Dragonflight Alpha/Beta General Discussion

[therumblings]

Spoiled how? We only got the title and a blurry photo of a promo image of Aleztrasza xD

Spoiled as in, treated to one of the earliest legitimate leaks, with such a long time until the announcement. Not spoilers for the plot or anything

[Raxacorico]

Every single action combat MMORPG has the exact same gameplay and that is sending 5+ enemies at you so you can aoe them down with cleave attacks. That is not what is appealing to me, sorry. The only MMO with different and imo better combat system was Wildstar, and I truly hope it does come back one day. It has to.

[therumblings]

The closer we get to the 19th, the longer the wait feels!

[Dracullus]

Blizzard needs to stop trying to fix things that aren't broken.

Yeah, some people here just want some different game in Warcraft universe. Correction, story also completely sucks for them, so I have no idea what they want.

[Das Thora]

WoW 2 is basically never happening, because it already exists. Pretty much anything they could accomplish in a WoW 2 can be done with an expansion (albeit an extremely ambitious one), and they wouldn't have to have everyone lose all their decades worth of progress. But even without a WoW 2, this is a very real and serious problem Blizzard needs to seriously start addressing and focusing on the long term goals of WoW as a whole, because it's been around for roughly 2 decades and they need a plan to support it for just as long, and that's just from judging Everquest and how long it's been around.

What you're suggesting isn't a WoW2.

[therumblings]

What you're suggesting isn't a WoW2.

Right, I wasn't suggesting a WoW 2, because the idea is stupid to me. Why make a separate game when you have the tools to revamp the world and keep all the progress your players made in 20 years instead of alienate them in some brand new game? I don't see any need for a WoW 2, unless someone else makes a good case for it.

[ercarp]

I know that as soon as we are all well fed on WoW news, we will instantly start craving more future news like when the beta is starting and when the release is, but I so enjoy leak season and the expansion announcements. I am just greedy

Yeah, and it's gonna be an even longer wait for any other news to come out after the expansion reveal. Right now we're talking about just a little over a week of waiting, but once the expansion has been revealed, we'll be waiting months for Alpha/Beta access. That's gonna be painful (especially if the expansion genuinely looks promising, which I hope is gonna be the case).

[therumblings]

Yeah, and it's gonna be an even longer wait for any other news to come out after the expansion reveal. Right now we're talking about just a little over a week of waiting, but once the expansion has been revealed, we'll be waiting months for Alpha/Beta access. That's gonna be painful (especially if the expansion genuinely looks promising, which I hope is gonna be the case).

It will be a really long wait but I'm hoping whatever is in the announcement gives me something satisfying enough that justifies the wait.

[Nymrohd]

See, wow is fairly active in any challenging content because the mechanics force motion. Heck if we went back to an ability paradigm more similar to MoP when every skill is met by an opposing skill it gets even more active; if everyone has mobility and defensive abilities then encounters (and pvp) are tuned with the expectation that they will be used so you don't just run out; you use a movement ability to move out (and thus abilities become much wider since you have movement available) or you use a defensive to tank shit. Heck if we also got some of Legion's abilities back, we'd have abilities off the GCD to use as well. WoW absolutely can be designed to have even higher APM than it does now. We even had skill shots in the past (if I remember right, explosive shot blowing on the second tap). All the mechanics are there with little responsiveness sacrificed. Really, fluid animation and amazing responsiveness are part of why I always come back to WoW (and why I still might play Diablo 3 for a few hours when I just want to murder things). The biggest success of Blizzard is and has always been Battle.net, not their games.

[Wangming]

It doesn't matter what is fashionable in other games, it really works well for WoW, especially the combat system. Sure it could use an overhaul to some extent because of bugginess, but to completely change the game is only going to alienate 99% of players.

Which is exactly why we are suggesting a separate release instead of just messing with the current WoW. WoW can stay and follow the old paradigms. If it were up to me I would make the new modern MMO a Diablo one, cause it is has much more room for it. But I'm not going to speculate on that in a WoW thread. The point is, if they truly want to follow current trends, a simple expansion won't cut it. It will need a complete re-release. I doubt they want to go that far. But if they did, I would welcome it.

[draugril]

It's the worst part about WoW. More or less. Also how can you even think that? If new people drop WoW it's because they didn't last with the combat that braindead and mindnumbingly boring. It was enough 20 years ago, not today.

Back in 2004, it was representative of what you were "really" doing. You could imagine what summoning lightning would do, or going all Bladestorm in a pack of enemies... these days, you can actually have combat that would have been cinematic-worthy back then.

That being said, this isn't a hill worth dying on. The system is absolutely integral to the game. We may as well ask them to remove Orcs and Humans.

[Nymrohd]

It will be a really long wait but I'm hoping whatever is in the announcement gives me something satisfying enough that justifies the wait.

I'd expect that after the announcement we will also get a lot more action on the PTR as well.

- - - Updated - - -

Back in 2004, it was representative of what you were "really" doing. You could imagine what summoning lightning would do, or going all Bladestorm in a pack of enemies... these days, you can actually have combat that would have been cinematic-worthy back then.

That being said, this isn't a hill worth dying on. The system is absolutely integral to the game. We may as well ask them to remove Orcs and Humans.

