Dragonflight Alpha/Beta General Discussion

[epigramx]

Here's what will happen. They will drop the expansion names entirely and call it simply 'Warcraft'; it will be an ongoing service that gets only patches and not expansions; it will satisfy both those that want a simpler game and those that want WoW 2 and it will make the game looks less daunting to those that never tried it before (they're scared if they see 99 expansions).
As for expansion theme; murlocs; the littlest person can change the course of the future.

[Cosmic Janitor]

Here's what will happen. They will drop the expansion names entirely and call it simply 'Warcraft'; it will be an ongoing service that gets only patches and not expansions; it will satisfy both those that want a simpler game and those that want WoW 2 and it will make the game looks less daunting to those that never tried it before (they're scared if they see 99 expansions).
As for expansion theme; murlocs; the littlest person can change the course of the future.

Unless they start selling us season passes instead there is no way they would drop the 50-60 bucks they make per expansion sale.

[Sondrelk]

Unless they start selling us season passes instead there is no way they would drop the 50-60 bucks they make per expansion sale.

Yes, but just consider how easy it would make it for the players that are looking for an excuse to say WoW is in maintenance mode. Just think of the extra engagement on the forums...

[Cosmic Janitor]

Yes, but just consider how easy it would make it for the players that are looking for an excuse to say WoW is in maintenance mode. Just think of the extra engagement on the forums...

Tbh I think my outlook is even more cynical. Blizzard makes probably 15-40% of their WoW profit from expansion sales, as the subs plummet between those, and they know it. So pushing expansion packs is lazy and makes them the most money for the least amount of effort, because people want to check out the completely new stuff and effectively drop the equivalent amout of 4..6+1 months of sub at the minimum. If I had to guess I'd say the spike is probably still 3 if not 4 times higher than the average subscribed player level, meaning they probably make roughly somewhere between 1 to 2.5 years woth of subs just during the inital sale; for an expansion that usually lasts about 2 years. They'd be utterly mad to drop B2P if my estimate is even just vaguely in the correct ballpark.

[Sondrelk]

Tbh I think my outlook is even more cynical. Blizzard makes probably 15-40% of their WoW profit from expansion sales, as the subs plummet between those, and they know it. So pushing expansion packs is lazy and makes them the most money for the least amount of effort, because people want to check out the completely new stuff and effectively drop the equivalent amout of 4..6+1 months of sub at the minimum. If I had to guess I'd say the spike is probably still 3 if not 4 times higher than the average subscribed player level, meaning they probably make roughly somewhere between 1 to 2.5 years woth of subs just during the inital sale; for an expansion that usually lasts about 2 years. They'd be utterly mad to drop B2P if my estimate is even just vaguely in the correct ballpark.

I wouldn't say lazy. Pretty much any given expansion launch has only slightly less content than the remainder of the patches combined. And if we go solely by time between content spikes then the content to time ratio is significantly better for launches.

[Makabreska]

Except for them having literally no reason to leave the shadowlands yet and join the mortals and their pathetic squabbles. The allied races joined because it was usefull to them, so unless we blow up the shadowlands in the next patch (would probably be for the best), I simply see no logical explanation why people that usually can't even interact with us should be joining us collecting bear arses to fuel our race wars.

Edit: Though we aleady discussed this stuff to death last year/earlier this year

This is literally a non issue, Blizz can come up with w/e excuse. Shadowland gets destroyed/Covs decide to repay mortals and help them/Covs decide the root of all problems is on Azeroth and want to prevent them/Jailer was after Azeroth soul, so Covs decide to send some of them to defend it, or just some of them simply want to travel. We already had random NPC Kyrian chatter saying he wants to visit Azeroth. Absolutely ZERO issue in believably explaining Covs joining us. SL is, after all, a fresh lore, and can be bent easily.

[Cosmic Janitor]

This is literally a non issue, Blizz can come up with w/e excuse. Shadowland gets destroyed/Covs decide to repay mortals and help them/Covs decide the root of all problems is on Azeroth and want to prevent them/Jailer was after Azeroth soul, so Covs decide to send some of them to defend it etc. We already had random NPC Kyrian chatter saying he wants to visit Azeroth. Absolutely ZERO issue in believably explaining Covs joining us. SL is, after all, a fresh lore, and can be bent easily.

While it's true that Blizzard could pull just about anything out of their rectum, the reality is that class and race lore is one of the few areas where they are rather anal retentive (probably because it can be used to deflect work easily), usually to the effect of not having races and classes combinations that people want. For now it goes against what they have stated and done in the past. They didn't want a repeat of pandaren and they claimed allied races were a BfA feature IIRC. Adding races is one of these things that you simply can't take back and I wonder if Blizzard really wants the bizzarrer aspects of the shadowlands to remain forever in the conciousnes of the playerbase.

That being said, I feel like having blue humans run around orgrimmar would be insanely funny.

[Makabreska]

While it's true that Blizzard could pull just about anything out of their rectum, the reality is that class and race lore is one of the few areas where they are rather anal retentive (probably because it can be used to deflect work easily), usually to the effect of not having races and classes combinations that people want. For now it goes against what they have stated and done in the past. They didn't want a repeat of pandaren and they claimed allied races were a BfA feature IIRC. Adding races is one of these things that you simply can't take back and I wonder if Blizzard really wants the bizzarrer aspects of the shadowlands to remain forever in the conciousnes of the playerbase.

