Dragonflight Alpha/Beta General Discussion

[Prenderghast]

Bit of a shame we lose out on a racial mount everyone can use like how all the other ones work, but I guess it's a fair trade to actually having functional wings.

I wouldn't be surprised if they went the Worgen route and added some sort of "token mount", like a recolor of some other Dragon Isles mount, to serve that purpose. Worgen were released with the Running Wild racial and no racial mount, with Blizzard adding the Mountain Horse and Swift Mountain Horse mounts to a Gilneas vendor 3 patches after release to throw a bone to us mount collectors. The same might not apply here since Dracthyr can be both Alliance and Horde - unlike with Worgen, their addition doesn't create an imbalance of mounts available to Alliance collectors vs. Horde collectors; both sides would just not get any new mount.

That being said, even as a mount collector, I'd be willing to forego the addition of a new racial mount if it means we get full flying with the Dracthyr's wings.

[Sondrelk]

I wouldn't be surprised if they went the Worgen route and added some sort of "token mount", like a recolor of some other Dragon Isles mount, to serve that purpose. Worgen were released with the Running Wild racial and no racial mount, with Blizzard adding the Mountain Horse and Swift Mountain Horse mounts to a Gilneas vendor 3 patches after release to throw a bone to us mount collectors. The same might not apply here since Dracthyr can be both Alliance and Horde - unlike with Worgen, their addition doesn't create an imbalance of mounts available to Alliance collectors vs. Horde collectors; both sides would just not get any new mount.

That being said, even as a mount collector, I'd be willing to forego the addition of a new racial mount if it means we get full flying with the Dracthyr's wings.

I am not sure they would. The Worgen horses seemed more like a way to placate the cries of the blatant Horde favouritism in Cata, what with only Horde having a proper intro to Twilight Highlands, or perhaps more importantly only Goblins getting an actual racial mount.

Dracthyr are neutral, so I doubt there is much reason to add much stuff to them.

[Nightshade711]

So in the MrGM interview Brian Holinka said that Dracthyr are their own racial mount. Ion had mentioned that Dracthyr will get a basic version of Dragonriding as a baseline racial, but does this mean that they'll also have traditional-flying as a mount option with their own wings? That'll be great if so.

I am hoping they get traditional flying with their wings in old content. They’ll 100% have the animations for it to be possible.
Especially since there’s that period between the prepatch launch and the expansion launch where we would have to use traditional flying anyways.

[Cheezits]

What would the Darkfallen mount be? Remember we have two encrypted mounts with snake noises, which could apply to the idea of the two elves.

[Raetary]

What would the Darkfallen mount be? Remember we have two encrypted mounts with snake noises, which could apply to the idea of the two elves.

The most obvious pick would be undead Hawkstriders for the belves and undead Sabers for the nelves.

[micwini]

Mildly interesting, Ion was talking about doing something along the lines of master loot (but not master loot) and didn't "want to promise that any of that work can get done in the next few months". Might be reading a bit too much into that, but that's interesting wording if that implies it won't be ready for 10.0 in a few months.

Not sure what the widely accepted American definition of "few" is but in my definition that feels like it at least does imply 10.0 pre-patch this year, seeing few wouldn't be "in 8 months" .

Struck me as odd too. However it could also mean that some big stuff that doesn't gets changed needs to be in at beta, so who knows. I think with how light this expansion is on features and they are focusing more on dev time efficiency, late 2022 could be possible.

[ChairmanKaga]

I wouldn't be surprised if they went the Worgen route and added some sort of "token mount",

The Worgen got a racial mount?

[Prenderghast]

The Worgen got a racial mount?

Yep! The Mountain Horse and Swift Mountain Horse mounts, sold by Astrid Langstrump in both Darnassus and Stormwind. They're actually really nice HD horse models.

[Nightshade711]

Mildly interesting, Ion was talking about doing something along the lines of master loot (but not master loot) and didn't "want to promise that any of that work can get done in the next few months". Might be reading a bit too much into that, but that's interesting wording if that implies it won't be ready for 10.0 in a few months.

Not sure what the widely accepted American definition of "few" is but in my definition that feels like it at least does imply 10.0 pre-patch this year, seeing few wouldn't be "in 8 months" .

Didn’t Ion also say in another interview that they were actually far along in development too?

