World of Warcraft: Dragonflight
World of Warcraft Dragonflight, by just the expansion name of it would be probably one of my most promising World of Warcraft’s expansions to date. Simply because I love the Dragon’s lore in the World of Azeroth. Honestly, I have no idea how they are even going tell this story, since the new Race Dracthyr are allowed on both Alliance and Horde’s side. Yet Stormwind still has bits of what’s left of the Earth Warder (Dracthyr’s Creator) on display next to Chromie. Kind of insulting the Dracthyr’s clansmen if we are being honest here.
Anyways, as this is a first preview review, we won’t be spoiling anything here but just understand if Dragonflight would be fun to play or not.
As usual, along with the standard content such as Arena, Dungeons, Raid & Rep Grind. They have revamped alot of the older “Evergreen systems” such as a slight rehaul of the Rep Grind system, using the Renown that was introduced in Shadowlands. Blizzard has already finally allow us to customize our User Interface without any add-ons which is a huge big QoL plus.
For a returning/existing player, Dragonflight would be another fresh start and like always, WoW will always have so much to offer that would suit for each different gamer, whether its being a lore-master, collecting pets, mounts toys, a money goblin, an achievement nerd, PVPer or Mythic Key Pusher or Mythic Raider.
As for Fayie, as an pretty casual player that enjoys Key Pushing and casual PUG Battleground PVP with some occasional tendency to want to collect mounts. it does free like there is a little too much going in the background which can easily overwhelm casual and new players. After playing DF for a few days now, while I love the the Dracthyr’s class as the Evoker’s play style runs really smooth and is to my liking but me and castors just don’t get along. I get bored of them super quick. However, I been trying to main my Monk for the past few expansions now and DF monk game play seems to be really fun, but then there is my good old Demon Hunter which I loved since Legion times. We’ll see how we go when pre-patch comes along, apparently there is a revamped classic dungeon Uldaman. With a new expansion also comes a new Mythic + Season so more KSM to do yay.
Back To Basics – Core Fantasy MMORPG
I remember just not long ago, people said Battle of Azeroth was really terrible and the worse expansion of all times. However, 2 years into Shadowlands, the opinions are shifting once again. Shadowlands literally feels like a complete waste of everyone’s time with nothing but time gating on everything. None of the new features they brought forward was polished and honestly I would of been OK if some never existed like the new Mission Tables, how I hated that completely. Luckily if isn’t just me who feels that way, there was at the least 1 other redditor.
Further, these past 2 years, quite a number of new MMORPG has been popping out of the dark, Lost Ark, Elyon, Embers Adrift just to name a few, not even mentioning expansions updates such as EOS’s Highlands or Guild War 2’s End of Dragons. World of Warcraft is really at it’s wits end it seems to be going back to the die-hard core fantasy world theme with explorations and dragons. Regardless of the fact, I really do enjoy World of Warcraft even if I do play more casually than others. The lore is decent and there are always plenty of things I can dedicate myself too such as Casual PVP in Battlegrounds or Mythic+ Key Pushing or achievements and collection such as mounts and toys.
Some things I have noticed in Dragonflight is that they are keeping quite a few of the newer features that was introduced in Shadowlands such as the new gearing system where you trade your Mythic+Set or Conquest PVP set with a Tiered version. The AOE caps were lessened but still exist, and most interestingly, they are adopting the new renown system for major factions and replacing it as the classic reputation bars we had since vanilla days.
While not getting too much into spoiling the lore of dragonflight, I am completely in love with some of the new artworks for the redesign of the dragon aspects and just the general graphics touch up they are doing patch over patch, expansion over expansion.
From playing Dragonflight beta for sometime now, Secondary stats from current Shadowland sets has been squished while our core level hasn’t and the maximum level will increase to 70. Our damage continues to be on the rise and I estimate around ~100k+ in dps on average by the end of S1.
Ups and Downs of Dragonflight
Positives
Plenty of new content, from lore, quests, new arena maps, dungeons, raids, pets, mounts, toys, achievements, you name it as always with a new expansion
An never ending list of things to do in World of Warcraft already never ending list. In short, you can’t be bored, if you are, the game simply isn’t for you.
New refreshing UI look, much more customizable and the ability to change talents and spec once again on the fly without any time-gating stopping you.
