Yesterday’s World of Warcraft reveal stream was kind of a big deal, announcing the next expansion for the retail game in the form of Dragonflight as well as the next expansion for the Classic side of the game with Wrath of the Lich King. As is tradition for Blizzard, the development team followed the big reveal with a set of interviews, with both IGN and AusGamers interviewing the staff; IGN got director Ion Hazzikostas and narrative lead Steve Danuser, while AusGamers got lead game designer Jeremy Feasel.
As is also tradition, these interviews restate some of what was in the reveal but also include some new tidbits, such as how dragonflight as a movement system is meant to recapture the feeling of vastness and isolated points of interest from the days of Stranglethorn Vale. The interviews also confirm that Renown is coming back, although it will work differently than how the system functioned in Shadowlands. Check out the full rundown for more details of the expansion, but if you’re mostly waiting for testing news or release dates, you’ll have to keep waiting. You are going to have to stick to the Isle for dragonriding, though:
We made these giant expansive zones so that it would work as a gameplay mechanic and for people on a variety of different hardware. We don’t want to have you fly into a bunch of creatures and then have them pop up around you. We’re designing the whole outdoor game world with dragonriding in mind. Also, we don’t want to invalidate all of the many hundreds of mounts that our players have collected up until now.
Meanwhile, the WoW Classic community is in the midst of an ongoing fissure over the expansion announcement for Wrath of the Lich King stating that the dungeon finder tool from Wrath of the Lich King will not be present in the Classic version. It has not been well-received news, to put it lightly; we’ll have more on that change as it develops. (Hashtag no changes?)
We're always open to feedback, but I doubt we'll change our mind on automatic dungeon finder. I know its contentious, but there are enough people cheering that I think we're making the right call.
We want players who don't want it to have a place where they can play with out it.— Brian Birmingham💙 (@BrianBirming) April 19, 2022
I think I get your meaning.
I think we're firming on LFD than we are on any particular limit to dual spec.
Hard to provide a lot of nuance on Twitter though. :)
We're doing lots of press interviews today, so hopefully one of those explains it better than I can here.— Brian Birmingham💙 (@BrianBirming) April 19, 2022
That's sort of how feedback works: we think we've made a decision and feedback can make us re-evaluate that.
We currently have no plans for race change, but that doesn't mean we haven't heard the feedback. ❤️— Brian Birmingham💙 (@BrianBirming) April 19, 2022
