Dragonflight Alpha/Beta General Discussion

[micwini]

Maybe Team A has been working on 10.0 for a while and BFA & SL were both made by Team B.

[Hitei]

Maybe Team A has been working on 10.0 for a while and BFA & SL were both made by Team B.

There is no team B.

[Luck4]

So, I was thinking today, if a World Revamp does not come in 10.0, and 10.0 end being something entirely different, without using the new human building models, what would that mean?

Revamp in 11.0? Waste of resources? Revamp canceled?

TL, DR: In case 10.0 isn't a World Revamp, what could be the purpose for these new buildings?

[Dracullus]

The dual team theory is a myth and always has been.
All sings point to WoW being made on an assembly line. The team that makes environments and the team that designs raids don't work on the same part of the expansion not because they alternate expansions, but because the environment team has moved on to the next patch or expansion by the time the raid design team gets to start putting bosses in.

Raids are made from patch to patch and expansion is just another season. Especially since BfA where they didn't test at all second big raid during Beta. But zones/dungeons/new features must be made through whole expansion, it's not like team is working on patch zone for 6 months and then BAM whole continent is ready for Alpha few months after last patch.

Clear example why some things are made very early is Anima. It works exactly like AP and I bet it supposed to be artifact 3.0. But they saw people are sick of this and repurpose Anima into cosmetic territory.

Team A/team B thing is obviously bullshit. Some expansions are more popular than others (usually when stars align and good theme is combined with good patch support, new feature that clicks and new class on top of that), but everyone had different flaws. There are things that SL or BfA did better than Legion, WoD did better than MoP, Cata better than Wrath. A lot of things actually.

Our theory about 10.0 revamp is different thing. Shadowlands is clearly smaller by design (nothing to do with covid, reveal was 2019), especially compared to massive BfA. It really feels like some people are doing other things. And remember that second revamp would require much more resources than first one, Cata was just 5 years after Vanilla.

Btw, anyone counted how many quests has SL compared to BfA? I think difference is most noticeable in that field.

[Cosmic Janitor]

I don't think that narrative has ever gotten an official quote by any developer. If anything the art asset guys are probably moved on to next expansions first if anything. Which adds up with the theory of BFA being the start of the updated assets for 10.0.

I wouldn't even be sure about that. Blizzard has 2 very heavy projects with lots of fires to put out besides WoW right now. I wouldn't be suprised in the least if some of the devs and artists are currently busy putting out those fires in OW2 and D4, so they will ship before 2025. I certainly wouldn't set myself up for disapointment and expect that the overwhelming part of the current team is already working at the next expansion like sneaky little ninja-devs and they just left a skeleton crew to pick up the pieces since before the expansion even launched.

- - - Updated - - -

Btw, anyone counted how many quests has SL compared to BfA? I think difference is most noticeable in that field.

I think there was once a count of individual new assets per expansion and it has been a steady decline since legion? Certainly SL was rather far behind during 9.0 and 9.1 didn't add very much either. Probably a question for our resident dataminer.

Edit: Found a reddit thread: https://www.reddit.com/r/wow/comment...nts_added_per/
9.2 would have to be massive to catch up to BfA, but it's still possible, I guess.

[Letdown]

I wouldn't even be sure about that. Blizzard has 2 very heavy projects with lots of fires to put out besides WoW right now. I wouldn't be suprised in the least if some of the devs and artists are currently busy putting out those fires in OW2 and D4, so they will ship before 2025. I certainly wouldn't set myself up for disapointment and expect that the overwhelming part of the current team is already working at the next expansion like sneaky little ninja-devs and they just left a skeleton crew to pick up the pieces since before the expansion even launched.

Can't speak to Blizzard, but as someone that works in a AAA game studio with multiple projects, this is EXTREMELY unlikely. These games have different styles and code bases, the ramp up time likely wouldn't be worth it because they'd need to spin back down to move to 10.0. It's more likely these gaps are filled with contract workers.

[Dracullus]

I think there was once a count of individual new assets per expansion and it has been a steady decline since legion? Certainly SL was rather far behind during 9.0 and 9.1 didn't add very much either. Probably a question for our resident dataminer.

I was only talking about SL compared to BfA - and only with quests/zones/dungeons, cosmetic game is growing every expac, nowadays they add more mounts in patch than in whole old expansion. Both BfA and Legion are massive, I don't know what count as "new asset", but it sounds like bullshit. Just compare modern zones to old wastelands from TBC/Wrath.

[huth]

Can't speak to Blizzard, but as someone that works in a AAA game studio with multiple projects, this is EXTREMELY unlikely. These games have different styles and code bases, the ramp up time likely wouldn't be worth it because they'd need to spin back down to move to 10.0. It's more likely these gaps are filled with contract workers.

I don't think most people realise that you can't just shove people around and expect them to work at full capacity. Let's not forget having the existing devs having to take time out of work to bring the new ones up to snuff.

It'd probably end up in an overall loss of productivity to try that, with no gains worth noting.

[shoc]

The 'dual team' thing was discussed extensively during the transition from MoP to WoD. It's the reason so much of WoD was unfinished. The old team training the new team was a massive drain on productivity and the Devs talked quite a bit about the challenges during that time.

[Lahis]

I think we all can agree on that not the entire team was working on Shadowlands. If indeed the entire team was working on Shadowlands, nothing can save WoW at this point if that's everything they're capable of nowadays. So lets assume a huge bunch of their employees was already working on 10.0.

