Oh, one thing I forgot to mention. Lag in the Azure Span is a big problem. I assume it’s because of the Cobalt Assembly and maybe the Wild Arcana quest when it’s up. But it makes it frustrating to do other things in the zone, which is sad because it’s my favorite zone visually and my favorite place to go herbing because it has a lot of writhebark for my Inscriptionist.
One more thing I remembered:
Is there a reason you guys chose Renown 23 with Valdrakken to lock taming Dragonkin behind for hunters?
I know in a month or two most of us will have that and it will be a non issue, but it feels real bad being flung onto the Dragon Isles, being presented with Dragon Frogs, Dragon Horse-Things, etc. and finding out you can’t tame them until you pretty much max out your renown. (and this doesn’t even touch on the Fae Dragons, Veilwings, etc. in old content we are looking forward to taming).
Ottuk were much more reasonable at Renown 11. (Even though I still haven’t reached that myself, as Tuskarr seem to have significantly less Renown sources than the other 3)
(I included this because as far as first impressions go, not being able to tame dragons for ~2-3 months [depending on your pace] into a dragon based expansion feels very bad, and I can only imagine newbie hunter’s frustrations that don’t know that option is coming later because they don’t pay attention to fansites.)
EDIT: To add, thank you for the variety of hunter pets this expansion <3 I love my new Butterfly. I just wish I could respec it to Ferocity, haha.
I have had it work, guildies and friends have had it work, and I’ve had it fail the last few days, so I stopped trying.
We think it’s the fact that other players deplete the fishing hole while we’re gone, and that destroys everyone’s nets. Which, if that is indeed what’s happening, I hope is a bug and not intended, because that’s allowing a single person to grief an entire server.
But yea, the fishing stuff in Dragonflight has been neat so far. I just learned today that you aren’t supposed to kill the lunkers on WQs with your abilities, you are supposed to harpoon them and drag them onto land to get extra loot from them. Lol. It all makes sense now. Wish they had explained that though, cause I didn’t learn until I read a wowhead comment.
I do question the decision to make the Tuskarr Harpoon Fishing WQs weekly rather than biweekly though. They already have less renown sources, seems like an odd decision decision, considering the WQs only reward basic things like 75 Renown, rather than gear or such, why are they the weekly world quest?
My favorite part is when I finally find a Titan node, use overload on it, mine it, then use the portal, and… it teleports me directly on top of the same node I’m already on. Or to one halfway across the map. Even though the description says it goes to the next closest node. Lol.
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I don’t what it is, but I couldn’t find myself able to level past 62 before I turned it off and haven’t played since.
I played quite a bit in Alpha/Beta, so I knew what the leveling experience felt like.
I’m more of a solo type of a player. I enjoy doing outdoor group content and group content, regular dungeons, LFR, but mainly, I enjoy doing my own thing.
I knew heading into this that there was going to be little to do at end-game that gave me much excitement to look forward to. There was nothing exciting or new like a Torghast or Island Expeditions, just feels like I had little to sink my teeth into.
I realize there are activities to do, renown/rep to unlock, but it feels so limited compared to what I grew accustomed to in Legion, MoP, BFA and even Shadowlands felt like it had much more to do for solo content players.
We have no mission tables to do, loved doing those for flavor and side fun, no callings/emissary type quests, just not much of anything that makes me feel like logging in for to invest hours on end leveling my army of alts.
Maybe it’s a combination of burn out, but I’m just not feeling the solo player experience this expansion, I’m really not.
Then reading world quests were going to be refreshed only twice a week when there’s already a meager amount baffled me even more. I understand the need to balance FOMO, feeling like you have to log in every day to a more spaced out experience, but it makes the end-game experience for someone like me feel like a shallow experience, a husk of an experience.
Maybe my opinions will change in the future and I’ll give it more of a chance, but I’m… not feeling it… AT all.
7 Likes
What does overload even do? I got some 12h cooldown overload thing (somewhere, don’t even remember where) and I have no clue what it is or what it does. Information about this is so sparse and I don’t want to read guides or manuals to find out what something this basic does.
The game really needs proper explanations on what these things do in-game.
Something that is annoying me since a few days, is “Explosive Ash”. I think I’ve already completed this quest before, and it keeps showing up:
When I then zoom in on the map there’s nothing:
There was another quest in Valdrakken that basically had 2 turn in points where 1 was wrong, something with a Dryad. Not being able to find something that’s located on the map when altitude is playing a big role in open world like with DF it gets really frustrating to be fed incorrect information on the map.
