Have you pre-ordered?

[Kalistez]

Nope. Waiting to see if my hunter main will have too many buttons for my comfort. .

So many classes have button bloat these days

[Nerph-]

Still no preordered. And I think it may be the first expansion I will not order at all. Not a hater. I am just not interested in the expansion features

Still monitoring the progress, but still firmly in the "no way no how" camp. Nothing I've seen so far is even remotely interesting enough for me to buy DF, sadly. But I'll keep watching, I guess.

I'm in the same boat as you two. Still not really seen anything that interests me in DF, so holding off at the moment. It will also be the first expansion I've not preordered.

[Cynical Asshole]

So many classes have button bloat these days

Yeah. Blizzard thinks buttons = fun, and many buttons = a lot of fun.

They are right in part, I mean my BM hunter tends to get boring, but they really go overboard in most cases, like WW monk, MM hunter, affliction lock, feral druid, or unholy dk.

Tbh in PVE it's fine, but in PVP where you need basically everything in the spellbook, it tends to be a pain in the ass, and at a certain point I just cba putting in the effort, it's beyond my comfort zone.

And if my favorite classes will have too many buttons for PVP mostly in DF, then I'll just btfo.

I will wait until DF hits the PTR and the pros will post the meta builds, and if it looks bad I'm out.

[Osmeric]

Yeah. Blizzard thinks buttons = fun, and many buttons = a lot of fun.

In fairness, FF14 gets this wrong also.

[Progenitor Aquarius]

Haha, I didn’t. What bonuses do you get when you pre-order basically?

[Swnem]

Well...yes. But, i didn't pay for it. I bought it with gold.

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In fairness, FF14 gets this wrong also.

I don't agree at all. I think many buttons, especially with cool animations are awesome.

I think it's funny people are saying WoW classes have many buttons, when most use 3 or 4 for their rotations. It's so boring! Pretty lukewarm and constantly repeating animations too.

[Cynical Asshole]

"Most"? Like what? Cause other than Destro lock and BM hunter and Arcane mage I guess, I can't think of any spec that only uses 3 buttons for the regular rotation.

And in PVP, like I said, you need basically everything in the spellbook. That's WAY MORE than just 3 buttons.

Even Ret paladins, who historically had a simple rotation, now in addition to that have Wake of Ashes, Seraphim, Final Verdict, and covenant ability. That's a whole bunch of stupid cds that are just bloat.

[Snufflupagus]

"Most"? Like what? Cause other than Destro lock and BM hunter and Arcane mage I guess, I can't think of any spec that only uses 3 buttons for the regular rotation.

And in PVP, like I said, you need basically everything in the spellbook. That's WAY MORE than just 3 buttons.

Even Ret paladins, who historically had a simple rotation, now in addition to that have Wake of Ashes, Seraphim, Final Verdict, and covenant ability. That's a whole bunch of stupid cds that are just bloat.

You say bloat, I say opportunities to maximise performance and stand out of the crowd. Can’t design a game to please everyone.

[Cynical Asshole]

You say bloat, I say opportunities to maximise performance and stand out of the crowd. Can’t design a game to please everyone.

Why do you conflate number of buttons with skill? Elden Ring has like 3 buttons and it's not an easy game. Starcraft at its time was the easiest to play RTS on the market, and it was orders of magnitude more successful than its direct competitor: Age of Empires.

Skill isn't about buttons. Skill is about situational awareness and doing the right thing at the right time.

Adding a lot of buttons on top of the situational awareness, is just artificial and unnecessary bloat that sacrifices the fun factor.

Easy to get in and play = success. The most popular games, both real life games and video games, are those who are easily accessible, and the skill comes from HOW YOU PLAY, not from how complicated it is to kick a ball or to manage to throw it through a hoop.

