The new World of Warcraft expansion has been revealed. From patch 10.0 onwards, it’s off to the land of dragons. We have summarised what you can expect there.
The wait is over: As usual, Blizzard announced its ninth expansion, World of Warcraft: Dragonflight, with a cinematic trailer. This time it goes to the land of dragons. Or more precisely: to the Dragon Isles. As you can probably already guess, some old acquaintances are waiting for us there. Among them are the red dragonflight and its mistress Alextraza.
We have summarised all known information about the new addon for you:
- New Area: Dragon Isles (with four new zones: the wild Coast of Awakening, the vast plains of Ohn’ahra, the sublime Azure Mountains and the ancient, magnificent Thaldraszus)
- New maximum level: Level 70
- New class-race combo: Caller of the Dracthyr (Ranged-DD or Healer)
- New Flight Mounts: Customisable Dragons
- Revised Talent and Profession System
- Revised HUD
Blizzard has not yet named a release date. Should the developer studio follow its old rhythm, you can expect a release at the end of 2022. But first there will be an alpha.
That’s all in a nutshell, but what we already know about the story and the individual gameplay elements will be explained in more detail below. But first, you can watch the first trailer for the expansion:
The Story of Dragonflight
In the trailer you will see that over 10,000 years ago the Dragon Islands were sealed off and the Dragon Aspects left their home. Now, however, the island is coming back to life and the dragons are returning. But the land has changed.
Those of you who remember the events of Shadowlands know that the dungeon master Zovaal spoke of an even more powerful threat when he died. In all likelihood, this threat is now approaching us and is threatening the dragons’ breeding cities.
Many of these we already know from previous addons. The most succinct might be Cataclysm, in which we fought the dragon Deathwing and his black brood.
In Cataclysm, we were already assisted by Alextraza as an ally, who stood against Deathwing and was severely wounded in the process. Since then, we have heard little from the Dragon Queen. It is a different story with Alextraza’s younger heaviest named Ysera.
The leader of the green dragonflight we last met in Shadowlands, where her soul was forever bound to the Deadworld. Does this mean that there is a new dragon aspect – that is, a new ruler or ruleress for the green swarm?
In addition to the green and red dragonflight, we also see blue and yellow, respectively bronze dragons in the trailer, which points to the two leaders Kalecgos (ruler of the blue dragonflight after Malygos died) and Nozdormu (ruler of the bronze dragonflight).
Either way, we will learn quite a lot about the culture and land of the dragons and the giants who live there. The new playable race, the Dracthyr also come into focus. They have strong ties to the black dragon aspect (Nefarian), which later became Deathwing.
New talent and profession system
As you have already read in the keyword list above, with WoW 10.0 and Dragonflight, there will also be some changes to existing systems. However, we don’t really know much about this yet. The official press release only talks about making creative and satisfying talent decisions [at every level] without losing effectiveness. First, briefly shown clips in the trailer show a larger talent tree than you know so far.
Less cryptic, but similarly vague, is the description of the profession overhaul. Here, player-influenced work orders, new job gear, a brand new specialisation system and more [are said to play a role] in allowing players to rise to become professionals known throughout their realm.
With this, Dragonflight wants to continue the basic idea of the profession system from Shadowlands and give the professions more leeway and importance again. Again, we don’t know anything concrete yet.
As you can see, apart from a first handful of information, we unfortunately don’t have many clues yet. As soon as we know more, we will update this article. Until then, you can already tell us in the comments what you hope for from the new addon.
