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Jan 9, 2024 · Key Takeaways. Despite World of Warcraft entering its 20th year, it has exciting content updates planned for 2024 and is worth playing, including the conclusion of Dragonflight and the start of a ...
- Overview
- What is World of Warcraft?
- WoW: Dragonflight: The total newcomer experience
- State of World of Warcraft: Dragonflight (Patch 10.2)
- What does the future of World of Warcraft bring?
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Thanks to Dragonflight, World of Warcraft is better than it has been in years.
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•TL;DR: Should you play WoW in 2023?
•What is World of Warcraft?
•The newcomer experience
World of Warcraft (WoW) is a game near and dear to my heart. I've played on and off since the game's closed beta in 2003, and have struggled to put it down even during its worst periods. I've said before, World of Warcraft at its worst still makes it better than the vast majority (if not all) of other MMORPGs out there, owing to its decades' worth of lore, rapid and responsive combat, and uniquely satisfying endgame loop.
World of Warcraft has now entered its 19th year with the Dragonflight expansion, which skips the game's story ahead a few years. WoW expansions add heaps of new content, kickstart new stories, revamp existing systems, and polish the game's graphics to keep it feeling fresh. Some expansions totally miss the mark, but this latest one is offering hope that better times in Azeroth are ahead of us from now on.
WoW expansions are near full-priced games in essence, given that they provide thousands of potential hours of gameplay with new systems and landmasses. The game is also funded via a subscription model, which means that every few months a new "season" drops during the expansion. These seasons tend to heap on even more new features and content, moving the story forward while adding new dungeons, raids, and bosses for you and your friends to take down.
World of Warcraft has many imitators (and WoW itself borrowed heavily from other MMOs that preceded it), but few have managed to achieve Blizzard's level of execution. WoW is an action RPG that is responsive, exciting, and quite honestly, somehow gorgeous despite rocking an engine that's more than a decade old. WoW is going strong, although the game has had a rocky few years owing to poorly received expansions like Battle for Azeroth and Shadowlands. Blizzard has also been embroiled in a series of scandals and controversies, contributing to a large amount of staff turnover and generalized disruption across its properties. However, Dragonflight represents something of a new beginning for the team, with a total change in direction and a time skip in the story, offering a brighter view on the horizon.
I've been playing Dragonflight since it launched in December 2022. A year later, Dragonflight is still a great experience overall, although there are a lot of things I would have done differently if I was in charge. Another side to this story is WoW: Classic and WoW: Classic Hardcore, both of which have revitalized and reintroduced the game to a new generation of MMORPG players.
Whether you're interested in the classic experience or the modern retail experience, WoW is in a stronger place than it has been in years.
I have experience trying to persuade dozens of friends and family to get into WoW, so I know many common complaints. Thankfully, you don't need the best gaming PC out there to run WoW, since it runs on fairly low-spec PCs, which makes it pretty accessible. That said, the last time I updated this guide, World of Warcraft's leveling experience was abysmal, to say the least. The overlapping timelines from over a decade of content additions made leveling an utterly confusing, convoluted experience, but WoW's Shadowlands at least attempted to address some of these concerns.
When you make a new character, you start on a brand-new island dubbed Exile's Reach out in the ocean. Shipwrecked away from your faction, you'll begin experiencing the game with a modernized, up-to-date perspective. This starter area takes place around the beginning of the "Fourth War" storyline, which follows the events of the previous expansion, Battle for Azeroth. This new leveling experience funnels new players straight into the Battle for Azeroth zones, bypassing content that hasn't been updated or touched in over 10 years. Veteran players can still go back and experience these previous expansions via "Time Travel" with the Bronze Dragon, Chromie. But for new players, the repositioning of the timeline makes everything a little easier to understand. Truth be told, though, it doesn't go anywhere near far enough.
Exile's Reach is overly simplistic and unengaging, making it hard for new players to see the "fun." You could probably train a goldfish to complete Exile's Reach, for an idea of how overly simplistic it is. It's a truly awful experience for any new player to WoW, and doubtless, a huge barricade preventing newcomers from younger generations from getting into the game. Blizzard absolutely needs to just revamp the old-school starting areas that immersed you in your faction and class fantasy, instead of this jump-through-hoops island replete with terrible voice acting and patronizing tutorials.
If you do make it through the boredom of Exile's Reach, you'll be dropped into Battle for Azeroth or one of the "Chromie Time" time-traveling expansion experiences. You'll sail quite rapidly through the story of these areas, and finish them to move onto Dragonflight without completing any of the content. It's best to play WoW with a veteran friend right now and focus on the combat and dungeon grinding because the leveling experience for a new WoW player is still an afterthought for Blizzard.
Speaking of dungeoneering, those 5-player dungeon experiences are similarly awful for new players, too. They're full of impatient veterans grinding out new characters, who will get angry at you if you don't have prior knowledge of the tactics. The game is sadly very unwelcoming for solo new players.
