Dragonflight: Lessons Learned
Blizzard has learned that players play games differently in 2022 from how they did back in 2004 when World of Warcraft was first released. Barriers that try to dissuade activity just become annoying hurdles that players will have to overcome. This has helped to influence the design of Dragonflight as Blizzard takes some lessons they’ve learned to heart.
The talent trees will include some of the covenant abilities you saw from Shadowlands as well as the shadowlands legendaries. Blizzard is looking to convert Solo Shuffle into a rated solo queue with rating and rewards. Dracthyr currently can not become any other class except the evoker, this may change in the future, but it is not where the story starts in Dragonflight.
Player housing is one of the things that the community talks about a lot, while Blizzard is excited and hopes to bring this to us in the future, they won’t be bringing player housing in Dragonflight. Many players don’t really want to do the same thing on multiple characters over and over again. Due to this, we have received skips, options where we could skip specific stories on alts. Things where you might have to complete a storyline on one character and then the next character you could skip it.
Becoming About The Player
Blizzard is making it so that the game is becoming more about the player than it used to be, which is one of the lessons. They do not want to force players to do the same story arcs over again if they don’t want to. It is clear that a core character thing is gear progression, getting items, leveling that up, and essentially mastering gameplay and your role. As such, Blizzard is shifting towards an account-wide space. Some things like content, cosmetics, and utility feel like they should be account-wide.
How Players Play
Even casuals will go to Icy Veins or Wowhead to learn how they should be playing. They will research specs, enchants, or whatever they need in order to be a better player or more effective at their individual playstyle. It is the minority who loves looking at their talent points and figuring out the best way to play their class and coming up with their own unique style. The majority will read what the experts and pros are saying. One of the major lessons learned is that you can not dictate how players will play the game, but you can make it so every different kind of player enjoys it.
Progression
Progression has felt pretty good, players have goals to work towards. There will be a lot to play with just from the talent system and the changes that it will bring. Blizzard believes they have their hooks in place for the talent system so they might explore other avenues. They may include some other additional talent points that one could gain after hitting max level, while it won’t be included at the start of Dragonflight it is possible that we may gain that in future patches. This way characters aren’t gaining “borrowed” power, that really isn’t theirs, to begin with.
WoW Classic’s Influence
WoW Classic has been quite successful. As such, some of this like the new talent system, strengths, and weaknesses of players have been influenced by what the classic players were doing. This would help guide Blizzard into an era that even retail players could enjoy playing and being a part of. Players play games differently than what they did 16 years ago, so the game had to change to adhere but still feel like World of Warcraft.
Back in 2005, players did not respect a lot and 25 gold was a lot to come up with back then too. In many cases, players were just waiting for a major patch where Blizzard would clear talents. Players also didn’t know how to make gold as easily either, it was a rarity to have a lot of gold. People just don’t play the game that way anymore.
What are your thoughts on Blizzard’s design goals and the lessons they learned from Dragonflight? Are you happy with the direction they are taking the game?
