World of Warcraft promises to satisfy the fans’ hunger for content. However, Dragonflight appears to be significantly smaller.
The mood in the WoW community could currently be described as “cautiously optimistic.” As we analyzed in our podcast, one can’t go wrong with the dragon theme. Dragonflight focuses on the strengths of World of Warcraft in its foundations. The return of talent trees, revamped crafting, a large new game world filled with secrets, and an interesting new class.
This was followed by the big announcement that Blizzard has acquired the studio Proletariat. Nearly 100 new employees are expected to ensure that WoW receives more and faster content. John Hight, the General Manager of Warcraft, stated:
We know that you are really hungry for new content, and I am very proud of how our development teams are working to meet or even exceed those expectations – more is happening in World of Warcraft than ever before and this is just the beginning.
This is quite a statement. One that will be hard to backtrack on later.
Bobby Kotick, the CEO of Activision, confirmed this as well. While he may not enjoy the best reputation among players, his word carries weight. He explained:
Over the next two years, we plan to hire hundreds of the best developers to meet the needs of our World of Warcraft players. The outstanding team from Proletariat will be a key component of our efforts to bring on new talent.
It may seem odd that the next WoW expansion, Dragonflight, has turned out to be relatively small and unassuming so far.
Dragonflight does not seem to take any experiments at first glance and forgoes parasitic systems.
Anyone taking a cursory glance at World of Warcraft might raise their eyebrows at the announcement of “more content,” as it doesn’t seem to align with what Dragonflight promises:
- No major new system like covenants, Torghast, islands, or warfronts
- Only 4 new areas (for comparison: Battle for Azeroth had 6 new areas, Shadowlands had 5)
- 8 new dungeons is also rather on the lower end of the standard for an expansion
Of course, there are some fresh features, such as the new class of Dracthyr Evokers or dragon riding. But dragon riding seems, at first glance, to be more of a sideline activity that will later be replaced by traditional flying and a new class is certainly welcome – but also not something entirely unexpected.
What does “more content” actually mean for WoW?
If you ask the player base of World of Warcraft what type of “more content” they urgently need in the future, the answers could hardly be more diverse.
While for many players, “more content” mainly means new dungeons, raids, and battlegrounds, World of Warcraft is much more than that. There are numerous fans of small niche tasks in the game, which PvE or PvP professionals can only roll their eyes at because, in their view, it is not “real content”.
However, if you add those smaller groups who are interested in content such as pet battles, transmog, toy collections, achievements, new character customizations, or role-playing, then that collectively represents a significant number of players with very different interests. Together, they make up a non-negligible part of all active players.
New employees on the WoW team are likely to help not only to satisfy the content hunger of PvE junkies but also to cater to such niche content. After all, it was this variety of content that kept many fans loyal to World of Warcraft for years. Mike Ybarra, the President of Blizzard Entertainment, seems to recognize this as he speaks of the creative freedom the team needs when he says:
We put players at the forefront of everything we do and we work hard to meet and exceed those expectations. […] A critical point, if we wanted to take care of the players, is to take care of our own team – we must ensure that we have the resources to create experiences for our communities that they will love while giving our teams the freedom to explore even more creative possibilities in their projects.
Of course, this is again quite openly phrased and leaves a lot of room for interpretation. However, “creative freedom” can only mean creating more and different content that sometimes appeals only to a specific niche of players – and these players have often had to compromise in recent years.
New employees will probably only become relevant after Dragonflight launch
But when will the new developers come into play? Even if it’s obviously a bit of a look into the crystal ball: Quite certainly not at the launch of Dragonflight. Although the beta has not officially started yet, Blizzard has likely been working intensively on Dragonflight for the past 2 years and has already completed the expansion in most respects. This may sound strange without a launched beta, but that’s the only way a release date in 2022 can be realized.
Beta versions of World of Warcraft are usually already extremely advanced and it’s only about fine-tuning. Even if not all features are playable at the beginning of a beta, most of them are already contained in the game data and just need to be “switched on”.
The approximately 100 new employees from Proletariat who are supposed to work on World of Warcraft will likely have little influence on the release of Dragonflight – but beyond that. Because World of Warcraft wants to provide “content faster and more often and even exceed fans’ expectations.”
Perhaps this all means that Dragonflight will be a more compact and generally shorter expansion that therefore receives fewer features to slow down the entire cycle of World of Warcraft a bit – before moving to the next expansion with a significantly larger team.
However, it is clear that Blizzard is once again sticking its neck out with the claim of providing more and faster content to fans – because Blizzard has made such promises multiple times over the past decades. And slowly but surely, these promises are bringing nothing more than a weary smile from long-time players.
On the other hand, the sheer size of nearly 100 new employees stands in stark contrast. If this increase in workforce isn’t able to create content more frequently or in greater volume, then something must have gone quite wrong. And Blizzard simply can’t afford that concerning World of Warcraft anymore.
That Blizzard is hiring so many new employees right now could also aim for significantly later success – namely with the next expansion. Because as soon as the launch window of an add-on approaches, active work on the next expansion begins. While players were still loitering in the Shadowlands beta, work was already slowly but steadily shifting towards Dragonflight. It’s only logical to assume that the same is the case now with Dragonflight.
Even if Blizzard is already making big promises, we will likely not see the effects significantly until after the launch of Dragonflight. But then it could be a glorious time for all content-hungry heroes in Azeroth.
Or what do you think about the whole thing?
More opinion on Blizzard can be found here: Because Blizzard is currently making it really hard to like them again
