The least that can be said is that the Dragon Ride met with great success. Many players can no longer do without it and it is true that crossing the Dragon Islands in this way is very pleasant. We take advantage of the superb landscape and we sometimes have the impression that the journeys are too short, which is a shame, you will agree.
For a good part of the community, it is absolutely necessary that Blizzard extend this functionality to future extensions of WoW, but also why not to areas of the original game.
In a lengthy post on Reddit, Unlucky_Lifeguard_81 explains to the studio that he has a real nugget there and that it should not be thrown away once the extension is finished, as is often the case with mechanics linked to a continent or a world.
How do you feel about dragon riding so far? Are you one of those players who think that Blizzard should not give up on this idea, and even rather evolve it and use it as a central point around which developers can continue to offer new activities?
Let me tell you this first. You are NOT going to remove dragonflying in the next expansion. You can add things to it, you can mess with it, but you can’t take that away from the players and come out with a good image.
That being said, these 4 areas are in my opinion 4 of the best areas you’ve ever done, and if I take things like nostalgia and thematic design out of the equation, I’d have to say THE best areas you’ve ever done . Oh my god, they’re fun. I was having so much fun that I maxed out before I even finished the second zone.
There’s nothing that would make me give up on the game more than seeing the next expansion bring back cramped, uninspired areas that are designed only as a way to get you to max level and nothing else. Yes, your art team is great and they can make a small area attractive, but that doesn’t change the fact that there’s nothing to do there. You can’t just rely on the art team, you need gameplay mechanics like dragon-backing to support the design.
There are a ton of things that work together in this expansion that make leveling up so enjoyable. There is of course the story, much better, as well as the amazing side quests, some of which are hidden and others that literally made me cry. There are also mini-games and other side activities that allow me to take a break from quests. There’s also the revamping of the professions which made them fun again and pushed me to put in the effort to improve them. The talents, the cuteness of the characters, the hidden gems and interactions, the music, I could go on and on. But NONE of these would have mattered without the Dragon Ride and the areas created around this system. Making the areas massive, with no loading screens and creating them with the intention of being able to explore them in three dimensions to accommodate day one flight is GENIUS.
I know you’ve been working on the next expansion already, and probably for a while, but listen to these comments. You cannot go back. You don’t need to make every area massive and created around the dragonfly. What you can do is add new mount systems for different situations. There can be a fun, cramped, underground area for example, provided there is a fun travel mechanic that the area is designed around with activities centered around that mechanic. For example, an underground area where you can slide across stone floors, walls, and ceilings, while shooting breakable terrain, would be a very cool movement system to design an area. There are several mounts in Guild Wars, each serving a different function, and as such there are several types of areas designed around them.
If your next expansion isn’t designed with these systems in mind, DISCARD IT. I’d rather wait 3 years for an expansion than go back, year after year, to areas where you can’t even move without aggro 40 mobs. And guess what, when your launch pads have this much content, you don’t need to rush to the first raid tier. I bet a lot of people would love to have an extra week or two so they can roam the zones at their own pace, level up their professions, maybe even level up some alts, enjoy pvp for a change. You could have just taken the extra time to add minor improvements before the first raid tier this time around and most people wouldn’t mind.
Shadowlands is the only expansion I’ve never purchased in 16 years of playing WoW. I was a huge fan of the franchise but ever since BfA I was embarrassed to tell people I was playing this game. This launch gives me hope.
You have my attention. Consider me a returning player for now.