Dragonflight Alpha/Beta General Discussion

[Merryck]

They announced the 2022 release date so they can delay it and farm confidence points from the player base. The community will say "they are finally listening" "make the expansion good we don't care how long it takes" "they are bringing back the old blizzard polish" My firstborn unconvinced will say "this is not the dao"

[Lahis]

For what? You can get the soundtrack on spotify anyways.

Spotify TOS doesn't let me play it on radio. CDs I can use.

All music transferring into Spotify and Amazon is fucking dreadful for this hobby.

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Pretty sure they haven't done that since MoP or WoD.

Atleast MoP was still on CD.

[Aeluron Lightsong]

They announced the 2022 release date so they can delay it and farm confidence points from the player base. The community will say "they are finally listening" "make the expansion good we don't care how long it takes" "they are bringing back the old blizzard polish" My firstborn unconvinced will say "this is not the dao"

....What am I reading.... /10char

[Merryck]

....What am I reading.... /10char

finally some truth.

[Alexjimithing]

There is nothing new aside from the race for scalies. Everything else is just reskinned current content with all the complexity and depth removed. What is there to actually test outside of Evoker and raids? They're not gonna test quests anymore so don't need to worry about those working on launch.

It's gonna be fun as people complain about there not being more systems but use the euphemism 'complexity and depth'.

[tumbleweed010]

There is nothing new aside from the race for scalies. Everything else is just reskinned current content with all the complexity and depth removed. What is there to actually test outside of Evoker and raids? They're not gonna test quests anymore so don't need to worry about those working on launch.

Dracthyr share a skeleton with the Incubus so it's not a full "ground up" creation there either.

They promised talent trees and quests, endgame content for leveling each individual recipe for all crafting. Thats going to need a lot of testing.

Talents don't even require any real testing either. Talent trees are replacing spellbooks and basically every talent is an already existing ability in the game. Since the idea is to have these trees be scalable for the foreseeable future, the only testing talents require is to ensure the underlying functionality (ie: 8 & 20 point breakpoints, "Choose one" talents, talents becoming enabled when one prior option is fulfilled, etc.) work.

Tuning isn't done until the last month of beta so that's irrelevant to actual testing.

The only actual testing that needs to be done is with professions, the raid, endgame content, and quests.

Unless there's something hidden they didn't talk about, there's not a lot to actually test compared to prior expansions.

[Wonderment2]

I honestly don't get why the April showing was so small?

Alot of it was just Devs and artists discussing stuff. Which is in of itself if they announced it fairly early on and didn't have much to show.

But fuck if it's announcement was only 8 months before it's launch they should have been way more in-depth.

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They announced the 2022 release date so they can delay it and farm confidence points from the player base. The community will say "they are finally listening" "make the expansion good we don't care how long it takes" "they are bringing back the old blizzard polish" My firstborn unconvinced will say "this is not the dao"

Delaying games isn't a good look. Like sure sometimes it's needed. But ideally a company should be hitting that deadline in the first place.

(Disclaimer: Crunch is bad and the initial deadline should reflect game development without crunch)

[13last]

It sets what precedent? That they release things when they think it is ready? That they are careful about in-development stuff so the community doesn't spend months with negative clickbait reactions? You say that we need to wait and see while at the same time saying wait and see is bad. You even threw in "investors" into the mix for a low hanging negativity. It doesn't even work much anymore because the investors currently are taking a back seat because they approved the Microsoft deal that will close in less then a year.

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Negative clickbait reactions? This is why we're at this stage of the game, due to people like you making such light work of feedback. They did not listen to feedback with BFA and SL slightly(they delayed for a month), they were set in their ways and they went for it, and on top of that they just had a huge conflict within their company for abuse/etc and a developer went on twitter saying there's no work being done for 2 weeks. We haven't seen how new dragon riding works, Ion interviews from a month ago is him saying they are figuring it out still and etc, we don't know all the talent trees, sure you say its w.e mostly the same, sure but they gotta test them no? We don't really know endgame besides the M+ scene. Beta at this rate will be ~4 and a half months. June is gone, and they will not release late December. Man you're wearing rose tinted glasses if you think none of this smells wrong.

[Aeluron Lightsong]

Negative clickbait reactions? This is why we're at this stage of the game, due to people like you making such light work of feedback. They did not listen to feedback with BFA and SL slightly(they delayed for a month), they were set in their ways and they went for it, and on top of that they just had a huge conflict within their company for abuse/etc and a developer went on twitter saying there's no work being done for 2 weeks. We haven't seen how new dragon riding works, Ion interviews from a month ago is him saying they are figuring it out still and etc, we don't know all the talent trees, sure you say its w.e mostly the same, sure but they gotta test them no? We don't really know endgame besides the M+ scene. Beta at this rate will be ~4 and a half months. June is gone, and they will not release late December. Man you're wearing rose tinted glasses if you think none of this smells wrong.

The only thing that smells wrong is the constant whining by the same people expansion after expansion. Must be miserable. The sky isn't falling calm down. That 2 week of them of not working is obviously caught up and it was so damn long ago. We have a decent idea of what the endgame is going to be its not like it hasn't changed all too much in the last few years and lets say it does, they'll handle it and show us.


