Many are worried that World of Warcraft Dragonflight will come too early and not be good. But is that actually true? We dare an analysis.
When Blizzard announced the next expansion, Dragonflight, a few weeks ago, the mood was positive. The developers wanted to go back to their roots, install fewer large systems and, above all, tell a more classic fantasy story – just an ancient, unexplored island and lots of dragons.
But the anticipation of the expansion was quickly dampened when the announcement of the pre-order came shortly afterwards. Because she revealed: Dragonflight will be released in 2022, on December 31, 2022 at the latest.
Some people were happy about the early release, but many are worried: Isn’t that much too early? Isn’t this coming to Shadowlands way too soon? Did the developers even have enough time to create a better extension here?
Reddit user creates useful graphic, points out problems
Disargeria posted a pretty interesting graphic on the World of Warcraft subreddit. The graphic shows the different runtimes of the different World of Warcraft expansions, taking into account the duration of the alpha and beta tests as well as the duration of the individual patches.
So you can see at a glance how long players had to wait for new content or how big the gap between the individual addons actually was.
It should be noted here that the information on “Dragonflight” on the alpha and beta so far is preliminary and speculative. Duration assumes beta testing is imminent. Accordingly, this time window is also getting smaller with each passing day.
Above all, the graphic shows the problems that Shadowlands and thus the players had to struggle with. Because Shadowlands had the largest release phase of all extensions ever – the longest period after the launch in which there was no new content. The players had to wait for patch 9.1 for more than half a year.
To the disillusionment of most, patch 9.1 turned out to be very poor. Korthia was unpopular with many players as it was just an extension of the Maw and was therefore a rather desolate area and comparatively small.
Additional new mechanics, such as the Shards of Domination, provided even more systems that meshed and brought the first problems. Because the new socket system was in conflict with the legendary items and those who were not lucky enough to get their correct fragments early on dropped drastically in their performance in dungeons and raids.
Everything you need to know about the new WoW expansion “Dragonflight” – in 3 minutes
Is Dragonflight too soon? There’s a general feeling in the WoW community right now that Dragonflight is coming out somehow “too soon”. The impression arises mainly because the release now has to take place within 6 months and no beta for Dragonflight has started yet.
In addition, there is the perception that Blizzard has not given enough time for Shadowlands and the associated expectation that this mistake should not be repeated with Dragonflight.
Comparing just the elapsed time between expansions, if it’s released on or before 12/31 Dragonflight comes next. actually appear, not too soon by the way. Shadowlands would then have run just a few weeks longer than Battle for Azeroth and a few months longer than Legion. The time difference between the addons has hardly changed.
Does Dragonflight need a long beta? That might be the crucial question. Because Dragonflight is not a classic addon in many respects, but does some things differently. And “different” in this case means above all “less new”. There should be no big, new game systems, such as Torghast, pacts or Azerit armor. Instead, Blizzard reflects on the core elements of recent years that have made World of Warcraft great:
An exciting, large game world with all kinds of things to discover.
Large, nested systems are also avoided. Dragonflight will be classic and will do without borrowed power, apart from items like animal sets. There is no pact to level, no secondary and tertiary power systems like soul ties, and no legendary items that immediately become mandatory. You also want to largely do without parasitic systems that make the game worse.
There are also a number of major revisions, such as the talent system or the professions. However, these are not entirely new systems, but simply revisions of existing game content. The test time should be comparatively short here. Any problems can probably be fixed much faster. It’s just easier to move a few talents around in a tree than to drastically revise a system like Torghast several times.
All of this should make Dragonflight significantly leaner and testing more focused. Therefore, even a shortened beta phase should not matter so much if the developers “get the curve back” after the setbacks during the Covid lockdowns.
Everyone can only get a really comprehensive picture when the beta is playable. Then it will become clear whether Blizzard is really able to release the extension by the end of the year – or whether a few more months are necessary.
The big question about the “after”: In the end, it might not even matter that much whether Dragonflight comes out too early or too late, but what happens next. Blizzard got over 100 new employees a few days ago, most of whom are also supposed to work on World of Warcraft.
The real test will be whether Dragonflight can deliver new content faster than was the case in Shadowlands. The fans there had to wait an extremely long time and were even bitterly disappointed in the case of patch 9.1. Only patch 9.2 with Zereth Mortis brought enough new content – but not enough to complete the expansion worthily.
How do you feel about the “early” release of Dragonflight? Is this all going too fast? Or is that okay?