At first I felt the same as you. I’m standing around in Valdrakken and thinking I’ve got nothing to do. I did some of the Wrathion citadel stuff and started having fun. I’m slowly starting to realize that there is a ton to do but very little in the way of things that smack me in the face and say “Hey go do this now!”, it’s not guided at all, which is I think the point. Without the constant guiding though it’s hard to figure out what to do next. I think it would be interesting if there was a “suggestions” window that looked at the things you had already done and provided a list of a dozen things you could be doing based on what you’ve done already. Dragonflight seems to require people to be a self-starter, and really, not very many people are and that causes them paralysis lol. Especially as a solo player without a guild pointing out whatever thing they’ve all decided to do (I’m in a guild but mostly just do my own thing anyway lol). As a solo player myself it’s challenging to figure out what I can be doing if it isn’t obvious so I have to spend a lot of time aimlessly reading or bumping into interesting things by accident.
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After you overload one of the elemental veins, it will put the explanation in the mining journal for you. From wowhead for easier posting:
- Overload Molten Node - spawns a Furious Flame that drops some some extra ore and Rousing Fire
- Overload Hardened Node - lets you mine the node a bunch of extra times for more ore and Rousing Earth
- Overload Titan Node - opens a Titan-Touched Portal which you can use to travel to another nearby mining node
- Overload Primal Node - will give you all the special elemental node buffs at double duration (4 min instead of 2 min)
- Overload Infurious Node (War Mode only) - will cast a shockwave that knocks back enemies and gives you a buff
It’s worth overloading each type once for the Knowledge, other than that, I find the only one worth overloading to really be Titan. Molten and Hardened drop level 1 ore, regardless of your skill, so meh.
This is a weekly Engineering Quest (and if you check wowhead, it’s one of the worst received quests lol. Low Drop Rate and Incredibly Spread Out Mobs and the birds essentially have to be killed twice [either as a feather or as a full bird]) And it requires 20 so it’s doubly mean. Plus, they hotfixed it so the phoenixes in the dungeon don’t drop the Ash, which is just ???
If you aren’t an Engineer and it’s on your map, I would probably go to the Bug Report forums.
I’m in a similar boat. Upon reaching 70, It’s not very clear what activities give what rewards, so I’ve been forced to frequently check wowhead to get an idea for what content I want/don’t want.
This is especially true for crafting professions. The quests did an alright job at showcasing how to get the ball rolling, but I found myself stonewalled when my Blacksmithing level got to around 50. Hardly anything I could craft would level my skill, and the trainer had no recipes left to teach me, so I had to dig around on wowhead to figure out where and what to do next.
Outside of the predictable shaky 72 hour launch window, leveling was fairly smooth, and the initial campaign was quite enjoyable. Special shoutout to the quest chain at the Temporal Conflux. Some of the funnest quests I’ve done in years. With the Infinite Dragonflight back, I’m really hoping to see some alternate timeline shenanigans pop up in a future dungeon or raid. They’re one of my favorite villains in Warcraft, running around doing wibbly wobbly timey wimey stuff.
Dragonriding is amazing. Honestly a lot better than I thought it would be. Obviously some growing pains adjusting from regular flying, but it’s a very enjoyable and clever way to repurpose an existing game mechanic. Though I do hope down the line regular flying becomes available in the Dragon Isles, and Dragonriding also available outside of it.
My biggest gripe is one that’s very specific.
There’s an elite mob named Breezebiter in Azure Span that has a low % chance at dropping a mount.
The caveat is that Breezebiter is just a regular elite mob, and not a rare, so it falls under standard tagging rules, in that only up to 5 people can tag it and get loot.
Combine this with it’s very campable spawn point, long respawn timer, and frequent raid groups of people trying to realm hop/naively share kills makes for a very frustrating time trying to merely be eligible for loot.
There’s also no daily loot lockout since it’s not a rare, so the same people are frequently scouring across servers trying to kill it as many times as possible at any given point in the day.
It’s basically Fallen Charger 2.0 but even worse due to the tagging limitations.
So I’m hoping at some point Breezebiter gets promoted to rare elite and gets the Fallen Charger treatment, namely a daily loot lockout paired with a better drop rate.
3 Likes
I’m the type of player who loves being overloaded with content and allowed to choose content at my own pace. I think Dragonflight has been very good in that regard. While not perfect, having the options to do the type of content I choose and am rewarded by doing any form of content is a very good feeling.
While I primarily focus on Mythic Raiding, I do understand it feels “bad” not being able to get everything done. I don’t believe it’s fully on Blizzard to time-gate content so “we” don’t burn ourselves out. While they should be cognizant of it, it’s important to have a healthy balance to let me choose for myself while keeping things from being egregious.
