I’ll believe that when it happens. Blizz is famous for drinking their own kool-aid and thinking it’s the best thing ever.
Fair enough, but there’s absolutely no reason for them not to give people the inferior option in the .2 patch.
Oh goodness, they’ll face a hurricane if they go back on their word with flying again. If I actively played I’d quit over it myself.
It’s definitely great to be able to fly right away at the start of the expansion too.
That was shockingly well written! Great post.
I got the Sha mount that week too. Heh.
I really thought I was WoW’d out, but this expansion is actually pretty great. The zones are awesome, and they seemed to have learned their lesson on a whole host of tediousness. Given how much I hated Shadowlands, I really didn’t think I could ever get back into this, but this has been pretty fun so far.
On a side note, my affliction Loc is just silly powerful for PvE, it’s just night and day to any of my other classes. The tankiness of the pet, and the ability to keep it and yourself healed is really great. Being able to solo named elites is probably overpowered, but it sure is fun lol.
I agree, I was lukewarm on Shadowlands, but I love this expansion. The flying is brilliant. It adds an element of challenge that makes the game far more interesting to me. It’s as if Microsoft Flight Simulator suddenly showed up in my MMO. OK, it’s nothing as intricate as flying a Cessna Skyhawk, but you do have to contend with gravity, acceleration, limited energy, etc. And you go FAST! It’s just plain fun, for me at least.
The old flying system meant we bypassed lots of game art and content, but with this system the art doesn’t go to waste – it’s designed with flying in mind. Crafting nodes are too.
Speaking of crafting, I’m happy to see that Blizzard has finally added quality tiers to the game. Five fo them, in fact. Star Wars Galaxies had its problems, but it had crafting quality out of the gate; I wish more MMOs used this model. And WoW now has separate crafting gear/accessory slots, though only 3; eventually I imagine they’ll expand this feature.
Two weeks in, and I’m still having a blast.
The best comment I saw to describe it is “A lot of stuff to do, but not nearly so much you HAVE to do”
With renown/reputation grinds being almost completely separated from character power, it takes away a lot of the feeling of having chores to do.
All the events that give good loot do it once per week, and even world quests reset two times a week instead of daily like Shadowlands.
This expansion also seems very alt friendly with almost all the reputation rewards and dragon glyphs being account wide, reputation boosts for alts, and the campaign unlocking a more free-form adventure mode.
That honestly sounds like a fantastic addition to the game for someone like me. From posts in this thread it sounds like @stusser really enjoys the leveling/campaign experience in WoW, but for me I can only tolerate going through the quest chains once, and only just. It’s what killed Diablo 3 for me at release, having to go through that damn story over and over again. Adventure Mode was absolutely the best thing they added in “2.0” or whatever they called it, along with ripping out the RMAH.
I played WoW from launch day up through Burning Crusade but largely stopped there. I came back twice for Cataclysm and Shadowlands. I was not impressed what with I saw in regards to where the game had gone in the intervening years but it sounds like just maybe they have turned a corner with Dragonflight? Hopefully a step in the right direction for them. It’s been so long since I enjoyed WoW (and further got sick of it because the entire genre turned into clones with very few exceptions) that I almost forget that at one point I was really into the game.
My favorite parts of WoW are the M+ and Raids so tomorrow is the real start of the expansion for me! I do really love the dragon flying though but wonder if they’ll be able to somehow incorporate it into the overall game once DF is over. So much to do that it’s a bit paralyzing really but it’s been nothing but fun so far.
It seems to me that the dragon flying aspect is a better way of handling flying mounts in new expansions. Build mechanics and progression around it rather than locking it away for a year or however long it usually takes before you can get your convenience back. The standard flying system just trivializes/skips the world so I understand why they don’t want it immediately, but it does feel bad going from being able to fly everywhere to being ground-bound with a new expansion release.
That’s my long way of saying that I think they should copy that feature going forward. It just seems like it really integrates flying into the game, rather than having to toggle it off and on every expansion.
This expansion is far, far better than Shadowlands which in my mind is the worst expansion ever. This unseated Cataclysm from the top spot for me, because at least Cata had the Harrison Jones quests. Shadowlands just getting to 60 and realizing the renown grind I had ahead of me did me in.
The flying stuff is nice, and I’d imagine the limitations are designed to not totally cheese the expansion. For example, it is impossible to hover so you can’t just fly up and go AFK to get a snack. It is also impossible to get from one end of the map to the other without landing to recharge vigor.
That said the way the expansion handles alts is brilliant. The dragon tree unlock is account-wide, so once you’ve got all the glyphs and story achievements for the skill unlocks, all your accounts have it. Also, once each character does ~6 of the beginning quests you unlock a mission table where you can pick a zone to level. TBH, given the rewards aren’t player power, I’d also be thrilled if renown was account-wide as well.
