Dragonflight Alpha/Beta General Discussion

[Nyel]

Dragon Isles confirmed?

https://www.wowhead.com/news/datamin...edition-325627

What else can be associated with a green dragon other than an emerald dream related xpac, I guess?

Everything related to Dragon Isles? A green dragon is as good as every other dragon for a Dragon Isles expac and they eventually have to choose one Dragonflight.

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Maybe they are so behind because of pumping every available resource into 10.0. They would not say that but Shadowlands was basically abandoned early in 2021 even if we get a good 9.2.

Absolutely. They knew way back in early 2021 that 9.3 wasn't a thing. The Ion interview in March made this already pretty clear, but most people where doubting it back then. But the writing was on the wall that 9.3 was never about to happen.

[LorDC]

This "slight chance" is growing scarier...

If I would bet for each speculated expansion, the probability chart looks like this:

- 50% Lifelands/Emerald Dream
- 35% Dragon Isles
- 15% World Revamp

The fun fact is that my wish list is literally the opposite.

Actually, World Revamp and Dragon Isles are not mutually exclusive. They can easily make new expansion events happen in (revamped) old world, while making Dragon Isles themselves into new msx-level zone Suramar-style.
And I have serious doubts about Lifelands. What would we even do there? Another Old God expansion? It also contradicts hints about "going back to basics".

[Makabreska]

Shadowlands was supposed to be a mirror of Azeroth and look where we are.

When did they say that? Also, Emerald Dream as a primal Azeroth was established long time ago.

[Myrrh]

In the spirit of rampant and baseless speculation, I've been looking at which models received new LOD files since the beginning of Shadowlands. Granted, this is likely to simply be part of a gradual update to the game as time allows to improve level of detail options, and nothing to read into with any hype.

They've been adding in LODs 1-3 for various models, spell effects and doodads since the 9.0 beta, but with seemingly no rhyme or reason to which models they opt for. There are a lot of wildlife (tigers, murlocs galore, yak, shoveltusk, eagle & many more), as well as seemingly random choices like protodrake mounts, the Heart of the Aspects mount, Teron Gorefiend (BT version), the legion female spider demon things, Invincible, stormforged vrykul, and for some reason a 'leytree' doodad from Legion (Azure dragonflight, anyone?). There are quite a lot more.

There's also the Taerar_q one which was noticed ages ago in this thread. I thought there was nothing to this (probably isn't!), but the Taerar_q updates also include new BLP files and 'updated' anim/skin files. Even if the updates are only caused by an accidental save, somebody has really been making an effort to check out Taerar behind the curtains. A little curious given we have much more solid evidence to be worked up around green dragons now. Heart of the Aspects is worth raising an eyebrow at too, like why would you prioritise such an underused model?

While these don't have any apparent connection, it would make sense if they were prioritising 'LOD-ing' models they intended to use again for the next expansion. The wildlife focus in particular was what made me start speculating this - new or revamped zones on Azeroth would likely use a lot of recolours of existing flora and fauna rather than whole new types of creatures. If I understand anything about LOD files (and I sure don't), they seem to apply to all skins that can be used with a given model. This would mean that if they were reusing these models, the corresponding new mobs etc could only be reskins rather than having drastic changes (my first thought seeing the spiderdemon model included was that it would make a decent skeleton for a female drakonid... alas, that would probably need a separate .m2 file).

Anyhow, food for thought or instant dismissal. Really this is just the result of me being weirded out that they made a conscious effort to improve the leytree model of all things.

[ExiHext]

Actually, World Revamp and Dragon Isles are not mutually exclusive. They can easily make new expansion events happen in (revamped) old world, while making Dragon Isles themselves into new msx-level zone Suramar-style.
And I have serious doubts about Lifelands. What would we even do there? Another Old God expansion? It also contradicts hints about "going back to basics".

I still don't think we get a world revamp ever. Too much effort for the benefit. I can only see them doing what they did with Arathi and Dark Shore. Two or three areas per expac but not whole continents. But that's just my personal guess.

Realm of life sounds a bit...let's say redundant after being in the realm of death. Also there is Ion (was it Ion?) saying that the next expac will be more grounded. On the other hand even "grounded" or "back to basics" leaves A LOT of room. Legion started quite grounded and ended in space. But (again personal guess) I don't think we will tackle the next cosmic force realm so soon. Though I can see Elune become relevant somehow after the build-up we had for her so far.

In the end we might get a Dragon Isle/Lifelands mash-up.

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When did they say that? Also, Emerald Dream as a primal Azeroth was established long time ago.

