WOW: Dragonflight First Impression

The latest expansion for World of Warcraft dropped on November 22, 2022, and it has left a lasting impression on players. This new expansion, Dragonflight, is the 9^th expansion for World of Warcraft and shows signs of a positive start, something that could not be said about the last few expansions.

As a former semi-hardcore raider and dungeon pusher myself in Legion (WOW’s 6^th expansion), I quit WOW after the launch of Battle for Azeroth (the 7^th expansion) due to what felt like Blizzard Entertainment taking steps backward in what was good for the game. However, I have decided to give Dragonflight a shot after seeing many positive reviews and reactions to it across the gaming community.

In short, I agree with all of the positive sentiments given to Dragonflight and makes me feel confident in the future of WOW once again. Let’s jump into why I feel this way.

First and foremost, maximum level content (Level 70) has a variety of options to choose from but I do not have to do all of them to feel relevant in the game. This was a problem in many past expansions where this is a lot to do at max level, but you had to do all of it to keep up with everyone else. This is a great change of pace for players that cannot spend tons of time on the game.

New additions to the game make the gameplay feel better. This has not always been the case in past expansions, but in Dragonflight, we have the Race and Class, Dracthyr Evokers, dragon riding, new profession systems, and new class talent systems just to name a few. These new features are refreshing additions to the game and bring a level of complexity to the game that was not there before.

Old features in the game feel better than before. Whether it is mythic plus dungeons or leveling alts, it feels better than past expansion. This is because there have been some good updates for all of the old features in the game as well as the new features making the old more fun to do. For example, leveling and alt character is made much more fun in the Dragon Isles (the new Dragonflight expansion zone) because dragon riding makes getting around to different quests so much faster.

Player versus environment (PVE) content is not a flop. In past expansions, PVE content, raids especially and dungeons to a lesser extent, have just been unfun. The content is either too easy or very shallow in terms of lore and mechanics. In Dragonflight, both the raid and dungeons are challenging and make sense lore-wise. This can be seen most clearly in mythic plus dungeons which consist of 4 new dungeons and brings back 4 old ones; the old dungeons are significantly easier to do than the new ones.

Player versus player (PVP) has been expanded on. World PVP is optional with War Mode making playing out in the Dragon Isles less tedious for non-PVPers. There is also a new PVP mode called solo shuffle where players must enter alone, making PVP more accessible to players without friends that PVP too. Also, alliance and horde players can play together on the same team in PVP and PVE content. This opens up a world of possibilities when it comes to meeting and playing with new players. Now, the only thing horde and alliance players cannot do together is be in the same guild.

Finally, Blizzard Entertainment and the WOW Developers have laid out a clear and exciting roadmap for 2023 regarding what and when they plan to release new content for Dragonflight. Assuming they can stick to what they have promised the community, the future of Dragonflight and WOW in general looks good, much better than it has looked in the better part of a decade.