Dragonflight Alpha/Beta General Discussion

[Foreign Exchange Ztudent]

What does that even mean?

Azeroth has two moons. The expansion idea is tied to Elune and the moons would be used as exploration for Elune stuff.

[Alanar]

So mysteriousness is now a bad thing plotwise. Jesus... -.-

It is now ye..

Mysteriousness can end up being vague and annoying realy fast, that is exactly what happened. They even admit that they gave players a hard job on giving some hands to speculate on. They said it would be better in shadowlands. Things obviously took to long and people got tired of speculating on the same thing over and over.. you can see more signs in this very thread and on this page.

They failed both, so yes. The whole mysteriousness in wow is something they cant handle, N zoth is also one example.

The mystery in wow is also gone for a while now.

[Raetary]

If you botch a mystery, you end up with a botched mystery.

Sky is blue, water is wet, more news at 12.

[Alanar]

Azeroth has two moons. The expansion idea is tied to Elune and the moons would be used as exploration for Elune stuff.

Idk.. doesnt seem very interesting to tie a whole expansion to going to the moon realy... what is the purpose going to be.. why would I even care going there?

Especially because it will be another made up realm with lore and stuff that was made like last month.

- - - Updated - - -

If you botch a mystery, you end up with a botched mystery.

Sky is blue, water is wet, more news at 12.

Its the execution that ruined most mysteries in wow.
You can still have mystery, just not explain everthing and keep some things left in the dark.

But I guess you cant realy help that after 17 years..

[Hitei]

If it wasn't a problem, why would I invent it? What possible motivation would I have? Particularly as someone who championed the game and company in previous years at every possible moment? There are obviously going to be people that complain for the sake of complaining. But honestly... take a look around you. Blizzard is burning on many fronts. Not everything is peaches and rainbows. It is incredibly disingenuous to dismiss everyone's concerns just because you don't share them.

Because you're bored of the game and instead of just accepting that and moving on, you've convinced yourself that there's some factor Y that is destroying the """current game""" and if that non-existent factor were just fixed then suddenly you wouldn't be tired of the game anymore and would enjoy it the way you did a decade ago. But the reality is that isn't going to happen and the factors you point to aren't really factors, or more often, have literally always been a thing since the day the game started.

You've deluded yourself to such an extent that you genuinely think that somehow, the launch state of WoW was "greatness" when it was a hundred times worse at the exact problems that you're attributing to being common in SL, because the Vanilla through Cata was easily the worst at having little to no character progression, no character interaction, context-less quests that all amount to "something dangerous is nearby kill it, thanks", etc.

There are actual problems with SL, but you are just complaining to complain. That's why you are continually forced to deflect:

Blizzard is burning on many fronts.

You are not enjoying the game less because some ATVI employee sexually harassed a female employee a half decade ago, or because Reforged patched retroactively ruined actual WC3, or because OW and HotS are dead games, or because current patches have less effort involved (a claim which can easily be dismissed by simply looking at the patch history of the game). You point to these unrelated issues, fall back on those nebulous terms like "greatness" or "talent", and appeal to popularity ("everyone's concerns") because it is easier to blame a dozen other things rather than just admit you don't find the same things fun anymore and probably won't ever.

Previously championing the game is just evidence to that fact. You ignored glaring problems the game had previously and now are trying to insist that those same problems, which in many cases are less of a problem than ever before, are the reason the current game just isn't working for you. Championing the game is the exact reason why you now feel the need to come up with some external explanation for no longer liking it.

Not liking the game is perfectly valid, but try to think about what is actually stopping your enjoyment instead of making up demonstrably false reasons, like the above story comments.

[draugril]

[...]

You seem to be lobbing preconceptions you have from other people my way. I did not think that WoW launched in a "great" state. But I do not critique it for things it did not attempt in the first place, like the narrative focus the modern game has. And I absolutely am enjoying the game less because of what has been revealed about the culture of the company. Part of the fun was being a part of that larger community, corporately-created or not. That community has been tainted to the point that some simply won't touch anything with a Blizzard stamp on it and will - not without good reason - judge those that ignore that and soldier on playing in a bubble. Nor do I appeal to authority or a hypothetical "everyone." Nor have I ignored problems in the game's past.

May you have luck debating this person! But that person is not me.

