes of us arriving in Pandaria we got exposed to Shado Pan, Sha, general Pandaren philosophy. Then as we level we discover Thunder King, Mantids and Yaungol.

All of this is an issue with the set up and execution.
I am aware that they need to explain how the places we go to work, but i'm arguing that we should've never gone there to begin with.

[Sondrelk]

I mean, and then we got plenty of complaints like "Jailer is a shit villain, we don't know anything about him". Also, let's not pretend keeping a mystery should apply to how current realm and it's denizens work. If you don't explain, people will not know wtf is going on. Blizz always done that.

You need to know the basics of what you are doing in an area and how thing there generally work. This is why Blizzard made a mistake by going to the Shadowlands to begin with, the story should have stayed in Northrend, leaving the more cosmic afterlife stuff to be vaguely implied instead of flat out told.
We didnt need to know exactly how the armies of Maldraxxus function, what their army structure is and what the zone looks like. It would have been far more interesting if we are just told that the Shadowlands is protected by a vast army of souls that looks similar to the Scourge. Or that the mushrooms that are seen with the plague of undeath come from Maldraxxus.
Hearing about the Kyrian just raises further questions. Each soul left on Azeroth is another question raised. The idea that the Val'kyr are based on winged humanoids whose job it is to ferry dead souls to the Shadowlands is explanation enough.

By going to the Shadowlands we are left with too many questions that cannot realistically be answered in the time we have, so instead we are left with that horrible in-between where we know too much to have a sense of mystique, and we don't know enough to stop asking questions.

Staying as grounded as possible and then using cosmic stuff as a spice on top is much easier, and tends to work much better.

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That's because orcs and ogres and draenei and eredar and demons have been in the lore for ages. They weren't asspulled into existence like the Covenants. Hell the entire Shadowlands were originally just a ghostly version of Azeroth.

It actually surprises me that some people don't understand such a simple concept.

We were also only on Argus for a short while, both narratively and in real time. The game didnt need to stretch out content and could instead just focus on the most important bits and leave the rest unsaid.
If the expansion had taken place entirely on Argus then we would have been obliged to more explanations on what happened to the elements, or whether there are different biomes. Or why the Krokuul still exist when the demons have had milennia to simply nuke whatever areas they suspect they might be hiding.

[Makabreska]

You need to know the basics of what you are doing in an area and how thing there generally work. This is why Blizzard made a mistake by going to the Shadowlands to begin with, the story should have stayed in Northrend, leaving the more cosmic afterlife stuff to be vaguely implied instead of flat out told.
We didnt need to know exactly how the armies of Maldraxxus function, what their army structure is and what the zone looks like. It would have been far more interesting if we are just told that the Shadowlands is protected by a vast army of souls that looks similar to the Scourge. Or that the mushrooms that are seen with the plague of undeath come from Maldraxxus.
Hearing about the Kyrian just raises further questions. Each soul left on Azeroth is another question raised. The idea that the Val'kyr are based on winged humanoids whose job it is to ferry dead souls to the Shadowlands is explanation enough.

By going to the Shadowlands we are left with too many questions that cannot realistically be answered in the time we have, so instead we are left with that horrible in-between where we know too much to have a sense of mystique, and we don't know enough to stop asking questions.

Staying as grounded as possible and then using cosmic stuff as a spice on top is much easier, and tends to work much better.

Oh ye, keep the story to WotLK continent, that would really work for people. Imagine all those "filler lol" post. Y'all say SL is an unnecessary exposition, I say it's a world enrichment, plus the gorgeous visuals.

[Aeluron Lightsong]

"I don't want mysteries to be solved" seems to be a running theme here. Its not very convincing. We all knew or well I like to think that when we hear of new places, we are curious and what to see what it is and how things look and or work. The same is applied to BC, same to Northrend, Broken Isles,Kul'Tiras and Zandalar.


Its pretty human to want to discover things and understand them. Just keeping things ignorant isn't really interesting and more often then not(I'm guilty of overspeculating) it leads to overspeculation.

We were also only on Argus for a short while, both narratively and in real time. The game didnt need to stretch out content and could instead just focus on the most important bits and leave the rest unsaid.
If the expansion had taken place entirely on Argus then we would have been obliged to more explanations on what happened to the elements, or whether there are different biomes. Or why the Krokuul still exist when the demons have had milennia to simply nuke whatever areas they suspect they might be hiding.

People WANTED to see more of Argus and such. It might of been self hype but there was a reason why we wanted to go there and see it. See it for ourselves. I don't entirely blame people wanting more out of Argus despite how....annoying the "Fel fatigue" comments would be if we stayed there longer.

Apply the same for Nazjatar and well Nyalotha.

[Dracullus]

I really hope despite all odds 10.0 will be revealed on live event. Any online expac reveal will feel shitty, including Blizzcon online.

Not event talking about live Gamescom/Blizzcon, cause I doubt lockdown craziness will stop next year, but Blizzard could just invite selected & vaccinated people from family & friends.

[Sondrelk]

Oh ye, keep the story to WotLK continent, that would really work for people. Imagine all those "filler lol" post. Y'all say SL is an unnecessary exposition, I say it's a world enrichment, plus the gorgeous visuals.

