Dragonflight Alpha/Beta General Discussion

[NikolaiShade]

Yeah, if you're Blizzard and had to choose between doing class skins or a new class, I really don't see why you would go with class skins. A new class seems like less work, and would get better response from the userbase.

As you said, people are kind of hungry for a new ranged damage spec and a new healing spec.

- - - Updated - - -



In unrelated news, the new Hearthstone expansion gets revealed today.

I think the real problem with a new class is balancing 2/3 specs on top of the other 36, not an easy task. Anyway 12 class skins (assuming all classes get one at the start) are a loadwork for the art team and honestly could be not that well recieved.
And now a plot twist: personally I'd prefer class skins just to get dark (forsaken) paladins and light dps priests

[huth]

Yeah I feel like "Class Skins" being done right would require at least two per class, to have a sense of choice to it. But that's what, 24 skins? It's why it's not happening.

Well, so far nobody seems to have a huge issue with just one existing. Warlock Green Fire is just that, after all.

Class Skins are cosmetics, just like mounts, different armour designs etc.

I think it's less the work and more that they haven't made a working concept yet.

- - - Updated - - -

Race specific Paladins can be done via glyphs instead of a whole class skin imo. Same goes for stuff like Ardenweald/Drust spells for Druids.

I'd say differentiate on scope. A glyph affects one specific spell. Class skin does whole specs or classes as a coordinated package.

- - - Updated - - -

I'm not gonna lie. Class skins have never done it for me. I'd much rather have a new class or 4th specs. Skins are kinda meh imo.

Those serve different purposes though. The former is cosmetics, the latter is gameplay. The Night Warrior aesthetic wouldn't have made much sense as a new race, either.

[Teriz]

I think the real problem with a new class is balancing 2/3 specs on top of the other 36, not an easy task. Anyway 12 class skins (assuming all classes get one at the start) are a loadwork for the art team and honestly could be not that well recieved.
And now a plot twist: personally I'd prefer class skins just to get dark (forsaken) paladins and light dps priests

I always find this argument interesting, because it's an argument that Blizzard has never brought up themselves. When discussing the possibility of future classes, they never say that another class would be difficult to balance. In fact, they never bring up balance period.

With that said, the game will never be balanced, so you might as well just keep bringing out new classes.

[GR8GODZILLAGOD]

I’d see them choosing class skins over a new class just on the basis of long-term development. New class means constant balancing as well as another class set to make if they continue with tier sets.

[Teriz]

I’d see them choosing class skins over a new class just on the basis of long-term development. New class means constant balancing as well as another class set to make if they continue with tier sets.

Yeah, but class skins forces the devs to constantly remake the art assets when new abilities hit the base classes. For example, say Paladins get a new ability, well now you have to remake the art assets (icon, animation) of that ability for each Paladin class skin. Multiply that for other classes, and now you have a lot of extra work for comparatively little return.

[CopyX1982]

Are we agreeing that the next expansion needs at least a new class?

The thing with a new class is, the expansion (10.0 that is) wouldn't just be releasing with new zones and such, a new class is a new way to play, and not just the shiny new stuff, but leveling through the older content with a new bag of tricks, thats what I'd like again. the only new class we've had that started at level 1 was monks back in Mists as we all know, and with the level squish and the chromie-time thing (never had to use it. at all. hence I don't know the name) and the heirloom xp nerfs (amongst other things) now would be a pretty good time.

Like I said, I'd take a look even if it wasn't tinkers/mechanic or whatever.

[Valysar]

Strange that no one wants to start the hype train today.

[Nyel]

Strange that no one wants to start the hype train today.

For what exactly? It feels like 9.2 preview came and went and players already moved on from it. There’s little to no buzz about 9.2, no matter where you look. Players just seem to be genuinely disinterested.

[Foreign Exchange Ztudent]

Strange that no one wants to start the hype train today.

I mean honestly I'm just hyped for the Journal and datamined text, I really don't care about anything else.

Honestly the continuous teasing they are doing with the recent email too. They do know what people expect from this? If they don't deliver and instead snap it away from us in the final moments then people will be excessively more angry than with the N'zoth situation, right?

[Hyrja]

For what exactly? It feels like 9.2 preview came and went and players already moved on from it. There’s little to no buzz about 9.2, no matter where you look. Players just seem to be genuinely disinterested.

Lol what a dumb statement.

[Foreign Exchange Ztudent]

Lol what a dumb statement.

Lol what a comment that adds nothing to the topic.

[Sondrelk]

I guess it will be exciting to see whether we find the usual "accidental" next expansion hint, like the cloth set with the Kul Tiras map, or whatever it was that hinted at Legion.

Class changes and the possibility of mining info from the dungeon journal will be fun though.

