Game Review: World of Warcraft: Dragonflight

Three years ago, I decided to quit World of Warcraft for good. This was at the start of Patch 8.3 (Battle for Azeroth). They had announced Shadowlands, and while the reveal panel gave me hope, once the Alpha and Beta got underway, I saw what the expansion truly would be… more of the same barrage of integrated systems that were all tied to player power and mandatory. All of which would just be taken away after two years. I had had enough, and I wanted nothing to do with the game anymore. I switched to Final Fantasy XIV and was having fun. I was content with calling that my new MMORPG until Pantheon: Rise of the Fallen was released. Then, something happened.

Blizzard listened.

They announced Dragonflight and, with it… a ray of hope. Hope that the game would be returning to its roots with a modern update. Hope that borrowed power was gone and would stay gone. Hope that everything we get in Dragonflight would carry forward into the future… just as an expansion SHOULD do. In other words… hope that they were actually going to fix the game… but did they?

Let’s go.

Title: World of Warcraft: Dragonflight
Platform: PC
Developer: Activision Blizzard
Publisher: Activision Blizzard
Release Date: November 26, 2022
Price: $49.99 (Base Edition), $69.99 (Heroic Edition), $89.99 (Epic Edition)

World of Warcraft: Dragonflight is Activision Blizzard’s ninth expansion. With it, we (mercifully) say goodbye to the Shadowlands and return to Azeroth once more to explore a long-lost fabled land that was supposed to have been a part of the base game back in 2004 but got cut…. The Dragon Isles. Situated off the northwest coast of the Eastern Kingdoms, the Dragon Isles is home to the five dragonflights and there is a LOT to unpack here story-wise.

The Story of Dragonflight

The Dragon Isles were sealed away when the Aspects left to protect the world. After they sacrificed their powers to defeat their corrupted fellow Aspect, Neltharion, the Earth Warder, who was twisted by N’Zoth’s whispers and became Deathwing, the Destroyer, they had to roam Azeroth as mere mortals. During Legion, they lost, yet another, of their own when Ysera, the Awakened, was pierced by the satyr Xavius with a corrupted Tear of Elune, turning her into a nightmare dragon. We did the merciful thing and laid her to rest.

Down the three, the Dragon Isles shed its protective mists, and the dragons were called home. As they were, an ancient evil has arisen. Primal Incarnates… proto-dragons who rejected the Titans’ power and are about as powerful as the Aspects were before the fall of Deathwing has been unleashed. If left unchecked, they could plunge Azeroth into chaos and after having something stuck into the planet… (what sword?), ravaged by the Scourge, attacked by the burning legion, ripped apart by Deathwing, and endured those late nights in Goldshire… Azeroth can’t afford to take another blow.

So, the mortals have banded together to repay the Aspects for their service when we needed them the most as we aid them in their fight against the Primal Incarnates… mainly the Storm Eater, Raszageth.

That is just scratching the surface, though. There are many sub-stories happening here that have built upon previously established lore… such as Nozdormu having second thoughts about accepting his fate of being turned into Murozond, the fact that Ysera is still “alive” in Ardenweald (discovered during Shadowlands), and how she might play a role in Dragonflight, the possible rebuilding of Darnassus or (at the very least) a new world tree for the night elves to call home, or Wrathion returning to take up the mantle as Aspect of the black Dragonflight only to discover he has competition in the form of an old black dragon that we haven’t seen since The Burning Crusade!

Again, there is a LOT to unpack here, and this is on top of the four main factions you will be aiding along with their stories as well. Those include the return of the tuskaar, centaurs, and, of course, dragons!

With there being so much story content to sit back and enjoy, you must be asking… what about the gameplay!? If I wanted to immerse myself in story alone, I’d watch a movie or read a book! This is a game, and I want to know what I’m doing when I actually play the damn thing!

Well, there is a lot to do and more coming soon (as of the time of this writing, of course).

Ding… Level 70

First off, leveling. It happens in every expansion, and it’s usually the best part. Even with WoW’s worst expansion (Warlords of Draenor… although some might argue that Shadowlands took that mantle away), people still to this day praise WoD’s leveling as some of the best you can do. In fact, during the pre-patch event, I picked WoD through Chromie Time and leveled up one of every class except for Rogue and Druid. WoD leveling is still fast and amazing to this date.