[Lorgar Aurelian]

Is there any semi current estimate of how many ppl work on WoW? Some ppl (art/music) will be shared amongst other Blizz games at least some of the time, but the rest? Is it <100 or more like 300+? This year especially it felt like there are just 10 devs left in a basement doing what they do...

Edit: Next expansion at least will be back on Azeroth. They said "more down to earth/good old WoW" content.

The best way to tell is going through the credits but then you’d have to count each category to take out things like voice actors QA ect and it takes a while for recent stuff to be added to sites like this with shadowlands not being up last time I checked.

https://www.mobygames.com/game/windo...zeroth/credits

[Hitei]

You seem to be lobbing preconceptions you have from other people my way. I did not think that WoW launched in a "great" state.

I want the game to be as great as it was when it released. I want it to live up to that potential.

Okay, whatever you say.

[draugril]

Okay, whatever you say.

Context. I was speaking to the potential of the game, not the game as it was, but how it could be. But if you need to take things out of context to make your point... all the more power to you. I wish you luck in your continued efforts tilting at windmills.

[Aeluron Lightsong]

Nostalgia chasing is not healthy.

[Relapses]

Nostalgia chasing is not healthy.

He just needs the item in my signature.

[Makabreska]

Woah! Vanilla = greatest still lives!

[Hitei]

Context. I was speaking to the potential of the game, not the game as it was, but how it could be. But if you need to take things out of context to make your point... all the more power to you. I wish you luck in your continued efforts tilting at windmills.

I know you are trying really hard to save face right now, but there is zero context where the the statement: "I want the game to be as great as it was when it released." does not mean "the game as it was". You are not going to convince me or yourself that what you really meant with that extremely clear sentence was actually "I want the game to be as great as it could have potentially been but wasn't when it was released".

[AngerFork]

I wholly maintain that those features would have been absolute hits if they: (a) Received the same backing that core features like raids and dungeons received, and (b) were allowed to function as features unto themselves.

Blizzard is too afraid to let that "engagement" metric drop, so they make this "alternative" content mandatory in some way by tying player power into it. Whether it be high item level gear, AP, or legendary power or whatever, instead of island expeditions or Torghast or Warfronts or Horrific Visions being designed according to their own conceptual strength with unique progression systems... they get spooked and tie it into player power. And when that happens, they begin to actively design these features directly for people that don't want to be doing the content in the first place.

So who benefits?

The people that want to focus on their raids and dungeons are spending time on tasks that are superfluous to them just to maintain viability.
And the people that were interested in this "alternate" content conceptually get a watered down and ultimately abandoned implementation.
But that "engagement" metric goes up.

So the only person who benefits is whoever convinced the directors that the engagement metric is indicative of overall player satisfaction. And they weren't necessarily wrong at the outset - the problem is that any measure that becomes a target ceases to be a good measure.

They might've been hits, maybe. I do feel from what we've seen that each had a major flaw even beyond the player power aspect which even with the same backing would have been an issue. Islands had the issue of seeking specific treasures which led to pug fights when people wanted different items. Even with more time/backing, these likely would've been loot slot machines. Warfronts were just boring due to the built in wait times inherent in their design. More time might've helped here to narrow down the timing, but the mere design showed why RTS design doesn't fit well in an MMO. Torghast perhaps could've been better as a feature by itself, 9.2 may give us answers there. Covenants...that one had perhaps too much backing & swallowed everything around it. They would've probably been better as cosmetic only with the soulbind/powers split off into something else.

But I do agree that tying them into player power probably hurts them in an overall sense. Pet battles are fun to some & ignored by others, but they'd probably be universally hated if they were required to raid. I think this is partially why housing is so popular while Garrisons were reviled: Garrisons were forced & swallowed everything whereas most player housing systems are just an outside system for casual endgame. Having played a few MMOs during this stretch, WoW definitely could use a better setup for the casual endgame. Suramar was great for that, Korthia just feels weak in comparison.

[Foreign Exchange Ztudent]

Content is always going to win out over feature sets. The Box Features have been extremely risky and there seems to be no one in the accounting teams and marketing teams that have done any risk management analysis on their features for their upcoming expansion releases.

