WoW: 9th expansion; Dragonflight

Its funny I just finally decided to buy the expansion to try it out. Shortly after that they give me beta acess, well no plans to try that out as last time I did a decent amount of beta and it made the expansion feel meh as I had done a lot of it before.
 
Call me crazy but I do like live WoW I especially love to the expansion legion. I thought that was some of the best stuff in many years.

BFA was mediocre

Shittylands was garbage, but I will say that starter zone they created on that island was pretty cool.

And from what I've seen and the dragonflight beta I'm in, it seems like it'll be a good expansion
 
A free weekend is nice and all but I'd be more interested if they were offering at least a free month with the expansion for $50. They want $90 for a free month and a character level boost.
 
Ranulfo said:
A free weekend is nice and all but I'd be more interested if they were offering at least a free month with the expansion for $50. They want $90 for a free month and a character level boost.
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They can keep the character boost and give me an extra two months instead.
 
I "leveled" my Dracthyr trough the starting bit and now learning a bit more to play them, looks nice enough compared to some other recent class additions.
 
Denpepe said:
I "leveled" my Dracthyr trough the starting bit and now learning a bit more to play them, looks nice enough compared to some other recent class additions.
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That soar ability is OP. I haven't done much with it but I think it will make moving around the world amazing.
 
I'm enjoying WoW quite a bit, having never spent much time with it in the past. The image fidelity and environmental detail is pretty good now in comparison to years past. I run it maxed out and RTX enabled at 4K120 +14% super sampling, aa/af off, and it's super smooth and actually is a fairly nice game to look at now.

The physics and collision system doesn't seem like it's changed much though. It would be nice if they invested some development effort into upgrading that at some point. I also wouldn't mind if they made the game slightly speedier and more action-oriented, but this is more of a nitpick and probably the result of playing too much Path of Exile. WoW feels more tactical. I've also only played hunter beast master and mage extensively at this point, so perhaps I just need to try playing some more classes. I have a Death Knight that I still need to level, and I plan to try Rogue and others also.
Seelenlos said:
That soar ability is OP. I haven't done much with it but I think it will make moving around the world amazing.
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The Dracthyr class, with it's soarding and gliding abilities, is definitely a step in the right direction imo. I just tried playing it, and the mobility improvements are most welcome.

On that art/animation side especially Shadowlands really impressed me. If Dragonflight is as good or better, I'm sure I will have a good time with it.
 
t1k said:
I'm enjoying WoW quite a bit, having never spent much time with it in the past. The image fidelity and environmental detail is pretty good now in comparison to years past. I run it maxed out and RTX enabled at 4K120 +14% super sampling, aa/af off, and it's super smooth and actually is a fairly nice game to look at now.

The physics and collision system doesn't seem like it's changed much though. It would be nice if they invested some development effort into upgrading that at some point. I also wouldn't mind if they made the game slightly speedier and more action-oriented, but this is more of a nitpick and probably the result of playing too much Path of Exile. WoW feels more tactical. I've also only played hunter beast master and mage extensively at this point, so perhaps I just need to try playing some more classes. I have a Death Knight that I still need to level, and I plan to try Rogue and others also.

The Dracthyr class, with it's soarding and gliding abilities, is definitely a step in the right direction imo. I just tried playing it, and the mobility improvements are most welcome.

On that art/animation side especially Shadowlands really impressed me. If Dragonflight is as good or better, I'm sure I will have a good time with it.
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What's your system specs? I thought RTX enabled in WoW was a massive fps hit?

I'm running a i9 13900k, 32GB DDR5-5600 and an RTX-3080 on a 38" Ultrawide. Would my system handle RTX on ok?
 
Zorachus said:
What's your system specs? I thought RTX enabled in WoW was a massive fps hit?

I'm running a i9 13900k, 32GB DDR5-5600 and an RTX-3080 on a 38" Ultrawide. Would my system handle RTX on ok?
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ASUS TUF GAMING B550-PRO | AMD 5800X3D | MSI RTX 4090 GAMING TRIO | G.SKILL 16GBx2 DDR4-3600 14-14-14-34 | KINGSTON KC3000 NVME M.2 2TB | EVGA 1600W T2

^^^ It's in my sig, but maybe it's difficult to see or not publicly visible or something. I think a 3080 might struggle some, depending on your resolution. It is very demanding. I think a 4080 or better would be necessary for RTX maxed out at 4K.
 
t1k said:
ASUS TUF GAMING B550-PRO | AMD 5800X3D | MSI RTX 4090 GAMING TRIO | G.SKILL 16GBx2 DDR4-3600 14-14-14-34 | KINGSTON KC3000 NVME M.2 2TB | EVGA 1600W T2

^^^ It's in my sig, but maybe it's difficult to see or not publicly visible or something. I think a 3080 might struggle some, depending on your resolution. It is very demanding. I think a 4080 or better would be necessary for RTX maxed out at 4K.
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On my smartphone don't see signatures on this Forum in Mobile mode. Yeah the 4090 you got is a beast and can surely eat up RTX for breakfast playing WoW. And the 5800X3D is amazing gaming CPU.