But how does Dragonflight’s leveling compare? Well… to be honest, there’s nothing here that’s going to blow you away. Sure, if you follow the main story quest, you’ll be treated to the main lore of the expansion and tons of cutscenes around every corner… still not as many cutscenes as Final Fantasy XIV, but enough to keep you interested and engaged. Outside of that, if you’ve leveled in a WoW expansion before, you know what to expect…

“HELP! THE WORLD IS ENDING, AND WE’RE ALL GOING TO DIE! PLEASE GO PICK 7 TURNIPS AND KILL 6 FIELD RATS FOR ME!!!”

It is what it is. If you thought that was mundane before, your opinion isn’t going to change this time around. Dragonflight does nothing new with its leveling experience. Sure, you get nifty dragonriding (more on that in a moment) to help you traverse, but it doesn’t take away from the fact that a WoW quest is a WoW quest no matter how you slice it. In fact, I think it was intended for you to just do the main story quests with a few side quests sprinkled in because I did every side quest I came across and was about to hit 70 right after I finished the second zone, leaving me with 1.95 zones left to do without that carrot of “gain experience by doing X” to string me along.

The total playing time to level is about 8-9 hours depending on how min/max you are which is par for the course with World of Warcraft as of late. I think every expansion since Cataclysm has had that target time baked into it. Blizzard understands that the true meat of their game is at the end so might as well get the playerbase there as fast as possible, right? (This is actually bad game design but that’s a discussion for an editorial more than a review.)

So, I mentioned dragonriding a few moments ago, let’s dive into Blizzard’s first big feature of the expansion.

How to Strain Your Dragon

Players wanted flying right out of the box. In fact, Final Fantasy XIV does it and allows you to earn flying at your own pace without restrictions so Blizzard was like “Challenge Accepted” and, I have to say, I honestly think they hit dragonriding out of the park. According to many influencers on your streaming platform of choice, the polls that they held all point to dragonriding being the best feature of Dragonflight… even more so than the return of actual talent trees… and… I’d have to agree.

Now… I will say… dragonriding really sucks when you first get it but it’s meant to be. You need to basically play Genshin Impact and fly around the zones collecting dragon medallions. Once you get all of them, you can unlock skills in a short but sweet skill tree which will enhance your dragonriding experience.

The best part? NONE OF IT IS TIME-GATED!

This means that you can get max dragonriding on DAY ONE without restriction. What’s even better? Dragonriding is account-wide meaning once you’re done… you’re done. Log on an alt, ship them to the Dragon Isles, and have fully unlocked dragonriding at your disposal! Once the system is fully unlocked, it truly shines!

Not only can you rise up and dash forward with speed, but you can also do a super dash in the form of a barrel roll and even set a location for you to fast travel back to! Not related to dragonriding but since we’re talking about fast travel, there’s also a series of teleportation pads you can unlock to access a fast travel network as an alternative to both dragonriding and flight paths. Have fun discovering and uncovering those! With all three combined, Blizzard made it super easy to traverse the Dragon Isles. Add in your obligatory hearthstone savepoint, and you’ll have the most travel options in a single expansion than you’ve ever had before.

At max unlock, dragonriding’s resource, known as vigor, replenishes very quickly while at max speed or slightly less quickly if you’re on the ground. It’s designed to keep you in the air for as long as possible. I’ve gone from barely making it from Point A to Point B in a zone to traversing the entire continent without running out of vigor or needing to land to recharge. Once you have it maxed out, it becomes an incredible experience, and collecting the coins will take you about 30-45 minutes of your time so it’s not super time-consuming either!

Force NPCs to Like You

Renown from Shadowlands is back but unlike Shadowlands, you are not stuck picking a single covenant and getting punished for switching. Here, there are four major factions: The Dragonscale Expedition, the Maruuk Centaur, the Iskaara Tuskarr, and the Valdrakken Accord. Each one has its own Renown track all with cosmetic rewards… so that means there is no player power attached to any of these factions. You can earn reputation at your own pace and, yes, you can get the maximum level of 25 on each without any time gating either!