That's just copium speaking. Next expansion pre-production should only take minority of the dev team. Most of them should keep the current expansion content pace on track.

[Seasz]

This A and B team is the biggest copium bs anyone could ever come out with in WoW.

[draugril]

Has this ever been confirmed? I know Blizzard has different teams and it makes sense that different groups of people would be working on individual projects but I'm pretty sure in a company the size of Blizzard a lot of the people would float between teams.

Pure speculation. We can’t possibly know what happens behind closed doors.

[Myrrh]

So, I was thinking today, if a World Revamp does not come in 10.0, and 10.0 end being something entirely different, without using the new human building models, what would that mean?

Revamp in 11.0? Waste of resources? Revamp canceled?

TL, DR: In case 10.0 isn't a World Revamp, what could be the purpose for these new buildings?

I tend to subscribe to the revamp idea in some capacity, but to play devil's advocate these buildings could easily be a passion project by a bored asset dev or something commissioned to provide experience to a grad/new team member.

IIRC the darkmoon rollercoaster is a good example of this, some devs made it for fun.

I'm guessing probably May at this point. Once the big guilds have cleared Sepelchur and all that information is out there on Youtube and such.

Eh, doubtful they will hold off on an announce for lore reasons. Both BFA (3 Nov 2017) and SL (1 Nov 2019) were announced prior to us learning of the transition lore from their raids (Antorus opened 28 Nov 2017, 8.3 released 14 Jan 2020.

I think someone suggested this 50-100 pages ago; I would tend to agree that we'd be either looking at the Game Awards in Dec or Dreamhack in Feb, leaning towards the latter so they can piggyback 9.2's launch on the new expansion hype.

[huth]

I tend to subscribe to the revamp idea in some capacity, but to play devil's advocate these buildings could easily be a passion project by a bored asset dev or something commissioned to provide experience to a grad/new team member.

IIRC the darkmoon rollercoaster is a good example of this, some devs made it for fun.

There's also the possibility of them being used for some new area, and they're just replacing outdated buildings while they're at it without any specific intent.

Eh, doubtful they will hold off on an announce for lore reasons. Both BFA (3 Nov 2017) and SL (1 Nov 2019) were announced prior to us learning of the transition lore from their raids (Antorus opened 28 Nov 2017, 8.3 released 14 Jan 2020.

Eh, they didn't exactly have much. Particularly Ny'alotha, which didn't really contain any hints to SL at all.

[TheFirstOnes]

Yeah, that's fair. They wouldn't have to make it "a bigger threat" anymore though, just a threat.



In my interpretation, instead of going to fight whatever is the bigger threat right now, it'd open up the floor for more side stories, going back/continuing the story lines of older content or going to new places where we'd just help the local populace against a local threat vs. the heroes, or these last few expansions, entire planets/realities being in constant danger. They could still do the last part for sure, but it doesn't need to last entire expansions anymore. This would also fit with partially refreshing older assets and expanding/refining chromie time (which got separate chat channels per expansion in 9.2) so old content remains available untouched.

There's a good chance this is all coming from my imagination of being able to retire my characters or letting them do more meaningless stuff, because it's been quite a ride for them.

I'm fine with the story going backwards a bit regarding power, as long as the story's at least good, and sets up the more "cosmic" side of things well enough. BFA was a MASSIVE step down from Legion in terms of threats, yet N'Zoth still ended up being a well enough threat, lore-wise.

[Aeluron Lightsong]

The 'dual team' thing was discussed extensively during the transition from MoP to WoD. It's the reason so much of WoD was unfinished. The old team training the new team was a massive drain on productivity and the Devs talked quite a bit about the challenges during that time.

No there is no team 1 and team 2 for wow. What you describe are basically people who are training new people that are getting hired, not the same thing you are implying.

[Nyel]

That's just copium speaking. Next expansion pre-production should only take minority of the dev team. Most of them should keep the current expansion content pace on track.

And this is completely unfounded guesswork. We don't know how they're working, if they do it simultaenously, if they alternate between retail content patches and expansion content etc.

Assuming how little they did with Shadowlands and how much they were able to do with Legion and BfA, one must assume that they shifted workpower towards 10.0 very early during the Shadowlands-cycle. Because there were no official major layoffs when it comes to developers and creative staff.

[Relapses]

And this is completely unfounded guesswork. We don't know how they're working, if they do it simultaenously, if they alternate between retail content patches and expansion content etc.

Assuming how little they did with Shadowlands and how much they were able to do with Legion and BfA, one must assume that they shifted workpower towards 10.0 very early during the Shadowlands-cycle. Because there were no official major layoffs when it comes to developers and creative staff.

I mean, isn't this all unsubstantiated guesswork? I only asked for confirmation of the two teams thing because I haven't really kept up with the behind the scenes stuff and was wondering if they'd dropped that in one of their infodumps.

[Luck4]

So, after reading both this and another thread, I got some conclusions:

A. 10.0 is a World Revamp.
- And this means that Blizzard still loves WoW, and was working on 10.0 since BFA/Legion era.

B. 10.0 isn't a World Revamp but still a lot bigger than Shadowlands.
- And this means Blizzard still wanna put effort into WoW, and will try to give the game a comeback.

C. 10.0 isn't a World Revamp, comes only in 2023, and is smaller than any previous expansion.
- And this means...

[Varodoc]

Option D: Dragon Isles expansion, N'Zoth was alive all along, the Ren'dorei emerge to oppose him and help the dragons, is announced at Game Awards 2021 (December 9, 2021), comes out on or before December 31, 2022.