Dragonflight Alpha/Beta General Discussion

[Darkarath]

The list of technical challenges left to do this has decreased throughout Shadowlands and it is now the easiest it's been for them (so far) to do, once they finish moving the entirety of WoW to use Prism (their new cross-platform cross-game graphics API abstraction layer, used to run WoW on Metal on Mac and DX11 on Windows) they'll at least have a lot of work already done to get WoW running on other platforms graphics API wise. The controller support from Shadowlands was also another technical challenge that they would've had to solve when porting for consoles that is already pretty much done.

You are raising my hopes... So excited for the news next week. I love PlayStation games but they feel soooo short after playing WoW for so many years. Plus, WoW combat is incomparable IMO, is the main reason why is so fun still.

[Shadochi]

Did no1 post this yet? from 4chan.
https://pastebin.com/TMyXtPMc

Gonna just cover some basic stuff that people probably want to know about 10.0
I don't care if you don't believe it, I'm not going to provide any proof.


- Cardinal Veil - The northern most zone of the Isles. The new hub city of Dragonshire is here, when you first get here It's abandoned, but the Dragonflights quickly repopulate it with their Dragonkin and Drakonids. Later on even some Nether and Storm drakes show up. A path runs through the middle of the city running north to south. The path north leads to a broken bridge out to sea that supposedly once led to Wyrmrest temple. But with how often islands like to move around on Azeroth it must not have lasted very long. Dragonshire itself is surrounded by a crimson Forrest called the Winewoods, which a new rabbit-like race live. The quests here are basically an introduction to the Isles, the history of the island, the various races that now inhabit the island, and why/how the island was lost in the first place.

Um but we already know where the path from Wyrmrest leads

Strand of the Ancients

[NikolaiShade]

-snip-

I'm not a dev but from a pure thematic perspective I would say tanking is more a Black dragonflight thing, while Bronze is more dot damage (earth and time things you know); anyway there is a little bit too much infos about cut content for my tastes

[Marlamin]

Um but we already know where the path from Wyrmrest leads

Strand of the Ancients

It actually goes over SotA.



(dont quote image pls)

[Shadochi]

It actually goes over SotA.

[img]https://marlamin.com/u/chrome_VnC1eYzgV6.png[img]

(dont quote image pls)

ah true, missed that.
Tho makes one wonder how explorers before haven't tried to follow it. Or y'know wasn't it at some point popular for the 2 factions to go conquering new unexplored lands

[huth]

Remember that with Shadowlands, leaking a logo has happened before, so there is a chance it could be real, however I'm leaning on the side of it being fake.

Sure, but that was right before the official announcement. This one just kinda showed up out of nowhere.
Any of the more recent expansions was leaked by some outsider working at the event they were revealed, too, which we won't have this time.

We may not even get a leak at all for 10.0.

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ah true, missed that.
Tho makes one wonder how explorers before haven't tried to follow it. Or y'know wasn't it at some point popular for the 2 factions to go conquering new unexplored lands

Well, it does kinda end there in practice. It looks like it went further in the past, but anything beyond SotA went missing. Given what happened to the continent, that isn't terribly surprising either. It's a wonder this much is left of it.

[Marlamin]

Well, it does kinda end there in practice. It looks like it went further in the past, but anything beyond SotA went missing. Given what happened to the continent, that isn't terribly surprising either. It's a wonder this much is left of it.

It ends there purely for visual reasons and with it being a PvP map they usually put a slightly harder focus on not having any unneccesary assets, so it might as well just keep going for all we know.

[Sondrelk]

If I was a betting man on real 10.0 changes, I'm going to put my money where my mouth is and say they will look to redesign how flight works in WoW so they do not have to continue using the unpopular Pathfinder system, while also restricting flight in some other way that throttles players like how they want, while not making players wait months to a year to use their flying mounts.

That would be the best option forwards. Though I somehow feel it's unlikely, mostly because Blizzard is very averse to going back to old content, which is the main benefit of having a less OP version of flying available.

[Shadochi]

Well, it does kinda end there in practice. It looks like it went further in the past, but anything beyond SotA went missing. Given what happened to the continent, that isn't terribly surprising either. It's a wonder this much is left of it.

I was talking about more of an in-lore reason, I mean looks like Strand was just one of the locations along the path, strange that they never went exploring what is further.

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It ends there purely for visual reasons and with it being a PvP map they usually put a slightly harder focus on not having any unneccesary assets, so it might as well just keep going for all we know.

And with it being removed in BfA I wonder if the lore around it is still canon.

