Dragonflight Alpha/Beta General Discussion

[Nymrohd]

Wouldn't that be a 10.x feature though? Like Renown for example.

Like, the way reps work in 10.0 is like Renown right? But I wouldn't call it new either.

E.g. we know from later interviews that Transmog was meant to be a MoP feature. However they felt it was in a great state and released it early in 4.3 for Cata. So they might be planning some evergreen feature for casual players for 11.0 and have it advanced enough to release in 10.2 or 10.3

[Lahis]

Pre-patch is more likely to go live early November. Two weeks of Dracthyr levelling, then two weeks of Pre-patch event.

Dracthyr start at lvl 58. If it takes you two weeks to level two levels, I don't know how you do it.

[loras]

That's fine, you don't have to play one, no one is forcing you too, leave the Dracthyr alone, they're fine.

While i do not mean to take sides in this particular exchange i just got a "Leave Britney alone!!" vibe from this exchange.

Probably not entirely justified, but funny enough to share.

[Nymrohd]

I'm ready for some priest news.

Please.

They made a post just to say they didn't forget you. I'd be hopeful.

Personally I mostly hope they move more classes to the design of shaman for the class spec; able to hit every throughput talent with 10-15 talent points leaving the rest flex for utility. For my paladin, especially for Prot and Ret, I think I might have 2-3 points in the tree that are flexible? The original design intent when they revealed that they were redesigning talents was like that and not at all like what some classes got.

[Skildar]

They made a post just to say they didn't forget you. I'd be hopeful.

Personally I mostly hope they move more classes to the design of shaman for the class spec; able to hit every throughput talent with 10-15 talent points leaving the rest flex for utility. For my paladin, especially for Prot and Ret, I think I might have 2-3 points in the tree that are flexible? The original design intent when they revealed that they were redesigning talents was like that and not at all like what some classes got.

I'd rather have them follow the design of death knights. Shaman have way too many talents and pathings. Moreover you have in the tree throughput talents for which the placement doesn't feel right or could be weirdly impactful (lightening lasso, nature's swiftness) and some talents that are completely dead if you're not playing enhancement.

[Avikur]

To be fair, it can't be long until pre patch PTR right? If the leaked schedule is at least... intended to be accurate then PTR needs testing soonish.

I’d expect pre patch on PTR mid to late September personally.

[Nyel]

I'd rather have them follow the design of death knights. Shaman have way too many talents and pathings. Moreover you have in the tree throughput talents for which the placement doesn't feel right or could be weirdly impactful (lightening lasso, nature's swiftness) and some talents that are completely dead if you're not playing enhancement.

Yeah, the Shaman trees are just messy at this point and there's too much going on. No other class has this clusterf*ck of a talent tree as of now which makes me believe that Shaman has a dedicated class designer (which is not bad). There needs to be a lot of clean up, but then the tree could be great, definitely one of the better classes in that regard.

[Makorus]

I mean, the internal leak puts the prepatch on the 25th of October, which seems reasonable.

The fact that it got the Game Awards date right kinda shows me that it's real anyway.

[Nymrohd]

I'd rather have them follow the design of death knights. Shaman have way too many talents and pathings. Moreover you have in the tree throughput talents for which the placement doesn't feel right or could be weirdly impactful (lightening lasso, nature's swiftness) and some talents that are completely dead if you're not playing enhancement.

I guess DK is better than paladin as well. As long as most of the class tree is not throughput I'm ok. When you are a hybrid with one dps spec, some of your capstones should be utilities. And did anyone really enjoy the Dusk and Dawn playstyle?

[Sondrelk]

Dracthyr start at lvl 58. If it takes you two weeks to level two levels, I don't know how you do it.

Two weeks of non-event pre-patch then. We usually get a week or two to become used to the various changes in the new expansion, especially when there is a new class that players should get to test before any actual relevant content shows up.

[Hugnomo]

They called Tyrande a 'Queen' instead of 'High Priestess'. That was... incorrect, of course. But the appropriate response/feedback to that one-word flub in the script is "Hey. Tyrande's not the Queen, she's High Priestess." and any "backlash" beyond that is unnecessary and overblown, for as minor an error as that was. I detest most things that have come out of BFA as a given, but come on. It's one word.

That, and probably whatever other little lore fuckups you can pull out of Darkshore, really doesn't make for a strong argument toward the whole 'Don't hide the cutscenes and endgame storylines of the upcoming unreleased expansion; lay it all out for the community to judge' stance. If anything, it strengthens my opinion that they should keep such things shuttered until launch. If this is really the kind of community that's going to analyze every breadcrumb of lore and decry it as utterly stupid and disgraceful when they find one word out of place, then yes, keep the bigger bits of story under lock and key and away from those such people for as long as humanly possible.

