How does Dragonflight look so far, Good, bad, same as usual?

[Malkiah]

I want WoW to be WoW again. Do you know what i mean?

i know what you mean - you want a new MMO that you're totally unfamiliar with that you get really into, and you think that the current expansion is the reason you don't feel that way anymore about a game you've been playing for 10+ years.

wow is not (significantly or notably) different now than it was at any other time in the past decade, what has changed is:
1. you hit max level
2. the game isn't new to you anymore

The quality content we received from Vanilla up till Mists of Pandaria.

vanilla up to mists was the same as it is now, the difference is that now days you basically start each expansion being max level and so skip all the fiddling around to get to that point that you used to do.
(i say "basically" because everyone treats leveling as hindrance they have to get through in order to start actually playing the game and rush through it as quickly as possible, and so the process doesn't get as much attention because it's the least utilized aspect of game content.)

post-level-cap content hasn't changed in WoW in over a decade - it's slowly grinding for ilevel upgrades, and slowly grinding through reputations for secondary throughput upgrades.
you grind dungeons, and/or you grind raids. you grind some daily quest content. absolutely nothing has changed except for your perception of it.

I just wanna be able to hang in a town and legit have fun. That is what WoW used to offer to anyone.

and it still does, and if you're not having fun it's not because of the game itself.

Now it's just the top tier scene that gets some love and rest just have to enjoy old content that we been doing for 18 years.

this sentence displays a significant lack of understanding how MMOs work.
here's a starter lesson: excepting new expansion launch day, no content that isn't max level 'top tier scene' has ever been added to the game in its entire history.
at no point has wow or any other MMO ever had a mid-expansion patch that goes "oh hey we added a new level 20 dungeon" - everything always is and always has been about the top tier scene, the only difference is that now days you're aware of the top tier scene in a way you didn't used to be.

the problem with wow isn't wow, the problem with wow is that the players look at MDI streams and then make that their personal end goal for playing the game.
most of you (and i include myself in that) will never be capable of that.
and so you just piss and moan about how "the game isn't fun anymore" because you've set a completely idiotic standard for yourself (and others) to play the game, and you can't live up to it.

[Echo of Soul]

Same shit as usual. Badge gear is still not back. You should be able to buy the second best gear in the game from farming a currency from queued content like daily heroics, LFR and daily/world quests.

Until they fix this they can't expect to get any of the casual players back from FFXIV. They have that exact system and it works great

[Khaza-R]

So far I am not really wowed by anything.

Evokers just look strange and poorly conceived for a new class

M+ is going to be questionable depending on the quality of older dungeons that are added to the season pools

New talents I think will be good in the long run but I think certain specs are going to suffer at the beginning with out some continuous polishing

Overall the expansion has good bones, but just how good it ends up being will depend on how well and how fast they are at responding to feedback since so many systems are being re-imagined.

[Angrie]

Worst advice I have ever seen, generally the first few weeks of an expansion are the most fun you will have. However, if you plan on playing the game single player and not involving yourself in basically any of the end game, then starting later after reviews are out can be a decent idea.

That being said, looking at reviews are a poor replacement for first hand experience. I have read countless reviews of games and movies in the past that denounced them as terrible, and I have thoroughly enjoyed when actually trying to product out for myself.

Now what you said is the worst advice ever. Rush to max level, smash all the mythics, wait a week, do it again the following week. Burn yourself out before the game even really starts, smart. I have friends who did exactly that and then quit for classic because "they had no content".

Words of mouth reviews are the best reviews you can get on the game. Mainstream reviews from the lower echelon of players doesn't mean squat to me. I've never not pre-ordered and DF is going to be the first time i do not. They lost my preorder after 2 terrible expansions in a row. So while YOU do not need to wait to preorder, the best advice for someone who is unsure is to wait, because it has not been worth for the past 2 expansions.

SL sucks, it sucks almost as bad as WoD. The class trees are spawns of the garbage SL produced, it's nothing new or refreshing.