[justandulas]

Not yet. I'm on the fence because i do miss my raid team from a year ago when i stopped playing for IRL reasons, but the reality is... DF isn't really offering all that much at all. Recycled content, another half baked new class (no third talent tree, AGAIN), and flying dragons is their big feature... we've been flying them since 2006. /sigh

I want to love WoW. I really do. I once drove 3000 miles to blizzcon (i have the murky to prove it) because i love wow so much... but modern wow is a game built without a soul. It legit feels more like a corporate designed checklist than it does a passion project for the devs. I mean, they've had in game assets able to be used for housing for a decade and are legit too scared to try because they lack the imagination to even try for real (no, garrisons don't count and if they do.. its the worst housing in MMORPG history. seriously, MUDs have better housing)

Meanwhile, literally every other MMORPG is putting out more and more content over time. It's hard to justify an expensive DF pre-order when i don't see too much that appeals to me. More M+ and more raiding... how original

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Why do you conflate number of buttons with skill? Elden Ring has like 3 buttons and it's not an easy game. Starcraft at its time was the easiest to play RTS on the market, and it was orders of magnitude more successful than its direct competitor: Age of Empires.

Skill isn't about buttons. Skill is about situational awareness and doing the right thing at the right time.

Adding a lot of buttons on top of the situational awareness, is just artificial and unnecessary bloat that sacrifices the fun factor.

Easy to get in and play = success. The most popular games, both real life games and video games, are those who are easily accessible, and the skill comes from HOW YOU PLAY, not from how complicated it is to kick a ball or to manage to throw it through a hoop.

You're 100% right, but there is a missing component of the equation/discussion. An ability already given.

Simplicity is fine, but in an rpg/mmorpg... once a character has learned a skill and become accustomed to it, they should never EVER have it taken away by the devs.

An example of this is metamorphasis for Demon locks. Demo locks knew this skill for a decade and then woke up one day and "forgot" it? Horrible game devs take powers away, good ones add to them.

I'm all for streamlining and simplifying games, but again... RPG is meant to have an air of permanence, and character progression. Characters should never forgot how to do moves they've had access to for years. It is poor game design, and leaves a bad taste in the mouth of players that they never lose.

It's also a big reason WoW is stuck in this permarut of Diablo 3 like seasons. They would rather have seasons, and 'borrowed' power because it's SIGNIFICANTLY less effort by the dev team, but it's also THE main reason why wow is basically on life support. If you took classic wow #'s away from wow currently, it would be an all hands on deck emergency

[Cynical Asshole]

Not yet. I'm on the fence because i do miss my raid team from a year ago when i stopped playing for IRL reasons, but the reality is... DF isn't really offering all that much at all. Recycled content, another half baked new class (no third talent tree, AGAIN), and flying dragons is their big feature... we've been flying them since 2006. /sigh

I want to love WoW. I really do. I once drove 3000 miles to blizzcon (i have the murky to prove it) because i love wow so much... but modern wow is a game built without a soul. It legit feels more like a corporate designed checklist than it does a passion project for the devs. I mean, they've had in game assets able to be used for housing for a decade and are legit too scared to try because they lack the imagination to even try for real (no, garrisons don't count and if they do.. its the worst housing in MMORPG history. seriously, MUDs have better housing)

Meanwhile, literally every other MMORPG is putting out more and more content over time. It's hard to justify an expensive DF pre-order when i don't see too much that appeals to me. More M+ and more raiding... how original

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You're 100% right, but there is a missing component of the equation/discussion. An ability already given.

Simplicity is fine, but in an rpg/mmorpg... once a character has learned a skill and become accustomed to it, they should never EVER have it taken away by the devs.

An example of this is metamorphasis for Demon locks. Demo locks knew this skill for a decade and then woke up one day and "forgot" it? Horrible game devs take powers away, good ones add to them.

I'm all for streamlining and simplifying games, but again... RPG is meant to have an air of permanence, and character progression. Characters should never forgot how to do moves they've had access to for years. It is poor game design, and leaves a bad taste in the mouth of players that they never lose.

It's also a big reason WoW is stuck in this permarut of Diablo 3 like seasons. They would rather have seasons, and 'borrowed' power because it's SIGNIFICANTLY less effort by the dev team, but it's also THE main reason why wow is basically on life support. If you took classic wow #'s away from wow currently, it would be an all hands on deck emergency

I agree with that. HOWEVER, once certain abilities have been taken away and replaced over time with other abilities, the worst thing you can do as a game dev is to bring them back and dump them on top of the already existing abilities that have been added since then, and create a massive bloat in the process.

