World of Warcraft: Dragonflight (2022)

I played World of Warcraft very actively from the original vanilla days through Mists of Pandaria, and to this day I feel obliged to check out each new expansion. With Battle for Azeroth, me and a bunch of friends became slightly more active, and since then I've been lucky enough to have a consistent group to check out new raids with as they come up.

Dragonflight came out a while back now, but I think the endgame is such an important aspect of the experience that it's impossible to properly review it fully until a few months in. I've personally found the questing and world of both Battle for Azeroth and Shadowlands to be excellent, but the endgame is where the issues always rear their head.

While Mythic+ dungeons and raids were always a highlight, the systems surrounding them could be a pain. BFA's Azerite system and Shadowlands' Covenants and Anima systems were pretty egregious, forcing players to interact with all of the expansion's new features to grow their power--even if the features in question are not fun.

Dragonflight is an expansion that exists purely as a reaction to that negative reception. Borrowed power systems are now gone, and your power is once again purely determined by your class, your talent trees and your equipped items. Because of this, players are once again free to focus on the parts of the game that they find the most fun, and not feel punished for skipping less fun bits.

The new expansion's new zone, the Dragon Isles, is a cozy game world grounded in textbook high fantasy, which is a nice clean break from the more fantastical areas of Shadowlands. The wonderful leveling experience is still linear, but there is a lot of exploration to be had, especially with the introduction of the new dragon riding system.

From very early in your time on the Dragon Isles, you get access to a customizable dragon mount which--FINALLY--adds real flight physics into World of Warcraft. With the return to a more vertical world design, there is more fun to be had in simply moving and exploring the world than there ever has been before. The fact that you have to upgrade your flight capabilities as you go is also a very nice and organic way to gate your ability to reach newer and more difficult areas.

Upon reaching the new level 70 cap, though, I found myself falling out of love with this expansion a little. I find the new dungeons to be really weak in comparison to BFA and Shadowlands, and while I very much enjoy the absence of borrowed power, the revamped reputation systems aren't exactly thrilling, so I found myself getting quite bored. That left me with very little motivation to stick to the gear treadmill, and I quit playing after a couple of cracks at the new raid. It doesn't help that certain aspects that kept me invested before, like the story and characters, have been damaged beyond repair by the incomprehensible shark-jumping exercise that was Shadowlands.

Dragonflight is certainly a step in the right direction, but I don't think it's World of Warcraft at its total best. It certainly tried its darndest to capture me with its nostalgic references to Wrath of the Lich King and Cataclysm, along with some long desired design philosophy changes. But to really get me invested again, I think the game needs more compelling new features that stay relevant during the endgame. Dragonflight is a good baseline to work from, though, so I remain open to revisiting the game once we're a few more patches in.