Yes of course, remaking the entirety of Northrend would absolutely make players think its filler.
Players didnt say WoD was filler because it reused Outland, players called it filler because the plot was mostly irrelevant to the larger story.

Remake Northrend to look slightly different. Someone "leaked" a concept art of a half-melted Northrend map before SL was announced and I was a great believer in that.
Underground caverns of Nerubians, a giant lake where Wintergrasp was. Old raids we didnt get to see in WotLK like the Drakkari raid.

It would have been amazing I would have imagined. Then you could have had the Maw as an endgame zone and even keep Torghast if that is important.
If you want to have old characters for nostalgia then you could have just had inhabitants of the Shadowlands somehow enter Azeroth. Draka and Mograine are parts of the Maldraxxi armies so they could move over without problem. Uther is a forsworn at the beginning, so you could have him come as well. Revendreth crossing over might be more difficult, but Ardenweald could be entered through the dream if you want.

Going to Northrend could have given us most of the important stuff from Shadowlands. Even the covenants if you put some effort into explaning why they are in Northrend. And more importantly it would have given enough distance from the actual Shadowlands that concepts wouldnt need to be overly explained, and could instead stay at a nice comfortable vagueness.

- - - Updated - - -

"I don't want mysteries to be solved" seems to be a running theme here. Its not very convincing. We all knew or well I like to think that when we hear of new places, we are curious and what to see what it is and how things look and or work. The same is applied to BC, same to Northrend, Broken Isles,Kul'Tiras and Zandalar.


Its pretty human to want to discover things and understand them. Just keeping things ignorant isn't really interesting and more often then not(I'm guilty of overspeculating) it leads to overspeculation.





People WANTED to see more of Argus and such. It might of been self hype but there was a reason why we wanted to go there and see it. See it for ourselves. I don't entirely blame people wanting more out of Argus despite how....annoying the "Fel fatigue" comments would be if we stayed there longer.

Apply the same for Nazjatar and well Nyalotha.

Players want to know stuff, but that doesnt necessarily mean the sheer enthusiasm would translate well to a game.
Going to Argus for a full expansion isnt a bad idea because it overexplains stuff necessarily, its a problem because the nature of an MMO means the reveals would likely be unsatisfying, both narratively and as gameplay.

Going to undiscovered continents like Zandalar is easier because we already know most of the stuff there simply because it's already part of the game. We know what an island entails, we know what trolls are and how they work, if you want them to have a navy you just need to come up with a quick explanation for why they have not used them frequently.

Going to Argus or the Shadowlands is different because you have to explain pretty much everything. Why it looks like it does, why it works like it does, what demons or undead do all day.
And you need to do all this while also telling a compelling story. Questing is Kul Tiras is easy because you don't need to get an explanation on why they use small ferries, or why the grass is green and the mountains have snow. You can just take it for granted because the game doesnt need to explain stuff like that.


Explaining stuff like how Argus functions, or what areas exist in the Shadowlands are best limited to supplemental materials like the WoW Grimoires, or quick vague explanations.
When the gameplay is limited to a single patch and zone you could get away with much less explaining. If you want the player to stay there longer you need to start explaining stuff.

[Makabreska]

Yes of course, remaking the entirety of Northrend would absolutely make players think its filler.
Players didnt say WoD was filler because it reused Outland, players called it filler because the plot was mostly irrelevant to the larger story.

Remake Northrend to look slightly different. Someone "leaked" a concept art of a half-melted Northrend map before SL was announced and I was a great believer in that.
Underground caverns of Nerubians, a giant lake where Wintergrasp was. Old raids we didnt get to see in WotLK like the Drakkari raid.

It would have been amazing I would have imagined. Then you could have had the Maw as an endgame zone and even keep Torghast if that is important.
If you want to have old characters for nostalgia then you could have just had inhabitants of the Shadowlands somehow enter Azeroth. Draka and Mograine are parts of the Maldraxxi armies so they could move over without problem. Uther is a forsworn at the beginning, so you could have him come as well. Revendreth crossing over might be more difficult, but Ardenweald could be entered through the dream if you want.

Going to Northrend could have given us most of the important stuff from Shadowlands. Even the covenants if you put some effort into explaning why they are in Northrend. And more importantly it would have given enough distance from the actual Shadowlands that concepts wouldnt need to be overly explained, and could instead stay at a nice comfortable vagueness.

So like, instead of giving us a new world/continent with new stuff, which Blizz has always done, you want this? "Slightly different" Northrend? Instead of a brand new world? This world revamp craving is getting out of hand. Not to mention your line of thinking could be applied to any expansion:
- Why go to Pandaria? It's a land of mystery shrouded in fog and let it be that way. We will get some panda travellers telling us a thing or two and that's enough.
- Why go to Draenor? It's a land of shamanistic tribes of orcs and technologically advanced Draenei. We know it from the tales of our allies and let's leave it at that.
- Why go to Broken Isles? It's a land of ruined elven civilization that caused all the problem. No point digging up the past.

Blizz doesn't operate like that. We get brand new xpac, we get brand new lands. With the exception of Cata, where devs said world revamp took too much of a toll on development.