I never agreed with returning the pruned abilities. Not like this. Not after Blizzard gave all classes more abilities over time, that replaced what was taken away.

Pruning is necessary. You can't just add more and more abilities over time and expect the player to just deal with it. Eventually bloat becomes an issue and action must be taken either by combining some active abilities with one another, or by outright removing stuff.
Sadly, it seems that Blizzard no longer thinks there is such a thing as "too many buttons" just as they no longer think there is such a thing as "too complicated raids", and the sky is the only limit.

[Kiria]

I agree with that. HOWEVER, once certain abilities have been taken away and replaced over time with other abilities, the worst thing you can do a game dev is to bring them back and dump them on top of the already existing abilities that have been added since then, and create a massive bloat in the process.

I never agreed with returning the pruned abilities. Not like this. Not after Blizzard gave all classes more abilities over time, that replaced what was taken away.

Pruning is necessary. You can't just add more and more abilities over time and expect the player to just deal with it. Eventually bloat becomes an issue and action must be taken either by combining some active abilities with one another, or by outright removing stuff.
Sadly, it seems that Blizzard no longer thinks there is such a thing as "too many buttons" just as they no longer think there is such a thing as "too complicated raids", and the sky is the only limit.

Maybe they should look at integrating spells they want to prune as a button into a spell they want to keep for example add hunters mark so it applies when an enemy is hit with aimed shot or misdirection..

[Nyel]

I'm still waiting for Amazon to finally get the CE as I don't want to order it from the Blizzard store.

[BeerEelemental]

Nope, i checked this site for a bit to see if DF looked any interesting to play wow for a bit again (been gone for over a year now). It does not. Maybe i'll eventually pick it up when it's like €10, just to check out the zones a bit etc.

[Snufflupagus]

Why do you conflate number of buttons with skill? Elden Ring has like 3 buttons and it's not an easy game. Starcraft at its time was the easiest to play RTS on the market, and it was orders of magnitude more successful than its direct competitor: Age of Empires.

Skill isn't about buttons. Skill is about situational awareness and doing the right thing at the right time.

Adding a lot of buttons on top of the situational awareness, is just artificial and unnecessary bloat that sacrifices the fun factor.

Easy to get in and play = success. The most popular games, both real life games and video games, are those who are easily accessible, and the skill comes from HOW YOU PLAY, not from how complicated it is to kick a ball or to manage to throw it through a hoop.

I didn’t conflate it with skill, I connected it to skill ceiling.

Increasing the number of things to do increases the number of potential situations and potential “right time”s, both derived functions of the number of things to do.

If skill is about situational awareness and doing the right thing at the right time, please describe to me how reducing the number of things to do increases the space for skill. Elden Ring is hard, but the skill distribution will necessarily be smaller than games with more potential actions and situations.

A three button game can be hard. A two million button game can also be hard. Given the same external parameters, more buttons means a higher skill ceiling.

[MoanaLisa]

No, I never really pre-order. What with instant transactions and downloading the expansion there's no real reason to do so earlier than a day or two before launch other than the perks they hand out. I'm not big on any of the perks so it's an easy choice.

[Nachtigal]

I will not preorder. And i will not order. For me, DF already is dead before its birth based on the missing effort of the devs to actually create endgame for others than raiders and mythic+ dungeon runners.

Casual gamers will have the leveling phase and nothing really compelling in endgame. So it is likely millions buy the expac, level, and quit again. Seems the devs got that used to that they do not even plan any effort to make these players play any longer.

What would a compelling end game be for casuals? They're already doing more in Dragonflight than they've EVER done for casuals in the history of ever.

[mr2t]

Really feels like there's zero hype for this xpac.

[Romanthony]

I didnt want too, But I did for a level boost so i can do the Blood elf paladin level 60 quest for the mog.

[oldgeezer]

Yep. Cheapest edition. I'll admit that many aspects of the expac look like total ass - flappy dragonriding and the hot mess of the talent trees especially - but I'll end up playing it anyway, if only for the levelling experience and the +.1 catchups.