Dragonflight Alpha/Beta General Discussion

[Chickat]

You killed it in the first paragraph

I agree its fake, but its very creative.

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Apparently he was pissed because of what some guy (I can’t remember the name but he was a big shot) did to Garrosh’s story so he made the Teldrassil cinematic have no room for “she isn’t evil”

Honestly, I think he knew he was getting fired soon, or that people were onto him so he intentionally ruined her character.

[Baedril]

As for stuff from SL that game should carry on (or with little changes), are:

- PVP gearing from S2

You know, I don't think I know a single arena player who actually likes the current gearing system. Everyone I know wants either Legion or WoD gearing. Maybe they could keep the system if they 1: shortened the grind and 2: buffed BGs, the whole point of making it so you have to use honor to upgrade stuff is so people would play BGs again, except random BGs are like the worst source of honor in the game, and you need so so so much that it's a waste of honor to spend it on upgrading honor gear rather than conquest gear.

[Chickat]

Teldrassil is a burned out husk with most of its branches gone. If it becomes anything it should be a small eerie zone off the coast, made up of bits of the burned out trunk to climb and scattered branches nearby, full of lingering spirits and eternally clouded by a thick smoky haze. Only a handful of found item quests (pick up a singed book or half-melted blade and take it to someone back in civilization for a bit of story and some neat transmog), and then a few farmable rare cosmetics off the various mobs, maybe a smoldering undead nightsaber mount or something.

It should definitely not ever be a nice zone or actual tree ever again, totally undercutting the event.

Didn't a Blizz dev say it could heal?

[NikolaiShade]

Didn't a Blizz dev say it could heal?

I'm pretty confident it will regrow in a future patch, same with rebuilding Lordaeron.

[Dracullus]

You know, I don't think I know a single arena player who actually likes the current gearing system. Everyone I know wants either Legion or WoD gearing. Maybe they could keep the system if they 1: shortened the grind and 2: buffed BGs, the whole point of making it so you have to use honor to upgrade stuff is so people would play BGs again, except random BGs are like the worst source of honor in the game, and you need so so so much that it's a waste of honor to spend it on upgrading honor gear rather than conquest gear.

I'm not going into details like how long it take to gear up, I just talk about general design:

1) there is PVP vendor
2) PVP items have lower item level outside PVP environement
3) gear matters unlike Legion.

[huth]

Comparing all of the logos to make it easier to figure out how fake it is

As i said before, this logo has a total disconnect between the title and the imagery (which is all over the place, to boot). None of the others do that.

[Shadochi]

Didn't a Blizz dev say it could heal?

Seeing how we could get a huge tree to grow in the Shadowlands, restoring Teldrassil shouldn't be a complicated task (just take longer)

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As i said before, this logo has a total disconnect between the title and the imagery (which is all over the place, to boot). None of the others do that.

I mean to play devil's advocate, the SL logo also looks disconnected until we get the context of the Expansion. The whole shattering in a bright light in the background doesn't look very shadow-y (until we learn of Sylvanas shattering the veil) and the Oribos styled frame also doesn't fit as we haven't seen Oribos architecture yet anywhere in the game.

So if EoD was real (I doubt it) it can just be that we don't have the context for the style yet. Both the forces in play in the expansion and the styles (we also don't know what Dragon Style is as so far it's been mostly borrowed from other races).

[Sondrelk]

As i said before, this logo has a total disconnect between the title and the imagery (which is all over the place, to boot). None of the others do that.

Or alternatively, the expansion will have a heavy void/light theme to go alongside it's useage of dragons.
Consider for instance an expansion where we go to the Dragon Isles and learn more about the Old Gods, the Void, and the eternal battle between them. Nozdormu turning into Murozond was afterall because of the Old Gods, so they would likely have to be relevant again if the Infinite Dragonflight returns.
Wrathion might be wanting to become the Earth Warder like Deathwing used to be, and in that position he would likely be interested in how to defend against cosmic forces like the Light and Void.
And of course there are the Void Dragons we saw in 8.3 that are still likely somewhat relevant.