Another good thing about this is that the Renown is also account-wide so if you’re level 23 with the Maruuk Centaur on your main, as soon as your alt steps foot into Dragonflight, they too will be level 23 with them! With the rewards just being cosmetic, there is no sense of urgency to complete them unless that’s your playstyle. You can either take your time and enjoy the ride or just plow through it and get it done. It’s all up to you.

Have It Your Way

I mentioned that talent trees were back, and they are in a big way. For those who never played the original version of World of Warcraft, there used to be three talent trees… one for each spec. You would get points, and you could spend them anywhere you wanted to. This is how you customized your playstyle. Since then, they dumbed it down into six rows, each with three choices. It wasn’t meaningful, it wasn’t engaging, and, to be honest, it was pretty damn insulting.

Now, all of that is fixed with the return of talent trees, but now we have two (well, technically, four). You have one for your Class and one for your Specialization. So if you’re a mage, the Class talent tree will be the exact same talents no matter if you’re Fire, Frost, or Arcane. The Specialization talent tree will change based on which you take. The Class tree gives some very interesting options, too. Want to have Dragon’s Breath and Meteor as a frost mage? Go for it! Want to have your old double time warp legendary power from Legion back? You can get it!

What’s nice is that there are choices for PvP, AoE, Single Target, and different playstyles all rolled into these trees to where you can truly customize your experience playing your class. What’s better is that it no longer costs gold to switch your talents, AND you can switch them anywhere in the game as long as you’re not in a Mythic+ dungeon or a PvP situation. Outside of that, change your talents for free anywhere, anytime, anyplace. In addition, Blizzard borrowed Hearthstone’s deck import system so you can copy a string of code on the internet and paste it into the talent interface and instantly learn a talent loadout. You can even save multiple load-outs and switch between them easily, which eliminates the need to manually respec every single time you want to try something different.

I’m A Useful Member of Society

Professions received a massive overhaul, too. There are now different qualities of reagents and new finishing reagents… all of which can affect the stats and the overall item level of crafted gear or the potency of consumables. On top of that, there is crafting gear in the game to help aid you in crafting those harder and higher-level recipes. Plus, if you need something but don’t have the recipe, you can commission someone who does it through the new Work Order system. You supply the reagents plus a gold fee, and someone will make your item for you. You collect the item, they collect the gold, and you’re set! This brings something that has been missing from World of Warcraft for the longest time… a sense of community to professions.

Plus, there are weekly profession quests you can do which will earn you profession knowledge. You can then spend that profession knowledge in your profession’s separate talent tree system! Everything from reduced reagents, to specializing in crafting certain items can be unlocked and improved upon through professional knowledge. It really has become a deep system but if I were to offer a bit of criticism, the depth of the system is nice, but it can be a bit confusing and intimidating for those who don’t really engage with professions all that much. I feel that they could have simplified it a bit, but it’s a nice start. Hopefully, it will receive some tuning as time goes on as it was made clear that this system will be WoW’s profession system going forward into future expansions as well.

Yet, Another Class

Of course, on top of that… we also have a new hero class to play… the Evoker. This is a unique case as Evokers can only be the new Dracthyr race, and the new Dracthyr race can only be Evokers. Perhaps, over time, other classes will open up, but for right now, it’s just the one. Evokers can be two specs: Preservation (healing) or Devastation (ranged DPS).

I will say this. I’ve played MMOs for over 25 years now. I have never once played a healer. One day during the pre-patch, my guild needed a healer to run the newly revamped Uldaman dungeon. I volunteered my fresh level 60 Evoker for the job. I put my talents in on-the-spot, had time to even learn what the abilities did, and we finished the dungeon with only a few deaths. If someone like me can learn to heal on an Evoker like that… anyone can play this class.

DPS-wise, Evokers are really fun and do a ton of damage. No matter if you’re healing or DPSing, the Evoker has a unique mechanic… the ability to charge spells. Think Mega Man’s Mega Buster… only in World of Warcraft. Supercharge an AoE to destroy tons of mobs or save your whole group. The Evoker feels really good to play and I believe Blizzard hit it out of the park with this one. What that translates to is expect nerfs incoming.

Lastly… extra things to do!