Legion was AMAZING, why? Because they brought in brand new ideas (artifacts), new spells, new effects with tiers and legendries, new class, new dungeon concept (M+), great story, unique quests for each spec, world quests, allied races and much much more. What does DF bring???? A talent tree that for most classes has must-have talents or stupid choices with no synergy. Poor ideas like adding SL covenant abilities, almost nothing new at all. Dragon riding that was stolen from GW2. A class that is mega gimped.

Don't get me wrong, i want DF to be good. It's just more of the same crap that i dislike. Sad because i've been playing Blizzard games since WC1, feels like it's time to get a divorce.

[Vakna]

Now what you said is the worst advice ever. Rush to max level, smash all the mythics, wait a week, do it again the following week. Burn yourself out before the game even really starts, smart. I have friends who did exactly that and then quit for classic because "they had no content".

Words of mouth reviews are the best reviews you can get on the game. Mainstream reviews from the lower echelon of players doesn't mean squat to me. I've never not pre-ordered and DF is going to be the first time i do not. They lost my preorder after 2 terrible expansions in a row. So while YOU do not need to wait to preorder, the best advice for someone who is unsure is to wait, because it has not been worth for the past 2 expansions.

SL sucks, it sucks almost as bad as WoD. The class trees are spawns of the garbage SL produced, it's nothing new or refreshing.

Legion was AMAZING, why? Because they brought in brand new ideas (artifacts), new spells, new effects with tiers and legendries, new class, new dungeon concept (M+), great story, unique quests for each spec, world quests, allied races and much much more. What does DF bring???? A talent tree that for most classes has must-have talents or stupid choices with no synergy. Poor ideas like adding SL covenant abilities, almost nothing new at all. Dragon riding that was stolen from GW2. A class that is mega gimped.

Don't get me wrong, i want DF to be good. It's just more of the same crap that i dislike. Sad because i've been playing Blizzard games since WC1, feels like it's time to get a divorce.

We'll just agree to disagree, you think I'm wrong, I think you're wrong. It is what it is.

[TheramoreIsTheBomb]

Seems worrying, because 10.0 needs to be a straight up 10/10 for WoW.

more like an 11/10. you also need the patches to be good as well.. but still i dont think it'll be enough.. a lot of people will be playing other games

[Ryzek]

I looks great to me, but all i need are raids and mythic plus, and I get that in every xpac since Legion. So I'm not the best to ask, I do like the talent revamp so this xpac looks even better than usual.

[Ashana Darkmoon]

Who knows, as usual the real test for new expansion is not the first month when you have shitton of new and unexplored stuff to chew on, but what happens 3rd month and forward.

The class changes ARE big and people who downplay it have no fucking idea what they are talking about. Many of the talents ARE returning bonuses/legendaries/sets from last 3 expansions, but the fact that you can now mix and combine them opens up a huge amount of options that will transform the way specs play a lot.

The new areas are huge and grand, the new class/race is both exciting (first new ranged DD spec in WoW ever) and has insane amount of customization to boot.


However, on the flipside, what will make or break DF is 10.1 and 10.2, how fast are they delivered and what they will be - because if 10.1 will be another dogshit like Korthia 8 months after expansion launch - it will all go down the drain fast.

As a side note - I really hope Blizzard splits the 6 monts deliveries into 3+3 instead, they need to find a way to launch more frequent content updates even if each of them will be smaller.

Yeah this is hugely important. The biggest crisis of SL was the 8 month first patch etc.

Even WoD was fun for the first little bit

[Chilela]

Or and hear me out, there are two components to an expansion. There is launch content which offers one type of experience and then there is post launch and repeatable content. Warlords of Draenor offered exceptional launch content.

Kinda off-topic to the thread at hand, but it definitely feels like this tends to be the case because it's much easier to test launch experience than post-launch experience. In the case of the former, it's something that's a relatively short experience where feedback is relatively accurate to how the experience will play on live. For post-launch, you have content that's expected to last between several weeks and effectively the entire expansion, so figuring out whether said content can hold off players for that amount of time is something that can't be properly tested due to the time-limited nature of betas, and comes down to sheer guesswork, which traditionally ends poorly.