Honestly, do the shadows and reflections and lighting look massively better with it enabled? It just a bit better
 
Zorachus said:
On my smartphone don't see signatures on this Forum in Mobile mode. Yeah the 4090 you got is a beast and can surely eat up RTX for breakfast playing WoW. And the 5800X3D is amazing gaming CPU.

Honestly, do the shadows and reflections and lighting look massively better with it enabled? It just a bit better
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I doubt it's a massive improvement. I've not spent much time in WoW in the past before RTX was around, so I'm unsure. But in comparison to my experiences from like 2004 and 2007 briefly trying WoW, the game is actually pretty nice to look at now lol.
 
NightReaver said:
I've heard the RTX implementation in WoW is a pretty lazy one.
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I think it's more of a content issue rather than an issue with the ray tracing itself. Part of the issue is that many things that logically should be sources of light aren't actually sources of light. You might see a lamp on the wall for example. It would make sense to assume that the lamp is a source of light and would cast a shadow. But it's actually just a texture made to look like a lit lamp. That doesn't give Ray Tracing much to work with. Ray Tracing in WoW would be a lot more interesting if everything that should be a source of light was actually a source of light. One thing that it improves very much is that it makes shadows become more blurry at a distance. Without Ray Tracing your shadow will be crisp even if it's 300ft below you on the ground as you fly through the sky, which is not realistic.

But it's also important to remember that even though it seems like Ray Tracing has been a part of WoW for a while now, it wasn't implemented until Shadowlands was already well into Beta. Most of the world content for Shadowlands had already been created by that point, mostly without Ray Tracing in mind. Dragonflight will be the first expansion where Ray Tracing has been a part of the game even since the expansion's earliest conceptual stage of development. They should have designed Dragonflight content with Ray Tracing in mind, or at the very least, put more effort into what gets designated as a source of light, so Ray Tracing has more to work with. We'll find out tomorrow.

Right now I'd recommend leaving Ray Tracing disabled unless you have a fair amount of extra GPU performance to spare. The regular shadows engine is still decent.
 
GotNoRice said:
I think it's more of a content issue rather than an issue with the ray tracing itself. Part of the issue is that many things that logically should be sources of light aren't actually sources of light. You might see a lamp on the wall for example. It would make sense to assume that the lamp is a source of light and would cast a shadow. But it's actually just a texture made to look like a lit lamp. That doesn't give Ray Tracing much to work with. Ray Tracing in WoW would be a lot more interesting if everything that should be a source of light was actually a source of light. One thing that it improves very much is that it makes shadows become more blurry at a distance. Without Ray Tracing your shadow will be crisp even if it's 300ft below you on the ground as you fly through the sky, which is not realistic.

But it's also important to remember that even though it seems like Ray Tracing has been a part of WoW for a while now, it wasn't implemented until Shadowlands was already well into Beta. Most of the world content for Shadowlands had already been created by that point, mostly without Ray Tracing in mind. Dragonflight will be the first expansion where Ray Tracing has been a part of the game even since the expansion's earliest conceptual stage of development. They should have designed Dragonflight content with Ray Tracing in mind, or at the very least, put more effort into what gets designated as a source of light, so Ray Tracing has more to work with. We'll find out tomorrow.

Right now I'd recommend leaving Ray Tracing disabled unless you have a fair amount of extra GPU performance to spare. The regular shadows engine is still decent.
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Great post thanks. Now I'm curious if Dragonflight implements Ray Tracing better?
 
GotNoRice said:
Dragonflight will be the first expansion where Ray Tracing has been a part of the game even since the expansion's earliest conceptual stage of development. They should have designed Dragonflight content with Ray Tracing in mind, or at the very least, put more effort into what gets designated as a source of light, so Ray Tracing has more to work with. We'll find out tomorrow.
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We shall soon see. It would be nice if Dragonflight handled it better, but I doubt it is a high priority for them. If it looks at least as good as Shadowlands though I'll be happy. I'm certainly hoping for the best.

I think I'm going to do my first playthrough with my arcane mage since it's fun to play. Level 70 should feel fantastic also.
 