I’m Not Bored! … for now…

Dragonflight has a lot of extra content from the community soup event at the Iksaara Tuskaar base to the Dragonscale assault, to the centaurs performing Wild Hunts, and more. When you reach certain renown or simply just complete enough sidequests, you’ll also unlock new and unique world quests such as climbing for the Dragonscale Expedition, Cataloguing by taking photos with your S.E.L.F.I.E. Camera, and more. If all of the extra activities weren’t enough, starting with Season 1, the primal events from the pre-patch will be added to the list of things to do along with World Bosses.

Dragonflight also offers up eight new dungeons, and this is where I stop sounding like a hype machine for the expansion. Sorry to say that the new dungeons are not very interesting at all. The bosses don’t really do anything new or innovative, there’s so much trash that it’s painfully obvious that the dungeons were only made for Mythic+, some are really short like The Ruby Lifepools, and some are just really annoying and long like the Halls of Infusion. Dungeons haven’t really felt great so far so one of WoW’s usually safe staples that you can count on to be good were just very underwhelming.

I’m not saying the dungeons were bad. None of them really made me say “I don’t ever want to run this one again.” But none of them made me say “OH! I hope we get this one in the rotation because I absolutely loved it.” The dungeons feel like they are there for the sake of being there. Nothing more, nothing less.

Here’s hoping The Vault of the Incarnates, Dragonflight’s first raid, does a better job. Raids are WoW’s specialty, very rarely do they deliver a dud. The number of raids that completely failed in the game is something that I can count on one hand and still have fingers left over.

The TL;DR Part of the Review

While Dragonflight does a lot of things right to get the game back to a place where it should have been about a decade ago, it’s not without its faults. The first is the most obvious one… no Dragonriding outside of the Dragon Isles… unless you’re an Evoker. Then you’re free to roam the skies no matter where you are. No option to fly on your regular flying mounts which means unless you’re outside of the Dragon Isles, they’re just collecting dust in your collection window. Plus, Dragonriding wasn’t confirmed as something that will be carried forward once 11.0 arrives, presumably, two years from now.

A lot of complaints say that this feels like a barebones expansion, but my counterpoint to that is I believe newer WoW players have been conditioned to expect tons of systems. In Classic, The Burning Crusade, Wrath of the Lich King, Cataclysm, and until 5.3 in Mists of Pandaria, this is how it was. Levels, Dungeons, Professions, Raids, Reputations, and that’s it. That’s all that Dragonflight offers, and it’s a return to the way WoW used to be.

However, each expansion added something to the game that carried forward. Burning Crusade added Arena, Wrath added Achievements, and (for better or worse) the Dungeon Finder. Cataclysm added (again, for better or worse), Raid Finder, Mists of Pandaria added Pet Battles and Scenarios, etc., etc. I’m sure I’m forgetting a few along the way, you get my point.

So far, Dragonflight hasn’t done that. One could argue the return of talent trees or the profession overhaul but those are not NEW features. Those are old features that were revamped, and I think that’s where people are getting hung up on… however… there is hope. Some of these long-lasting features didn’t come at the start of the expansion. Some came in towards the end, and Ion Hazzikostas has strongly hinted that by the time 10.3 rolls around, we will be getting Cross-Faction Guilds in Dragonflight… which will be the big system that carries forward.

The bottom line is… three weeks into this expansion,  my love for World of Warcraft has been rekindled. Classes have, overall, felt great (hell, they even fixed Enhancement Shamans… can you believe it?), the story has been interesting thus far, the number of world activities is very abundant, all on reasonably-paced timers, so you can do them multiple times per day, and a sense of community has been restored thanks to certain areas having nothing but elite mobs that require you to group up and interact with other people.

Dungeons needed some more love, and once people go through the raid and out-gear the world events, how relevant are they really going to be? Sustainability, in the long run, is going to be a challenge for Dragonflight so let’s hope Blizzard is up for it.

At least for now, though… Blizzard has started to put the MMO back into their MMORPG.

Is it perfect?

No.

But it’s a start and a good one…

But… we are three weeks in. There are 104 weeks in a two-year time period. There are still 101 weeks for Blizzard to screw up. We can only hope that they don’t. If they keep using this design philosophy, WoW COULD see the rebirth it has been needing, only time will tell.