Dragonflight WoW expansion arrives November 28

The next World of Wacraft Expansion, Dragonflight, is coming to the battle net launcher in the 28th of November. Blizzard announced the date at the end of September, with the 50% XP Buff beginning in Oct 4. The pricing remains the same, from 49 to 89 EUR, depending on which edition you choose.

What we know about WoW Dragonflight

Since the initial announcement, the Warcraft twitter page has been slowly but surely adding some new details on what’s coming with Dragonflight. Here’s what we’ve got so far:

• Boat Timers
• Detailed search functions for settings and talents
• Cross faction Mob tags. Attacking a mob will no longer prevent a player from the opposite faction from getting the loot, XP and kill credit.
• The Dragon Isles will have four major factions.
• UI Customization akin to famous add-ons like ElvUI.
• Dragonriding skill, similar to the abilities available in the Guild Wars 2 mount system.
• A new talent system which brings talent-trees back.
• Updated professions with more usefulness.
• The first race-class combo in WoW: the dracthyr Evoker.
• 8 dungeons on release. 4 of them are meant for levelling, the other 4 are max level.
• December 13 will bring the expansion’s first raid, Vault of the Incarnates.

A lot of people already have access to the beta, and things are changing constantly. Crafting has already been slightly nerfed, and there’s likely many more changes to come. What’s included in the list, though, is here to stay.

What Dragonflight represents

Dragonflight is a monumental moment for World of Warcraft. Shadowlands saw WoW in perhaps its direst position yet. A decent number of large content creators either dropped the game entirely or took a break for the entirety of the expansion.

Subscriber numbers kept on dipping as the game suffered a massive content-drought for months on end. Character arcs and the overall story were disliked by most, in both concept and execution. The project felt like such a failure that Blizzard seemed to drop it halfway through to start working on Dragonflight.

This upcoming expansion seems to be the company learning from their biggest recent successes: Classic servers. Don’t get me wrong, Classic isn’t for everyone. Nostalgia is indeed one hell of a drug, but games have evolved immensely in the last 15/20 years, so what was fantastic in 2004 isn’t that impressive nowadays.

Yet, WoW did get a lot of things right from the get-go, and the franchise has kept on drifting too far from that initial blueprint. Dragonflight is a theoretical step-back in every sense.

There’s a focus on rebuilding core systems like the talent trees. UI customization is finally being added into the game, after years and years of ElvUI being one of the most downloaded add-ons in the game. The story and setting seem much more grounded in the classic fantasy way, dragons, magic and mystery.

Regardless, do not let the hype overtake you. Most WoW expansions look much better on paper than what we actually get to play. I sincerely hope that Blizzard have learned from their mistakes and what we’ve seen so far is indeed positive, but I can’t go further than cautiously optimistic right now.