Trust in Blizzard's writing ability does need to be earned, but there's really no reason they have to try and earn it with every single spoiler and total transparency before launch. :/

Completely agree.
They can launch the story without spoilers, and if the community disagrees with aspects of it, they are free to voice it. Blizzard can later correct it, or adjust their approach for future content (or not do either if they find the criticism to be unwarranted, which in my opinion, often is). But if many lore fans had their way, the story would never materialize. It would just be stunlocked forever with trivial nitpicking and conflict over which fan headcanon should prevail in the game. And even then they'd decry it as horrible.
I'd rather have blizzard hired writers at the wheel, than an incoherent mass of arm chair game devs and writers.
I find it much fairer and useful to experience the content fresh and finalized. Then you can judge the story as it was meant to be told, and criticize accordingly. Taking out of context snipets from alphas and betas and blowing them out of proportion is frustrating to watch.

[Dracullus]

Hopefully we will get final Alpha build this week if there are any dungeons/professions/specs unfinished and we will move to Beta next week (now it would be pretty stupid to divide hype, Beta won't bring ton of new content but for sure there will be massive invite wave). In general it's funny how calm is this testing cycle despite tight release window.

Dracthyr start at lvl 58. If it takes you two weeks to level two levels, I don't know how you do it.

Maybe he also thinks about gearing. But that could be done very fast too, like 10 minutes after he hits 60 my Evoker will only have to find 4 gear pieces and 20 lvls of Renown to be as 'finished' as all my alts.

[Rageonit]

Dracthyr start at lvl 58. If it takes you two weeks to level two levels, I don't know how you do it.

Are you aware that people have different schedules and not everyone will be able to hop in and level one up as soon as it's live? Two weeks is a great timeframe to make everyone happy and ensure that even people who play super casually have lots of time to do it.

[gcsmith]

Are you aware that people have different schedules and not everyone will be able to hop in and level one up as soon as it's live? Two weeks is a great timeframe to make everyone happy and ensure that even people who play super casually have lots of time to do it.

More importantly, gives them some time to play them in current raids for a bit of fun.

[Lady Atia]

I mean, the internal leak puts the prepatch on the 25th of October, which seems reasonable.

The fact that it got the Game Awards date right kinda shows me that it's real anyway.

Of course it's real (the wotlk date alone proofs that imo) but still you will always have a few weird people who will try to deny it anyways, like with the pre-announcement leaks for dragonflight.

[Nymrohd]

Yeah, the Shaman trees are just messy at this point and there's too much going on. No other class has this clusterf*ck of a talent tree as of now which makes me believe that Shaman has a dedicated class designer (which is not bad). There needs to be a lot of clean up, but then the tree could be great, definitely one of the better classes in that regard.

It's one of the few trees that really focuses on class/utility on the class tree and throughput/multiple builds on the spec tree. Yeah there is bloat, especially on the class tree. But I'd rather have bloat and many viable utility options than have a railroad class tree were I incidentally get a few utility skills while moving on a track to pick more than 20 throughput points (when the original design was supposed to be "a few")

[Lahis]

Maybe he also thinks about gearing. But that could be done very fast too, like 10 minutes after he hits 60 my Evoker will only have to find 4 gear pieces and 20 lvls of Renown to be as 'finished' as all my alts.

Gearing in SL content is irrelevant. All SL gear will be outdated once you hit 70.

[huth]

No. Beta means feature lock, so no new major features will be added once they shift to Beta.

Included features can still be worked on and adjusted, and yes, that includes the talents.

This. It would be a problem if a class didn't have a new talent tree, but changes to existing trees aren't out the norm.

That aside, this test phase is decidedly and explicitly not in line with previous ones anyway, so how it was done in the past is of limited relevance.
In particular, it is intentionally shorter, so they pretty much have to do changes further in.

[Lahis]

Of course it's real (the wotlk date alone proofs that imo) but still you will always have a few weird people who will try to deny it anyways, like with the pre-announcement leaks for dragonflight.

WotLK dates, Call of Duty dates, Game Awards dates all have lined up with the leak. If Dragonflight dates do not line up, then there has been a delay.

[Lady Atia]

WotLK dates, Call of Duty dates, Game Awards dates all have lined up with the leak. If Dragonflight dates do not line up, then there has been a delay.

Yeah. That said, judging from the current state of alpha, it seems like there won't be a delay this time. Once we get the last talent tree they can start to stress test and invite masses for dungeons and pvp tuning (while the raid will hopefully not be fully tested again by the public to make the R2WF far more interesting and also to avoid any spoilers aswell as already made tactics there, which is something f.e. Max did approve of).