If you want to circle it back to the thread's topic, the short version is that the only thing that can really be gauged is stuff like the leveling experience, whereas the longer-term implications of stuff like the talent tree/profession revamp or dragon riding are a bit trickier to determine.

Granted, this all comes with the caveat that I haven't been personally paying much attention to DF as a whole.

[Nyel]

More of the same where Evoker is the only real "new" thing. Which is a massive problem for everyone who doesn't want to play one. Dragonflight might be the most boring expansion yet, because it's just an extension of already established things while bringing nothing new (see point 1). I think they will run into a lot of problems with this approach. Sure, it's more dungeons, raids and zones, but the exciting hook is missing this time. Dragonflight could just be two major content patches for any other expansion, because only so little is changing.

"But there are talent trees which open a lot of possibilities!" Yes and no. Most talent trees consist of stuff we already have right at this point. For most specs the gameplay is not changing at all. Just because you're getting one new passive or one new active skill, your core gameplay isn't up for a shake up - which is the case.

"There are so many builds now!" So what? You can have AoE builds, ST builds and builds that both mix it up. Basically the same as in live WoW right now. Yes, you have more builds available, but will they be viable? Will they be fun? In the end your options might increase, but their usefulness will be limited.

"Dragonriding is new!" No, it's not. It's flying that has been restricted, just to give you back what you already had by doing things and unlocking stuff.

If you want to play Evoker, you're in luck, the class looks fine, Preservation looks fantastic. But this expansion is so shy on innovation, revolution or even evolution, that it's by far the most basic expansion yet. And Cataclysm (ignore the world revamp) and WoD exist.

[Richardbro]

It looks pretty good so far, the lore will be better than SL.

However, the endgame seems lacking at the moment. There are of course the mythic plus, pvp and raiding which is great but there is no big feature like Torghast, Islands, Warfronts, etc. (Dragonriding and races are the big feature but I don't think it will last long). There is also not much casual side content (like the 4 covenent sanctum activities, Ember court, stiching etc.).

They are definitely cutting some corners and when compared to the content of other expansions in order to get this out this year (which I don't mind to be honest, 2 year expac cycle is perfect) but the cost of the expansion should have been lowered accordingly.

You will get bored faster than you did in 9.0 (which people got bored in March 2021, 4 months after release).

But Blizzard has promised faster and more frequent content releases, so we shall see.

[saixilein]

Does it look on first hand better then Shadowlands though?

Almost every addon looking good pre launch. Many promises, new exciting features, "we learned", "we listened". But in the end u dont know.

And the latest wow is always doomed as the worste one, and 1-2 addons later people wish back the doomed and bad addon. I mean look at mop. 50% dislikes back then when it was revealed. Many people dont like pandas (and monks) and after wod they start wishing back mop, because overall it was one of the best addons weve ever got.

[Nymrohd]

Yeah this is hugely important. The biggest crisis of SL was the 8 month first patch etc.

Just think about it, the PTR for the first Legion patch went live just a couple weeks after launch. A patch that added Karazhan and a three boss raid.

[FelPlague]

Remember Mists of Pandaria? Each 3 months a patch. Small Patch, Big Patch, Small Patch, Big Patch.. etc..
I do hope they can deliver like that again. MoP was stable near 8 million subscribers due of that for the whole expansion period.

????? Mop lost more then cata did, only recovering with wods announcement causing that uptick at the end.


- - - Updated - - -

Same shit as usual. Badge gear is still not back. You should be able to buy the second best gear in the game from farming a currency from queued content like daily heroics, LFR and daily/world quests.

Until they fix this they can't expect to get any of the casual players back from FFXIV. They have that exact system and it works great

As someone who has played a fair bit of it recently, this is a lie, you cannot get the second best gear in the game by doing basic dungeons...

[unstableone]

Looks bad. They had an opportunity to work on class design and come up with good talent trees. Unfortunately, not every class/spec received equal treatment.

I hope there is time for changes but I doubt it can happen. Appears to [still] be no regard for class balance...

