Yesterday I really did not have any firm plans for my evening, so when I saw that there was a new Alpha update for Dragonflight I thought I would spend my night testing that. With this update brought the Warrior talent trees, which shifted my focus to spending the evening on a Warrior trying out the current state of protection. At this point I have played through the Dracthyr starter area twice and then Waking Shores twice: Once as a Blood Deathknight and once as a Protection Paladin. As I have said before the game is in a very rough alpha state but I have enjoyed my experiences so far. With the opening of Thaldraszus I also got to spend some time in Valdrakken, the new hub city of the expansion. The above screenshot is from the central area of the city staring up at the seat of the aspects.
As far as cities go, this one feels like a blending of the Shrines from Pandaria and the Guardian Faction Capitol from Rift in that you have a central tower with a bunch of other buildings spread around it forming a larger campus. As far as scale goes think of something about the area of Zuldazar, but this time Dragon Flying helps you zip around various destinations rather quickly. The central tower is accessed through a portal/lift and then can be used as a launchpad to easily use dragon flying to get out to the other zones. So far it seems like a really great hub city, with more than enough room to keep it from feeling terribly cramped as players flood into it.
As far as Warriors go, each expansion seems to be a gamble. There are some times they feel great and other times they feel less so as they sort of vacillating between feeling like a god and feeling like a puny mortal. Right now Protection Warriors feel more on the god-tier spectrum and I had more than enough interesting choices to be made while building out my character. Sadly Gladiator Stance is not bad and my daydreams of returning to being a sword and board dps character have flown out the window. I do however seem to have some of the trappings of that era at least in the form of Shield Charge. Reportedly some of the abilities are currently not replacing other abilities, so I am wondering what the final form will end up feeling like.
Right now it feels like I need way more Hotbars than I currently have easy keybind access to. Essentially I had to spend quite a bit of time setting up macros to put shield charge and charge on the same button or to have a modifier swap between thunderclap and shockwave. That is maybe not optimal because I firmly believe that the core of every class should be able to function on a single Hotbar. Maybe this is my great experience with action RPG-style combat flavoring my opinions, but it would be great if your spec narrowed the number of buttons you needed more than it currently does. Essentially I want one Hotbar for active abilities and maybe a second Hotbar for cooldowns… and that is it.
Have you ever heard about a sculptor talking about being able to see the outline of their figure buried deep within the stone? I feel like that with the Dragonflight expansion. There is a lot of rough here currently because it is in this “very alpha” state, but I can see greatness lying there just under the surface. The Thaldraszus zone is legitimately great. I mean I would stack this zone up with some of the better zones that the World of Warcraft team has ever created in the past. I really enjoyed the story… or what I got to see of it in its very unfinished form. I think this is setting up some interesting conflicts for this expansion.
It also seems to be doing a better job of teeing up the first raid than most final zones have done to this point. Sadly there was no party with Captain Placeholder and a bunch of monkeys… but instead, the Thaldraszus quest just sorta died out at the gates of the first raid area. I am very interested in seeing how these zones play out with full cutscenes and dialog included. Right now we are in a state where you are essentially having to talk to Captain Exposition each time you finish a major quest chain that would have had a cutscene sequence in order to get the necessary quest flags to move on to the next step. Like I said “very alpha” but the raw stuff that I am seeing and what I can imagine being there in the final polished version… looks promising.
December is not a very long way off, and that is still the piece of this equation that concerns me. There is so much work that will have to be finished before this expansion ships. However after two “bad” expansions… it feels like maybe just maybe Blizzard is going to pull this one off. If things continue to progress along at the pace that they seem to be… I think Dragonflight might be ushering in a new era for World of Warcraft. I’ve said it before that I was honestly surprised that I was in this alpha given that I have been pretty hard on this game in the past. However, I do think this is a step in the right direction and might be something heralded as the next great expansion. There is so much work to be done but for the first time in a very long time, I have hope about this game.
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