World of Warcraft is finally an MMO again? At least that’s what Bellular thinks and explains how the Dragon Islands allow for much more cooperation and group play.
Before the launch of Dragonflight, the streamer and MMO analyst was still in doubt as to whether World of Warcraft would turn the corner again. Now he looks at how Blizzard changed the game world on the Dragon Isles and how this design all by itself makes everything feel better. He believes Blizzard has even “brought the MMO back to the MMORPG.”
What does Bellular mean? In one of his latest videos, YouTuber and streamer Bellular analyzes why World of Warcraft is feeling so good right now. In recent expansions, WoW has felt more and more like a “lobby game” where you’re just looking for a group for dungeons or raids without doing anything in the actual game world.
But that has changed now, the world has become more alive and there are many more pleasant encounters between players.
He sees the improvements mainly in the fact that Blizzard’s MMORPG has finally turned to MMO aspects again. More precisely he said:
WoW feels very much like an MMO world… in a way it might not have felt since Wrath of the Lich King. […] The Dragon Isles feels like it’s always full of players getting things done.
How does he come to this opinion? In the rest of the video, Bellular analyzes why World of Warcraft feels more like a classic MMORPG with Dragonflight and the main reason for this is the design of the quests and various events. Almost all “big” tasks are designed to be done alone, but playing in a group is almost always more efficient and a little bit more fun.
Whether it’s the Tuskarr Cooking Event, the Great Hunt, or even the Wrathion and Sabellian reputation grind, you can succeed in all of them alone, but it’s easy with other players who are also in the area more pleasant.
“Nothing beats when the skies go dark just because someone wrote SOUP in the territory channel and everyone shows up for achievements and reputation.”
The events also ensure that the players meet at certain locations anyway and then complete tasks together – whether by forming a group or just briefly killing a rare enemy together.
However, Bellular also notes that WoW is still not in season 1 and that could pull quite a lot of players out of the open world and into dungeons and raids permanently. It remains to be seen whether the game world will remain as busy when the best players are mainly grinding “Mythic+” again or trying their hand at the tough raid bosses.
How do you feel about World of Warcraft right now? Does it feel good to meet so many players again and often work with them as well? Or do you find that rather annoying and prefer to have quest areas “to your own”?