World of Warcraft: Dragonflight’s Dragonriding changes everything

One of the following is a good idea: World of WarcraftDragonflight’s new zones, the Azure Span, it was hard not to reminisce about the Azeroth of old. The massively multiplayer online game’s original locations had a rustic feel to them, an aesthetic shared by the new Dragonflight zone we were able to check out in a preview of the expansion’s upcoming alpha test.

And while going back to one’s visual roots isn’t always the most exciting box feature, it works so well with DragonflightA brand new feature, Dragonriding allows for different ways of moving about the area.

I wasn’t overwhelmingly excited for Dragonriding in World of Warcraft’s ninth expansion, but I felt its impact immediately upon logging in for the first time. This is in contrast to previous expansions where the ability to fly on new landmass for approximately a year was usually reserved after release. Dragonflight It is available before you reach maximum level. However, this is not the same as flight. World of WarcraftIt has been known by players since the Burning CrusadeDays gone by, when one just points the mount in the direction that they desire and then flies straight. This is the art of falling.

When I mounted my dragon in the Dragon Isles, my usual abilities were replaced with unique Dragonriding skills, and I was presented with a new UI that denoted my dragon’s energy levels. My dragon took off after I hit the spacebar two times. Although we began with lots of momentum, my dragon lost its speed as it fell into a glide. By flapping its wings again, we regained our speed and picked up some height — although it cost a chunk of my dragon’s limited energy, which only refills when flying at mach speeds or resting on the ground.

Although I was initially clumsy at first, I soon learned how to pull up and dive to increase speed, without wasting energy. Eventually I’d need to flap again to regain some altitude, but only an hour into my time with the system, I was dive-bombing my way into quest encampments and traversing the zone with ease.

Image: Blizzard Entertainment

To accommodate flight, a world must be constructed differently. Ion Hazzikostas, the game director of Azure Span told us in a group interview that it is the biggest single zone. World of WarcraftThe history of the world, and other regions. Dragonflight These are all comparable.

That means that there’s a lot of “negative space” in the Azure Span — places you may never actually need to visit for a quest. Although it may seem boring, this expanse gave the world a sense of life and mass that was unlike any other zone. Mists in Pandaria(The expansion Blizzard frequently likens to Dragonflight The most. Here are some of the places I went. Dragonflight It felt more like a living space that I was exploring, than an overgrown forest with many quests.

My wonderful Dragonriding experience during my DragonflightPreviews are just an introduction to the system. As time goes by, players will be able customize their drake as well as earn more energy. That should help make flying easier. Hazzikostas stated that the goal of the system is for players to eventually be able to move as fast, or even faster than they were before. World of Warcraft’s old-school flying. To get there, you will need to master the new mechanic and upgrade your account. So when players eventually leap into the air, they’ll have an enjoyable time flying from one side of the Dragon Isles to the other, rather than simply hitting “auto-run” and getting up to get a drink while your lifeless mount flaps away.

As for the future of Dragonriding, Hazzikostas told us that it’s an expansion feature currently only designed for the Dragon Isles. The hope is that it will be so popular that Azeroth fans demand that the feature be implemented throughout Azeroth. Only a few hours in, I personally can’t imagine going back to the far less engaging flight system that WoWIt has been used for almost two decades.