The ninth expansion of World of Warcraft has launched. Dragonflight is now live and everyone is storming the Dragon Isles to reach level 70.
Update 0:10 AM: On some realms, it seems that the ship meant to take players to the Dragon Isles simply has not arrived… many people are left waiting impatiently.
Update 0:15 AM: Blizzard has now spawned portals at the dock that teleport directly to the Dragon Isles.
Original announcement: It’s finally done. The era of “Shadowlands” is definitively over, and World of Warcraft has successfully launched its 9th expansion. The launch of Dragonflight took place on time at 12:00 AM on November 29, 2022, and thousands of players are already gathering on the Dragon Isles to reach level 70.
How did the launch go? As expected, the launch – at least by the current account – has been relatively uneventful. At midnight, the new quests popped up for all owners of Dragonflight, and off they went to the Dragon Isles. Only those who weren’t logged in at that time might have experienced minor issues, as there were queues during login at times.
What’s included in the new addon? The expansion “Dragonflight” presents itself relatively traditionally and forgoes particularly many features. Instead, it focuses on its old strengths, providing a familiar package with only a few innovations meant to connect with past successes:
- New max level of 70
- 4 new areas (+1 as starting area for the Dracthyr)
- 8 new dungeons
- Reworked professions with a new quest system
- Return and improvement of the talent trees
- Dragon riding as a new mode of transportation – significantly faster than conventional flying
Is there more to come? Basically yes. On the one hand, many endgame features will only be unlocked tomorrow, on Wednesday, after the weekly reset at 5:00 AM. This way, no one should feel “rushed” to reach level 70 on the first day.
Even after that, it is far from over. The first raid opens just a few weeks later, and Blizzard has already promised that they want to release much more and much more frequent patches and updates than in Shadowlands. For this purpose, World of Warcraft even hired 100 new developers a few months ago to satisfy the community’s hunger for content.
Whether these goals will be achieved will likely only become clear in 2023 – but until then, most should have enough to do on the Dragon Isles.
Are you also playing through the night and will you regret it at work, school, or university on Tuesday morning? Or did you take a day off to really dive in?
You can find all information about Dragonflight in our comprehensive overview.
