Dragonflight Alpha/Beta General Discussion

[username993720]

If the designers want it to, sure.

Neither predefines a whole lot about their gameplay.

Well, if they want to they could scrap Paladins and Demon Hunters, as well.

Actually, it does.
Because the Blademaster has abilities and gameplay associated with it that are different from the Outlaw Rogue.

[Cosmic Janitor]

If we go for an Azeroth awakening plot then I hope we will see an underground / "Journey to the Center of the Earth" type of expansion, where we delve into the depths of the planet, discover all those ancients forgotten evils in the dark, the traces of fallen civilizations (nerubians, long fogotten Iron/earthen/proto dwarves), the titans framework to support Azeroth and then ultimately make our way to the core where we give Azeroth the final push. Though I guess it's a too early for that, since I doubt many people want to see magni or a late expansion corruption theme again any time soon.

[razorpax]

Is it confirmed that a titan awakening destroys the planet? I don’t want to really use Argus as an example because of the pantheon interference

[Aeluron Lightsong]

Is it confirmed that a titan awakening destroys the planet? I don’t want to really use Argus as an example because of the pantheon interference

Presumed at most and well Argus's birth was like a very extreme case of premature birth.

[Wangming]

Is it confirmed that a titan awakening destroys the planet? I don’t want to really use Argus as an example because of the pantheon interference

Well at the very least the tides will go insane if the planet decides to fuck off somewhere.

[username993720]

Presumed at most and well Argus's birth was like a very extreme case of premature birth.

Baby Argus, tadadada, baby Argus, tadadada, baby Argus

[AngerFork]

I'm curious to read it ! And I might try my hand at one !

You should! I'd be totally interested to see what you come up with. Here's somewhat a rough sketch of what I'm thinking thus far, sorry if it's a bit long.

World of Warcraft: A Deafening Silence
Story: Even though the citizens of Azeroth have seemingly stopped the Jailer's attempt at corrupting Azeroth herself, Magni finds himself feeling a strange emptiness. The Speaker can no longer hear or feel anything from Azeroth, nor can MOTHER or any of the Dragonflight. The elements have become crazed and near uncontrollable, each of the Great Trees are dying, the Emerald Dream has become closed off. No one is quite sure whether Azeroth is dead, sleeping again, corrupted, or about ready to truly be born. Everyone has their own ideas as to how to discover the truth of Azeroth...and not all of them are good.

Somewhat unrelated, without a seeming big threat to fight off for once, the Horde & Alliance finally have a chance to breathe. Since they are still under a peace treaty, each side takes this chance to rebuild while looking at the other very cautiously.

Initial Release Zones - The way I see this working best is if Blizz releases the updated zones throughout the expansion. I worry that if they try to bite off too much at once, they'll wind up short changing things and some zones will just feel empty. Plus I'm not convinced every zone needs a full revamp as opposed to some facelifts here or there. Most of the updated zones I've thought about so far are in lower Kalimdor.

Silithus - In this zone, we see the long term effects from Sargeras' sword and the opening of the heart chamber. We also see how the absence of Azeroth affects C'thun & the nearby Qiraji.

Uldum - While we know some of what Reorigination was supposed to entail, what really do we know about how reorigination was going to affect Azeroth herself? Would she have been reborn? If she is dead, could this be a way to revive her? And if so, is that a sacrifice the people of Azeroth are ready to make?

Un'goro - The landscape itself is surprisingly unchanged, but many of the monsters appear to be becoming sick & corrupted by outside forces like the Void. You'll discover why this is and what if anything you can do.

Feralas - Unlike Un'goro, all of the trees here seem to be dying, the Great Tree most of all. If Azeroth is not around, can nature as an element really continue to thrive?

The Chasm of Time (Max level zone) - The Infinite Dragonflight has come to believe that Azeroth truly is dead and life as we know it will soon follow. Seeing this as untenable, they have broken into thus far unseen reaches of the Caverns of Time to "set right" the timeline, no matter the cost.

Undermine - New capital city for Alliance & Horde both. Most of the city involves Goblin greed and Gnomes trying to improve on the tech they see.

