Dragonflight Alpha/Beta General Discussion

[Dracullus]

I mean I still believe there's more embargoes ahead of us that will illuminate and have huge positives for the product.

You won't have any info if there will be 3 or 4 regular seasons. Or at least it isn't expected. We can only tell from experience, if patches will drag too long, there won't be 10.3. But that's stuff post launch.

My perfect (within reason) expac would be that:

0) Pre-patch, 1 week changes + 2 week event = 3 weeks
1) Launch = 2 weeks
2) Season 1, 10 boss raid, DF dungeons 1-4 + 4 MoP dungeons = 10 weeks
3) 10.1 - Evoker zone turned into max level stuff, in general content typical to X.1 patches, big catch ups for S1 = 10 weeks (it's still S1)
4) 10.1.5 - BfA timewalking, brawler's guild, Troll/Draenei heritage, Season 2 - 9 boss raid, DF dungeons 5-8 + 4 WoD dungeons = 10 weeks
5) 10.2 - new big zone like ZM (season 2 catch up), new 8 boss megadungeon = 10 weeks
6) 10.2.5 - Timewalking raid, some evergreen content, Orc/Human heritage, Season 3 - 9 boss raid, DF dungeons 1-2 + DF 9-10 (megadungeon) + 4 Legion dungeons = 10 weeks
7) 10.3 - Revamped Azeroth zone (Dragonblight?), solo challenge for every spec = 10 weeks
8) 10.3.2 - Undead/Nelf heritage, Season 4 - 12 boss raid, DF dungeons 3-6 + 4 BfA dungeons = 10 weeks
9) 10.3.5 - Epilogue questline, Pandaren heritage, new battleground, 2 new (allied or not) races = 10 weeks
10) Season 5 (implemented in 10.3.5, it's already during 11.0 Alpha/Beta) - 'fated raids', DF dungeons 7-10 + 4 SL dungeons = 20 weeks.

Total: 105 weeks = 2 full years. Looks busy, but this is exact amount of content we saw in BfA and Legion. Not to mention they don't have to invent new system every patch, at least during this expansion. Also they could make HD version of some old set for 1-2 seasons like they did in 7.2.

[Lahis]

What's even weirder is the fact it's been over a month now and we haven't gotten any news on the talent preview that they claimed they wanted us to see as soon as possible. Why wait this long to show them if beta is right around the corner?

Never trust a Blizzard Soon.

[Foreign Exchange Ztudent]

So the same thing they have done for going on 18 years now. Why is it that you are even discussing a game that is so against your views? You keep saying you don't know what motivates consumers but apparently know what belief Blizzard is doing things under. Strange right? It is almost as if you've concocted this elaborate story in your head just to justify hating pretty much everything they do.

Just like when you got upset about having less zone count even though the zones themselves are bigger. Because of some magical precedent of zone count and quantity being better then quality.

I mean it was never right for Blizzard to operate like this in the first place. It was allowed due to the good faith and the fact that the MMORPG genre was very new for the mainstream so new content wasn't exactly something that was seen as anything but a "Oh, hey new content" and a form of excitement for the more hardcore to be interested in.

Again, fundamentally I am really annoyed that I gave you this attack vector because you've now used it twice to belittle my mental faculties and again I kind of should've known that you would go hard in on the idea that I can't have a view of the anti-consumerist behavior of Blizzard and also be confused about the consumers continuous decision of partaking in a companies anti-consumerist behavior in which they are buying a product which they have no idea what will consist of in the current state of the product.
(I mean, it was fine for 18 years as you say. So yeah, I don't disagree on that point of view. But, the problem is the perspective of it and again you can use the WoD argument as well. But again, I think the way the lack of 3 Major Content Patches for Shadowlands happened was sleazy as the community manifested the "Cut & Run" scenario and Blizzard neglected the players until they got the mandate to make it acceptable passage of the Shadowlands expansion.)