That being said, I feel like having blue humans run around orgrimmar would be insanely funny.

You mean Pandaren being neutral? Easy soultion: Kyrian+NF for Alliance, Venth+Necro for Horde. They already sort of divided Azeroth dead NPC's like that. And these AR's would bring lots of players to the yard with their good looks and lore. BfA Ar's alr seemed very popular.

[Cosmic Janitor]

You mean Pandaren being neutral? Easy soultion: Kyrian+NF for Alliance, Venth+Necro for Horde. They already sort of divided Azeroth dead NPC's like that. And these AR's would bring lots of players to the yard with their good looks and lore. BfA Ar's alr seemed very popular.

I mean, sure, if we want to repeat the AR betrayals of late legion and mechagon again, okay. We will see, I won't hold my breath.

[Makabreska]

I mean, sure, if we want to repeat the AR betrayals of late legion and mechagon again, okay. We will see, I won't hold my breath.

Would be much less of a betrayal, since it wont be BfA with faction war emphasis.

[Nyel]

You mean Pandaren being neutral? Easy soultion: Kyrian+NF for Alliance, Venth+Necro for Horde. They already sort of divided Azeroth dead NPC's like that. And these AR's would bring lots of players to the yard with their good looks and lore. BfA Ar's alr seemed very popular.

It makes even less sense for Covenant races to be bound by Azeroth factions than it made for allied races like Vulpera etc.

Having a split of the four Covenants to fit two into each faction is just a horrible idea overall.

Horde gets the super cool Venthyr and something skeleton like while Alliance once again gets the chop with recolored humans and derp looking Satyrs? No thanks.
______

By the way, the only way to fix the lore massacre that Shadowlands is, is to completely destroy and get rid of the Shadowlands and the concept of afterlife in WoW altogether (as others suggested). If they do that, they can basically retcon 99% of the stuff from Shadowlands again as it was only a one expansion thing. I hope they’re doing this.

[therumblings]

Having a split of the four Covenants to fit two into each faction is just a horrible idea overall.

Agreed. Either they be neutral, or not playable at all. Initially I was strongly against them becoming playable, but I could see Blizzard quickly try to add them to create much needed hype and excitement for the next patch.

[Black Rider]

9.2 new zone I guess
https://www.mmo-champion.com/threads...-Ones)-Azeroth

[Marlamin]

9.1.5 was just confirmed by the new Classic test build, fwiw.

[Pebrocks The Warlock]

9.1.5 was just confirmed by the new Classic test build, fwiw.

What about it confirms it if you don't mind me asking?

[Marlamin]

What about it confirms it if you don't mind me asking?

They added a file that lists deprecations of interface features for 9.1.5.

-- These are functions that were deprecated in 9.1.5, and will be removed in the next expansion.
-- Please upgrade to the updated APIs as soon as possible.

if not IsPublicBuild() then
return;
end

-- Tooltips have moved to use the NineSlicePanel interface. Some old functionality remains (see SharedXML\SharedTooltipTemplates.lua)
do
-- These functions are no longer meaningful
TooltipBackdropTemplateMixin.OnBackdropLoaded = function() end;
TooltipBackdropTemplateMixin.OnBackdropSizeChanged = function() end;
TooltipBackdropTemplateMixin.GetEdgeSize = function() return 0 end;
TooltipBackdropTemplateMixin.GetBackdropCoordValue = function() return 0 end;
TooltipBackdropTemplateMixin.SetupTextureCoordinates = function() end;
TooltipBackdropTemplateMixin.SetupPieceVisuals = function() end;
TooltipBackdropTemplateMixin.HasBackdropInfo = function() return false end;
TooltipBackdropTemplateMixin.GetBackdrop = function() return nil end;

-- These functions will just apply the default backdrop and show the artwork
TooltipBackdropTemplateMixin.ApplyBackdrop = function(self)
local layout = NineSliceUtil.GetLayout("TooltipDefaultLayout");
NineSliceUtil.ApplyLayout(self.NineSlice, layout);
self.NineSlice:Show();
end;
TooltipBackdropTemplateMixin.SetBackdrop = function(self)
local layout = NineSliceUtil.GetLayout("TooltipDefaultLayout");
NineSliceUtil.ApplyLayout(self.NineSlice, layout);
self.NineSlice:Show();
end;

-- This function will just hide the artwork
TooltipBackdropTemplateMixin.ClearBackdrop = function(self)
self.NineSlice:Hide();
end;
end

Usually these come with PTR builds, but they've been merging the interfaces/clients between Mainline/Vanilla/TBC so they gave us this file a bit early. Does mean 9.1.5 is likely on its way to PTR soon-ish, though. The usual news sites should pick up on it soon.

[Sondrelk]

More content is always nice. Though I have to wonder what actual substance 9.1.5 could have in the Shadowlands. For some reason I feel like Blizzard is not going to have content have us return to Azeroth, at least not before the final patch, but if not then I suppose Brawlers guild is due any moment now.

[Dracullus]

So we will get 9.1.5, huh. Hopefully it's something beyond Legion timewalking and brawler's guild.

[therumblings]

Unlikely but I'm hoping it's a Heritage Armor/Allied Race patch

[Sondrelk]

So we will get 9.1.5, huh. Hopefully it's something beyond Legion timewalking and brawler's guild.

I am sure there will also be a brief quest where Sylvanas says something obvious regarding the next patch.