New Races
Alliance - Naga: After the events of Nazjatar, the Naga are very much a shattered race. Their numbers are dwindled, their home is largely broken, and they are being hunted down The knowledge they gained under N'Zoth's rule, while twisted, could be very helpful to Magni as well as the Alliance. Upon Magni's pleas, the Alliance strikes an extremely uneasy truce with Azshara to bring the Naga, their weaponry, and their knowledge to the Alliance.

Horde - Ogre: While the Dunemaul & Stonemaul clans have always been a part of the Horde, they haven't really had any say in Horde affairs. Upon hearing there is a council rather than just a Warchief, each clan comes to join the Horde fully, but neither can get along with each other. Geya'rah regales them with her tales of how the Draenor Orc clans came together as well as what Highmaul was like in their world. She then takes them to meet some of the Gorian Orcs that escaped from AU Draenor. They put their differences aside and all join the Horde as one clan.

New Class
Tinker - Won't go heavy into story here, but it ties in with the rebuilding efforts.

First Raid
The Heart of Azeroth - Underneath the Heart chamber, MOTHER has found a once lost path. She believes that it could lead to Azeroth or at least something to help us find her.

The Rebuilding Effort
Both the Alliance & Horde have quite a few homeless races right now. A large part of the rebuilding effort is to fix that once and for all. So in the first patch, the Alliance will be rebuilding Gilneas for the Worgen & the Horde will be rebuilding Kezan to be a true Goblin paradise. Each .5 patch, a new pair of cities will be added to rebuild for a set of homeless races. This will be done as a profession-type minigame where the players are actually bringing materials from professions to build the cities up. There will also be some world quests around the area to clean up old enemies, replace banners, stuff like that. The items attained will all be cosmetics: mounts, pets, transmog, etc. FFXIV player will probably recognize this as the Ishgard Restoration, which is pretty much what I'm going for here.

[Nathanyel]

A Samurai plays like a Pirate?

A Blademaster is not a Samurai. The class borrows RP elements from the fictionalized image we have of Samurai, to the extent that you could easily RP a Blademaster as a Samurai, but they're not the same.
You could also RP a Samurai with a Warrior, Rogue or Monk. This doesn't require Blademaster as a class.

Either way, Blademaster as a WoW class has no real distinction from either an Arms Warrior (more likely, if mostly due to use of 2h blade weapons) or Outlaw Rogue (smaller weapons, but Agility based - while the WC3 manual mentions "Stealth", I don't think we've actually seen Blademasters use that) and their distinctive abilities (e.g. Bladestorm) have been used by these classes, as well as Monks, kinda (Mirror Images is similar to Storm, Earth, and Fire)

This is not comparable to Demon Hunters, where Warlocks previously had one ability (Meta) that was clearly borrowed, not actual overlap.

So it would be difficult to justify Blademaster as its own class, while there are still class ideas with actually different skillsets.
It would fit perfectly for the Class Skin concept though, as a visual modification for Arms, or less likely, Windwalker.

[huth]

Actually, it does.
Because the Blademaster has abilities and gameplay associated with it that are different from the Outlaw Rogue.

Which is utterly irrelevant to Samurai and Pirate not dictating those. Pirate dictates pretty much nothing regarding combat style since the main defining traits are completely seperate from that. Outlaw was also divorced a bit from the pirate theme after Legion.

[razorpax]

Well at the very least the tides will go insane if the planet decides to fuck off somewhere.

My point is
Does anything happen to the planet itself

[Cosmic Janitor]

My point is
Does anything happen to the planet itself

We don't know. And even if we did know because of the birth of the pantheon titans or Argus, the situation of Azeroth is simply completely different. Azeroth has been pretty much in a titan incubator since they found her with a nasty case of the old gods, so that can already be used a plot device to make it a non-issue. Just remember the reorigination devices. Argus on the other hand was pretty much ripped out of his shell, so that Sargeras could hot-wire him into his fel-generators to power his demon respawn cheat, whereas we simply don't know what exactly happened to the worlds the Pantheon Titans originated from.