Not sure if I remember correctly, but weren't the shadowlands where we went after ingame death in the beginning? So Azeroth just black and white? And that got retconned somehwere along the way? I mean, one of the DK spells (Wraith Walk) read something like "Sidestep into the Shadowlands, breaking Root effects and increasing your movement speed by 70% for until canceled". I don't think it was a sidestep into Bastion or Revendreth, just something like a phase change.

[Makabreska]

Not sure if I remember correctly, but weren't the shadowlands where we went after ingame death in the beginning? So Azeroth just black and white? And that got retconned somehwere along the way? I mean, one of the DK spells (Wraith Walk) read something like "Sidestep into the Shadowlands, breaking Root effects and increasing your movement speed by 70% for until canceled". I don't think it was a sidestep into Bastion or Revendreth, just something like a phase change.

Oh, so they simply did a token explanation for gameplay part of corpse running.

[YogSoggoth]

9.2.5 will probably have some loose ends being tied up and bring us some QoL improvements like the removal of the dreaded covenant system (the abilities being treated as talents you can change by talking with a new NPC in Oribos) and timewalking rework (weekly rotation instead of a horror we have now)
10.0 is either Dragon Isles (with either 5 new zones dedicated to each known dragonflight or better yet, 5 new zones dedicated to NEW wacky dragonflights) or Light vs Void expansion with Yrel invading Azeroth.
That's my take of it anyway.

[Lahis]

Shouldn't "Lifelands" be just life itself?

Life is a cosmic force, so it has a plane for itself.

[Plehnard]

To add to the M+ participation numbers dropping, it really isn't a fair estimate as even in my guild (Semi-casual, we do raid mythic but usually don't clear it before next raid) the participation has went down in M+ over the months even if the people are still subbed and active, most people got their BIS drop from dungeons and aren't bothered that much with pushing keys. I for example while I have been subbed for all of SL and play almost daily have not done a M+ in over 2 months I think.

Can confirm that. Most dropped M+ to a minimum after they got their KSM with only a very few in the mood to push for 20+ or get at least the portals.

[uzira]

Okay so now its safe to say that 10.0 has 100% something to do with dragons.

[Shadochi]

Life is a cosmic force, so it has a plane for itself.

I missed most of the "Lifelands" talk, but it there any actual information that it DOES have its own plane of existence (not something connected to a specific World like the Emerald Dream). If you are going off of https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/wo..._Cosmology.jpg then the Life portion just looks like a generic magical forest or nature stuff to represent life, might as well just be the material realms, you know where most of life is.
Even the original cosmic chart represents life as just nature and druidic stuff https://i.pinimg.com/originals/8b/b5...09860c20c7.jpg

I think that with the redo of the cosmic chart they just basically said "Yeah this is a cool drawing but we will modify it as needed, might be true, might not"

[Hyrja]

My bets are 10.0 will be a Elune expac, dragon isles might be patch content in 10.2 orso.
Don't forget the Elune theme transmog set from the shop that was added recently..

[Shadochi]

Okay so now its safe to say that 10.0 has 100% something to do with dragons.

Don't forget we were told that dragons would have importance by the time we are level 113 (that is what Chromie Scenario originally scaled to, what does it scale to now?).

But I wonder if they actually did have another dragon expansion that was being worked on backed then and if that was the prime candidate (I mean by Legion story it would make sense to have dragons next as we once again had the pillars to empower them).

[Sondrelk]

I missed most of the "Lifelands" talk, but it there any actual information that it DOES have its own plane of existence (not something connected to a specific World like the Emerald Dream). If you are going off of https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/wo..._Cosmology.jpg then the Life portion just looks like a generic magical forest or nature stuff to represent life, might as well just be the material realms, you know where most of life is.
Even the original cosmic chart represents life as just nature and druidic stuff https://i.pinimg.com/originals/8b/b5...09860c20c7.jpg

I think that with the redo of the cosmic chart they just basically said "Yeah this is a cool drawing but we will modify it as needed, might be true, might not"

A soldier in Maldraxxus talks about fighting against invaders from different cosmic realms, of which he mentions the Gardens of Life.

No idea why everyone started calling it Lifelands though, I assume just as a derisive nickmame.

[guro-tchai]

10.0 is either Dragon Isles (with either 5 new zones dedicated to each known dragonflight or better yet, 5 new zones dedicated to NEW wacky dragonflights) or Light vs Void expansion with Yrel invading Azeroth.

why not both? we have literal void dragons, who might be free from the old god influence - maybe just temporarily. Yrel would probably try to cleanse them, be it by killing or lightforging them.
they already have a track record of wasting several plotlines in a single expac, BfA being the worst offender.