Another revamp of Balance Druids, it really seems that they cannot get it right at all. Feral seems to be still a complete weakfest in Dragonflight once again while Balance druids seems to be constantly under reworks, buffs and debuffs like they just can’t make it right. Why not show more love the the Feral spec, there is a reason why it’s one of the least played Druid specs, simply because its just super unsatisfying. Yes, Crit Convoke + Bites does insane damage but let’s be honest, feral druids have nearly literally no cast spells and it isn’t to always have 1 kick saved for that burst convoke that will come, not to mention our feral state aura damage was nerfed by 30% and convoke no longer does 5 point bites but only 4 now.
Anyways, for Dragonflight, we been given more mounts, some exclusively only for the new dragon riding feature which is currently super fun, while traditional flying would still be the main way around in most likely 10.1 when flying is unlocked. It is great that we are not time-gated stuck to the ground for months at the start of each expansion. Not just that, the mounts are fully customizable which is great, everyone will have some form of slight variant dragon instead of everyone looking exactly the same.
One of the biggest change that I makes me fall in love with World of Warcraft once again is the Rated Solo Queue. This is going to be live during Prepatch 10.0, which the potential to still get Season 4 Vicious Mount in the 3-5 weeks of off season. One of the biggest reason why this is an excellent change is due to the ability to solo queue into rated arena. Test the skills of random players in a Rated Arena scene really push you to the limits. Ontop of that, people like myself, who don’t like grouping up nor have dedicated arena partners anymore (or ever) a chance of the Arena Vicious Mounts is always a plus.
Negatives
Going to be honest, as of currently, the biggest drawback I personally encountered is the new crafting system. Nearly every material will now be divided into ranks and crafting now also have rank 1 to 5. Making crafting a total RNG fest and also a potential huge gold-sink. Personally not sure if I like the direction the crafting system is going, specifically since Legendary crafting in Shadowlands costed everyone hundreds of thousand of gold which luckily wasn’t RNG ranked while the new Dragonflight Crafting system is ranked based. So some PTSD there.
The second biggest issue is potential time gating, World of Warcraft is very known for time gating it’s content and Shadowland was one of the worse of the worse in times of time gating. I do understand the need to time-gate some content but you shouldn’t lock your players out of 95% of the game just because it’s a new expansion. That’s not fun at all.
Other Notes
All the non-money goblins out there, or trying to be a Buy to Play player without subscribing to the game (Play by using WoW Tokens) in WoW, the only time it has been this easy was back in the Warlords of Draenor Expansion. Start of expansions are one of the best ways to make money as long as one makes the effort to do their dailies, and on multiple of characters, their revenue stream will multiple like never before.
In Shadowlands, having a few alts could easily make you close to a 1 million a month if not more depending on how much you play and how many alts you have. At the current WoW Token rate, 230k = 1 token which is roughly $15 USD blizz balance. So just 4 tokens is enough to buy the new expansion. Honestly a cheap bargain for a few weeks of hard work.
After all, even if you are doing just the bare minimum of callings + mission table. A calling is about 2.5k a day and mission table is about 1.5k a day which is 4k a day. This comes to roughly 30k a week if you include the weekly Replenish the Reservoir Quest . If you had 10 alts that would be around 300k a week. Which is roughly 1.2 million in a month’s time which is about 5 Tokens worth already. This isn’t even scratching the surface of being a WoW goblin either. Even if you just play casually, you can easily make over 250k a month to pay for the subscription to keep on playing without ever spending more money.
That’s one of the best things I enjoy about WoW and things alot of people don’t understand about.
As I am not a huge wow goblin myself and play casually to have fun, there are obviously much better ways to make gold in WoW, and if you are interested, I would recommend checking out this subreddit.
Is World of Warcraft Dragonflight Expansion Worth Playing?
I would definitely recommend to just subscribe to World of Warcraft for the time being. You will be able to enjoy the game up until level 50 and all of the content up until BFA. Which is honestly better than Shadowlands anyways. As we are this close to Dragonflight, you will end up double dipping and purchasing the two expansions instead of just one if you wait until Dragonflight actually releases, since all previous expansions merges into the base edition and literally becomes “free” when you subscribe. World of Warcraft is one of my favorite MMORPG of all times and I always come back to play to meet new friends or continue playing with my wow friends I met over the years. While Activison has been said to largely ruin the game itself, the game is still great with a stable success while always maintains a constant high player base to enjoy with so you will never need to worry about the game becoming “dead” unlike other MMORPGs. As for the returning players, unless you are returning for collector, raider or mythic keys progressioner, I would recommend to hold off for a little as you will hit the time gate super quick and feel quite frustrated since bugs and imbalance exist everywhere in the game currently.