If you do decide to pick up WoW: Dragonflight, you get a token to jump straight to the current expansion and skip everything prior. The downside to using this as a new player is you don't get to "learn" your character in a gradual way. You can solve this by using a YouTube video class guide to get yourself up to speed, but it's still probably better to drop the token and skip the level 1-60 experience, jump straight into the 60-70 experience of Dragonflight.
World of Warcraft: Dragonflight has been out for a year, and along with it, a new era of player freedom. Blizzard really absorbed the feedback from Shadowlands and used it to inform them when creating Dragonflight's endgame, which has been rock solid overall.
Dragonflight takes place a few years after the events of Shadowlands, effectively wiping the slate clean both in terms of story and design direction. Gone are the forced choices of Shadowlands, which pigeon-holed you into joining specific factions for meta reasons even if you didn't like their aesthetics and features. Gone are the time-gating systems artificially preventing your character's growth. Chores like the mission table have been eliminated entirely, too.
What has arrived is an all-new talent system, that riffs on the classic points-based tree system of old. More so than ever, you can tailor your playstyle as you see fit, and even swap talent builds on the fly before specific boss battles. You could swap from a cleave build to a single target build in the middle of the dungeon at the click of a button, without having to drop a reagent and fiddle around with the talent panel for five minutes before the pull.
The new talent trees also incorporate heaps of spells and abilities from previous expansions, as well as passives from popular legendary items and so on. In some cases, there are tons of new abilities too, giving you new tools and playstyles to explore. My warlock can now summon a Pit Lord, for example, something I never expected to be possible. Returning players will find a lot to love in the new talent systems, although there are still some outstanding balance issues Blizzard is working to address. Some talent specs have arguably received more love than others, too. Shadow and Disc Priests feel needlessly complicated now, for example, if you gun for every active ability in the trees. Some streamlining could solve some of these teething problems, but the direction is correct, at least.
World of Warcraft: Dragonflight also has a new class/race combination for the first time since Legion, in the form of the draconic Dracthyr Evoker. These ranged draconids are the progeny of Deathwing himself and are mid-range casters with high mobility, complete with two DPS specs and a healing spec. I criticized Evokers for feeling underbaked at launch, but they have been improved since. They now have a third talent spec as part of the story. Augmentation Evokers are the first support-focused class in WoW history. Instead of dealing pure damage by themselves, Augmentation Evokers use the power of the Black Dragonflight to enhance the damage and healing of the rest of the group. They were incredibly overpowered at launch and became essentially required for groups, but they have been scaled back a little since.
Dracthyr have been a welcome addition to the game overall, and their unique Augmentation spec bodes well for the future of the game. They are incredibly thin on transmog though, given that they can only wear shoulders, chests, and belts. I'm not sure if Blizzard plans to rectify this in future patches, but their unique design might make it difficult to do so.
With Dragonflight now fully released and the final raid tier available, the future of the game is looking brighter than it has in quite a while. At Blizzcon 2023, Blizzard detailed not one, but three upcoming expansions in a big new story arc. The first is called World of Warcraft: The War Within, and will refocus the game on the slumbering Azeroth worldsoul beneath the ground, and the gigantic sword Sargeras pierced the planet with at the end of Legion. The expansion will take place underground in Azeroth's mysterious tunnels and caverns, with the classic spider Nerubian race taking a central role.
I find myself suitably surprised by how Dragonflight has landed, and how it seems to be shaping up for what could be a bright future for the game. Blizzard has been rapid with content drops and roadmap updates throughout, which feels like a great footing for the future of the game.
It remains to be seen if Blizzard can keep up this pace of content without hindering quality and without succumbing to formulaic gameplay elements and story tropes, but I've not been this hopeful and optimistic for the game in years and years. With great catch up mechanics and fresh content — if you've ever loved World of Warcraft, the game is in a truly great state right now and is ready to invite you back to Azeroth with open arms. New players should probably still avoid the game, though ...
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If you play without the intent to do mythic raiding or any high skilled endgame play, it’s worth it. I say that because if you have the intent to do so your time will be spent on a hamster wheel of tasks and you will burn out. If you play casually it well worth it. If you don’t rush through content, don’t optimize your gameplay and just ...
Feb 8, 2023 · Time Expenditure. As an MMO, World of Warcraft can pretty much be played forever. Each expansion can take hundreds of hours to complete; in addition to the main storyline, expansions have end-game content that you can grind away at. According to HowLongToBeat, players report that Dragonflight takes around 30 to 40 hours to complete.
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Feb 5, 2021 · WoW combines the benefits of a sixteen year old game with all the advances of modern gaming. Basically, World of Warcraft is a beautiful, brilliantly written, aural masterpiece of a game with so much content that I can spend literal hours doing almost anything I want to do. I can farm old content for transmog gear, run dungeons and raids with ...