[FelPlague]

Legion was AMAZING, why? Because they brought in brand new ideas (artifacts), new spells, new effects with tiers and legendries, new class, new dungeon concept (M+), great story, unique quests for each spec, world quests, allied races and much much more. What does DF bring???? A talent tree that for most classes has must-have talents or stupid choices with no synergy. Poor ideas like adding SL covenant abilities, almost nothing new at all. Dragon riding that was stolen from GW2. A class that is mega gimped.

New ideas= Dragonriding, World events, world orders, profession overhaul
New spells= Plenty, cause legion added 1 new ability per spec, thats it, no new talent row, just the "activate your artifact weapon" ability, that's it. Dragonflight already FAR out preforms that, as demo i have 4 new abilities.
new effects with tiers and legendaries= We have tiers, and while no legendaries, legendaries are literally just talents but on armor, so bringing back the talent trees replaces legendaries
new dungeon concept= a dungeon that has you actually flying around on your mount, pretty new, or are you saying you want mythic + +?
Great story= Yep
Unique quests= there was all of about 1 unique questline per spec, which while nice meant most people only saw 1/36th of the content made, MAYBE 3/36th of the content. instead just make, more stuff?
World quests= dragonflight has world quests too
allied races= not a legion feature, it was a BFA feature, please dont try to bullshit.

"Must have talents or stupid choices with no synergy" i fucking love your absolute shittery here, cause funny, same could be said for the legion legendaries, some were must have, others were stupid choices with no synergy, but nah, old thing is perfect and amazing, new thing is stupid and useless. and the fact you praise legion legendaries is fucking hilarious, speaking most of the community fucking hated them till the final patch when you could just buy them, because aww man, remember getting all the worst ones first, and literally getting your "Best in slot MUST USE you will parse 70 rating lower if you dont use it" legendary last?
"Poor ideas like adding sl covenant abilities" what the fuck? sl covenant abilities are amazing, they were not a "problem"
"Almost nothing new at all" Again, dragon riding, world events, work orders, profession overhaul, NEW CLASS/RACE, empowered abilities. what "new" did legion add? Artifacts? DF talent trees. DH? Evoker.
"Dragon riding stolen from gw2" and Gw2 stole it from another game, and that game stole it from another game. oh and dragon riding is better then gw2's flight because of the abilities.
"Class that is mega gimped" boi you praise legion, the fucking expansion that added a spec with a 2 button rotation still memed to this date come on.

Legion was an amazing expansion, but this is just sad.

- - - Updated - - -

Looks bad. They had an opportunity to work on class design and come up with good talent trees. Unfortunately, not every class/spec received equal treatment.

I hope there is time for changes but I doubt it can happen. Appears to [still] be no regard for class balance...

"I hope there is time for changed but i doubt it can happen"
Maybe look at the actual changes mate, cause they are getting changed each week, sometimes even multiple times a week.

- - - Updated - - -

More of the same where Evoker is the only real "new" thing. Which is a massive problem for everyone who doesn't want to play one. Dragonflight might be the most boring expansion yet, because it's just an extension of already established things while bringing nothing new (see point 1). I think they will run into a lot of problems with this approach. Sure, it's more dungeons, raids and zones, but the exciting hook is missing this time. Dragonflight could just be two major content patches for any other expansion, because only so little is changing.

"But there are talent trees which open a lot of possibilities!" Yes and no. Most talent trees consist of stuff we already have right at this point. For most specs the gameplay is not changing at all. Just because you're getting one new passive or one new active skill, your core gameplay isn't up for a shake up - which is the case.

"There are so many builds now!" So what? You can have AoE builds, ST builds and builds that both mix it up. Basically the same as in live WoW right now. Yes, you have more builds available, but will they be viable? Will they be fun? In the end your options might increase, but their usefulness will be limited.

"Dragonriding is new!" No, it's not. It's flying that has been restricted, just to give you back what you already had by doing things and unlocking stuff.

If you want to play Evoker, you're in luck, the class looks fine, Preservation looks fantastic. But this expansion is so shy on innovation, revolution or even evolution, that it's by far the most basic expansion yet. And Cataclysm (ignore the world revamp) and WoD exist.

