New WoW Expansion Dragonflight Brings New Class & Race

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Yesterday Blizzard held a planned reveal show, where the new expansion for World of Warcraft: Dragonflight was announced. The fantastic trailer was shown there, told about the main innovations and changes that will appear in the game.

Major new Dragonflight features:

Most of the rumors and leaks about Dragonflight were confirmed — data miners did a great job long before the announcement, which fueled the interest of the community.

It all started with the viewers being told about the return to Azeroth., after which the cinematic was shown. The plot of the expansion tells about the return of the dragons to the Dragon Islands, where heroes will help to protect the ancient territories from the coming attack.

New WoW Evoker Class

This innovation forced us to look at the class mechanics in WoW from a different angle. Evokers have awakened from their long sleep and are ready to stand in defense of the Dragon Isles.

Class Main features:

Evokers were originally created by Neltarion to combine the power of all five dragon packs and use magic in a special way. This is the mechanics of Empover — players now be able to hold a button to choose the power of the spell themselves, depending on the holding time.

Devastation — designed to use the power of red and blue dragons. It is possible to use fast explosive abilities and suppress the enemy with blue dragon magic.

Preservation — aimed at healing with time manipulation, which Evoker inherited from the bronze dragons, as well as the magic of green dragons, which can save a life even in the most difficult time.

Dragonflight Story

The Dragon Isles are one of the oldest continents of Azeroth. Once it was an ancient dragons world. During the War of the Ancients and the Great Sundering, everything changed and the dragons had to leave. The magic of the land was almost completely drained by the Legion’s presence.

Watchers were left to protect the lands, waiting for thousands of years for the elements to gather strength again. They signaled to the dragons that it was time to return. Alexstrasza and the other packs returned but found that in millennia of absence, much had changed and ancient threats had been awakened.

Kalimdor and Eastern Kingdoms dragons are different from their ancestors. The ancients were wilder, more dangerous, and unpredictable. We are familiar with some of them — they are protodragons.

Some dragons, over time, have managed to become Aspects that are meant to protect Azeroth. Each of them has a different ability depending on their color. This power must always be used for the good of the planet and the Aspects themselves, but there have been exceptions in the way of Neltharion, who went insane and became a Deathwing.

Djaradins is one of the oldest dragons enemies, but there are other creatures that inhabit the Isles. There you again encounter tuskarrs and centaurs, which are much older than Kalimdor one.

Heroes have to meet Wrathion again and ask him to take the place of the head of the black dragons. Other key characters include Kalecgos, Ebonhorn, and Merithra.

New WoW Dracthyr Race

Dracthyrs were one of Neltharion’s most valuable and successful experiments. He put the best qualities into these creatures, ranging from wisdom and strength to adaptability to everything. He thought they were great warriors.

It is worth mentioning that only Dracthyrs can be Evoker and vice versa. Other races and classes do not have such a combination. After completing the starting questline, you can choose a faction, as it was with the Pandarens. All Dractyrs start at level 58 in one of the Dragon Isles locations, where the basics of the game for a new race and class will be shown.

WoW: Dragonflight — All Zones

There 5 locations on the Dragon Islands: one initial location for the Dracthyrs race, and the other locations for leveling and high lvl content. Heroes have to join forces with dragon packs to reclaim the isles.

The journey starts in the capital of your faction. Heroes of Azeroth swim through ancient ruins until they land on the Waking Shores.

Waking Shores

The first location of the Dragon Isles, where heroes will go. Elementals rage everywhere, flocks of protodragons blanket the skies, and the land itself seem to have come to life. Both factions have joined forces with the Explorers League and The Reliquary to learn more about the new territories.

As they progress, you learn the history of the red dragons and meet again with Alexstrasza, their queen. They consider it their duty to maintain life around them, but the Djaradins, half-giants wielding the power of magma, have awakened and want to break the balance.

Waking Shore is the historical home of the Black Dragons and Neltharion. His pack had some hard times ahead after the earth Aspect fell into madness. Teaming up with Wrathion, the heroes must save these lands.

Ohn’Ahran Plains

This location follows when you fully explore Waking Shores. It gets its name from the wild wind god Ohn’Ahran, who came to the ancient centaurs in the form of a giant eagle and helped with adversity and their travel to the dragon lands.

Old centaurs met a pack of green dragons and wanted to reclaim territory from them, but learned that all dragons were equally strong and made peace by dividing the territories. The green dragons settled in the dense forests, while the centaurs continued to exist on the plains. There you can learn more about their culture and history.

Azure Span

The third continent allows exploration of the azure expanse. It has been stated that this is one of the largest locations that exist in WoW at the moment. Moreover, the developers were inspired by the legendary Grizzly Hills, which is one of the fans favorite territories.

