Blizzard unveils the next expansion for World of Warcraft: Dragonflight, alongside announcing the long-awaited arrival of Classic: Wrath of the Lich King.

Blizzard Entertainment made two big announcements yesterday in their scheduled livestream. While they were set to unveil the future of their MMORPG, World of Warcraft, they also announced a return to the past. The fan favourite expansion, Wrath of the Lich King, which originally released back in 2008, will be coming to World of Warcraft Classic in 2022. Meanwhile the new expansion was confirmed to be Dragonflight.

Return of the King

The return of Wrath of the Lich King was expected by fans after the successful releases of Burning Crusade Classic last year, and the Classic ‘Season of Mastery’. The latter of which saw players able to join a new server with fresh characters to take on modified versions of the classic game’s challenges.

Wrath of the Lich King, by recorded subscription numbers, was the most popular of the game’s current nine iterations. Returning it to classic servers seems like a no-brainer, but Blizzard have already announced a single but important change to the game. The automatic ‘Dungeon Finder’ feature which was added to the game later on in Wrath of the Lich King’s life, won’t be appearing in the new ‘Classic’ version. Lead Producer of WoW Classic, Holly Longdale described the feature as being one that wasn’t a good fit for the Classic community. The WoW Classic experience is touted as one that returns to the more social and community focused experience of the earlier days.

As such, this may be the last expansion to hit Classic servers, as many members of the community view Wrath of the Lich King as the last expansion made to the original vision for the game. Considering it’s successes however, it doesn’t seem like Blizzard will be abandoning the project any time soon, and we could be looking at more ‘seasons of mastery’ in the future, potentially for Burning Crusade, and Wrath of the Lich King.

Soaring to new horizons

Looking to the future, the new name of the game is Dragonflight. As speculated by many fans, in the MMORPG’s ninth expansion the dragons will be taking centre stage. Set in their long abandoned former homeland, the Dragon Isles, the expansion will see explorers from the Horde and Alliance, travelling by ship to the newly revealed islands alongside their draconic allies. Lead narrative designer, Steve Danuser describes the isles as a place that has lain dormant for 10,000 years, hidden by ancient magic. But now as the elements and life begins to return to the land, the titanic watchers have re-activated the beacon, and recalled the dragons back to their home.

Described as an adventure of exploration and discovery, rather than warfare or grand cosmic stakes, your character will venture to the new lands alongside other explorers and researchers, rather than soldiers. Players will traverse rocky shores, long sprawling plains, icy mountains, and ancient ruins, all while the land comes alive around them with devastating elemental forces. During the new experience, players will be able to ride on a customizable dragon mount. This ‘dragon riding’ feature promises to update the experience of flying in the game, making it more dynamic with momentum, speed, and gravity being important factors.

But players who would rather be a dragon, than ride one, are not out of luck. The livestream also announced the new playable race, The Dracthyr. These draconic and humanoid hybrids will be able to pick either faction to play on, but have access to only one class. The Evoker. The Evoker is a new class, exclusive to the Dracthyr, which will give players the ability to make use of their draconic wings and breath weapons, along with colour based magics, to both damage enemies and heal allies.

Other changes and updates are set to come alongside the expansion as well. These include a return to the more classic style of ‘talent trees’, where players will earn points to customize their character every level. Professions will also be seeing an update. Gathering and crafting is said to have been greatly expanded, with the ability to specialize into more niche areas, and to complete work orders for other players. Additionally, updates to the UI to make the HUD more modern and customizable will be coming as well.

More to come

More news is expected to come out over the next few months, in the build up to these releases. No window for a release date was given for Dragonflight, but alpha and beta testing is expected to start later this year. Wrath of the Lich King Classic is slated for release in 2022. We’ll keep our eyes peeled for future updates. In other news, in May the studio will offer a preview of Warcraft’s first game built from the ground up for mobile, which is scheduled for release later this year.

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Blizzard has confirmed additional details about its plans to reveal the next World of Warcraft expansion.

The studio said last month that it would announce a new World of Warcraft expansion during an online event on April 19, and it has now confirmed exactly when and where fans can tune in.

Players will be able to watch the reveal stream on YouTube and Twitch from 9am PT / 12pm ET / 5pm BST / 6pm CEST.

World of Warcraft has received a new expansion roughly every two years since its 2004 launch, recieving it’s 8th expansion in November 2020 in the form of Shadowlands. With the 9th set to be announced during this livestream. Though historically World of Warcraft expansions have usually been announced at the studio’s own convention Blizzcon. The event has been suspended due to the global pandemic. This makes the upcoming expansion the first to be announced to a solely online audience.

“With the story in the Shadowlands coming to a conclusion, the time is at hand to get a sneak peek at what’s next for the heroes of Azeroth,” Blizzard said on Tuesday. However, keen-eyed fans may have already unearthed some hints about what could be in store for the game.

Dragonflight Rumours

Reported by Wowhead earlier this month, the expansion’s name may be ‘Dragonflight’. Unearthed from within the code of the official website, an update has been found which is thought to have leaked the name. the website’s public source code shows strings for the Dragonflight Base, Heroic and Epic Expansion pre-purchases. Similarly, the code points to a new, though currently inaccessible URL, which would be expected for a new expansion launch: dragonflight.blizzard.com.

This theory is corroborated by a second apparent leak which occoured on the same day. The leak reveals apparent key artwork for the expansion, along with a logo containing the same Name.The key art itself features Alexstrasza, the Dragonqueen of the Red Flight, in a new outfit never seen before, with her draconic form behind her. Though an imperfect view, the art is incredibly well-made, and appears to be in the form of posters similar to those found at BlizzCon and other events.

This seems to have all but confirmed to many, the prevailing theory that a dragon themed expansion was around the corner for the long running MMORPG. At the end of last year, Blizzard offered a Dragon Pack cash shop bundle, pairing several draconic mounts and minions together in a theming tactic used in the past to hint at future releases. Furthermore at the start of the year Wowhead uncovered new encrypted content going to live servers, which included textures and particle effects for a mount, a pet, and some additional items.The mount’s file name, 9fx_drakemountemerald_buff_4219045, suggested it to be a green dragon, known by fans to be the guardians of the druidic, Emerald Dream.

This led fans to speculate that the next expansion may take place on either the Dragon Isles, or Emerald Dream. Though the latter’s corrupted side, the Emerald Nightmare served as the setting for the opening raid of the Legion expansion, neither location has ever made it into the game as a fully explorable location. This is despite initial plans to include both from the very beginning, before the game’s 2004 launch.

All together, the leaks suggest that the Dragon Isles are the more likely of the two locations to become the setting of the next expansion. This lines up with what was suggested in an interview with game director Ion Hazzikostas, who implied that the team planned to follow up the more cosmic and high-concept setting of the Shadowlands, with something more terrestial and traditional for the games fantasy setting.

Whatever the expansion reveal ends up containing, we won’t know for sure until the livestream next week, on April 19

In other news, in May the studio will offer a preview of Warcraft’s first game built from the ground up for mobile, which is scheduled for release later this year.

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The post World of Warcraft expansion reveal stream, time announced first appeared on Get2Gaming.