Also again, I think the argument on the zone thing was tied to number of zones based on expansion. There's some edge cases here, but the thing I wanted to point out on that subject was that you can be assured of the quantity of the content in-game and you can't be assured of the quality of the content in-game from the developers. (also again Quantity is actually quantifiable but Quality is not as you can't really decipher that without knowledge on in-dev) That was the main point I wanted to come out of that argument rather than the math issue where people don't get that 5 is more than 4 (Hey, the new Drac'thyr Starting Zone is used for Post-Launch Content woohoo).

You won't have any info if there will be 3 or 4 regular seasons. Or at least it isn't expected. We can only tell from experience, if patches will drag too long, there won't be 10.3. But that's stuff post launch.

My perfect (within reason) expac would be that:

0) Pre-patch, 1 week changes + 2 week event = 3 weeks
1) Launch = 2 weeks
2) Season 1, 10 boss raid, DF dungeons 1-4 + 4 MoP dungeons = 10 weeks
3) 10.1 - Evoker zone turned into max level stuff, in general content typical to X.1 patches, big catch ups for S1 = 10 weeks (it's still S1)
4) 10.1.5 - BfA timewalking, brawler's guild, Troll/Draenei heritage, Season 2 - 9 boss raid, DF dungeons 5-8 + 4 WoD dungeons = 10 weeks
5) 10.2 - new big zone like ZM (season 2 catch up), new 8 boss megadungeon = 10 weeks
6) 10.2.5 - Timewalking raid, some evergreen content, Orc/Human heritage, Season 3 - 9 boss raid, DF dungeons 1-2 + DF 9-10 (megadungeon) + 4 Legion dungeons = 10 weeks
7) 10.3 - Revamped Azeroth zone (Dragonblight?), solo challenge for every spec = 10 weeks
8) 10.3.2 - Undead/Nelf heritage, Season 4 - 12 boss raid, DF dungeons 3-6 + 4 BfA dungeons = 10 weeks
9) 10.3.5 - Epilogue questline, Pandaren heritage, new battleground, 2 new (allied or not) races = 10 weeks
10) Season 5 (implemented in 10.3.5, it's already during 11.0 Alpha/Beta) - 'fated raids', DF dungeons 7-10 + 4 SL dungeons = 20 weeks.

Total: 105 weeks = 2 full years. Looks busy, but this is exact amount of content we saw in BfA and Legion. Not to mention they don't have to invent new system every patch, at least during this expansion. Also they could make HD version of some old set for 1-2 seasons like they did in 7.2.

I mean certainly interesting and I mean it could become tighter without the system bloat and if they could get back to a 77 day schedule from Legion with planing and delivery of post-launch content being a tight ship. (No idea how the schedule would look like and somehow it might be unreasonable due to the whacky nature of Seasons in Legion) I wonder how it would look then. But, again I am still hopeful that it will look good post-launch I mean they've got so much opportunity to catch up on post-launch.

[Aeluron Lightsong]

You won't have any info if there will be 3 or 4 regular seasons. Or at least it isn't expected. We can only tell from experience, if patches will drag too long, there won't be 10.3. But that's stuff post launch.

My perfect (within reason) expac would be that:

0) Pre-patch, 1 week changes + 2 week event = 3 weeks
1) Launch = 2 weeks
2) Season 1, 10 boss raid, DF dungeons 1-4 + 4 MoP dungeons = 10 weeks
3) 10.1 - Evoker zone turned into max level stuff, in general content typical to X.1 patches, big catch ups for S1 = 10 weeks (it's still S1)
4) 10.1.5 - BfA timewalking, brawler's guild, Troll/Draenei heritage, Season 2 - 9 boss raid, DF dungeons 5-8 + 4 WoD dungeons = 10 weeks
5) 10.2 - new big zone like ZM (season 2 catch up), new 8 boss megadungeon = 10 weeks
6) 10.2.5 - Timewalking raid, some evergreen content, Orc/Human heritage, Season 3 - 9 boss raid, DF dungeons 1-2 + DF 9-10 (megadungeon) + 4 Legion dungeons = 10 weeks
7) 10.3 - Revamped Azeroth zone (Dragonblight?), solo challenge for every spec = 10 weeks
8) 10.3.2 - Undead/Nelf heritage, Season 4 - 12 boss raid, DF dungeons 3-6 + 4 BfA dungeons = 10 weeks
9) 10.3.5 - Epilogue questline, Pandaren heritage, new battleground, 2 new (allied or not) races = 10 weeks
10) Season 5 (implemented in 10.3.5, it's already during 11.0 Alpha/Beta) - 'fated raids', DF dungeons 7-10 + 4 SL dungeons = 20 weeks.