For all we know the sword in Silithus could just be the first step to a giant Caesarean section to get her out of the planet without destroying it. Maybe she can just form her titan dust could body without any issue what so ever. Maybe she doesn't want one to begin with an pefers being a world soul. Maybe her domain - which is still rather unclear - is the plot device that makes her birth a non-isue. Besides the obvious fact that Blizzard is hardly beyond retcons, they simply already have enough leeway to come up with almost anything they want. Actually destroying the planet would probably be the most ballsy thing they could come up with though.

[ExiHext]

Well at the very least the tides will go insane if the planet decides to fuck off somewhere.

Are there any lore sources how the birth of a titan works? I mean, most people surely think of a hatching egg but we are talking about magical beings here. I don't see why they wouldn't just kind of teleport out of the planet, keeping everything intact.
It would be incredibly cruel of the titans to nurture worlds and create live on them with the knowledge that everything will perish once the baby titan is born. That goes against everything we know about titans.

Edit:
Not to forget that Azeroth guided us in saving her. How dumb would it be to save a being that will kill us all once it is born? Be it deliberately or by accident.

[username993720]

A Blademaster is not a Samurai. The class borrows RP elements from the fictionalized image we have of Samurai, to the extent that you could easily RP a Blademaster as a Samurai, but they're not the same.
You could also RP a Samurai with a Warrior, Rogue or Monk. This doesn't require Blademaster as a class.

Either way, Blademaster as a WoW class has no real distinction from either an Arms Warrior (more likely, if mostly due to use of 2h blade weapons) or Outlaw Rogue (smaller weapons, but Agility based - while the WC3 manual mentions "Stealth", I don't think we've actually seen Blademasters use that) and their distinctive abilities (e.g. Bladestorm) have been used by these classes, as well as Monks, kinda (Mirror Images is similar to Storm, Earth, and Fire)

This is not comparable to Demon Hunters, where Warlocks previously had one ability (Meta) that was clearly borrowed, not actual overlap.

So it would be difficult to justify Blademaster as its own class, while there are still class ideas with actually different skillsets.
It would fit perfectly for the Class Skin concept though, as a visual modification for Arms, or less likely, Windwalker.

It is the archetype, they just chose to give it a different name.
You could, also, RP as anything else you want if you try hard enough. That's, hardly, a justification.

It does have. The Arms Warrior lack the Wind Walk and Mirror Image gameplay of the Blademaster. You can see how Samuro isn't depicted like your typical Arms Warrior in HotS.
Outlaw Rogue doesn't even come close when you think about a Samurai. That's a Pirate. Different archetype. You could have said Demon Hunter and it would have made more sense (because of the Japanese influence).
It called Wind Walk, and they do use it.
Storm, Earth and Fire is not Mirror Image. It's like saying Mechagnomes' Hyper Organic Light Originator makes them Blademasters.

It is, exactly, comparable to Demonology Warlocks. Because Bladestorm is, also, borrowed to the Arms Warrior until we get a Blademaster class/spec.

Might not be top of the list, but an option nonetheless.
Class skins should embody race/class archetypes like Sunwalkers. Less so a Blademaster, which is not unique to Orcs anymore.

Which is utterly irrelevant to Samurai and Pirate not dictating those. Pirate dictates pretty much nothing regarding combat style since the main defining traits are completely seperate from that. Outlaw was also divorced a bit from the pirate theme after Legion.

Pistols, for example.
Grappling Hook.
Roll the Bones.
Bribe (in the past).
Cannonball Barrage (in the past).

You can't just impose the Samurai archetype on that of the Pirate, just because they use a melee weapon and stack agility.

[Cosmic Janitor]

Pistols, for example..

Can be found as well in some of samurai subclasses, usually the ronin variant that are also a bit pirate themed by carrying pistols because they came in contact with foreign culturers via travel or sea faring. So it would be the same as combat is to rogues.

[username993720]

Can be found as well in some of samurai subclasses, usually the ronin variant that are also a bit pirate themed by carrying pistols because they came in contact with foreign culturers via travel or sea faring. So it would be the same as combat is to rogues.