[Lahis]

I missed most of the "Lifelands" talk, but it there any actual information that it DOES have its own plane of existence (not something connected to a specific World like the Emerald Dream). If you are going off of https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/wo..._Cosmology.jpg then the Life portion just looks like a generic magical forest or nature stuff to represent life, might as well just be the material realms, you know where most of life is.
Even the original cosmic chart represents life as just nature and druidic stuff https://i.pinimg.com/originals/8b/b5...09860c20c7.jpg

I think that with the redo of the cosmic chart they just basically said "Yeah this is a cool drawing but we will modify it as needed, might be true, might not"

The Broker version of cosmology chart uses Ardenweald to represent Life because that is the only Life related thing the desisens of Death know of.

And the Mortal plane version shows mortal plane examples of the forces, not their home dimensions.

[Shadochi]

A soldier in Maldraxxus talks about fighting against invaders from different cosmic realms, of which he mentions the Gardens of Life.

No idea why everyone started calling it Lifelands though, I assume just as a derisive nickmame.

Ah this is obviously referring to the WOTLK soundtrack Garden of Life, so from whichever zone that soundtrack is. /s

But would be kind of crazy if the "Life Realm" of the cosmic force of Life was tied to just one planet in the whole universe... and it also not being there then before Azeroth started forming as a planet and nascent titan.

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The Broker version of cosmology chart uses Ardenweald to represent Life because that is the only Life related thing the desisens of Death know of.

And the Mortal plane version shows mortal plane examples of the forces, not their home dimensions.

That makes sense I guess, but that just furthers the point that there isn't a specific realm of Life. If it was made by inhabitants of draenor (before the whole thing happened to it) it would probably be represented differently than on Azeroth, since their planet isn't a titan with a dream.

I would be more interested in the Arcane/Order realms tbh, vast Ulduar like cities. Imagine Ulduar the size of Suramar or Revendreth (better example I guess) with a titanic city encompassing most of the zone... and because of the size of the architecture to the titan constructs that would probably be a "small" town

[Raetary]

I missed most of the "Lifelands" talk, but it there any actual information that it DOES have its own plane of existence

Each force has its own plane of existence, that's established.

Shadowlands for Death, TN for Chaos, Light/Void for Light/Void.
Lifelands were literally name dropped (Gardens of Life, as per the Necrolords) and we pretty much know Elune is residing there.
Order has its own thing according to the devs.

Reality isn't tied to life, its a cosmic nexus connecting every force.

[Shadochi]

Each force has its own plane of existence, that's established.

Shadowlands for Death, TN for Chaos, Light/Void for Light/Void.
Lifelands were literally name dropped (Gardens of Life, as per the Necrolords) and we pretty much know Elune is residing there.
Order has its own thing according to the devs.

Reality isn't tied to life, its a cosmic nexus connecting every force.

Chaos and Void were done okay, for Light and Order I guess we do not have much info on what their realm is. But for these there was actual worldbuilding done spanning decads.
If Order and Light work as Chaos and Void then they would presumably also be expanding their planes by consuming/corrupting/cleansing/ordering reality.

I wish they just kept the Life and Death domains like the Elemental ones, not tied to the whole universe but to individual worlds (correct me if im wrong but aren't the Elements on Draenor different than on Azeroth, they share many concepts sure but not same entities ruling over both).

It should've been split by:

• Basic Building Blocks - (Life/Spirit, Death/Decay, Elements) unique to each world
• Actual cosmic forces battling on Reality (Chaos, Order, Light, Void)

I mean I might be biased since I am projecting how I did my worldbuilding for my D&D setting but Death and Life seem to not match quite well with the other 4 on that tier. And from the original cosmic chart (before the whole "perspective" changes) seems like the original Chronicles writers were thinking the same way with Shadowlands and Emerald Dream being tied to Azeroth in the same way.

Would that mean the First Ones created both the realms of Life and Death before moving on? Then makes it strange how Eonar could shape a Life realm and before SL herself and Elune were the most powerful Life entities we knew of with nothing pointing to there being others more powerful or even on their power level.
That was defo not the original plan but seems like it is what we will have to live with as canon now.

[Edward Wu]

New expansion: Delve into the Garden of Life as you visit the progenitor land of all creation that has a special bond with the Emerald Dream, Zereth Vitam!
Class: Tinker