Sad Rockboy is Sad

by

Good Morning Friends. I am going to admit this is probably going to be a bit of a melancholy post, and I want to give you a heads up as not to deflate your enjoyment. There are many riding the hype train from yesterdays announcement of the Dragonflight expansion for World of Warcraft, and I don’t want to do anything to diminish your joy. Lord knows that Blizzard gamers right now need a little bit of joy in their life given everything that has happened with the company and their flagship game over the last several years. Lets start off with just the facts. If you did not catch any of the coverage yesterday there is a slew of videos to watch on the official World of Warcraft channel.

For your viewing enjoyment and ease of use I am going to link them all here:

At a high level a brand new expansion was announced set in the Dragon Isles, and area that the player has not visited since Warcraft II (and even that was likely non-canonical). With it comes a brand new race for those who really like scalesonas, the Dracthyr. This is going to create a bit of a weird balancing situation because with them comes a brand new class that is locked to that race as well. The Evoker can be a DPS or a healer and blends the magic of the various dragonflights into its spells. I’m personally not terribly interested in playing a dragon and have had more than my fair share of opportunities be it the actual dragons in Horizon, or the Sarnak in Everquest II. Before I get into more editorialization, lets go with a quick rundown of everything that was discussed.

  • New Expansion, Level Cap bumps up to 70
  • New Race/Class combo of Dracthyr/Evoker
    • 2 Specs – Healing and DPS
    • Hero Class – Starts at 58
    • Wears Mail Armor
  • Dragon Isles – 4 leveling zones, 1 new starter zone for Dracthyr
  • Dragonriding
    • Dragon mount that levels up over time and gains new abilities
    • Customizable with collectable bits of armor and such
  • Talent Tree Rework – Time will tell if it is freedom of choice or just the illusion
  • UI Overhaul – More customizable and cleaner
  • Profession Revamp
    • Ability to create an order to have something crafted by another player

That folks is World of Warcraft Dragonflight in a nutshell. Now I guess it is time for me to talk about my reaction to it. I will admit that I found myself looking forward to this reveal yesterday. World of Warcraft is much like a bad breakup that never really goes away, and I wanted to see a glimmer of hope. I’ve talked before about how Blizzcon is this concentration of nostalgia and joy that ultimately makes me resub to the game almost every single time. This is especially true when it comes with the announcement of a new expansion. I have this history of coming back in at the tail end of an expansion and coasting on the good vibes until the launch of the new content. Prior to Legion I leveled everything to the then cap of 100, and did something similar at the tail end of legion with my horde characters preparing them for Battle For Azeroth.

The weird thing is… it isn’t that ANYTHING I saw was bad. In fact I think Dragonflight is probably going to be a universally good expansion. There is a part of me that would have been super excited by this reveal. The problem is as I watched it yesterday felt nothing. It summoned forth the same amount of emotional attachment that I would have while watching the evening news. I have no clue what changed but I am starting to fear that I am too far gone to be revived. I know there are a lot of people who poured their hearts and souls into this expansion reveal and I think for the most part they did a good job. I expected SOME reaction to the news… but I just sort of feel hollow about it. This is in part why I tried to give the warning at the beginning of this post, because I do not want to suck the joy out of the room.

While I was not personally feeling it, I do think that the way in which the information was delivered was probably a good call. Blizzard had this bombastic rockstar persona built up over so many years… and we have learned that with that came a lot of exceptionally bad behavior within the company. It is sobering to see what a Blizzard reveal looks like when it isn’t trying to borrow the energy from a Jolt Cola ad from the 80s. I get the general feeling that the Dragon Isles are going to feel a bit like Northrend, which admittedly was one of my favorite expansions. It is a time of expeditions instead of military conquest, and it sounds like the scientists and archeologists are going to be leading the way. This is all really good, and a positive step forward for the game. I just wish that I felt something about all of this.

I signed up for beta like I have always done, and if I get access I will try it out and see if maybe the reality can sway me where the marketing material has not. The panel format does give the impression that the reigns of Blizzard are being taken over by the competent adults in the room and being taken away from the abusive aspects. I am really hoping that this is true behind the scenes because I have so many friends who work for this company in one aspect or another that I want to see it succeed. I am just uncertain if the fate of this company and my desires still align. I don’t want to give the impression that anything about Dragonflight was bad, just that for whatever reason I am not feeling it. That is not to say that will not change over time, but I do wonder if the magic is gone for me.

6 thoughts on “Sad Rockboy is Sad”

  1. While my reaction was basically the same, “meh”, “not excited”, I think I can predict that this says nothing at all for me, I might like it, I might not like it. I liked Legion and still stopped playing very soon, and the fact that I couldn’t find a single blog post where I talk about an expansion announcement for WoW just shows that I’ve never been excited. I guess for some expansions it was even that I didn’t like them at first and then came to enjoy them. Also I’m weird anyway because I really loved BfA unlike everyone else.

  2. This one did nothing but bore me, honestly. There are better dragon peeps out there to play. The flying bit was…meh. The class was meh. There just wasn’t anything that made me go “that looks cool”. I think it may be time for wow to just fall behind and let others take stage.

  3. I think too many years of out of the park expansion cinematic’s leading to a “your experience may vary” feeling have left me wary. I play one character now, any Alts are low level bankers. What they do with my class and spec is going to be the deciding factor. I will say, if I see Surrender to Madness again as a choice for Shadowpriests. I will fly out to Anaheim and flip a conference table. Ion said, we know we haven’t listened. Yes, we know, and now my subscription and my wife’s hang in the balance. She is more of a gamer than I am and she has not logged into the game in over 3 months. She wants to, but every week she feels further behind, which means she needs to spend more and more time just to catch up. I personally did not want to buy Shadowlands, I didn’t like the theme, and after playing all this time I’m lucky if I log in once a week to make sure the guild is still running. A pre-order for something we may not see for more than a year, without more in depth information? Yeah, not happening. This will be an order placed the week before launch for a digital download. If at all.

  4. Pingback: The WoW Dragonflight Expansion has been Announced | The Ancient Gaming Noob

  5. I saw a bunch of reddit posts deriding how the dragon mount resembles the GW2 skyscale. Meh, Blizzard is famous for taking established ideas and adding a polish to them, so I don’t really see anything wrong with that. If as you say, the explorers and expeditions are at the forefront, that will be a good thing. I gravitated away from the need for constant cold war in my games. And as far as I can tell, WoW is one of the few popular MMORPGs that still maintain that sharply defined factionalism. Most others only pay lip service to conflict in the story, or have dispensed with it entirely.

    • Eh, it’s win-win, if you ask me. If WoW is losing too many subs to other games, copying stuff that is good from other games helps to keep the Blizzard fans tied down to the MMO that they are used to, since it has everything they may want.

      Yet, imitation is the best form of flattery, and now every time someone mentions the WoW dragon mount, the free advertising of GW2’s mount system comes with it. If people ever get tired of the vertical progression grind, the next name they think of would be, “hmm, I’ve heard of this other MMO, maybe I should give it a chance and check it out.”

      Then it’s up to the two MMOs to appeal to the different playstyles they appeal to.

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