Korinthi's Dragonflight Beta Leveling Experience

So I did the thing and got to 70 on the DF beta. I also wanted to finish the main quest and do all the dungeons to check things out, but the state of beta simply didn't make that possible when I played.

There might be spoilers!

The hindrances

The main story had several quests that could bug out for various reasons in the last zone - and due to how questlines are built these days that means I got stuck. And since you need to finish the campaign to unlock some endgame stuff like world quests, I couldn't test that either.

The dungeon finder had at times a bug that would fill up a group... And then just not port people to the dungeon, and due to the ui there is no "teleport to dungeon" option. I had that a lot while leveling (not let in) and two dungeons always had some people being part of the group that wasn't let in (low leveled it looked like, for level 70 dungeons) and then lfg wouldnt replace them when they left.

And this remained for a few weeks... Until they did a big patch, and instead of these things being fixed, the bug report tool bugged out so you could no longer submit bugs. At that point I didn't bother anymore :)

General impressions

The campaign is mostly built like the Shadowlands campaign (and the FF XIV msq) - you are forced to do the main campaign to unlock a lot of stuff. I don't like that. It also has that Shadowlands thing that quest xp doesnt scale with level like most other things do, so if you leave sidequests from earlier zones they turn grey and pointless. Which is just mind boggling to me. It's like they took the worst of scaling to the player character and the nonscaling part and chained them together.

The talent points is a nice addition. It meant I felt I got something every level, and not just scaled up gear with the same stats. Some of the talents were things I was not used to so were new (as Blood Death Knight), but some had the good old "had before have to reearn for whatever reason" feeling.

I liked Dragonriding. Having travel have gameplay is ok for me, I didn't just snore when going from A to B for the first time since Wrath or whatever. The gameplay also reminded me of some old games that I cant remember what was called, so a bit of a nostalgia trip. Obviously it is less practical than regular flying - so farming mats and stuff is a bit more of a hassle. But I prefer having this from the start, than waiting for a year to farm rep to fly on the regular.

Resource tracking was bugged until I played it last time, and not spending time farming mats on the beta to craft stuff, so I'll leave this for when it's live.

Zone impressions, ranked

Four: Valdrakken

It looks ok, but all the buggy stuff, some really annoying quests and it all felt a bit disjointed. Bit of a letdown after the other zones.

Three: The Waking Shores

This zone felt like an afterthought to Cataclysm. The enemies, zones and voice acting direction was at times horrible. But it looks really nice, and kinda sets up the point of the expansion well I thought.

Two: Ohn'ahran plains

This zone is what happens if Desolace and Nagrand had a baby. I really liked how it looked, and the fundament for the story and stuff. The voice acting direction was all over the place again which was distracting.

One: The Azure Span

This one was a bit like Grizzly Hills and that blue dragonflight zone in Wrath had a baby (a theme, here). I really liked this place. Can't remember voice acting being weird, either.

Dungeon first impressions, ranked

The two not rated due to bugs not letting me test:

Algeth'ar's Academy

The Azure Vault

Six: Halls of Infusion

You go straight ahead, there's a gauntlet and some bosses I can only remember having some uninspired aoe effects. It wasn't bad, but it wasn't "this place I'd like to do a lot" either.

Five: Nokhud Offensive

I liked the bosses. I liked how it looked. I liked some of the trash pulls. But playing dragonriding so much in a dungeon? Ehhh...

Four: Neltharus

As a concept, I liked it. But the bosses seemed to overdone, it had too much trash and all of it kinda reminded me of doing DOS or Spires.

Three: Uldaman

So they took out all the exploring and sprawling dungeon bits of old uldaman, and made it a "press w" dungeon with the boss fights juiced up. It was fairly fast paced, and reminded me some of Sanguine Depths which nailed the pacing for me. Uninspired just like SD for routing and stuff, however.

Two: Ruby Life Pools

Short, just one tiny break, and some boss fights that just seems like they would be fun in keys. Not a place routing will have anything to say - unless pressing w makes you go overcount, at which point some highly annoying invis pot skips will cause a lot of annoyance in pugs.

One: Brackenhide Hollow

The first time I did this place, it was a nightmare run. But I kinda like it. The start is sprawling and you get some choice in what to do (until routes are set some time into expansion, I guess). The bosses requires some on the spot decisionmaking and stuff. Use of a lot of utility. Currently seems overtuned, if it's meant for season 1 it might be... Interesting :)

Story thoughts

Eh. Basic stuff, the side quests were as usual often more interesting.