The location consists of many elements that change as you progress. These can be redwoods, golden tundra, and snow-capped peaks. Much of the area is frozen.

Here is where you first meet the Gnolls, who have settled in the forests, and tuscarrs, who have taken refuge in the tundra. In the WotLK, players saw only male characters of this race, but now you will be able to communicate with women and kids. Here you can also meet blue dragons and Kalecgos, after which they go together to the Sindragosa’s archives.

Thaldraszus

A territory of bronze dragons, huge mountains, and underground chains of tunnels and caves. The ability of this pack to change time allows heroes to go through several storylines at once.

This is where heroes first enter the ancient city of dragons called Valdrakken. The city will become the new capital of the Horde and the Alliance for the duration of their stay on the Dragon Isles.

There located Tyrhold, old tower built by Tyr. This is the most ancient dwelling, which helped aspects during the war with Galakrond.

WoW Talent Updates

The developers said that the talents have been completely redesigned in Dragonflight. First of all, Blizzard wants to create a system that allows to make more unique builds, as well as to abandon systems like artifact weapons and covenants.

Players have access to two new trees in which they can change talents and create presets that can be changed in the rest area. One of these trees focus on enhancing class abilities, while the other focus on specifics of your spec, damage received and dealt, or healing.

Talent points are awarded evenly as you level up for each level you gain, as was previously the case. This combines old and new gameplay elements to achieve flexibility in classes and variability from players in certain situations.

WoW Profession Changes

The professions system in WoW: Dragonflight got significant changes. The developers want to make the process of interaction with the craft more exciting and rewarding for everyone.

The game now has the opportunity to make orders. They can be composed on their own depending on the needs, traded to the players, or put up at auction. Thanks to this innovation, you can create and freely transfer BoP items.

In the game will return mechanics which allow you to choose the direction of the profession, for example, the blacksmith can decide whether to create armor or weapons. The quality of the created item depends on this.

The professions interface was also redesigned, which gave it uniqueness and more convenience. In the capital of the Dragon Isles, Valdrakken, there is a special place — craft tables — where skilled craftsmen can meet, communicate and work.

Dragonflight HUD and Interface

Minor changes to the overall UI have been announced. It can be said that players will be allowed to customize everything on the screen, which now can only be achieved with addons. All elements have become more minimalistic, but have not lost their WoW charm.

For the most part, this decision was influenced by time. Since 2004 there haven’t been almost any changes in UI, and most users have been using widescreen and high quality monitors for a long time.

Initial impressions

Dragonflight was revealed and there’s a lot to think about. What got me really hyped this time, is the premise of the story: A somewhat grounded adventure back on Azeroth. It feels great to be able to go back to basics after dealing with cosmic threats for the last couple of years. Now however, we are going back to old-school fantasy tropes – helping good dragons, fighting bad ones. It feels weird to go to wiping tribes of gnolls after defeating death itself, but it is warcraft needs, it is what we – the playerbase want. So, in any shape or form – Dragonflight has a potential to become that much needed breath of fresh air.

Dragon Isles as a location looks amazing. Very diverse set of biomes and architectures that represents different dragonflighs.

New race and class. Dracthyr Evoker is an interesting concept, that feels very unique, however, I find it kind of upsetting that their visage form are reskins of male Blood Elves and female Humans. This is because Ion Hazzikostas specifically said, that the Dractyr are not an “Allied Race”, where such reuse of assets would be acceptable. Their dragon form is unique though, but it’s not what majority of WoW community expected when it came to playable dragonkin. They are certainly not for everyone, but you can’t be mad at a new mail-wearing healers.

Dragon riding. So Blizzard decided to give us flying on Dragon Isles day 1, which is great thing. No more time-gating and endless grind just to be able to traverse the land. It is also amazing to finally see some physics-based flight being implemented in WoW. And yes, it is clearly based on Guild Wars 2 flight system, but is it a bad thing? -I think not. It’s not bad to learn from someone who does something better than you do. However, some visual difference would be greatly appreciated because right now it looks like a straight copy-paste.

Overall thoughts. There’s no denying in that the expansion is very far from being done. There’s not even a estimated release window as of now, however, Dragonflight looks promising. Blizzard clearly listened to what community had to say, and started implementing some of the feedback to the game. Like the return of talent trees and the updated UI. There’s almost no new info on the new raids or dungeons, PvP or even player housing, which leaves us to wait until more details are revealed, hopefully followed by a release date announcement.

We’ve prepared a page for all your Dragonflight needs! Once the release date of the expansion is revealed you will be able to pre-order all the new expansion services!

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