I’d love for a similar(if even a smaller scale) experience every patch, but the issue is gear is so strong from the prior tier it feels worthless to do, since gear is a huge carrot on the stick for any player who does key content and raid content.
Dragon riding is awesome, I do wonder if in the future there would be some hybrid form where I can “afk” and auto-run to my destination on my flying mount and we can introduce the system to all mounts while allowing the legacy system if someone wishes to use it for their travels.
While there were a lot of bugs, it’s been a phenomenal experience thus far.
2 Likes
I thought I had a 12h cd item to do this, but doesn’t seem to be the case. I’ll have to look up how this actually works because I can’t find it in-game anymore 
I am an engineer, it’s just not showing up as actual quest it seems, only on the map 
The Launch was a bit of a bumpy ride, with various issues. That aside though, I have had a great time. Levelling to 70 didn’t take too long at all and was enjoyable.
I have spent most of my time getting my rep up with the various factions and flying at top speed across the zones collecting minerals to help me level engineering.
I do feel though at times to get rep up it is a choice of grind or wait for the new world quests / weekly quests. I do appreciate not being bombarded with loads of world quests every day, but I would like a couple to make the rep grind seem less of a grind.
In terms of the environments, they are all fairly varied, I can’t say I have a favourite one yet though.
I haven’t done many dungeons, but the ones I have went fairly smoothly and were all different in design and mechanics.
I am looking forward to seeing how the story unfolds so hoping to get my rep / renown up to the required levels to unlock the next chapters.
I really wish our Dragons could be used in the old zones though, as normal flying mounts, as I am already growing attached to my Dragon
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My early thoughts are that it’s a great expansion, Dragonflying is fun and engaging, professions are more interesting and the leveling process feels smooth. Talent trees are certainly a great addition and a good start for the future. 
My only complaints thus far:
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Nokhud Offensive has become an unpleasant experience due to community expectations, a wall-jump style of skip is required near Nokhudon Hold, if you are unsuccessful you are immediately spotted and then killed. I found that type of skip to be a maddening experience in The Everbloom when players were expected to be competent wall climbers in order for the skip to be successful.
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My level 69 Warlock can no longer ride the boat to dragonland, it phases away each time I approach the dock in Stormwind. I went to check if there was a portal available in the Mage Tower, it would not allow me to pass through.
That’s it for now, overall I really like the direction things are going. Keep it up.
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4 more things i noticed. Actually I am missing some raw gold sources like callings… especially when everything at the start of an expansion is so expensive.
Also i noticed a lot of people not farming the normal herbs and ores and only going for the elemental ones, which leads in the end to a map full of normal herbs and ores,
And for god sake why can u downgrade items while recafting…??? This is something that should never happen, you put ressources into an item and get it back worse if your unlucky.
Pls do something against the very unfair profession hopping to get extra rep at artisan consortium and mettle for professions.
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Honestly I have absolutely LOVED this expansion thus far. I quested very slowly by doing all the side quests and completing each zone before continuing to the next. Honestly, a full applause to the quest and script team. They did a PHENOMENAL job of giving the NPCs personalities and making the player character actually care about them. The dialog after turning in a quest or receiving a quest was so well written!
The expansion gameplay has also been awesome! Dragonflight is SO fun and it’s nice to have the option to stay interactive with the game while traveling or having the choice to use a flight master to step away while in transit. The wide variety of talent options and playstyles is also so fun! It’s nice that when I want to change things up I don’t necessarily have to go to an entirely different specialization, but rather just swap talents around.
The dungeons have been really fun as well. I’m looking forward to the Mythic keystones since I do think they are a bit too easy in their mythic version. We were able to easily conquer them severely undergeared at the start of the week. I wish they were a tad bit harder, but I’ll eventually be able to satisfy that itch once they come into rotation for Mythic+ as the expansion continues.
Player vs. Player has been a lot of fun too! Especially in the world content with dragonflight! Chasing down or trying to outmaneuver enemies is SO much fun! I will admit there needs to be a greater inspection on balancing though. I’m surprised Blizzard has not acted on some of the more obscene offenders at the moment.
The new profession system has been awesome! I’m sure the crafting order system will pick up more steam as players craft more powerful items and others can see what is available. I do wish the public order system would list ALL orders available for crafting though instead of us having to click through each individual item to see if there is a crafting order available. I also think players should be able to request a specific quality type in the public system order. It’s a shame a player can place a request and just has to hope that someone who specializes in that item picks up the order; otherwise, they risk receiving a low quality item. Aside from that, the new system is definitely a nice and welcomed change!
The new battle pets have been awesome in design! I really think Blizzard did a good job of creating the new models for these pets.