They’re a few missed with the expansion I’ve found. Up until you’ve at least unlocked all the dragon glyphs, dragon flying is a huge pain in the ass. You run out of vigor fast, and as @Spock alluded to, flight sim skills come in handy. Once you’ve run out of vigor, you are a DC-3 out of fuel.
I didn’t do any side-quests, but most of the bonus objectives, and I still finished the story at level 67.75. This is, slightly, better than Shadowlands where you hit 60 and still had a chunk of story to go before the rest of the game unlocked.
I’d recommend an add-on like Azeroth pilot, and turn off all the auto-skip, accept, yada yada. It should at least clue you in to the side quests you need to do.
I imagine I will play it for a few months and do a stutter and shut it down. It’s one of those things were I am taking a serious look at the game subs, and having game pass, FFXIV, and WoW is at least one sub too many.
All the recipes are gated behind rep, and only cosmetic items can be purchased when your “main” has a higher rep – not recipes.
Yes, the 100% rep boost for alts at level 10 is nice (and I think there’s another at level 20), but in the end – you still need to grind those reps if you want the recipes.
Yep…the kid and I are enjoying the expansion…we tend to play them like a lot of peeps for a few months and then un sub. Back in the groove now. I did duel my kid’s 61 Evoker with my 60 warrior and he one shot me with that stupid Deep Breath…so darn overpowered. He’s bragging like crazy…so a little payback will be happening soon.
For me personally, this is the best WoW expansion. WoW suffered a long decline into tediousness in order to try and keep people subbed via enforced grinding. Blizzard seems to have come to terms with the fact that most people are just going to sub/quit/re-sub around content release, and went back to designing the game to try and be fun, instead of trying to artificially stretch it out.
There are so many great things about this expansion, it’s hard to list them all, but the biggest overall take for me, is that it is actually fun. There is certainly some of the old, and best, WoW magic in this expansion.
It’s highly premature to call this the best wow expansion. We still need 18 months of content to figure that out.
Hence the “for me personally”, and based on the amount of actual fun I’ve had being higher than any other expansion I’ve played.
- Rep grinds transfer to alts
- Rep grinds are largely for cosmetic items and not player power.
- Dragon riding mini game is the best thing they ever added (for me). It keeps me engaged from quest to quest, and gives me a reason and motivation to really explore and goof around.
- Crafting update finally makes crafting worthwhile.
- Adventure mode leveling once you get through the story once.
- Skill trees and actual customization of your spec.
- Story, world building, general atmosphere.
Those are all of the tangible things that effect how I feel about this expansion, but besides those…it’s just “fun” for me, which WoW really never was. I’ve never had so many things put an actual smile on my face, as I have with this expansion. Once again, totally personal reaction. I can’t speak for anyone else.
I think the best way I heard this expansion described:
Shadowlands - Tons of stuff you have to do.
Dragonflight - Tons of stuff you want to do.
Complete change in design, and so welcome at this point. Shadowlands was an unbelievable grind of multiple systems. IF you took a week off, you would need to play x more hours to catch back up with the pack. With the campaign table, covenant renown, torghast, soul-binds, maw quests, anima etc. There were so many things you had to complete each week to catch up. “Did you do your max torghast run this week to collect soul ash?” Did you cap your renown? Did you run mythic+ keystones? Did you kill at least 9 bosses in raid? etc. IF you weren’t doing these things, you got way behind. It was a treadmill you were forced on to play.
Right now, Blizzard is claiming that all things to do with your player’s power-level are skill and gear. Which is how it was pre-legion. Legion’s change to have legendary weapons increasing in power-level along with you was fun at the time, but they went completely overboard with it in Shadowlands.
Anyway, I am just happy we are back to a game with less systems you are required to interact with to be at a competent level of power to play endgame content.
Also, flying is just fun to do.
False. Only cosmetics and activities transfer.
Also false. Most crafting recipes are gated behind rep. My blacksmith, and tailor / enchanter have ~50 skill and nothing to craft to skill up because they have no access to any additional orange recipes.
There’s plenty of 384+ gear on those quatermasters as well.
I completed the achievement for completing all the quest hubs in the expansion on my main. I did it for the rep. Now I’m doing it again on my alt. For the rep. Literally a rep grind.
Also, Wrathion and Sebellion would like a word. Literally a rep grind. Cobalt Assembly? Also a grind.
Yes, the grind is better than it could have been and better than it’s been in the past. But let’s not sugar-coat it too much. It’s still a grind.
Too early to make this call. I’m constantly searching for workorders on my mid-pop server and there are none or a handful of items that require 19+ rep recipes.
I’m not sure if this is any better than Shadowlands, because as I’ve mentioned, you have to do every quest anyway for the rep. Maybe if you’re just a gatherer you can be carefree and ignore it.