Total: 105 weeks = 2 full years. Looks busy, but this is exact amount of content we saw in BfA and Legion. Not to mention they don't have to invent new system every patch, at least during this expansion. Also they could make HD version of some old set for 1-2 seasons like they did in 7.2.

Putting shit aside, three raid tiers wouldn't be bad IMO, just saying. Again not some "OH BLIZZ GREEEDY1111111111111"

[Foreign Exchange Ztudent]

I mean, I don't really give a fuck about Raid Tiers. In many ways, I feel like the Development Team got tunnelvisioned on always delivering great Raid Content and forgot about the rest of the game.

I am more a lore type person and the butchering of the storylines of the past two expansions to get to the next expansion has been rather gnarly to say the least. Not to speak of other content and other opportunities that are just lost due to the lack of care from the company in the final content patches as of late.

[Chickat]

Yep, even the core abilities clash on concept levels. Are you the careful sniper that takes aim and fires deadly shots or the rapid firing bulletstorm? MM is both!

And even the cooldown is weird in that it's a noob trap that has lower dps if you spend the arcane shot procs from aimed during it and cap on aimed charges etc, even tho arcane shot lights up.

Definitely needs another hard look at, spec is all over the place and feels janky af imo.

Imo the entire hunter class is aimless to varying degrees. Hunters were perfect from Cata-WoD IMO and then they ruined them in legion.

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I have to say I find the prospect of 9.2.5 going live before S4 weird. We were told it can happen, that's true and there is no technical reason it shouldn't happen. But that would mean that part of S3 will be done with cross-faction available and I do wonder if that is perhaps too big of a change to do mid season.

I think Season 3 should be longer than season 4. Imo October is the perfect time to start season 4. 6-7 months of season 3 followed by 5-6 months of season 4.

[Dracullus]

Putting shit aside, three raid tiers wouldn't be bad IMO, just saying. Again not some "OH BLIZZ GREEEDY1111111111111"

With SL S4 idea three big raids could be acceptable.. if they fill expansion with patches and other types of content. If it's desert with patch every 7-8 months again, we will repeat story from SL, only this time different weak points will be presented as worst shit ever that is destroying WoW (looking at you, dragon riding stamina bar). Especially first few months are key how expansion is perceived, from hindsight we can tell that even long drought at the end is lesser evil than medium droughts spread out evenly.

[Aeluron Lightsong]

With SL S4 idea three big raids could be acceptable.. if they fill expansion with patches and other types of content. If it's desert with patch every 7-8 months again, we will repeat story from SL, only this time different weak points will be presented as worst shit ever that is destroying WoW (looking at you, dragon riding stamina bar). Especially first few months are key how expansion is perceived, from hindsight we can tell that even long drought at the end is lesser evil than medium droughts spread out evenly.

Well at least they are used to <Evil virus messing up everyone's plan> this time around.

[Foreign Exchange Ztudent]

I mean again just some form of presence post-launch whether that is the Twitter Space (Will it continue? Will it not?) or the Q&A/Community Stream in a bi-monthly (at a bare minimum, although the Q&A is not very likely to return as the Twitter Space seems to be its successor/Community Stream is also unlikely) fashion post-launch would be pretty helpful in that regard, honestly. People start riling up the negativity once they have left us in the desert for a few months without any acknowledgment which hopefully we avoid this time around with the Council () and every other opportunity that the Team has to communicate going forward.

I just hope we don't see a repeat of SL in that regard.

I also just hope they don't just abandon features and decide that its' "gg" right out of the gate like they did with Torghast and how we didn't get a full Mawsworn set of gear beyond the SoD sets. (or the SoD Set/Legendary Recolors that they didn't add to S4 to unlock through Fated Raids)

[Sondrelk]

Well at least they are used to <Evil virus messing up everyone's plan> this time around.

Well that is just one thing. Are we sure they are ready for World War 3?

