Dragonflight marks the beginning of ‘third era’ of WoW as Blizzard outlines its plans for the future

It’s no secret World of Warcraft’s glory days are a thing of the past. Although the game is past its prime, it doesn’t mean Blizzard Entertainment has stopped trying to make it great again. The devs revealed their plans for the game to content creator and streamer Preach.

A couple of days ago, Preach returned from his visit to Blizzard’s headquarters in California and shared a video that includes talks with devs about the current game philosophy and the future of WoW.

In these videos, the WoW staff reveals they are changing their entire philosophy with Dragonflight. First, they will be looking to bring back features like Garrisons and Island Expeditions that were around only for a single expansion in an improved state. This means they will fix all the problems the community had with them, like isolation from the rest of the players.

Next, the devs talked about how this is the third era for WoW, meaning they will be heavily oriented toward listening to the communities’ feedback and implementing it into the game. This will new rule won’t only apply to retail, WoW, but Classic too.

In regards to lore, the devs will now avoid making single-villain expansions like Wrath of the Lich King and instead, they will look to expand the story arcs over the course of several expansions. This is not only to give characters more love and thought but also to avoid characters like Khadgar disappearing for several expansions. 

The devs will also look to diversify combat by introducing new game mechanics like the recent “Press and Hold” interactions. But they don’t plan on stopping there. Instead, they want to make the game accessible to both new and veteran players. The first step towards this was definitely starter talent builds.

The final topic Preach and the devs tackled was player housing. Although the feature has been in demand for a while now, it won’t be coming to the game anytime soon since it takes a major engine update for it to work.

In conclusion, all these changes that Blizzard discussed with Preach are definitely a step in the right direction that will hopefully help WoW relive its glory days in the near future. Recycling old content, giving classes their own identity, developing meaningful stories that won’t wane by the end of the expansion, and other similar ideas that might pop up in the process will help the game see similar fame as it did in the past.