So, yeah, after nearly 18 years of playing WoW, you may have noticed that my World of Warcraft-related posts on this blog that started as an exclusively WoW-focused one have thinned a bit.
Dragonflight has been an interesting experience for me: objectively, it was a very good expansion. It marked a real shift in philosophy that saw greater respect for players' time and interests, rather than falling back on outdated notions of what the game was supposed to be. (Arguably, Shadowlands' final patch was really where this shift started).
But again, I started playing in the tail end of vanilla, so I've been through multiple cycles of WoW at its peaks and valleys.
Today, once the servers come up, we're embarking on what comes next. I'm sure that Blizzard is really hoping that its "Worldsoul Saga" that will take place over the next six years will be a new height of WoW storytelling, and will make the stakes feel high in a way they haven't necessarily since Legion or even Wrath.
It's far too early to judge this - we haven't even started the first act of it.
But there are signs that, on a gameplay level, Blizzard has learned a lot of lessons.
Pre-patches are always a kind of weird reset - we remain the god-like powers we were from fighting through the expansion's final raid (though I'll confess I didn't participate much in season 4, so gear-wise I'm probably way behind and imagine I'll be able to replace lots of gear with the pre-expansion event rewards). But we'll be seeing major shifts in talent systems, likely bigger shifts than we'll see until Midnight's pre-patch in 2026 (at which point I'll be 40 and will have been playing WoW fully half my life).
11.0 is going to bring one really exciting new system: Warbands. For over a decade now, I've talked with my best friend about how we always wished we could have player housing in which we could see our various characters hanging out together. We're both altoholics (see the name of the blog) and I know it always seemed like it would be cool to have a townhouse in Stormwind where I could go in on my human paladin and see my Dwarf Hunter, my Draenei Death Knight, and my Night Elf Demon Hunter just lounging around - maybe allowing me to access their inventory rather than having to log out and back in over and over to see who had that one account-bound item I needed.
While I think to a certain extent this is going to be a somewhat cosmetic change (Warband-bound will more or less just mean Account-bound) I'm eager to see how things like a single reputation/renown level across my characters will feel. I struggled to get my renown maxed out with the Dragonflight factions - I never did it with the Loamm Niffen or the guys in the Emerald Dream. In part, that's because I liked to just check in on each of my alts and do things like take down the world boss and maybe do my weekly "escorting the big treant" quest and then move to a different character.
This does mean that my human main will be losing the beloved Diplomacy racial - I'm sure it's necessary to avoid making every player feel like they needed to play a human alt to help grind reputation, but it'll be sorely missed.
There's definitely a FOMO feeling I've gotten with Dragonflight - because I haven't been playing it as consistently as I did earlier expansions (which I think is partially just the fact that I have other games drawing my attention more - Elden Ring is certainly a factor) but I also think I'm fine not really pushing myself too hard. There's a mentality I think especially when your main character is a tank that you really need to keep up with other players - a DPS character who is at the minimum gear level for a piece of content isn't really holding anyone back, but a tank who can't maintain threat against super-geared DPS is a bit of a liability, even if they're in content that they're totally appropriately-geared for.
Still, I think it's healthier for me if I take a bit more of a casual approach to the game. I have a sentimental attachment to a lot of my characters, but you know, it's just a game in the end.
I'll also note that I think D&D has, to a large extent, better satisfied my desire for organized play. My guild kind of dissolved over time, in part because I wasn't there to organize raids as much (as the guild's main tank, the responsibility to do so kind of fell to me when our original guildmaster - who was great at running raids - stepped away from the game). But given that I now have three weekly D&D games (one of which I run, and is probably the most consistent of them) I'm sort of happy to stick with LFR. Frankly, I think I'm likely to run the follower dungeons when leveling up in War Within if only to let me see the dungeons at my own pace (I'll probably run some with my best friend, who if anything is less tolerant of the "go-go-go" mindset of so many dungeon groups). Actually I'm really excited to feel less guilty about running as DPS on characters that can tank, and I might (might) even try my hand at healing again.
I will say, while I'm a bit skeptical about the wisdom of doing a big, multi-expansion Saga (at a time when the cinematic equivalent in the MCU feels like it's floundering) I am very excited about the long-term thinking about characters and villains that Blizzard seems to be doing. No final boss of an expansion, in my mind, has felt quite as epic and built-up-to as The Lich King in Wrath, because we had spent Warcraft III, The Frozen Throne, Vanilla WoW, and Burning Crusade building up to it (and Arthas' appearances throughout the leveling process and even some of the raids leading up to Icecrown Citadel also helped build the anticipation).
A villain like the Jailer had the potential to be really cool (though I thought his "shirtless buff dude" design was profoundly underwhelming) but as such a huge and powerful force, we needed way, way more build-up to him. Like, we should have first started hearing whispers of him four or five expansions prior.
I think they learned that lesson, and they seem to be really working hard to make Iridikron feel like a worthy bad guy. I don't know if the intention is for him to be the final boss of The Last Titan (though that seems likely, assuming Xal'atath is going to be the boss of War Within) but he is getting his build-up this way, introduced as a credible threat in Dragonflight but studiously unfought (well, outside of the time travel dungeon). And hey, if he's the boss of The Last Titan, that means we're getting four expansions of build-up, which will allow them to really flesh him out (personally, I love that he seems more wary of us - it's so easy to make an arrogant villain, but a villain that respects the fact that the "heroes of Azeroth" tend to kill every big bad that threatens the planet instantly earns my respect for being much smarter than the others. Hell, Iridikron was smart enough to make sure that Fyrrak was the expansion's final boss instead, and I could see the next couple expansions in which he carefully maneuvers to make sure that he doesn't have to fight us for as long as he can manage).
We're at the outset here. Servers aren't expected to be up for like 5 and a half hours, so I guess I'll just chill until then.
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