[Darkarath]

Strand of the Ancients is located in Dragonblight right? So it is south oriented. It could go to any city that was along that path when Kalimdor was one continent. Nothing relevant IMO.

[Harbour]

Allied races - Currently Dracolites for Alliance (the two legged lizardy dragons) and Leppuns for Horde (rabbit-kangaroo hybrid lookin humanoids) are planned as allied races in a future patch.

i loved this leak until this bit
blizzard aint going to add second furry little race in a row to the Horde
the outrage would be tremendous, especially since alliance will get badass legged nagas
cool but fake

[Darkarath]

Well if it does happen it definitely won't come to Playstation. Actually now that I think about it MSoft could push it hard for XBox as a competitor to FFXIV since Sony screwed SE out of letting it be true cross-platform.

I'll buy a Xbox in a second if it is exclusive. But if they make it I think that it will be available in multiple plataforms.

[huth]

It ends there purely for visual reasons and with it being a PvP map they usually put a slightly harder focus on not having any unneccesary assets, so it might as well just keep going for all we know.

Well, even in lore it likely just kind of ends in the middle of nowhere. You have to remember that back when it was built, it was on dry land.

[username993720]

Also "on her third death, she will usher in our coming". Suppose the huge crack in the planet seen on the logo means Azeroth "dies" again in 9.2, then is covered in darkness because "her heart is a crater, and we have filled it."

Old Gods coming back like never before, perhaps with a Void Lord being the final boss. Dragons needed to beat them.

It's actually Azeroth's 4th time.
The Sundering, the Cataclysm, Sargeras' sword and the Jailer's assault.

It most likely refers to Alleria, who has a quote about her feeling like she already died twice.

[Sondrelk]

I find it interesting that no leak wants to talk about improvements to the open world much.
Shadowlands might have been the most inpactful single expansion for improvements to the open world outside Legion, and I am curious what will happen with it going forwards.
The covenant stuff especially feels like it could have been made in such a way that it made all zones relevant instead of just your chosen one. And even the very idea of covenants to begin with feels like a better version of reputations for the purpose of rewarding the player for sinking time into one zone over others.

[Marlamin]

Well, even in lore it likely just kind of ends in the middle of nowhere. You have to remember that back when it was built, it was on dry land.

Yeah, but "middle of nowhere" is an excellent way to tie later stories to it which that leak does.

[Sondrelk]

Are we discussing the path from Dragonblight? Isn't that just the trail Arthas' scourge carved out into the ground in Quel'thalas?

Edit: I just remembered it's more constructed than the path in Quel'thalas so nevermind.

Maybe it leads to Uldorous, a hypothetical titan facility on the Dragon Isles.

I am still standing firmly by the idea that Uldorus i just the proper name for the heart chamber, based on the simple fact that Antorus was where Argus' world soul was.

[Revamp Man]

The list of technical challenges left to do this has decreased throughout Shadowlands and it is now the easiest it's been for them (so far) to do, once they finish moving the entirety of WoW to use Prism (their new cross-platform cross-game graphics API abstraction layer, used to run WoW on Metal on Mac and DX11 on Windows) they'll at least have a lot of work already done to get WoW running on other platforms graphics API wise. The controller support from Shadowlands was also another technical challenge that they would've had to solve when porting for consoles that is already pretty much done.

Not saying they're already porting things to consoles or trying things out, but it's definitely never been this easy for them to do.





This alone makes me hope it is real as this has some pretty cool implications.

I mean we do know the scarlet crusade is back and planning to make their move soon

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I love the leak
Personally love this season and I’m happy to see all of the different stuff people are doing for it. We aren’t getting anything on the level of “the expansion is about death but here are ghostbusters” and this version of DS even had the whole “not all flights are covered because blizzard is creatively bankrupt” which is possible

Probably all are 100% fake but I want this one damn it

[Vakir]

In regards to that leak, the rabbit race may actually explain the encrypted pet that shares animations with Vulpera. That's one of the things missing in deducing the theme, and I never felt a cute draconid would fit that rig.

This is way too fucking detailed but a lot of it checks out. Horde allied race sounds like dogshit compared to dragons though.

[Raetary]

I am still standing firmly by the idea that Uldorus i just the proper name for the heart chamber, based on the simple fact that Antorus was where Argus' world soul was.

But if we stick to that naming convention than the Heart chamber is very much NOT Uldorus as it doesn't house the World Soul.

Besides that, if it was Uldorus Mother would've just called it that.
Furthermore the chamber was created in secret by Archaedas, not even Ra knew about it, so it's very likely the facility is somewhat removed from the other ones.