Other than that there isn't really a whole lot to be hyped for exactly. Not because it will be terrible, but because we know pretty much everything that will go into it, and Zereth Mortis and the Sepulcher are completely new areas, so there isn't really a reason to speculate on how it will look and feel like there was for Argus, Nazjatar and Ny'alotha.

- - - Updated - - -

One of the chronic problems with Shadowlands is that the setting isn't something players know and have been hyped to see beyond the very basic broad concept.
This is another reason why we shouldn't have had the entire expansion take place here to begin with. Once we passed into the Maw and the covenant zones we knew everything worth seeing, so there wasn't another hyped location to go to afterwards.

Zereth Mortis is a completely vacous concept to the playerbase.
I have faith it will look great and capture the fantasy of going "behind the scenes" of the Shadowlands, but it would never be a location that players are itching to finally see. It will simply look good, and feel good to play in, or it won't.

[Ersula]

Lol what a dumb statement.

I personally have seen zero excitement about that preview. Even from the sycophants. We've reached a weird place in the fandom where both the wow haters & the wow fanboys are both openly disparaging the game, but the haters are still mocking the fanboys for not hating the game in a very specific way.

[Foreign Exchange Ztudent]

I feel like most people don't really care about this patch because the idea that Danuser has hinted throughout 9.0 has been a Thanos moment where he snaps the finger and wins. But, we know that since WoW is a game where the players always have to win that it was very unlikely for that to happen and so now we're in this weird situation where historically we should not believe that Zovaal wins or that Sylvanas wins. But then you also have the fringe ideas such as time travel being involved or Azeroth waking up and resetting the universe herself and other nonsensical theories.

The thing is Blizzard has basically used an entire expansions narrative to basically create this really convoluted way to copy a Marvel movie that took decades of movies to establish which also spent considerable amounts of times trying to make Thanos's plan understandable even if nonsensical outside of his viewpoint. Except we didn't have that with the Jailor and again this means we're just moving onwards into the abyss of nothingness.

Killing Zovaal is not satisfactory because we don't even know who Zovaal was. Certainly, I think the fact that this expansion feels like an apology for N'zoths' death and the fact the entire expansion has mimicked the storyline of N'zoth up until now.

It also doesn't help that the Warcraft Universe should be destroyed if you think in-canon of your player character. Your entire existence is pointless and used for soul fertilizer and you as a hero of Azeroth probably have vast amounts of anima meaning that you in turn will be extreme quantities of soul fertilizer to keep the Eternal Cycle going until its inevitable reset point. (Again which is further established by the Firster Ones and the even more convoluted hierarchy of godhood in The Warcraft Universe which could lead us to the inevitable Simulation Hypothesis)

Also again some of the questions posed by the Raid Bosses in Sepulcher just literally annhilates fan sentiment even more because they can't even wrap their heads around all of that.

Don't get me wrong a lot of us theorycrafters probably just hate how stupid people are and they can't level up their intelligence level to get what is going on. But at the same time, this whole ramp up in knowledge required to fundamentally understand World of Warcraft was way too rapid and again that's on Danuser for being a moron.

Honestly, I don't really care about 12 week timegate System to unlock Flying/Conduits/Double Leggos. I'm not going to engage with it, regardless. I'm just interested in seeing how this ends and to see if Danuser can even make up for the mistake of N'zoth and actually just fucking do something interesting rather than take us back to a 10.0 that will rain hellfire and brimstone from the skies from the start before we even have the System kerfuffle.

Honestly they've been hinting at Azeroth's soul so much at this point. Just do something interesting and please for the love of god take us away from Sword in Azeroth/Yrel/Turalyon/Void/Life nonsense. It's time to hit a reset button and start in the small again with all the options they have on the table for this patch.

[Sondrelk]

I personally have seen zero excitement about that preview. Even from the sycophants. We've reached a weird place in the fandom where both the wow haters & the wow fanboys are both openly disparaging the game, but the haters are still mocking the fanboys for not hating the game in a very specific way.

There simply isnt anything to be passionate about. Whether (how) Sylvanas gets redeemed, Anduin, and how Arthas will factor in are really the only things I feel players have even some passion for, and that's hardly enough to spark interest in the community.

Zereth Mortis is no Ny'alotha, a realm we have only been teased briefly, and which has still been a part of the playerbase fore several expansions, more so when you consider it the "homeland" of the Old Gods, which themselves are fan favorites.
In the leadup to Ny'alotha there were a lot of discussion on what bosses would be there, what it would look like, how it would end.
For this patch we know that Anduin will be there, and we will fight Zovaal at the end. There could be curveballs on what we defeat, but so far there is nothing to really discuss.

