Seeing the trailer for Dracthyr was pretty sad. I have a background in 3D art, primarily prop/weapon/environment design, and seeing a few flaws outright in what they have in place.
WoW’s models typically share animations between rigs, and even with the dubious ‘new’ rig being added, it would be a cakewalk to add animations for more than just the Evoker class. That’s without considering the industry’s tools it has at its disposal to port over animations. You can make any rigged model Fortnite dance, so there’s literally no excuse to not allow other classes from an animation standpoint. It’s absolutely lazy of them to not allow Dracthyr to be other classes, even if it is a simple limited set (though class restrictions are dumb as a concept already).
Dracthyr being forced to go dragon-mode in combat is dumb. This is more understandable from a layman’s point of view. We have Demon Hunters, who can freely swap forms (ie meta/Demonic talents) mid-combat seamlessly through casting Fel Devastation/Eye Beam. This implies the tech for temporary swaps through abilities is possible.
The overall face-shape is unlike anything we’ve seen in Warcraft before, and not in a good way. The faces and bodies are too slender, and even with the promise of bulkier/skinnier frames, it won’t stop the scaly equivalent of baby-face here. There was a good redesign with less cuddly parts and more imposing parts, and I think to really bring out more shape diversity than just one. I’m not even saying to get rid of the original face, just to build onto it to give more interesting shapes to them all. For example, https://twitter.com/thunderbrush/status/1516627407846924288?s=21
This is something I have less experience on, as I am not involved in the gameplay aspect/coding/programming/balancing, but I will nonetheless give my own opinion on it. I think 2 specs is really lame. We need a new tank, as we’re having a drought as it is on tanks. The bare minimum should have been 3 specs, with the dream being 5 specs. I know what you’re saying, “blizzard struggles hard enough with the classes we have already”, but we are entering a new system of talents, and with that comes inherent rebalancing of EVERYTHING. Blizzard has a long time and a large team to balance all this out, since we have 9.2.5, 9.3 and season 4, and however much time it takes to get things in order. They could have even more cool specs, maybe give it the Druid treatment and give them infinite adaptability to encompass each of the Dragonflight’s own inherent strengths with a focus on specializing on them.
Overall, I’m really not down with how Dracthyr will be pushed, the most egregious being the lack of other classes. Blizzard has a long way to go before the travesty that is Shadowlands is forgotten, and putting in a bit of elbow grease is worth it.