World of Warcraft is giving it all and releasing patch after patch. But how long can this go well? MeinMMO demon Cortyn dares to make a prediction.
When Blizzard announced the release date of patch 10.1 Fury of Neltharion at the beginning of the week, I had to blink several times. The next update is already starting in early May.
I want to be honest and never thought I would write this about World of Warcraft: It feels a bit too fast for me.
Maybe because I’ve been accustomed for years to only getting an update every 4 to 5 months, it now feels almost rushed.
No matter how much I think about it, I simply cannot comprehend how World of Warcraft manages to release so much high-quality content so quickly, as has been the case since the launch of Dragonflight.
Having patch 10.0.7 for just 6 weeks also means that the Forbidden Island as an “endgame zone” was only truly relevant for 6 weeks, just like the Onyx ring with its countless customization options.
Blizzard has introduced a new system here, namely the aforementioned ring, and is burying it again after about 6 weeks.
That is fast. Very fast. Almost wasteful towards its own content.
The community is also mostly thrilled and confused. For many, Dragonflight is well on its way to becoming one of the most popular expansions of all time:
And although I am very excited about the amount of content and the speed at which World of Warcraft is currently delivering, I still have this small, skeptical voice in the back of my mind whispering to me: “Just wait, the crash is coming.”
There is still this chance that Dragonflight can release this amount of content only because the players left Shadowlands very early. If that is true, then Dragonflight might just be getting a significant boost in content that is mostly already developed.
That, however, would mean that Dragonflight either experiences a major content drought until the next expansion or this expansion in turn has larger content gaps because this boost is simply used up.
I am truly confused about how this current pace is happening. Because even though Blizzard had hired 100 new employees for World of Warcraft just before the Dragonflight launch, their contributions will likely only be noticeable in the coming months – after all, the newest content had been in development long before the launch of Dragonflight.
But being pessimistic all the time is not pleasant either. Therefore, I will push the thought of the future a little into my subconscious and enjoy the fact that so much is currently going so damn right in World of Warcraft.
If Blizzard proves that they can maintain this pace, then I even dare to hope that World of Warcraft can reclaim the “MMORPG throne” that it has visibly – and rightly so – been crumbling from in recent years.
