World of Warcraft: Dragonflight Revealed

April 19th was certainly an exciting day for World of Warcraft fans. The game’s current expansion, Shadowlands, is regarded as particularly unpopular among much of the venerable MMORPG’s player base. In light of that, it’s little surprise that players have been hoping for something newer and more exciting to come along. Judging by what I’ve seen of the public reception to the announcements that Blizzard made on April 19th, it appears as though something fresher and more thrilling might be exactly what they plan to give us.

During a lengthy Livestream that aired on Twitch and YouTube, Blizzard announced the ninth expansion set for World of Warcraft, officially entitled Dragonflight. My goal for today is to provide you with a rundown of at least the majority of what Blizzard has revealed about Dragonflight’s content thus far. That is, in case you missed the Livestream or just don’t want to sit through the whole thing.

Before we get to that, I should mention that Blizzard also officially confirmed the existence of Wrath of the Lich King Classic during that same stream. If that’s more your cup of tea, you can check out my article on that right here. Just be advised that Blizzard hasn’t made very many momentous announcements regarding Wrath Classic yet, aside from an approximate intended release date of sometime this year. Now then, let’s dive into Dragonflight!

The announcement Livestream was primarily hosted by three prominent Blizzard members: John Hight, Ion Hazzikostas, and Holly Longdale. They are the Warcraft franchise’s General Manager, World of Warcraft’s Game Director, and World of Warcraft Classic’s Lead Producer, respectively. Among the first things they did during the stream was unveil to the masses the Dragonflight announcement cinematic.

This cinematic primarily explains that the ancestral home of the Dragon Aspects, known as the Dragon Isles, has been concealed and dormant for the past ten thousand in-game years because, according to Alexstrasza, “the world has been sundered. It cries out in pain.” The Dragon Aspects had to leave the Dragon Isles in order to help protect the world from external threats, such as the Burning Legion. Thus, they magically concealed the Isles to ensure that no such threat could locate and destroy them.

When the cinematic returns to the present day, it depicts a Titan Watcher who was entrusted with the safekeeping of the Dragon Isles in the Aspects’ absence working to once again light something known as the “Beacon of Tyrhold.” This act dispels the concealing fog which hides the Dragon Isles from every being on Azeroth (even the Aspects themselves) and urgently calls the Dragon Aspects back to their ancestral homeland.

Shortly after the announcement cinematic concluded, the trio of emcees started listing off details about what Dragonflight will contain. Ion Hazzikostas first stated that the expansion will consist of a total of five new zones, four of which are intended for players to level their characters through the new expansion’s content and reach the new max level of 70. The fifth zone serves as the planned starting area for Dragonflight’s new playable race. I suppose discussing this new race is as good a place as any to begin.

The new playable character race that Dragonflight will introduce is known as the Dracthyr. These are basically bipedal, humanoid-like dragons who were created (at least in part) by Neltharion, the former Aspect of the Black Dragonflight who would eventually fall victim to corruption and become Deathwing. As such, the Dracthyr are imbued with the abilities of all five Dragonflights to some extent – Red, Black, Blue, Bronze, and Green, for those who might not know.

However, the fact that the Dracthyr possess that sort of power from the quintet of Dragonflights means that they don’t really fit in very well with the archetypes of any existing character class within World of Warcraft. Therefore, the Dragonflight expansion will additionally introduce a new class that can only be played by members of the Dracthyr race. This also happens to be the only class available to Dracthyr characters: the Evoker.

Evokers are considered a hero class, like the existing Death Knights and Demon Hunters. Thus, they’ll begin at a much higher level than other classes (level 58, to be more specific) and have their own unique starting area. Players will have the ability to choose whether to make each Evoker a Horde or Alliance character. They primarily wear Mail armor, though the presenters didn’t specifically mention what sorts of weapons they can equip.

Similar to Demon Hunters, Evokers have two available combat specializations players can choose from. They’ve got one spec that zeroes in on dealing damage from range, called Devastation, which “mostly focuses on Red and Blue [Dragonflight] magic.” Additionally, Evokers also have a combat spec that allows them to focus on healing their allies, which is known as Preservation and centers on Green and Bronze magic.

Furthermore, Evokers will have access to a new spell type (or possibly spell effect) called “Empower.” This effect strengthens any applicable spell players cast based on how long they hold down that spell’s respective button on their keyboard. Each spell that benefits from the Empower mechanic could, for example, deal additional damage or hit extra targets depending on how long the ability was” charged up” before being cast.

