World of Warcraft has been a stable game for nearly 20 years, and it’s remained that way largely because Blizzard Entertainment hasn’t done much to drastically alter the way the game plays or operates for the majority of its lifespan. Whenever new mechanics are added to WoW, a natural risk is being taken because it’s that sense of stability that’s kept WoW at the center of the MMO zeitgeist for so long.
The game’s newest expansion, Dragonflight, which has been out for a little over a week, has arguably introduced more features that shake up the game’s ecosystem in that short span than it’s had in the last two decades. From a revamping of all 13 class’ talent systems (including the newly introduced Evoker), a complete overhaul of each of the game’s 12 professions, to the introduction of legacy content into current seasons, Blizzard is using Dragonflight as a catalyst for change within WoW.
None of the expansion’s changes and new features, however, are bigger than the introduction of Dragonriding, a system that makes riding (and creating) your mount more interactive than ever.
Take flight
Since flying mounts were introduced to WoW in 2007, the process of jumping on your mount and flying in a straight line to your destination at a reasonable speed has felt largely uninteractive. The only sense of appeal in flying mounts traditionally came from their appearance and their overall rarity—two factors firmly in the hands of WoW’s developers. With Dragonriding, though, the way your mount is customized and ridden are both firmly in your hands, making the simple process of getting from point A to point B one of the most engaging things you can do in WoW.
“One of the pillars for World Warcraft has always been ‘the world is one of our main characters,’” WoW’s lead software engineer May Flores Garcia told Dot Esports. “One of the things that I think Dragonriding [does], even though it’s a new system, it actually makes you feel like you’re more connected, like you’re interacting with the world a lot more.”
For well over a decade, WoW’s max flying speed of 310 percent made Classic WoW’s standard of traveling on the ground at 100 percent speed feel obsolete. Now, with Dragonriding mounts reaching top speeds of 830 percent movement speed, the long-heralded standard of 310 percent is practically a snail’s pace.
Dragon mounts have been in WoW for decades, but now, even flying on one of the game’s older drakes feels like a slow crawl. Dragonriding adds a litany of abilities, both passive and active, to your character’s new customizable dragon mount to make you feel like a master of the skies. The abilities to ascend, dive, barrel roll, and even rewind time midair have made flying more stimulating than it’s ever been.
“One of the pillars [is] that this needs to feel like a fast, fluid, very visceral system,” WoW associate game director Jeremy Feasel told Dot Esports. “And that ended up being the core of the system. It does feel like you’re flying, you’re swooping and you’re diving.”
With the addition of Dragonriding, Blizzard has successfully turned one of WoW’s most monotonous activities into one of its most engaging.
No two identical dragons
For as much freedom as there is granted to players in flying their dragons, there’s even more when it comes to customizing them.
With four base Dragonriding mounts and dozens of unlockable customization options available for each of them, it’s a rarity to see two of the exact same dragon mounts in the wild. Gone are the days of every member of your party jumping on the same Blue Drake they received from a raid drop and rolling together with an identical look.
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Each of the four dragons loosely resembles WoW’s dragonflights in their base configurations, although more colorizations can be unlocked throughout players’ journeys in the Dragon Isles. Unlockable customization options can be found across all corners of the continent and by way of all activities in the game. Whether you’re farming world bosses, working on your professions, or taking on the game’s deadliest raid bosses, you’re bound to encounter new options for your customizable dragon mount one way or another.
Making WoW feel larger than ever
Dragonriding adds a new sense of depth to WoW’s zones. Although the feature is only available to use in the newly-added Dragon Isles, Dragonriding makes those newly-added areas and regions feel larger than anything ever produced for the game.
And that’s because they are larger than ever. Dragonflight’s zones were designed entirely with the 830 percent speed boost that Dragonriding provides in mind.
“The overworld in Dragonflight is pretty expansive,” Feasal said. “I think they have some of the biggest zones we’ve ever done, especially the Azure Span. And one of the focuses there was having a ton of negative space, so it felt like you could really swoop and dive through the trees. So, the overworld was, in general, designed around this idea of a really fast and fluid movement system.”
We calculated the total time it takes to get from the top of Scalecracker Peak in the Waking Shores (the northernmost landmark of the Dragon Isles) to the Azure Vault (the southernmost landmark). In total, it took three minutes and 16 seconds while flying in a straight line—or, as straight as one could fly without bumping into any obstacles.
In three minutes and 16 seconds at pre-Dragonflight’s flying speed of 310 percent, we got from Booty Bay to the Elwynn Forest. Extrapolating that number and applying the Dragonriding top speed of 830 percent all the way through, you’d be able to get from Booty Bay to somewhere near the Eastern Plaguelands in just over three minutes.
Of course, maintaining that 830 percent speed boost is difficult and part of what makes Dragonriding actually have some sort of skill expression involved, but seeing even a shred of it applied to the game’s old world would make it feel microscopic in comparison to the Dragon Isles.
Although four zones is the fewest number of regions that Blizzard has created for a WoW expansion in the game’s history, the world of Dragonflight feels monstrous in comparison to continents released alongside other expansions.
Still, if half of an old WoW continent can fit inside the entirety of one new WoW continent—even without counting for the verticality of the zones—then the game’s world design team is on the right track. Getting to soar and swoop through those worlds by way of one of the game’s most intriguing systems ever is an added bonus.