Even if they delay the game its fine it happens lots of games get delayed now a days

(Disclaimer: Crunch is bad and the initial deadline should reflect game development without crunch)

Welcome to the age of Covid, enjoy your stay.


Inb4 "COPIUM11111111111111"

[rhorle]

Negative clickbait reactions? This is why we're at this stage of the game, due to people like you making such light work of feedback.

The problem with the game is because of people like you that find any reason to be negative. Blizzard has listened to feedback. The problem is you want them to design the exact game you want where as they instead went with the game they thought was best after listening to feedback.

Listen to yourself. You have no details about the expansion and you are already viewing it as negative. You are being negative just to be negative at this point. Dragonflight could solve all the problem you have with the game but you've already decided it sets a negative precedent and is something to be hated. So why does length of beta or a release date matter when you've already come to a conclusion?

But sure people like me are the problem with the game. Lol.

[Bindanda]

i thought typically they dropped alphas and betas on a Thursday or Friday. my money is on July 7/8, they wont drop it on the 4th of July weekend, which would be next week

[Luck4]

While I agree, that an argument can be made about Shadowlands being abandoned earlier, I think it's fair to assume that correlates to working from home.

I mean, we're one week from July, and the expansion is supposed to come out before 31th of December, but since I think Blizzard doesn't wanna do a release on holidays, it's also fair to assume that any release after the 15th of December would be a disaster.

So, let's say the expansion will release on the 20th of December, just to get the full six months time-frame, we still didn't get:

• Preview of most Talent Trees, Professions Rework, Dragon Riding;
• Datamining;
• Alpha;
• Beta;
• Even the "pre" expansion book is slated to release in 2023;

It's hard to not be concerned about it.


I'm sad about all this because I think if Dragonflight fails as well, it'll be endgame. Shadowlands was terrible in every aspect IMO, even the general MMO feeling that WoW had for nearly 20 years was lost.

Everyone seems to be playing this game for just a couple of weeks every patch for cheap lore and then quit, there's no more population-critical mass to sustain the MMO acronym.

What happens if Dragonflight fails?

I'm deeply concerned...

[infinitemeridian]

I'm skeptical they will make that 2022 deadline, expecting this to be delayed. We'll see just how far along things are once the Alpha drops (hopefully it's more than previous expacs).

[Eurhetemec]

Shadowlands was terrible in every aspect IMO, even the general MMO feeling that WoW had for nearly 20 years was lost.

Oh look it's the thing everyone says about a different expansion that just happens to coincide with when they, personally, started feeling like WoW was less of an MMO.

There isn't a single post-WotLK expansion someone hasn't said this about. Shit I said it about Cataclysm.

So, in short, it's nonsense. As is your ass-pull, evidence-free theory re: "critical mass" of population. Your "cheap lore" comment really just is the icing on a truly awful cake.

[infinitemeridian]

Oh look it's the thing everyone says about a different expansion that just happens to coincide with when they, personally, started feeling like WoW was less of an MMO.

There isn't a single post-WotLK expansion someone hasn't said this about. Shit I said it about Cataclysm.

So, in short, it's nonsense. As is your ass-pull, evidence-free theory re: "critical mass" of population. Your "cheap lore" comment really just is the icing on a truly awful cake.

It's not a gameplay thing. SL's aesthetic, story, tone, lore, etc. just doesn't feel like WoW. It's easily the worst thing about the expansion (apart from lack of content).

[Ersula]

No it's going to get release come hell or high water. People begged for expansions with no systems or anything to do at end game that's required and this is what that is. It doesn't need to be delayed because it doesn't have any content.

This is pretty much it. By the most conservative estimate the covenant abilities took at least 20% of Shadowlands testing just to balance 40+ combat abilities. And Torghast was at least 5%. They can knock off at least 6 weeks of testing based on that alone. That being said I'm so excited for the new crafting. FFXIV crafting is lit.

[huth]

It's hard to not be concerned about it.

Not at all. Unless you seriously overthink things and spend way to much time worrying about a video game that ultimately isn't going to change your life.

Or put another way, the problem isn't WoW, it's you.

[boyzma]

Not at all. Unless you seriously overthink things and spend way to much time worrying about a video game that ultimately isn't going to change your life.

Or put another way, the problem isn't WoW, it's you.

Exactly. So many debbie downer, nasty nellie, gloomy gus people here. If it's so bad without even being launched, do us all a favor and don't play. This forum is just a tiny spec of the playerbase but yet I bet it's the most negative of them all.

[Alexjimithing]

Literally every place for online discussion is shitting on how content bare the expansion is that it can launch within six months without having even started alpha testing. It's not just here.

I think there's a world of difference between expressing concern/curiosity at how much content it may have versus pretending like you definitively *know* and saying something like, "it doesn't have any content."

You're conflating your intentional pessimism with people wondering if it will be short on content at launch. Disingenuous at best.

[therumblings]

It doesn't have any content.

Just like every pre-borrowed power expansion had no content.