That with him letting the “next few months” slip might mean 10.0 in 2022?
Idk why they wouldn’t announce it if that were the plan, unless they’re still evaluating of they’d want a little more time to polish everything?

But not getting my hopes up yet for 2022.

[Aeluron Lightsong]

Didn’t Ion also say in another interview that they were actually far along in development too?

That with him letting the “next few months” slip might mean 10.0 in 2022?
Idk why they wouldn’t announce it if that were the plan, unless they’re still evaluating of they’d want a little more time to polish everything?

But not getting my hopes up yet for 2022.

Well better that they know for certain what year instead of like last time.

[Sondrelk]

Yep! The Mountain Horse and Swift Mountain Horse mounts, sold by Astrid Langstrump in both Darnassus and Stormwind. They're actually really nice HD horse models.

They are only HD horse mounts because they were literally just a regular horse model though. When the horses were updated in BfA they got updated along with them.

[Prenderghast]

The most obvious pick would be undead Hawkstriders for the belves and undead Sabers for the nelves.

In the BFA epilogue the dark rangers were shown riding a unique pale darkhound mount. Felt super unique and appropriate at the time. With the several color variations of darkhound mounts added in Shadowlands, though, I'm not sure that Darkhounds would be my default guess for Darkfallen anymore. Probably more what you said with undead Hawkstriders/Sabers, simply because I have no clue in what way the encrypted snake mounts would be linked to Darkfallen thematically.

[Sondrelk]

Didn’t Ion also say in another interview that they were actually far along in development too?

That with him letting the “next few months” slip might mean 10.0 in 2022?
Idk why they wouldn’t announce it if that were the plan, unless they’re still evaluating of they’d want a little more time to polish everything?

But not getting my hopes up yet for 2022.

A 2022 release would probably have to require the Alpha either starting in the next 2-3 weeks, or skipping most of the public Alpha or even not opening until Beta.
Any later and we would be looking at a dangerously shirt testing cycle, even if there isn't some massive new system that needs custom testing, or loads of extra stuff is encrypted.

Or of course 10.0 pre-patch launches in December and the actual launch is early 2023.

[micwini]

A 2022 release would probably have to require the Alpha either starting in the next 2-3 weeks, or skipping most of the public Alpha or even not opening until Beta.
Any later and we would be looking at a dangerously shirt testing cycle, even if there isn't some massive new system that needs custom testing, or loads of extra stuff is encrypted.

Or of course 10.0 pre-patch launches in December and the actual launch is early 2023.

Depends who's testing. If it's asmongold, they'd only need one shirt.

[Makabreska]

Hmmm, Ion wants to bring back Master Looter.

[Teriz]

If Dracthyr’s racial mount is themselves, I wonder if they’re going to give them standard flight.

[Syegfryed]

Horde has none of those either. So Reliquary has to fill the spot..

Ah yes, the horde does not have a organizations that know how to deal with deadly beasts or dragons, let alone the thunderlord clan, who are the best hunters and the dragonmaw clan with all their extensive knowledge about dragons.

Sure a bunch of scholars will be better suit for an exploring mission in a dragon infested isle.

- - - Updated - - -

I think modern Blizzard has ego issues with certain things. Instead of looking at past lore to find those interesting kernels to follow up and tell an interesting story with, they'd rather just tell the same story with original creations. This is how we get stuff like the Jailer and Zereth Mortis.

Thats sure it is, head too far in their butts problem, they just made up a race/class on the fly, when they could have just used drakonids and dragonspawn for race and class

[Hitei]

Sure a bunch of scholars will be better suit for an exploring mission in a dragon infested isle.

Yes, because the Aspects want to explore and learn about the current state of the land, not have a bunch of meatheads try to murder or enslave everything that moves and then turn around and stab them in the back at the first opportunity "for glory".

[Varx]

Blizzard: "we're hoping to have races be as little as possible of a limiting factor as to which class you can play."

Also Blizzard: "the dracthyr can only be evokers and evokers can only be dracthyr"

Joking aside, now I know that dracthyr will have more classes sometime after launch or in 11.0

And visage form needs to be open to more races and usable in combat to simulate more races being able to be evokers.

[Raetary]

I'm surprised nobody actually asked them about visage form expansion in any interview, at least as far as i know.