I don't think this has much to do with player power. They needed player power for a purpose otherwise we would have no reason to engage with the game and as such they came up with that idea and have ran it into the ground. They still missing the mark on recognizing that players just want more content in the game world though. (Not just the World itself but Dungeons, Raids and so forth)

[Dracullus]

Having played a few MMOs during this stretch, WoW definitely could use a better setup for the casual endgame. Suramar was great for that, Korthia just feels weak in comparison.

Suramar was really visually impressive, big zone. But it had literally two things going on: lot of max level story progression and withered training minigame. It's not like we don't have it in BfA/Legion - Boralus, Dazal'Alor, Revendreth are equality visually impressive, BfA had a looot more questing experience (but instead of max level if was 'play another faction' thing), SL campaigns put together have lot of questing as well (but I won't deny SL is smaller expansion than Legion/BfA in general), no matter what you think about launch Warfronts/Islands/Torghast it's all bigger than Withered training.

Korthia is different kind of zone. Suramar didn't have anything for catch up, barely anything for collectors. That was Broken Shore and Argus. From design perspective Korthia picked best stuff from Nazjatar/Mechagon and eats BS/Argus on breakfast. But of course it's ugly, small and you can't fly there.

That's why Zereth Mortis has huge potential. It's big, pretty like TI/Mechagon, has flying. If design will be similar to Korthia, it will be best max level zone ever made.

[AngerFork]

Suramar was really visually impressive, big zone. But it had literally two things going on: lot of max level story progression and withered training minigame. It's not like we don't have it in BfA/Legion - Boralus, Dazal'Alor, Revendreth are equality visually impressive, BfA had a looot more questing experience (but instead of max level if was 'play another faction' thing), SL campaigns put together have lot of questing as well (but I won't deny SL is smaller expansion than Legion/BfA in general), no matter what you think about launch Warfronts/Islands/Torghast it's all bigger than Withered training.

Korthia is different kind of zone. Suramar didn't have anything for catch up, barely anything for collectors. That was Broken Shore and Argus. From design perspective Korthia picked best stuff from Nazjatar/Mechagon and eats BS/Argus on breakfast. But of course it's ugly, small and you can't fly there.

That's why Zereth Mortis has huge potential. It's big, pretty like TI/Mechagon, has flying. If design will be similar to Korthia, it will be best max level zone ever made.

For sure, withered training is nothing compared to Islands or Torghast. But it isn't meant to be, it's just a small mini-game. Moreso what I'm referring to there is how much of a story was there specific to endgame. Suramar had a lot of questing to do & a lot of story to unfold, but it presented it in such a way that you wanted to build up to see the next portion. The story eventually culminated with the Nighthold raid, but the entirety of getting there from building the Arcandor & portal network to sneaking around town in disguise to doing small dailies to build the place up (like the wine vat) gave the whole zone a feel of casual endgame. Nazjatar & Mechagon were somewhat similar, though not nearly to the same extent. Those went from consistent zones to open to simply being daily zones real quick.

I'm hopeful for ZM as well. Unlocking part of the zone behind the Cypher (which isn't tied to player power) has amazing potential & sounds really cool. While I don't think it'll save Shadowlands from an overall sense, I could absolutely see that being a bright spark that helps WoW get back on track in 9.2 & perhaps giving some momentum for 10.0.

[Chickat]

ZM has a lot of potential for sure. I'm quit skeptical but we shall see. Hopefully ptr tomorrow.

[Raetary]

Btw, we got this years super duper secret, foreshadow-y voice lines.
https://www.reddit.com/r/warcraftlor...oracles_lines/

A Stillness falls.

You will banish the Silence.

The design must endure.

The cosmos has been shaped, but nothing is fated.

Their song flows through me.

Can you hear their echoes?

Harmonies merge between us.

The path is revealed to you.

Six voices in discord. Without harmony, the anthem will be ended.

Her dreams sing beneath the surface. Quite now, but her voice will awaken the others.

Mortis, Lumen, Ordos; rhythm and structure.

Vita, Umbra, Tumult; improvisation and possibility.

[ExiHext]

Btw, we got this years super duper secret, foreshadow-y voice lines.
https://www.reddit.com/r/warcraftlor...oracles_lines/

Not much to speculate about besides "her dreams sing beneath the surface. quiet now, but her voice will awaken the others." Talking about Azeroth? She perhaps being a First One?
The rest of the quotes seem quite clear.