With apologies to Samuel Clements, I'm sorry I wrote such a long post -- I didn't have time to write a shorter one, but TL;DR at the end. My thoughts in not-quite-chronological order:
The new cinematic might be the most boring one Blizzard ever created for WoW. I mean, nice art, but...just no substance. I'm genuinely shocked, and have to believe there were some behind-the-scenes constraints. Did all the scene writers migrate to the Overwatch team?
New talent system -- huge for two reasons. One, the revocation of nonsequential ability development i.e. WoW decided to go back to letting players somewhat emphasize which features of a given class they enjoy the most. Note that Blizzard is retaining (if you look at the talent screen) PvP-only talents and their activation with War Mode. But two (and this is the bigger deal), talents provide another way to balance classes beyond screwing with baseline abilities. That's HUGE, not the least of which because it means Blizzard is going to have to make a balancing pass on all baseline abilities before implementing the talent tree change. Whatever meta we have right now will end the moment the prepatch goes live.
New UI. Yes, I'm beyond excited for this badly needed change, but not for the reasons most people might think. Blizzard always found ways to integrate add-ons into the game, and we could easily say that this is just Blizzard integrating Bartender or whatever add-on you use to customize your interface. That's not the real news here. When Blizzard finally (finally!) added click-to-cast and mouseover targeting to the UI last patch, it got a one-line mention at the bottom of the patch notes. The real news here is that the revamp of the UI is important enough for Blizzard to include it as part of the expansion announcement. Notice how they were careful to repeatedly say that the old elements would remain if you wanted them, but they were "just" changing the default elements? When it comes to UI design, that's huge. Unlike dedicated players, the casual player rarely messes with the UI. Changes here will affect how casuals get into the game, and Blizzard knows it. I fear that this round of "UI changes" will amount to little more than window dressing, but then I ask you this:
What plans might Blizzard have, that would make a focus on UI change suddenly so important when the UI didn't change for almost two decades? Especially changes that concern alleviating "screen crowding"? There was absolutely no need to do these kinds of updates to the UI...if WoW were going to remain PC-only.
The work order system leaves me skeptical. It adds a bunch of endgame grind and re-engages the old AH culture of putting items up for bid instead of insta-sale. I think that ship sailed long ago, and is a fail right out of the gate. However, requiring crafting tables in the new main city could create live flea markets, and that's interesting. Let's also recognize that Blizzard pointed out they're going to put an AH in the new main city, so Blizzard fully intends the new city to act as the new main hub for Dragonflight. For sub-endgame brackets, this will affect nobody, as I don't see Blizzard going to back to revamp any of the old profession stuff. This will simply be the new Dragonflight way of doing things.
No Shadowlands squish. No surprise, no problem. I think people will look back on Shadowlands and see it as the proving (or disproving) grounds for a lot of stuff that Blizzard takes on more earnestly in Dragonflight.
Let's talk for a moment about the "empower" mechanic. That's a really big deal. Abilities and spells currently work one of two ways in WoW: you either hit a button to fire the ability, or hit a button to begin channeling an ability. All WoW abilities treat button presses as ignition points. Some of you old-timers might remember that the default ignition point used to be when you released a key, and you had to use an add-on to change the ignition point to when you pressed a key, until Blizzard finally changed that default. For Blizzard to introduce abilities with two ignition points (one to start the "empower", and one to unleash it) makes for a clever use of already-in-the-game mechanics. I fully expect Blizzard to eventually revamp some class abilities with this new mechanic, and I love the tension it will create for someone sweating over how far they think they can build an ability without getting interrupted or ranged. Spell channeling could get another layer of depth. Honest to God, this might be one of the best additions to WoW gameplay ever devised. I mean, just off the top of my head, I would revamp WoW fishing with this to something more Zelda-like. So many possibilities with this new mechanic. It's so straightforward that, like a lot of great inventions, I'm stunned nobody came up with it earlier for WoW.
Dragon flying, with the obligatory how-to-train-your-dragon feel (I'm glad others thought so, too), might be fun. I'm more excited for the implications -- if Blizzard is willing to experiment with a new flight system, what other movement systems might they look at? Will I get a chance to do mounted PvP and squirrel-glide to another player after jumping off my mount? It'll probably go nowhere and just be a conceit of Dragonflight, but props nonetheless for trying it out.
No Dungeon finder for Wrath Classic is amazing. That means the Classic developers get what that community is about. Same for no arena team rating. These were "improvements" in Wrath that hurt WoW in the long run, and if the Classic team got the power to call those shots, something is going right over there.
TL;DR: I subscribe to the
@Chops theory of different epochs of WoW. Shadowlands started WoW 3.0. Dragonflight will be the TBC of WoW 3.0, and bring some similar, fun conceits. The three most important takeaways from that video were the talent system (not so much for gameplay, but as another dial for balance), the UI changes, and the new "empower" mechanic. Frankly, I think none of these will do much for 20s in Dragonflight. I
do think 20s (and all brackets) will see impacts in the expansion after this one.