Well, i'll be damned. You're right. Though, it is more of a long-rifle than a pistol:

"Tanegashima (種子島), most often called in Japanese and sometimes in English hinawajū (火縄銃, "matchlock gun"), was a type of matchlock -configured arquebus firearm introduced to Japan through the Portuguese Empire in 1543. Tanegashima were used by the samurai class and their ashigaru "foot soldiers", and within a few years the introduction of the tanegashima in battle changed the way war was fought in Japan forever."


They even used cannons, which is weird to me:

"Cannon became a common part of the samurai's armory by the 1570s. They often were mounted in castles or on ships, being used more as anti-personnel weapons than against castle walls or the like, though in the siege of Nagashino castle (1575) a cannon was used to good effect against an enemy siege tower. The first popular cannon in Japan were swivel-breech loaders named kunikuzushi or "province destroyers". Kunikuzushi weighed 264 lb (120 kg) and used 40 lb (18 kg) chambers, firing a small shot of 10 oz (280 g). The Arima clan of Kyushu used cannon like this at the Battle of Okinawate against the Ryūzōji clan."

[Cosmic Janitor]

Well, i'll be damned. You're right. Though, it is more of a long-rifle than a pistol:

In TTRPGs you often find homebrew versions that use flint-lock pistols as a side-arm. I'm not sure about their historical context, might be late feudal era stuff because no one without a death wish could pretend guns don't exist forever. I can just tell you that the asociation is not entirely wrong when it comes to RPGs. Maybe it's a bit of creative/fantasy license, since paladins didn't exactly smite people literally either .

Edit:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tanegashima_(gun)
The wiki artile also has some pistol versions near the bottom in the Edo era section. I guess my hunch wasn't too far off. Before the end of the era of samurai they were mainly hunting and sport weaponry, might as well carry just a hand gun around instead of a rifle if that is all you need them for. Maybe it's a trope that has it's roots in period dramas or some weeb stuff I'm unaware of. Either way, the association of samurai with guns exists. Obviously for WoW that might be different, since all we have here is some flimsy orc lore that has barely been explored and is more a testament to metzen's and samwise didier's weeb streak (which they mellowed out alot with WoW as I feel).

[DatToffer]

World of Warcraft: A Deafening Silence

A very interesting take ! I like that you kept the mystery of Azeroth's whereabout, a thing that Blizzard kinda sucks at now. I would have gone for a more direct approach, I think. Un'goro and Uldum are pretty good elements to deal within, since they are both Titans facilities and it's a fine idea to deal with the sword in Silithus too !

I also entirely with the idea to revamp zones gradually, makes it less of the hassle and allows more care for each one !

New Class and New Races are always welcome, especially those who have been asked for so long ! I might go wild on that point.

I didn't know about the Ishgard Restoration at all, but your planning and gameplay for the rebuilding efforts seem very well-thought, and I don't think there's much different ways to handle that. I too would have started with Gilneas xD

First raid seems enticing, delving into the Heart Chamber facility is a good starting point to make the connection with BFA events.

[Wangming]

Are there any lore sources how the birth of a titan works?

We don't. And I guess Blizz can pull anything out of their butthole. Normally with IRL rules I'm fairly certain it would kill all life. I mean can you imagine a Sargeras sized chunk disappearing from the planet core? I'm sure Blizzard can handwave it saying it's all magic and the titan awakening makes life even better. How much sense it makes is another question.

[Dracullus]

Well at the very least the tides will go insane if the planet decides to fuck off somewhere.

I don't think you have any sources to back it up. And if you just try to apply our laws of physics.. well, don't you think giant sword sticking out of planet visible from space wouldn't already fuck everything up?

[Sondrelk]

An idea that floated around for a world revamp which I very much champion is that instead of Blizzard redesigning the old zones as insular zones they instead take zones with things in common and think of them as giant zones.

Instead of having all the different Lordaeron zones and having to pick and choose which one is the main one you instead redesign them as "Lordaeron" and save some time that way. Each zone would still have its own charms, but they wouldn't all need to be fully fledged out zones like we know them now.
In my draft for a new expansion for instance I imagined the Lordaeron faction to have a storyline spanning all the zone, with endgame world quests and similar on a rotation so you visited all zones.

The downside to this would obviously be less distinct zones, but the upside would be less time spent on details and more on the greater picture of what zones could be.