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I will never fail to be staggered by the improvements that World of Warcraft has made in a few short years, especially given my miserly perspective on it circa 2020. I wouldn’t even say that perspective’s been unwarranted—quite the opposite. Shocking allegations of workplace culture issues slammed broadside into one of the most disappointing expansion launches in MMO history. Blizzard got put on the naughty step, and it pretty much had it coming.
Steven Messner does a great job laying it out in the article I just linked, but to sum it up: Shadowlands had a 218-day content drought, controversial story fumbling, stingy rewards and borrowed power—and was just a goddamn mess by every metric. You wouldn’t be blamed, back in 2020, for believing that WoW was circling the drain.
As such, Dragonflight had a ton riding on its scaled wings, and a lot of work to repair. I played it off and on again during its expansion cycles, and I was pleasantly surprised to find myself having some wholesome fun. But it also felt (deliberately) experimental—and even a little uncertain, like a newborn fawn wobbling on its baby legs. It’s a vibe that was reflected in its release cycle: A whopping total of 637 days—give or take, given early access and the like.
That’s shorter than Warlords of Draenor, an expansion ranked as one of Blizzard’s big blunders. And yet, it felt way more constructive. Taking a leaf out of Guild Wars 2’s book, Dragonriding pretty much reinvented Blizzard’s approach to travel and zone design—and is a hoot to use, too. Borrowed power systems, a staple of past expansions, were nixed entirely.
Just to properly lay out how Dragonflight transformed the game: in a single expansion, Blizzard fired up a new, less stingy reputation system, gave us the trading post, revamped the talent trees, improved the base game’s HUD (though lets face it, we’re all still using addons anyway), and more. All while somehow managing to walk the line of providing an expansion with a solid hunk of content, while also reinjecting hope into its remaining playerbase and not keeping them waiting too long for new dragons to slay.
More impressive, though, was Blizzard throwing down the gauntlet. The company began to use roadmaps in 2023 and, wouldn’t you know it, actually delivered on them. World of Warcraft hasn’t had a content drought or major hiccup since it started doing this—and has, so far, met most of its targets, exactly when it said it would meet them. 200+ day radio silences are a thing of the past.
Then there’s all the secondary stuff that came with Dragonflight. World of Warcraft Classic and Season of Discovery—which rolled into experimental weirdness like Hardcore, Plunderstorm, and Mists of Pandaria: Remix. Suddenly you’ve got, like, four different ways to play this thing, on top of the main game’s well-staggered patch cadence. Blizzard got so confident, in fact, that it announced a three-expansion saga. Just—right out of the gate, swinging for a hattrick. Now we’re coming up on The War Within’s first major patch, was that confidence earned?
I mean, look, I’m not going to say there haven’t been problems. If you’re a WoW player yourself, you’ve probably been rolling your eyes at my glowing words, so in the interest of fairness: Delves, the expansion’s new feature, have been extremely messy. Most rewards for events, such as the anniversary celebration, were borked upon arrival and had to be fixed later. There was that stupid $90 dinosaur. The auction house broke for, like, a week. And hero talents, one of the expansion’s major features, are either some top-tier thematic food or require excessive WeakAura fiddling to have them deliver any dopamine at all. I also hear the Mythic+ raiders aren’t happy over the state of tanks, for which they have my condolences.
But I want to point out that these are like… normal MMORPG issues. Not to be taken lightly, sure, and I’ll dutifully stick my tongue out and nyeh-nyeh at Blizzard every single time they happen, because it’s one of the biggest gaming companies out there, and it can take its licks.
If we’re comparing them to the lows of Shadowlands, where the earned power systems of the expansion were ill-conceived from the word “go”, where the story had fans frothing at the mouth, where a mass exodus to Final Fantasy 14 happened, where there wasn’t a new patch for over 200 days? I mean, ‘game’s a bit janky sometimes’ isn’t that bad, all told. Besides, World of Warcraft players will complain about anything—and I say that with love. It’s tradition.
When you get everything in perspective, I am forced to put my cynic’s hat away and state, without a shadow of doubt in my heart, that the downright haul that’s taken place from 2022-2025 to get this thing back on track is genuinely impressive. And with Warbands continuing to be expanded upon, player housing set for the next expansion, and, uh, goblin racecar drifting—the future’s looking interesting, even if I fully expect to be writing articles about how said cars are punching holes in the game’s code, or making Anduin bald, or something. Dragonflight, a short and sweet little expansion about dragons, got WoW back on its feet. Now let’s see if Blizzard can keep its momentum as the Worldsoul Saga runs.
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Kurt Indovina
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