I really like that the world quests are bi-weekly. I don’t feel as pressured to do them daily at risk of “falling behind.” It’s also nice to be “caught up” on them and allow myself time to engage in other content.
I really enjoy the new reputation system! I thoroughly enjoy the fact that none of it is tied to player power, and that it gives us agency to decide what and who we want to focus reputation on. I also really enjoy the change in the reputation to that of the “renown” system for it. I enjoy seeing the constant rewards and having more options to pursue.
So thus far I have had a phenomenal time with the expansion! One of my biggest issues though is the fact that there is no real story explaining WHY the Dragon Isles are suddenly open now. I was hoping that story would be explained but am still hoping it will be explained in the future.
Overall - great job with this expansion Blizzard!
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Having done some crafting, it looked like an interesting system compared to the old one, but I’m starting to greatly prefer the old one.
- Crafting orders are a nice concept, but please just remove the crafting order quest. It feels way too forced and just a massive waste of materials. I would rather see everything tradable and just ditch this system.
- Different ranks of materials is taking up so many slots. I now have 2 different SAVIOR items that take up space… Getting a lower rank craft seems “nice” on paper, but it’s a total mess in my inventory and I don’t really want the lower rank one, but throwing it away is also a massive waste of items
I’d ditch engineering and just pick up herbing instead but I can’t, because that locks me out of my Loot-a-rang.
I enjoyed engineering in SL despite the system being close to useless, now not so much anymore. It’s extremely overwhelming and complicated and it’s extremely hard to get an overview of what I need crafting for, or what I need others to craft for me. The multiple qualities of items makes things so much more complex, and the amount of different stats that influence the outcome of a recipe, and the amount of optional reagents etc is just way too much.
I want to go back to the system where we had a flask, which had a few ingredients that I could simply gather, and then craft that flask. I don’t have the time and patience for this convoluted system. I just want the same easy way to get some gadgets and make some consumables for myself so I don’t have to farm gold to get it from the AH.
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Just to add about the Profession system: Most of my guildies and I are pretty much bottlenecked at 65 in our Professions.
For engineering, the only reliable source of points would be to spec into Explosives, then do the daily CD once I invest 30 points in a sub-spec. However, therein lies the problem.
I can’t spec into Explosives until I hit 75 Engineering. All of the recipes I currently know, except the goggles (and bracers if I take the time to learn them), will turn green at 70, and thus, 75 will be extremely expensive to reach, compared to someone who bee-lined right for Explosives. The goggles/bracers also require a Spark of Ingenuity, so… (To give someone an idea, the toys, the non-spark recipes that go to 75, that turn green at 70, cost about 10,000g to craft each, and are selling for 4-5k each right now, and that’s if they sell, the price is dropping every day. And even if we farm the mats, that’s a lot of loss from just selling the raw materials we’re forced to take. And since the recipes will be green from 70-75, it will probably take 20-30+ toys to get those 5 points.)
There’s other recipes that can be used for those skills, but they are super rare drops from the Gold Swog Bags you get from trading in 75 Copper Coins from Fishing. (I only got the toy my first turn in, felt bad D:) Those recipes are being sold for 300k+ in the AH because of their rarity and because people know they’re pretty much required to hit 100 in a profession.
I -think- there’s recipes gated behind the final rep of the artisan’s consortium that can give a chance of skill up, but that’s months away. Most of the Renown recipes aren’t much use unless people are posting crafting orders - for instance, I have the recipe for the blue tailoring scissors - they give skill ups - however, they are not only BoP, but they require 300 Artisan’s Mettle, so I can’t even just craft them for the skillups for myself then vendor them.
An easy fix for this would be introducing a BFA scrapper-like system that allows us to regain the Artisan’s Mettle spent on any BoP piece of Profession Gear. This could also be used to allow us to regain Sparks of Ingenuity and other hard to get materials. (Much like BFA, have it be at the cost of the other materials used to craft the item - so we’d get the Mettle back, but not the gears, bolts, awakened/rousing items, etc. used to craft)
Is the intent that most of us remain at 65ish in our profession for the majority of the expansion until the recipes stop selling at high prices and the prices start to lower? If so, what about people on dead servers where those prices will never lower?
It feels like the intent was for us to use the Crafting Orders system to level from 50-75/100, but the Crafting Order system is almost always empty because there’s so many crafters compared to people needing crafting.
The fact we have no way to refund our specialization points is the biggest problem in this, as I could easily respec and grab the Explosives Tree and have a recipe to work on skill ups daily to 100. But I didn’t know this ahead of time, and no guides pointed it out, the game gives no indication, etc. So I essentially screwed myself over by focusing on the toy aspect of engineering, and that feels bad. D:
Overall, the profession system revamp is nice, but the bottleneck is really discouraging.