What new did tbc add?
What new did wotlk add?
commonly both said as the two best expacs, what new did they add if you do not consider anything in dragonflight new?
Cause like guy 2 sections above, you are hilarously underselling everything
"1 more passives or 1 new active skill"
demo lock here, 4 new active skills and 36 new passives
for one spec. but please. "Just because you're getting one new passive or one new active skill"

"You can have AoE builds, ST builds and builds that both mix it up" No, you have builds like nether portal which focuses on sending massive bursts of demons out by spamming out as many soulshards as possible in a small window, or an implosion build where you summon as many imps as possible to empower them, to then boost your shadowbolt and demon bolt, or a mass demon build where you try to empower your tyrant as strong as possible, or a felguard build where you focus on empowering your 3 major demons, imp, dreadstalker, and felguard, where you summon swarms of super powerful imps, packs of dreadstalkers, both of them in obscene amounts, easily hitting 9 dreadstalkers, and 30-40 imps, all while your felguard increases their damage, both directly, and by weakening your enemies, while the imps also increase the felguards damage. while nether portal spec and tyrant spec are mostly single target, and implosion is aoe, the felguard is a middle ground, and all of them do this in different ways, with different playstyles and damage phases.


""Dragonriding is new!" No, it's not. It's flying that has been restricted, just to give you back what you already had by doing things and unlocking stuff. "
This part is just fucking hilarious, as someone who has been playing with dragon riding for what 2 months now?
Normal flying feels fucking garbage compared to dragon riding, even with zero talents, but please, i would love if you were to explain how "Dragon riding is just flying that has been restircted, just to give you back what you already had by doing things and unlocking stuff"

Please show me where we used to have fully customizable mounts that moved at almost 1100% movement speed.

[Gimlix]

i know what you mean - you want a new MMO that you're totally unfamiliar with that you get really into, and you think that the current expansion is the reason you don't feel that way anymore about a game you've been playing for 10+ years.

No you are totally wrong. What i miss is seeing every zone i walk to, crowded with players, having a group of 10-20 people that you hang with non stop because you all love to hang and just do not too serious content in WoW.

Missing walking into Stormwind and seeing it crowded to the max. You know that overcrowded feeling WoW once had? That is what i miss.

Nothing to do with me outgrowing WoW, i know exactly how WoW is. I know the big quality difference in Blizzard's content since WoD disaster.
But what i wish for is a bit of a dream, because old Blizzard is long but gone.

- - - Updated - - -

????? Mop lost more then cata did, only recovering with wods announcement causing that uptick at the end.

Not really, MoP was stable around 7.7M active subscribers for 1 full year (I know the exact Quarter reports still) and then dipped little bit just to jump back to over 10M with the announcement of WoD. While Cata surfered a quarter loss from begin to end of Cataclysm. So no Cataclysm was worse.

Then WoD came and lost over 50% playerbase in 1 quarter time. Everything MoP worked on to repair was completely shattered by 1 shit expansion.

[Berkilak]

No you are totally wrong. What i miss is seeing every zone i walk to, crowded with players, having a group of 10-20 people that you hang with non stop because you all love to hang and just do not too serious content in WoW.

Missing walking into Stormwind and seeing it crowded to the max. You know that overcrowded feeling WoW once had? That is what i miss.

Nothing to do with me outgrowing WoW, i know exactly how WoW is. I know the big quality difference in Blizzard's content since WoD disaster.
But what i wish for is a bit of a dream, because old Blizzard is long but gone.

More than that, I miss being able to pick out recognizable names out of the crowd. I'm not a fan of all the cross-server stuff out in the open world. But they don't want the bad press that comes from legit server merges.

[Gimlix]

More than that, I miss being able to pick out recognizable names out of the crowd. I'm not a fan of all the cross-server stuff out in the open world. But they don't want the bad press that comes from legit server merges.