Blizzard also went into a bit of detail about the character customization options that will be available to Dracthyr characters. Not unlike the Worgen race on the Alliance, Dracthyr will have two distinct forms. One form is more humanoid-like, while the other focuses on giving these characters the visage of a dragon. These forms can apparently be customized to resemble one another or be completely different, based on how the player chooses to make them look. Whether or not Dracthyr will be able to fight while in their humanoid form (something Worgen cannot do) wasn’t mentioned, however.

Moving on, it was also revealed that players will have access to a new way to get around on the Dragon Isles. More precisely, this new mechanic is known as “Dragonriding,” which is exactly what it sounds like. Early on in Dragonflight’s story campaign, players will reportedly receive a ride-able dragon that can be customized to your heart’s content. The Dragonriding mechanic will allow players to “move through the air” while in the Dragon Isles, according to Blizzard. I say that because Blizzard strangely seems to be purposefully avoiding saying this system will let players fly in any of the new zones.

Due to the existence of the Dragonriding mechanic, it has also been reported that every existing flying mount outside of Dragonriding will only be able to be used as a ground mount within the confines of the Dragon Isles. Perhaps this is why Blizzard currently seems to be averse to saying that players will be able to fly on their custom Dragonriding mount. Either way, this whole scenario still seems peculiar to me.

The first of two final, noteworthy things announced about World of Warcraft: Dragonflight is the apparent revamp of the in-game Talents system. I suspect that many longtime WoW veterans will remember all too well the controversy surrounding the previous set of changes to this system that were introduced alongside the Mists of Pandaria expansion, which currently sees players choose one of three talents on a set of tiers based on their character level.

Now, however, Blizzard seems to be going back to its roots by reintroducing talent trees (no pun intended) that resemble the trees that existed before those aforementioned, sweeping changes alongside Mists of Pandaria. Once Dragonflight has launched, players will see two talent trees upon opening their Talents page: one tree specific to their character class and one tailored to their current class specialization.

The example Blizzard showed during the stream depicts a tree specific to Druid abilities, and one specific to portions of the Druid class’s Restoration spec, in case that helps make things a little clearer for you. It was stated during this portion of the Livestream that the class-specific tree will start with some abilities already “filled out for free, just kind of starting you off in that spec you’ve chosen, but then you’ll have your first point to spend, which could be […] something from elsewhere in the class.”

“We want you to be able to tinker with it. We want you to be able to make a lot of changes at a lot of times and not necessarily have to commit,” said Senior Game Designer Brian Holinka. “The power really is coming back to the player.” To that end, Mr. Holinka also said that Blizzard is “building a save/load feature that lets you create your build, name it, save it, and then load it up very quickly and freely.”

From the sound of that last quote, it seems to me as though players may not be required to be in a rest area to change between their talent profiles anymore, though I could definitely be wrong about that. Even if that’s not the case, at the very least, it sounds like players who already have several talent builds created and ready to go will only have to remain in a rested area for a matter of seconds to change between their builds based on what sort of content they’re currently playing. For what it’s worth, I’m most assuredly looking forward to seeing what sorts of changes Blizzard makes to this system.

The last thing I want to discuss is a brief overview of Blizzard’s planned overhaul of the game’s user interface (UI). Blizzard explained that they plan to make World of Warcraft‘s UI much more user-friendly and customizable alongside the Dragonflight expansion. You might be aware that you can already customize your UI to some extent via the use of external add-ons, but Blizzard essentially said they think it’s high time that the functions of many of those add-ons become available to players by default as part of the game’s base user interface.

For example, you’ll be able to move your minimap to any point on your screen that you like, or change the position of HUD elements (like your character’s health and mana bars) as you please. You can also do such things as relocate your ability bars in such a way that you find them easier to use and keep track of. Blizzard also mentioned that they plan to introduce a slew of new accessibility options alongside the UI and HUD updates.

However, they haven’t gone into any actual detail about what those options may entail. Even so, since making games more accessible to everyone is part of our mission here at Phenixx Gaming, I think this seems to be positive news for sure. I’m all for one of my favorite games of all time being made more accessible to anyone who might want to play it.

There you have it, folks! Even though I’ve covered most of the currently-announced updates and changes coming in World of Warcraft: Dragonflight, there’s still quite a bit more I elected not to include for brevity’s sake. If you’re interested in learning more about any known aspect of this newly-unveiled expansion, whether I covered it here or not, I wholeheartedly suggest that you check out external resources like Wowhead and the official World of Warcraft YouTube channel. For now, though, do feel free to sound off about any part of WoW: Dragonflight in this article’s comments if you’re so inclined!