[rhorle]

I also just hope they don't just abandon features and decide that its' "gg" right out of the gate like they did with Torghast and how we didn't get a full Mawsworn set of gear beyond the SoD sets. (or the SoD Set/Legendary Recolors that they didn't add to S4 to unlock through Fated Raids)

How was Torghast abandoned when they made changes to it and new rewards each major content patch?

[wowrefugee]

On the second part, fundamentally I don't know what motivates consumers to return to the product of World of Warcraft in its current anti-consumer state nor why people continue to engage $60-$80 + sub fee with it. I don't really care too much that people do it, I just find it odd considering how bad faith the company is operating in. (Especially with the current Game Director consistently lying and consistently throwing out ideas that Dragonflight isn't a on the backfoot expansion trying to find some steady foundation after 2 bad expansions in a row and instead is "far along" and "soon ready for testing" with a Q1 release date that beggars on belief with the timeline and structure they're working around internally.)

The game is fun, that's why I do it. Simple.

Also lol I don't think Ion is going around lying in interviews. People really think defending devs and leads is the same as defending Bobby Kotick and the people around him.

I think you are so confused about peoples actions because you have a lot of interpretations of things that are either complete speculation or flat out false. If you think Ion is this evil, manipulative person then of course you're gonna wonder why people don't really care about it.

[Revamp Man]

Alpha in June launch in February
No way they can launch before because they want to show talent trees in the weeks leading up to alpha so I'll assume max 3 weeks
Let's say we get the talents started next week
Places alpha mid June
For November release they would have to have like 5 months of testing which is not a possibility
7 months of testing would place beta ending in January and then 3 weeks after it ends we get official launch

[boyzma]

I swear...some of you people (not all, don't get me wrong) but some of you are like a mom's soccer van full of kids "Are we there yet? Are we there yet? How bout now? He's pinching meeeeeee! Are we there yet?" I WILL turn this expansion around....oooops van......and none of you will get anything if you don't stop bitching....seriously. Geesh.

[towelliee]

Hyping up the closed non-AU beta of Arclight Rumble starting is perfectly okay since Towelliee is actually excited for it. Don't think anyone actually mentioned an "announcement" and it's just another case of the hype thread reading too much into things.

A bunch of reviews also released so there definitely was an embargo lift on the game.

This 100%. I was given exclusive access to stream Limited iOS beta. I even went as far as saying on my stream before hand IT IS NOT DF ALPHA. And even confirmed DF Alpha would not be this month via my sources. This community has a habit of spreading misinformation and lies about what I say and how I say it.

I was under embargo so couldn’t just outright say until this morning I had the WaR access.

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Trust me when Alpha is ready to go you all will know. They haven’t even started to collect bnets yet from F&F and CC Which means it isn’t soon.

[Foreign Exchange Ztudent]

Well, I guess the late May never really was meant to be. At least it should hopefully be June (Based on Encrypted - Non-Encrypted Build timeline) or July.

Time to touch grass, I guess.

[Kiria]

Imo the entire hunter class is aimless to varying degrees. Hunters were perfect from Cata-WoD IMO and then they ruined them in legion.

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I think Season 3 should be longer than season 4. Imo October is the perfect time to start season 4. 6-7 months of season 3 followed by 5-6 months of season 4.

This I whole heartedly agree with, I have played Hunter since the beginning but since Legion MM felt extremely lacking and BM gets boring due to being a faceroll also I have no interest in melee classes so Survival is a no go zone for me.

[Nymrohd]

Wasn't BM always a faceroll? But yeah MM is just weird, I still remember trying to get the pace of the spec on the dummies before I tried the Mage Tower for it and it was not intuitive at all.

[Melorandor]

Always next week guys.

This community has a habit of spreading misinformation and lies about what I say and how I say it.

Towelliee, this is MMO-Champion bro. Of course you know this exactly what we(not me) are going to do.

This forum is pretty much the equivalent of the old man yelling at clouds meme.

[Nymrohd]

I think it has more to do with people reading tweets and any kind of vague communication, assuming it is directed at what they care for and then being mad they misinterpreted something that was purposefully vague to begin with.