Yep, that is why i am all in for Server Merge and removal of Sharding/Layering/CRZ. This kinda stuff do not belong in MMORPG's in my opinion.
I remember when layering got introduced and Goldshire went from a town with 100 players to a town with 10 players because my realm got sharded because it was "overcrowded" at the area. Worst feature ever made.

[Nyel]

What new did tbc add?
What new did wotlk add?
commonly both said as the two best expacs, what new did they add if you do not consider anything in dragonflight new?
Cause like guy 2 sections above, you are hilarously underselling everything
"1 more passives or 1 new active skill"
demo lock here, 4 new active skills and 36 new passives
for one spec. but please. "Just because you're getting one new passive or one new active skill"

"You can have AoE builds, ST builds and builds that both mix it up" No, you have builds like nether portal which focuses on sending massive bursts of demons out by spamming out as many soulshards as possible in a small window, or an implosion build where you summon as many imps as possible to empower them, to then boost your shadowbolt and demon bolt, or a mass demon build where you try to empower your tyrant as strong as possible, or a felguard build where you focus on empowering your 3 major demons, imp, dreadstalker, and felguard, where you summon swarms of super powerful imps, packs of dreadstalkers, both of them in obscene amounts, easily hitting 9 dreadstalkers, and 30-40 imps, all while your felguard increases their damage, both directly, and by weakening your enemies, while the imps also increase the felguards damage. while nether portal spec and tyrant spec are mostly single target, and implosion is aoe, the felguard is a middle ground, and all of them do this in different ways, with different playstyles and damage phases.


""Dragonriding is new!" No, it's not. It's flying that has been restricted, just to give you back what you already had by doing things and unlocking stuff. "
This part is just fucking hilarious, as someone who has been playing with dragon riding for what 2 months now?
Normal flying feels fucking garbage compared to dragon riding, even with zero talents, but please, i would love if you were to explain how "Dragon riding is just flying that has been restircted, just to give you back what you already had by doing things and unlocking stuff"

Please show me where we used to have fully customizable mounts that moved at almost 1100% movement speed.

These arguments are silly. TBC and WotLK were extensions of the Classic formula which brought WoW to its peak. So it makes zero sense to compare an expansion Anno 2022 to expansions from 2007 oder 2008. TBC added flying and heroic dungeons, two "new" classes for each faction and two new races. WotLK added an original class while making all specs viable, adding hard modes to raids etc. - now it might not look like much, but it was another time.

I'm not underselling everything in Dragonflight. Fact is, the expansion doesn't offer much. The impact of talent trees is incredibly overexaggerated by people like you. In the end it will be the same story as it has been since they introduced the new talents in MoP. The charme of the talent trees will linger, but most "options" will be lost in translation.

It does not matter if normal flying feels like garbage. Fact is, again, the Dragonriding is just that, flying with some sparkle, at the end of the day a completely unnecessary addition to the game because the base system (TBC flying) was already functioning well for the last 15 years. They tried to fix something that didn't need fixing by making it restrictive. Maybe I don't want to ride one of those ugly ass dragons and instead ride my hundreds of flying mounts I collected over the last decade? Why am I forced to use these four (five) ugly dragon models? Customization doesn't help when it's incredibly restricted to these basic mount models.

Dragonflight is a bare bones expansion that's improving most base systems - that's totally fine and was needed. That doesn't make the expansion special though. It's as basic as it can get with a major lack of interesting endgame stuff and features. Again, that's a fact. This doesn't make the expansion bad per se, it just makes it very uninnovative and more of the same. And I doubt that's what WoW needs at this point. There is not one single fresh, interesting or innovative idea in Dragonflight. Nothing. All they are doing is either reproduce previous features and twist them in an unneeded way. Dragonflight just shows how creatively bankrupt the WoW devs are. It's 100% derivative.

And just before someone steps up and calls me &$/"&§"), I love the setting. I love the premise. I love the art and everything the audiovisual team has done (minus the god damn ugly Dracthyr model), I love Preservation Evoker. It's a fantastic spec. Devastation not so much, in complexity it feels like an afterthought, similar to Demon Hunter. But that doesn't help the expansion when we look at it from a gameplay / feature perspective.