And really, maybe this system was chosen exactly because this level of responsiveness and fluid animation is not really possible with a system that constantly has to decide who you are facing at. Diablo also allows for target lock after all.

[Dracullus]

Alt catchup is so easy in 9.2, the only way people could be complaining about it in my mind is that they haven't actually done it. You hit 48 or 50 or whatever and go to SL content, you select threads of fate and pick your covenant, get the renown catchup and level however you want. By the time you hit 60 your renown will also be well past 60, which fully unlocks your soulbind. You also have the 200 ilvl conduit catchup, and you can send over a bunch of 226 BoA gear and soul ash/soul cinders (which are in turn purchasable for Cosmic Flux on your main, which if you're playing the patch at all you have far more than you know what to do with). You either run a dungeon or quick torghast wing to get your legendary recipe, or just buy it from Rendle for Soul Cinders (again, you can get this from your main), get a legendary at whatever ilvl works for you (they're pretty cheap on any decently populated realm).

Doing just "walk here and talk to a vendor" and running a single normal dungeon after hitting 60 can easily put you at 230 ilvl with 60+ renown and ilvl 200 conduits. That's not gonna get you into mythic raiding, but it puts you at a perfectly reasonable spot to start doing M+ (which drops 236 at a +2) or LFR/Normal (LFR drops 239/246).

And this is all assuming you are a solo player, if you've got friends and/or a guild it's way easier to get gear.

Honestly, I'm not sure how much easier they could make it, the basically free BoA gear you get is already pushing up pretty close against the entry level gear from M0/LFR, and you even get stuff at that quality from rares in ZM.

I know all of that, believe me. Currently bigger problem is community perception, not reality. We could say similar thing about whole Shadowlands. On surface it looks like ton of systems like BfA and Anima looks similar to AP. In reality systems require barely any work, sometimes you spend more time on research&setup than getting something.

In Legion they introduced extra talents so we can have something to grind on max level. Now most systems are just deadweight. Blizzard don't get pros from extended playtime, but keep all cons from overcomplicating things.

They should get rid of that list of chores no matter how trivial they are. Blizzard introduced this for people who play main most of time and get bored when whole progression is level&gear up. But alts should be exactly that. Blizzard can achieve it two ways:

1) Go back to pre-Legion progression, but then we end up with same sitution as WoD.

2) Make every new system completely account-wide from start.

As you can see, I'm in favor of second option. I would be even fine with Legion amount of grind if it means my whole account progress with me. On top of that it would be awesome if expansion system would work in respective timewalkings (it could be their plan, while after Legion they removed all systems, after BfA they did it only to corruption, necklace works the same on Azeroth).

And alt friendliness is not just progression. In 9.1.5 they did awesome job with exploration toys, not only they uncover all flight points, but also whole map. In 9.2.5 I will be able to finally send items between my Horde and Alliance toons (thankfully I didn't picked separate servers for them like many people playing this way). On this field next step would be account wide profession recipes (so you finally can switch profession if you care about rare recipes) and of course account wide reputations.

[Yus atath]

11 days left until the Player Housing feature announcement!!!!!

[huth]

I don't even understand the logic beside this claim. There is nothing even remotely interesting about WoW's combat. Sure compared to the unmentionable competition the controls are much more responsive. But here is the thing. What they like about it is that it is responsive and faced paced. That would absolutely improve by huge leaps if WoW had action combat.

That's a different type of game. No, it wouldn't be leaps better. It'd just be different.

This is not a question of quality, but design choices.

[Nymrohd]

I'd love player housing. So much. But do I trust them to do it justice?


no, no I don't

[Fahrad Wagner]

I'd love player housing. So much. But do I trust them to do it justice?


no, no I don't

Same here… It would probably be super limited. Basically indoors Garrison

[Nymrohd]

That's a different type of game. No, it wouldn't be leaps better. It'd just be different.

This is not a question of quality, but design choices.

And really, WoW has had specs that did extremely fast paced combat. My tankadin at the end of Legion with extremely high haste, through off the GCD heals constantly was active like crazy. They can make WoW fast paced (or add very fast paced specs so people can choose what they want to play) any moment they want.
And I did not look like I was having a stroke constantly like my ESO Templar does.

[SniperCT]

And really, WoW has had specs that did extremely fast paced combat. My tankadin at the end of Legion with extremely high haste, through off the GCD heals constantly was active like crazy. They can make WoW fast paced (or add very fast paced specs so people can choose what they want to play) any moment they want.
And I did not look like I was having a stroke constantly like my ESO Templar does.

Tankadin is at it's best when it feels really fast, just throwing sheilds and hitting things. I remember a couple of expansions where prot warrior* was super fast paced too, with lots of good movement.

And I mained Rogue for 15 years, that's about as twitchy as you can get in this game.

*I miss gladiator stance like burning

[Das Thora]

Right, I wasn't suggesting a WoW 2, because the idea is stupid to me. Why make a separate game when you have the tools to revamp the world and keep all the progress your players made in 20 years instead of alienate them in some brand new game? I don't see any need for a WoW 2, unless someone else makes a good case for it.

I mean no one has the responsibility to convince you of a WoW2, but it's ignorant to say expansions are the same thing as a new MMO.