World of Warcraft: Dragonflight – is WoW finally changing for the better?

The now infamous company of Blizzard has announced a new expansion for World of Warcraft called Dragonflight. What’s so interesting about this installment is that it’s significantly different from the previous expansions. Blizzard’s seemingly returning to their old ways of developing expansions, specifically prior to Legion. 

Release date

Contrary to the last popular belief of Dragonflight releasing somewhere in late 2023, Blizzard has shocked everyone. It is expected for the expansion to be released in September of this year! Incredibly early, considering it has only recently been announced. This has stirred up some controversies in the fanbase and the general gaming public. Will the game be full of bugs, how much new content has been added, and whether is this a bad marketing strategy are all questions everyone has been asking themselves as of late. However, we can only wait to see the results. 

Why is Blizzard changing the Borrowed power route in Dragonflight?

Having your rightfully earned weapons taken right away at the start of the expansions resulted in a massive backlash from the players. Surprisingly though, Blizzard has listened to the player base and decided that they will be fixing that mistake. Another thing they have decided to fix is the mess of the talent trees. Now, instead of going for a more hybrid design, they will just be adding more talents for the ten talent points to aid in the progression of the game. 

This marks the death of borrowed power in World of Warcraft. Even though they expressed their concerns about this system of talents becoming too bloated in a few years’ time, they have also realized that a future problem can’t get in the way of the current gaming experience. Along with the changes in talents, they also said that legendaries aren’t planned. 

Gameplay in Dragonflight

Ahead of World of Warcraft is a change that will be bad at first but is necessary to keep the game running healthy. One of the developers on the Warcraft forum has announced that dungeons for the new expansion will be released two times, each featuring four dungeons along with mythic installations of four older dungeons. That means the content will feel fresh and players won’t have to farm the same loot again with every new season.

Why would this make Dragonflight more beginner friendly?

If the rooster of dungeons were to stay the same in the new season, all of the players would have in-depth knowledge of the gameplay tactics and loot from those same dungeons. This makes playing mythic plus for beginners a really hard experience cause of the gap between them and the older players. 

People were initially disappointed with this decision because they aren’t getting all of the eight dungeons in the first season. However, sometimes we must sacrifice our own personal wants for the greater good.

PVP is finally getting fixed

Brian Holinka, a World of Warcraft game designer, had an excellent interview with the famous player and YouTuber – Bajheera. With PVP as well, they are really focusing on making the game more friendly for beginners. In the previous expansions, PVP gear was directly connected to your rating. If you have played actively since the beginning of the season, you had nothing to worry about. However, if you wanted to jump on the train later on, you would have encountered some issues. Now, the gear is dependent on your conquest points only which will make the entire system of PVP gearing a lot more doable and engaging.

Closing thoughts

This new expansion is truly new to all of us. It has recently been announced and it will be released in the near future as well. As of so, we all have mixed feelings about it. However, all of the information they have released so far seems to sit well with the community. Hopefully, World of Warcraft is going in the right direction again.