f13.net

New expansion for World of Warcraft announced: Dragonflight

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ZtedjN1JXY

https://dragonflight.blizzard.com/en-us

Apparently very focused on Dragons, with some new "dragonrider" ability which sounds like a new take on flying with more mechanics.  Takes place in the dragon isles, storyline is focused on the dragon aspects.

New player race / class, too.  Just one race, the Dracthyr, which can apparently shapeshift between human and dragon forms, and choose to be either Horde or Alliance. All Dracthyr (and only Dracthyr) are one class, Evoker, which is a ranged DPS / healing class.

When the trailer for the re-release of WotLK is far more compelling than the new expansion's trailer involving dragons, you know that Blizzard have lost their way.

Yeah, probably the worst trailer I've seen of theirs (Statue guy, please guard this thing, and then he does, and has to fix it, then a dragon flies around for like five minutes and roars, gripping stuff guys), but I don't take trailers as any kind of indication of game quality.  There's a lot that sounds cool here, the playable dragons, the new flight mechanics, the new charging spells mechanic...  Plus, they're at the stage when they can say "we've learned a lot about what made people frustrated with Shadowlands" without having to actually explain what that is, so I can at least pretend all of my complaints are fixed.

On the other hand...

• As a tank main, I wish they'd give the dragons a tank spec.  They are the only race that can't tank, seems weird for big stompy lizards
• The new flight mechanics look really cool... for a game where you don't have to hold RMB to turn
• The story looks completely boring

So, I guess meh.  I can't disagree with the skepticism, but there's a lot more I find exciting here than for Shadowlands at least (which I thought was pretty much only interesting for the setting, which went completely ignored, at least until I unsubbed).

Aren't those flight mechanics basically a 1:1 copy of the GW2 Griffin and Skyscale? (not saying that's a bad thing, more MMOs need to steal good ideas from GW2)