How WoW: Dragonflight's Dragons Are Pushing Blizzard's MMO Into The Modern Era

Dragons have always played an important role in World of Warcraft, and after largely being pushed to the sidelines in more recent expansions, Dragonflight is set to bring back some of the MMORPG's most iconic draconic characters in a big way. And although it does feel like a nostalgic throwback in some ways, Dragonflight, more so than any other WoW expansion in recent history, feels distinctly modern.

There is a good reason for that: Many of Dragonflight's core features have never been done before in WoW, and required the development team to push Blizzard's nearly 20-year-old flagship title in new ways. From dragonriding to the new Empowered abilities that are a core part of the new playable dragon race/class combo, the Dracthyr Evoker, Dragonflight is filled with new ideas that look to be ushering in a new era of WoW.

Empowered abilities are a great example. In a recent interview with GameSpot, senior game designer Graham Berger elaborated on how the team wanted to incorporate an iconic moment from every piece of dragon-related media into the Evoker's gameplay--the deep breath of a dragon moments before pushing out a pillar of flame.

"They have this big, scary moment that is preceded by a lot of anticipation," Berger said. "You see the dragon breathing in and you know something dangerous is coming. So we asked ourselves, 'How do we get that across in World of Warcraft?' Because a regular spellcast doesn't quite do it justice. We can make it a really long cast bar but that's not the same feeling. We wanted to have the player be involved, have the players feel like they were the ones breathing in, get the physicality of that moment, in a way we couldn't do with our existing spells."

Players holding down the key and then releasing it to devastating effect was a way to get that message across, and it makes the Evoker feel more active than any other WoW class. The Dracthyr themselves aren't quite like anything seen before in WoW, either. While they are distinctly dragon-like, they differ in some key ways from the dragons players have seen in WoW before, appearing more slender and sleek. That was by design.

"They are spellcasters," Berger said. "They do move quickly around the battlefield, while the Drakonid or other dragonkin we've seen before are these big, heavy, melee bruisers. Wanting to embrace the magic of the five dragonflights and make them a caster from the outset really led us to that more lithe, mobile form you see the Dracthyr have, while still taking inspiration from the big dragons."

Customization is a big part of Dragonflight, and the Dracthyr have a ton of it, with two forms for players to customize. There are so many customization options, in fact, that Blizzard had to develop new tech just to be able to incorporate them all. Berger said Blizzard is now looking at how that tech could be applied elsewhere in the future, possibly to some of the game's other playable races.

Much like the Dracthyr, Dragonflight's other core feature, dragonriding, required new technology. For years, flight in WoW has been a fairly boring affair. Since their addition back in the Burning Crusade, flying mounts have simply been a way to get from point A to point B faster, but added little when it came to actual gameplay. Dragonriding changes that, making traversing the new location of the Dragon Isles fun in and of itself.

Instead of just pointing in a given direction and the player's mount automatically taking them there, dragonriding requires making use of the environment and the special abilities inherent to the game's new Dragon Isles Drakes to navigate the world efficiently. Senior game designer Jake Miller said dragonriding was a combined effort across the development team, as it required the feature's designers to work hand-in-hand with level designers and quest designers to make it so players had fun opportunities to use their dragonriding drakes over the course of their adventure. It also required the team to write new code for how movement works in WoW, along with the creation of some of the game's most eye-popping animations in order to sell the feeling of diving and dashing atop a massive flying lizard.

One big selling point of dragonriding is that it will be available almost from the very start of the expansion. Typically Blizzard only allows for players to use flying mounts in new expansion zones several months after an expansion's release, and only then by completing various achievements reserved for dedicated players. Dragonriding changes that. Though aspects of the experience will improve over time, a key goal for Blizzard was to make it so dragonriding felt great from the start. There is an upgrade path that will see players improving their Dragon Isles Drake's capabilities and even unlocking new abilities as they experience the story of each of the expansion's new leveling zones, but players will fly just as fast at the start of the expansion as they do at the end.

"We really wanted to start at a great base experience and level it up so the player can have a better and better time throughout,'' Miller said.

Based on player impressions from the alpha and beta, dragonriding seems to be a huge hit, with many players hoping the feature will carry forward into future expansions and into older content. Miller said he wasn't sure how players would react to dragonriding at first, so it was amazing to see the "warm and positive" reception from those who have gotten the chance to try out the new feature first-hand. Though he didn't have anything to announce at this time, Miller said player feedback will be key to informing where dragonriding goes in the future.

WoW: Dragonflight is currently in beta. Based on our hands-on impressions, it's shaping up to be a return to form for the MMO following the game's disappointing Shadowlands expansion. Dragonflight is currently slated to arrive before the end of the year, though it does not yet have a specific release date.