It would undoubtedly be a weird disconnect to have such a heavy Void themed logo over what will likely be a whole lot of dragons, but then again it might also be exactly what Blizzard would have done with an expansion. Having something with 5 different colors to represent the five different flights would probably look weird, and something more firey might look too similar to the Cata logo.
This logo would be entirely distinct from the rest, which is probably important to someone.

[Fahrad Wagner]

Or alternatively, the expansion will have a heavy void/light theme to go alongside it's useage of dragons.
Consider for instance an expansion where we go to the Dragon Isles and learn more about the Old Gods, the Void, and the eternal battle between them. Nozdormu turning into Murozond was afterall because of the Old Gods, so they would likely have to be relevant again if the Infinite Dragonflight returns.
Wrathion might be wanting to become the Earth Warder like Deathwing used to be, and in that position he would likely be interested in how to defend against cosmic forces like the Light and Void.
And of course there are the Void Dragons we saw in 8.3 that are still likely somewhat relevant.

It would undoubtedly be a weird disconnect to have such a heavy Void themed logo over what will likely be a whole lot of dragons, but then again it might also be exactly what Blizzard would have done with an expansion. Having something with 5 different colors to represent the five different flights would probably look weird, and something more firey might look too similar to the Cata logo.
This logo would be entirely distinct from the rest, which is probably important to someone.

I hope not, and I truly hope if we get a Dragon expansion it's not overly diluted in a Void vs Light theme. I don't like themes which are overlapping too much (BfA was the example of that) and I'd rather have them be digged into properly during separate expansions. Although a Dragons expansion will definitely have ties to the Void, I just hope it doesn't bring in the Light as well just yet.

[Sondrelk]

I hope not, and I truly hope if we get a Dragon expansion it's not overly diluted in a Void vs Light theme. I don't like themes which are overlapping too much (BfA was the example of that) and I'd rather have them be digged into properly during separate expansions. Although a Dragons expansion will definitely have ties to the Void, I just hope it doesn't bring in the Light as well just yet.

The problem I had with BfA wasn't so much double theming, but rather how they didn't have much at all to do with eachother by the end at all. Not the broader faction war and Old God themes, nor did the nautical theme carry over to the end at all.

It would probably be better to just have one string theme with a smaller thing being built up though, I agree. But if it's just the logo being void themed to this extent then I somehow doubt that would be much of a problem honestly.

[Edward Wu]

You now know that Dimensius is an actual void lord:
https://wowpedia.fandom.com/wiki/Dim..._All-Devouring

Just a shard of one, though. I'm almost certain he'll be revamped into an expansion big bad at some point, probably when we go visit the Ethereal homeworld.

[Fahrad Wagner]

You now know that Dimensius is an actual void lord:
https://wowpedia.fandom.com/wiki/Dim..._All-Devouring

Just a shard of one, though. I'm almost certain he'll be revamped into an expansion big bad at some point, probably when we go visit the Ethereal homeward.

Most definitely! And it would be perfectly fitting for a K'aresh expansion (and the long awaited playable Etherals haha)

[Edward Wu]

Most definitely! And it would be perfectly fitting for a K'aresh expansion (and the long awaited playable Etherals haha)

Yeah, that'd be the dream. I think it's being saved for 11.0, though. Where 10.0 is dealing with the more immediate backlash of whatever the Jailer will do in the finale of 9.2, healing up Azeroth in 10.0 and involving the Dragonflights (I hope) and maybe Xal'atath as a precursor to Dimensius in 11.0. Then we follow the Ethereals back to K'aresh to fight Dimensius but The Lightbound are unconvinced and think this will be disastrous so they try to destroy us all on K'aresh or something. Queue us and Ethereals vs. Dimensius' armies vs. The Lightbound. Full space opera expansion.

