I’d suggest they may give us flying in the Isles, but it will be locked everywhere else to us. I can’t imagine they would give it to us for all zones.
I hope they fix the professions though for low levels. Every other X-Pac professions have been useless for us. So I hope they sort that out, at least for DI’s.
That would make sense from a marketing perspective. Right now when a trial player joins the game they get BFA. They want BFA to be the expansion new players experience because it will catch them up on the world of Azeroth. BFA isn't that bad an expansion and graphics wise looks very nice and it's six zones right off the bat. If they started instead with Shadowlands the trial players wouldn't get a very good first impression. They'd only get 4 zones and that eternal shopping mall in the sky Oribos. They'd also get the worst storytelling in the history of WoW as their first exposure to the game. Shadowlands is definitely not the expansion you want to use to showcase the franchise.
Now Dragonflight. From what I hear it's actually a pretty okay expansion and it looks stunning and Dragon Flying is actually fun. Using Dragonflight as the expansion to showcase their franchise would make sense. Give them a taste of Dragon Flying and see if you can't entice some of them to subscribe.
If that's true it's going to mean a fundamental shift in the way Blizzard employs its trial account.
Right now what Blizzard's strategy with the Trial Account is is "buy the game or get the fuck out" and so they've designed the Trial experience to be very uncomfortable in the long run. They don't want you getting cozy as a free-to-play. They want you to know that WoW is not a free-to-play game and that's why it's called a trial account. "That's enough fun, give us money or slowly experience an increasingly gimped game play experience until the game becomes so tediously pointless you give up and fuck off" is the point Blizzard is aiming at. They are gambling that most people will pay just to have a less shitty gaming experience sometime before they get to the point in the Trial Account where they rage quit.
If Dragonflight becomes the new Official WoW Starting Point and F2Ps get Dragon Flight only on the Dragon Isles because of magic bullshit reason then it's possible we might actually see a much better F2P experience. We might see Blizzard actually embrace F2Ps as just a different type of player. I mean, if they're playing the game they've probably bought some merch at some point. They're all eyeballs. It may be possible that Blizzard has realized the economy of the future is attention and unless they start making World of Warcraft get the same amount of attention it had during WotLK they are not going to be the franchise they are now for much longer. We might see the end of the Trial Account and WoW may actually go Free To Play. WORLD OF WARCRAFT: DRAGONFLIGHT! PLAY IT NOW FOR FREE! (you heard that in old WoW TV voiceover voice too, right?)
They might actually let people play the full Dragonflight expansion, raids and all for free just to start stockpiling attention before it becomes really hard to do that. It could be the Free To Play experience of the next expansion is all of Dragonflight and if that is true it could mean a huge change to what this game is like for the F2P Twinks. One thing they might do is put F2Ps in their own queues separate from all subscribed players. If they were to do that they might completely nerf all non DF gear so that the Baby Twinks have to grind DF gear just like the noobs do. This might be a good thing or it might be a bad thing. The good from Blizzard's perspective is the noobs don't have to face battle hardened Baby Twinks just pounding them without mercy in the PvP. The good from the Vet accounts who have been F2Ps for all of this expansion and longer, we get to experience Azeroth again with a new sense of wonder, and it may take us awhile to gear up we still have the experience and we will be at our battle best in no time at all and now there won't be any Daddy Twinks to one shot us. The bad side is "ugh, another gear grind". And if you can tell from the Pook's gear I hate grinding gear. But, some people love that and the gods bless them when they're on your side in the BGs. But if it happens it happens and the Pook just hopes it doesn't take as long as it took me to get the pants you get for breaking Thrall out of Time Prison. The bad from Blizzard's side is it could discourage old world WoW exploration and if you're trying to maintain attention for your franchise discouraging exploration means you could lose the attention of the F2Ps who like exploration. It might be better to let the dedicated PvPers learn to explore that part of the game and the old world of Azeroth at the same time. Maybe tinker with the stats and make sure there's a BiS for every class in every expansion.
Or maybe Blizzard just doesn't care about getting the same number of eyeballs they had back in the day. Maybe next expansion is the same as it ever was and they don't move the F2Ps to their own bracket or at least move us back to being in queues with Levellers. Maybe they want PvE to be FREE TO PLAY and PvP to be technically it's free, and you can play it, but unless you have the kind of neurology where all night long you're hurry-up-and-wait in the queues and you finally get a pop and you're in the waiting room and you look at the roster and you look at the names and you see we got 8 and they've got 5. Then you notice they have one Daddy Twink, one Baby Twink and 3 noobs and you notice our side is just the Pook three Baby Twinks and 4 noobs. And then you look at the names of the Daddy Twink and Baby Twink on their side and you look at the names of the Baby Twinks on your side and then you calculate what this game is probably going to be like. Sometimes you look at names and you know it's going to be a good game win or lose. You know that Daddy Twink is going to be determined to make sure nobody pounds their Baby Twink and Noobs, that Daddy Twink is there to do some pounding. And then you look at the names of the three Baby Twinks on your side you know, you just know those are Baby Twinks that can take a pounding. And you know they're going to do it. They're going to go out there and take that pounding from the Daddy Twink and their lone Baby Twink and they're going to do their best to rally the noobs. And they'll take that pounding while the Pook steals stuff and I know they'll be sore. The Daddy Twink is gonna pound them pretty hard, but you know those Baby Twinks and you know they can take it and if the Noobs pay attention they're gonna learn stuff. There will be poundings and they will be GLORIOUS! So if you have the kind of neurology where you enjoy seeing Daddy Twinks pounding Baby Twinks and Baby Twinks pounding other Baby Twinks and Baby Twinks teaming up to tag team a Daddy Twink while Noobs run around doing Noob shit then boy oh boy is WORLD OF WARCRAFT! FREE TO PLAY NOW! ever for you because you'll get that.
But mostly you get the Noobs on one side or the other rage quiting until the game auto-forfeits. All that data on Twink poundings, just gone. That Daddy Twink on the other side, they never got the chance to prove themselves to their Baby Twink, and the Baby Twinks never got to prove their ability to give a pounding as good as they can get. And that, my friends is the sad price of war... ....craft, Warcraft. Playing World of Warcraft for free PvP.
Anyway, the gummy has kicked in so I'll have a large Ghost Pepper chicken burrito and a large chocolate milk. Thanks.
