WoW Dragonflight Releasing This Year

WoW Dragonflight Releasing This Year

Blizzard recently found themselves in hot waters once again, this time after releasing the highly-controversial Diablo: Immortal mobile game. The game critics had a field day and the game was overwhelmingly disliked on Metacritic, where it’s currently sitting with a 0.4 user score.

Activision Blizzard was quick to start putting out fires as they almost immediately revealed new Diablo 4 news and started distancing themselves from Diablo: Immortal and the drama that was unfolding. Now, we’ve received news that the new World of Warcraft Dragonflight expansion will be coming out this year, which is sooner than many of us expected.

All of this begs the question whether this news was something Blizzard actually planned all along, or if it’s just a desperate attempt to divert the public’s attention from the raging fire that is Diablo: Immortal.

Image Credits | Blizzard

Is This Too Soon?

World of Warcraft has had a track record of releasing expansions in an unfinished state in recent years, so it is a bit concerning to hear that WoW Dragonflight will be coming out this year. And while the majority of WoW fans will be thrilled to be able to get their hands on the new mounts and the challenges that await in the Dragon Isles, there’s still a real possibility this could be another Warlords of Draenor scenario.

But, the news is out and we’re getting the expansion on or before December 31, according to the official Blizzard post. The players can already pre-purchase the game in three digital editions:

  • Basic Edition 49.99 EUR
  • Heroic Edition 69.99 EUR
  • Epic Edition 89.99 EUR

All three editions unlock the new expansion, but also come with some cosmetic items such as pets, mounts and costumes you can transmogrify onto your characters in-game. However, the price tag is quite high, especially the Epic edition. But this didn’t stop the fans from purchasing these in the past, and it probably won’t now.

Realistic Expectations

The WoW Dragonflight expansion will be a hit or miss situation for Blizzard, depending on how good the game’s systems end up being and how much content there is for fans to consume. We could either get a WoD 2.0 situation, which would certainly drive even more fans away from the game, or we might get another expansion similar to Legion, which would certainly make a lot of fans happy. We believe it’ll be the latter option, and here’s why.

WoW Dragonflight will bring a brand new playable race and class – the Dracthyr Evoker. This is a huge selling point for the expansion and perhaps one of the main reasons many veteran WoW players will renew their subscriptions. We haven’t seen a new class since Legion, when the Demon Hunters were introduced, so we went through two expansions without any innovations in that area. For this reason alone, Dragonflight has a realistic shot at being a successful expansion.

wow-dragonflight-epic-edition
Image Credits | Blizzard

Still, the new class alone won’t be enough to bring back WoW to its glory days. The content itself has to be great to keep a large player audience around for longer periods. We’ll probably see a bunch of the same old dailies and world quests we’re all tired of, but there’s hope Blizzard will introduce more activities to mix in with the old stuff.

All in all, there’s real potential here. The Dragon Isles have been an area the fans wanted to explore since the early days of Vanilla WoW, and the dragons themselves have always been highly popular in the game, whether as allies or enemies we had to defeat. So we’re remaining optimistic about this new expansion, but ultimately, time will tell whether it’ll succeed or flop like some expansions before it.

Should You Pre-Purchase?

Well, this is a question we all have to ask ourselves, and there’s many pros and cons to consider.

On the one hand, getting the pre-purchase goodies earlier is convenient and gives the players an early taste of what’s to come in Dragonflight. This will certainly be an insta-buy for many diehard WoW streamers and they won’t even look at the price tag. However, there’s something else to consider.

If a lot of players pre-purchase and Blizzard rakes in millions before the expansion is even out, what stops them from slacking and releasing a sub-par game once again? These sales will be reflected in their quarterly reports, which will go well with the shareholders, but what about the players?

Honestly, if you really want this new expansion to be as best as possible, our advice is not to rush with the pre-purchase. There’s still plenty of time and you’ll get your items eventually. Remember what happened with Warcraft 3: Reforged? This is the same situation. It can happen again.

Ultimately, the decision rests in your hands. And at the end of the day, as long as the players are happy with their purchase, that’s all that matters. As for us, we’ll remain cautiously optimistic and hope that the new expansion will be a success and that things will change for the better.

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Denis Alihodzic

Freelance writer with a passion for gaming and esports. Loves a good old-school RPG, and enjoys spending time with his dogs.

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