[Fahrad Wagner]

Yeah, that'd be the dream. I think it's being saved for 11.0, though. Where 10.0 is dealing with the more immediate backlash of whatever the Jailer will do in the finale of 9.2, healing up Azeroth in 10.0 and involving the Dragonflights (I hope) and maybe Xal'atath as a precursor to Dimensius in 11.0. Then we follow the Ethereals back to K'aresh to fight Dimensius but The Lightbound are unconvinced and think this will be disastrous so they try to destroy us all on K'aresh or something. Queue us and Ethereals vs. Dimensius' armies vs. The Lightbound. Full space opera expansion.

That is what I believe/hope for as well, for 10.0 to focus on the Dragon Isles and revamping/healing the old world (so that it may be used in the future if the story requires it), giving us a fresh start/base for future expansions. It doesn't have to be done all at once of course, and I think the Void narrative will be very present if next expansion focuses on dragons, probably creating a link to a Void-themed 11.0.

Also, I remembered something about the Army of Light this morning: in its previous descriptions based on some visions of the possible future, it was mentioned some dragons were a part of it, and I think this could be relevant next expansion as perhaps some dragons would choose to align with the Light rather than remaining neutral or affiliated to their own dragonflight. This could be one of those breadcrumbs that is dropped next expansion only to be picked up 2 or 3 expansions later when the inevitable Void VS Light conflict blows up.

[Valysar]

Imo Void Lords are the final bosses of the game

[Foolicious]

Seeing how we could get a huge tree to grow in the Shadowlands, restoring Teldrassil shouldn't be a complicated task (just take longer)

Nordrassil took a huge blow in wc3 and is doing great by now. Teldrassil is very young and could either be healed or replaced by another tree in the future. It doesn't seem that complicated to grow new world trees.

[Fahrad Wagner]

Nordrassil took a huge blow in wc3 and is doing great by now. Teldrassil is very young and could either be healed or replaced by another tree in the future. It doesn't seem that complicated to grow new world trees.

True, but I think in the case of Teldrassil there is a technical aspect which makes it more complicated as its in-game representation never really lived up to its original design:





If they ever want to regrow Teldrassil, the art team will have a considerable challenge ahead of them; that is if they decide to go that way and make the new tree similar to how it was supposed to look like in its original artworks, with the elven city and buildings at the top of the tree and without having the tree being a massive vertical stump in-game.
Or they could just do that with a loading screen and separate instances between the top and the roots of the tree, making it impossible to reach using a flying mount without going through those loading screens, adding clouds to fix the broken edges at the top of the tree (which were so ridiculous in Vanilla+Cata now that I think of it).

That's why I think they won't make Teldrassil or the Undercity come back. If any new Kaldorei capital is created, I believe it should be at the summit of Mount Hyjal, below the roots of Nordrassil. Same logic applies to the Undercity, if the Forsaken return to the city, they should rebuild upon the ruins of Lordaeron, rather than below as previously. This also fits both narratives of Night Elves claiming back their place on Kalimdor and Azeroth, and the Forsaken stepping out of the shadows.

[Nyel]

Imo Void Lords are the final bosses of the game

After they tried to picture the Jailer as that and failed miserably, I don't trust them anymore.

Remember when the Jailer was framed to be the UBER SUPER DUPER VILLAIN?

[huth]

I mean to play devil's advocate, the SL logo also looks disconnected until we get the context of the Expansion. The whole shattering in a bright light in the background doesn't look very shadow-y (until we learn of Sylvanas shattering the veil) and the Oribos styled frame also doesn't fit as we haven't seen Oribos architecture yet anywhere in the game.

So if EoD was real (I doubt it) it can just be that we don't have the context for the style yet. Both the forces in play in the expansion and the styles (we also don't know what Dragon Style is as so far it's been mostly borrowed from other races).

That's more because we had little context for the Shadowlands, though. We already have context for dragons and the imagery doesn't fit, while it does fit some other contexts that again have nothing to do with dragons in particular.

[Gloriandus]

True, but I think in the case of Teldrassil there is a technical aspect which makes it more complicated as its in-game representation never really lived up to its original design:

These days, they could easily design enviroment to look closer to that first pic than they could in the past, but they're unlikely to put in that much effort into "old" stuff. Looking at the fantasy lushness of that pic is kind of depressing compared to the Wish.com version we get in game. XD