Zorachus said:
Great post thanks. Now I'm curious if Dragonflight implements Ray Tracing better?
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Ray tracing in WoW is only shadows, as far as I'm aware. Seems hardly worth it without the global illumination to go with it.
 
Yeah it is confusing since weekly reset is usually on Tuesday, but from what I understand, they wanted the release synchronized across the whole world, so for some we get it on Monday (3pm PST).
 
Finished up the campaign the other day. Overall I had a blast. Good pacing, quest objectives seemed fair and not to grindy. New zones are nice, however I think Shadowlands might have had more differences between them? Still liked them overall. Also dragonriding is amazing to get around and not having it in old world or probably the next expansion will be sad.

Also there is a quest arc in one of the zones that is 10/10.
 
WarriorX said:
Finished up the campaign the other day. Overall I had a blast. Good pacing, quest objectives seemed fair and not to grindy. New zones are nice, however I think Shadowlands might have had more differences between them? Still liked them overall. Also dragonriding is amazing to get around and not having it in old world or probably the next expansion will be sad.

Also there is a quest arc in one of the zones that is 10/10.
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The story was decent enough, the new flying thing is annoying as hell, I spend more time waiting for the stuff to fill up again so I can fly a bit more, and also the Azure span zone is broken and has lag of up to 5 sec.

Hope they will add regular flying to the new continent so at kleast I can mine a bit better, for bigger distances the new mounts are ok-ish, but for lot's of smaller movements it sucks doneky balls.
 
Denpepe said:
The story was decent enough, the new flying thing is annoying as hell, I spend more time waiting for the stuff to fill up again so I can fly a bit more, and also the Azure span zone is broken and has lag of up to 5 sec.

Hope they will add regular flying to the new continent so at kleast I can mine a bit better, for bigger distances the new mounts are ok-ish, but for lot's of smaller movements it sucks doneky balls.
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Hey that's funny cause I really like dragon riding actually. Swooping downwards to gain speed and then moving upwards over a mountain feels great. I actually felt bored with regular flying mounts I have to say.

I really like the time trials too. I got bronze on most but I'm gonna revisit them.

Yeah the lag in that zone is disgusting. It was really bad yesterday afternoon and I'm surprised it's still ongoing!
 
Denpepe said:
The story was decent enough, the new flying thing is annoying as hell, I spend more time waiting for the stuff to fill up again so I can fly a bit more, and also the Azure span zone is broken and has lag of up to 5 sec.

Hope they will add regular flying to the new continent so at kleast I can mine a bit better, for bigger distances the new mounts are ok-ish, but for lot's of smaller movements it sucks doneky balls.
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Do you have all of the upgrades? You can get them all in about 30 minutes if you missed any while going through the campaign. Pretty much infinite flight if manage it correctly, which is easier with maxed upgrades. Also can climb to the highest reached without too much issue.

Ya the lag is annoying, but seems to not happen all the time from my time playing. Its a popular zone due to a group activity.
 
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Blizzard is making fun of people criticizing the expansion. That's a bold strategy, Cotton.



 
The Dragonflight racing is my favorite part of the expansion so far. Very fun. I'm going to be trying different builds to see what I like best in WoW. Arcane mage has been pretty fun to solo, and now I'm working on an unholy death knight, which is just getting its wings. When the new Path of Exile league starts on Friday though I may drop the game for a while to play that...not sure yet.
 
Dragon riding is great. I think it would be a huge mistake to not include it going forward and they should expand it to the rest of the world.
Be nice if they could get it to work with our old mounts. Not the cosmetic parts, just the flight capability.
 
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Gold all races. I was proud of mysel lol :).

The Thaldraszus races were the most challenging I think. There were at least 7 race attempts where I missed gold by 1/10 of a second or less. Not too much room for error on some of them, gotta go fast 8).
 
GOD'SlittleSERVANT said:
What do you get for that?
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I know I got at least 1.5K gold all together and also a good amount of Dragon Isles currency. That currency I spent on climbing/cataloging upgrades, which open up more quests to you on the island. I also got a decent amount of XP from it since I was leveling my new Death Knight character. Edit: And you get a Title unlocked also, but I'm not sure what benefit titles give, if any. Edit 2: And also, some dragonflight cosmetics were unlocked.
 
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Did anyone finish the campaign?

I must be a real dumbass cause I can't seem to find the quest giver that my quest log tells me I need to find to continue the campaign.

My quest log says to Continue the campaign by accepting the quest Deathwingurlugull! in Azmerloth. However, it doesn't show on my actual map and when I go there, the quest giver is no where to be. All the way in Northrend
 
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