Blizzard has revealed the next expansion for World of Warcraft. Dragonflight has the heroes of the Alliance and the Horde helping with the dragons of Azeroth. They need help dealing with the threats and mysteries that are beginning to surface following their sacred broodlands reawaken. Blizzard also revealed that Wrath of the Lich King is the next expansion getting the Classic treatment.
In World of Warcraft: Dragonflight, players will get the chance to explore the primordial wonder and ancient secrets of the Dragon Isles across four new zones – The Waking Shores, the Ohn’ahran Plains, the Azure Span, and Thaldraszus.
A new playable race/class combo is coming to Dragonflight. The Dracthyr Evoker is WoW’s first-ever race/class combo that allows players to play as a dragon. The new expansion introduces Dragonriding, an all-new skill-based method of aerial movement that allows players to take to the skies on the back of a personal Dragon Isle drake.
The talent system is being revamped. The main focus that Blizzard wanted to do with talents is giving players more options to choose from. “We want players to be able to tinker with the trees and make a lot of changes while not necessarily feeling like you must fully commit. The power really is coming back to the player,” Blizzard said. “It’s not something we want people to feel locked into and so one of the things we’ll be preserving is the ability to change talents at the same kind of frequency as they do now. Players should easily be able to go from their raid night to playing arena matches by taking advantage of a new feature that allows them to save and load their build. They’ll be able to name it, save it, then load it up very quickly.”
In addition to the talent system getting revamped, professions are also getting revamped. One new addition is called Crafting Orders. This allows players to request other players to craft something even if they don’t have the skill or the right profession to do it. Another update is the introduction of quality of both crafted items and gathered reagents. Crafting points can be earned in multiple ways which allows players to get into crafting specializations. This opens opportunities for players within the same guild to specialize in varying aspects of a profession to add value to the guild.
Dragonflight will also refresh the World of Warcraft UI with improvements to the look and feel of the minimap and other elements, and new options for players to customize different aspects of the UI to their tastes.
World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King Classic will release later this year and allows players, new and old to explore the bone-chilling lands, storm Icecrown Citadel, and halt the Lich King’s baleful efforts. As with previous WoW Classic releases, those with existing World of Warcraft subscriptions can play Wrath of the Lich King Classic at no additional cost.
Players can play as a Death Knight, WoW’s first hero class which lets players harness the powers of darkness to help combat the evil that threatens Azeroth. A new profession – Inscription – is coming to the expansion rerelease. This allows players to scribe mystical glyphs that modify the properties of spells and abilities (cooldowns, damage, etc.), and craft powerful trinkets and off-hand items. Achievements are coming to WoW Classic, giving players new rewards for their exploits and accomplishments.
New to the Classic version, the level cap will be increased to 80 with a level 70 boost so those who didn’t play Burning Crusade Classic can play right away. The boost can be used on any class except Death Knights. The Looking for Dungeon feature has been removed following community feedback. Arena teams are removed from Classic and Blizzard will incorporate all of the improvements since the Barber Shop was first added in Wrath.