Once dialogue or quest text shows up there will be more though, once we can start discussing things like Sylvanas' likely redemption, or whether Arthas will be a character for questing, a raid boss, or even if he will just be mentioned briefly in the raid.

[Foreign Exchange Ztudent]

There's 3 bosses for the unknown final wing of the raid. Who are the 2 bosses prior to the Jailor?

That's one of the key questions I'm curious about because there's a few puzzle pieces that need to fit nicely into the overall picture that still aren't put into play.

Also I love how this entire expansion doesn't happen without Yogg-Saron's help and Danuser just said "LALALALALALALALALALALALAA DIDNT HEAR YOU"

Again a main issue of this expansion is that the audience have literally just been waiting for the end of the expansion due to the premise of Zovaal which is a really horrible way to setup a story because now the players will just be like "Oh, okay I wait till the end of the expansion to finally get to know what Zovaal meant".

[Sondrelk]

Also again some of the questions posed by the Raid Bosses in Sepulcher just literally annhilates fan sentiment even more because they can't even wrap their heads around all of that.

Almost a full expansion, and we still have no idea what caused the machine of death to break, what Zovaal actually wants, how he acted before being imprisoned, or how his partnership with Sylvanas actually functioned prior to Shadowlands.
Either Blizzard went too deep into making Zovaal mysterious, or they flat out forgot to give him a personality and actual character.

It's saying something when Zovaal could have literally been an empty husk pulling a reverse Arbiter essentially, and Shadowlands would have functioned no differently.
It probably would have worked much better for Sylvanas' character as well. Trying to "ressurect" someone she thinks will help her, and end up betrayed when she unleashes the ultimate evil, at least then there would be some legitimacy to her helping us stop him other than her heart growing a couple sizes bigger after 9.1.

[Aeluron Lightsong]

Almost a full expansion, and we still have no idea what caused the machine of death to break, what Zovaal actually wants, how he acted before being imprisoned, or how his partnership with Sylvanas actually functioned prior to Shadowlands.
Either Blizzard went too deep into making Zovaal mysterious, or they flat out forgot to give him a personality and actual character.

It's saying something when Zovaal could have literally been an empty husk pulling a reverse Arbiter essentially, and Shadowlands would have functioned no differently.
It probably would have worked much better for Sylvanas' character as well. Trying to "ressurect" someone she thinks will help her, and end up betrayed when she unleashes the ultimate evil, at least then there would be some legitimacy to her helping us stop him other than her heart growing a couple sizes bigger after 9.1.

We know why, there's something in the sepulcher that will enable him to have Azeroth and basically make him the big overlord of the cosmos. Its pretty clear who harmed the arbiter, the same redish energy that came from Revandreath? Obviously, its not some big mystery. This isn't a cynical take but Blizzard usually has a simple direction when it comes to how the story unfolds.


P.S. 9.2 isn't out so there is clearly more stuff to find out.

[Syegfryed]

I guess it will be exciting to see whether we find the usual "accidental" next expansion hint, like the cloth set with the Kul Tiras map, or whatever it was that hinted at Legion.

Class changes and the possibility of mining info from the dungeon journal will be fun though.

Other than that there isn't really a whole lot to be hyped for exactly. Not because it will be terrible, but because we know pretty much everything that will go into it, and Zereth Mortis and the Sepulcher are completely new areas, so there isn't really a reason to speculate on how it will look and feel like there was for Argus, Nazjatar and Ny'alotha.

- - - Updated - - -

One of the chronic problems with Shadowlands is that the setting isn't something players know and have been hyped to see beyond the very basic broad concept.
This is another reason why we shouldn't have had the entire expansion take place here to begin with. Once we passed into the Maw and the covenant zones we knew everything worth seeing, so there wasn't another hyped location to go to afterwards.

Zereth Mortis is a completely vacous concept to the playerbase.
I have faith it will look great and capture the fantasy of going "behind the scenes" of the Shadowlands, but it would never be a location that players are itching to finally see. It will simply look good, and feel good to play in, or it won't.

i disagree with shadowlands not being popular because is new, mop was 10% new, they just knew how to do things before

they simple shit the bed with the plot, they do something only they care about, not for the people who like warcraft, bfa and shadowlands does not feel like it.

fucking thunder king was a better villain all together than the janitor

[Fahrad Wagner]

I personally have seen zero excitement about that preview. Even from the sycophants. We've reached a weird place in the fandom where both the wow haters & the wow fanboys are both openly disparaging the game, but the haters are still mocking the fanboys for not hating the game in a very specific way.

Perhaps people who are excited are just less vocal about it. I personally am excited about 9.2, and I don't consider myself to be a fanboy; I'm just waiting for 9.2 to hit the PTR so that the real fun can begin.