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i got the same problem with engineering I am stuck now, because i skilled in the wrong tree and got nothing that gives skill except the spark googles…
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Really love the direction Dragonflight is heading so far, especially in the story department. The game FEELS nice because the environment, the characters we are interacting with are nice, they’re hopeful looking to new horizons and the Dracthyr are just wonderful character-wise. It’s amazing how many light quests there are without serious stakes, and how many little stories are nestled in the game. It’s such a welcoming place and compared to the last few expansions it’s a major shift in tone and storytelling which I massively appreciate.
This is the direction WoW should be in. We don’t need amazing grand stakes in the realms of death or some such other place, we don’t need genocidal war dictators, we just need something fantastic and with decent conflict.
Chris Metzen once said the world was the most important character and I think that’s something that had been lost as years go on. I never really felt like the World was a focal point even in an expansion where quite literally the world was talking to us through it’s champion in Magni. She felt less alive then than she does now. This is putting Azeroth back as a focal point character in my view, a completely living world that feels great to explore and see!
This is the first time since Mists I’ve been completely and totally enamored with the story direction you’ve gone, it’s refreshing, it’s lore rich, it’s intriguing, and it grounds the various cultures of the isles, and those who visit. The world is more inclusive and kinder, something we desperately needed compared to expansions of the past.
This is the best thing you have released in a long time and I Hope you continue to push the story in this direction, please. Leave the other zereth’s alone, we don’t need cosmic mumbo jumbo, we just need to be home and not have the factions trying to destroy each other.
The world design is also great, so much interesting locales, it’s both vertical and horizontal, and it’s got such good flow when Dragonriding and soaring among the massive trees in the Azure Span or through the ruins in Thaldrazus.
As for the gameplay elements, I’ve really enjoyed each class I’ve dug into so far. I think the profession revamp is a massive success and hope the past expansions see some form of an overhaul in the future to utilize this kind of stuff, it’s the first time I’ve ever really felt any kind of drive to work on Professions as much as I want to now. A capital city with all the amenities you need is nice too, I find most of the time I’m on is in the Dragon Isles, which is great.
I do have one complaint right now. Stop gating the story through Renown, that’s my major issue right now. People who can get through it faster are essentially spoiling the discoveries for those of us who move slower, so we get left behind as they progress the story onward. Just let the major story elements be played freely with no reputation requirements, and I encourage you to remove the ones that exist now.
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I’m a bit late regarding the exact context of the title but:
The overall questing experience was great and finishing up each area including every minor quest chain has felt good overall. It really helps when not everything is tied to the major plot but can exist as it’s own story setting up individual support for the overall world building.
The dungeons have a good variety though some places feel a bit empty due to their sheer size and dimensions. Uldaman maybe has a bit too much trash corridors towards the end that come across as more filler than content.
Dragonriding overall feels great and the pacing towards finishing up all glyphs felt good since you could boost speed and recovery of vigors early on and towards the end added more mileage for endgame activities that were more centered around longer travels benefitting from the last boosts in the progression tree.
Crafting in it’s early stages was fine and I used a couple of my early items for myself until the dungeon grind had filled out most slots. But once you want to get past 60 skill points you are really dependend on crafting orders that don’t really come along outside of guild/friends since very few players use the order system so far for the more advanced items. Also: If you are not well informed about all the baseline sources for spec points it feels a lot like being drip fed.
Endgame content on a weekly basis has been a lot more relaxed compared to the entirety of the last 3 xpacs. I can get all world quests done within an hour or faster. Rares have their relevance for a good chunk of the time but don’t really feel mandatory after that. The high renown gating for certain campaign quest chains feels a bit much without really pushing reputation via item/treasure grind.
PvP was okay so far since I learned pretty quickly that it’s not going to work without gearing which is fairly simple and quick this time. Probably the best change for players to jump in and play at any time on a decent level.
What is weird about world PvP though: Horde is once a gain dominating “acitive players” on Warmode but Alliance will most likely be grouping up and dominating locally. It seems that WM is mostly seen as an outcome boost for those who choose it on Horde side similar to BFA times where most Horde players would only care about +10% extra AP and rarely fight back the Alliance zergs that would just check in for their weekly quest kills and then opt out again.
Certain areas are really choking on my PCs performance (Valdrakken) or had and still have major lag issues during peak times. The Plains/Span boarder especially was already a complete lag spike in the first 2 hours when I’d have to traverse it a few times getting all the glyphs.
The definitely frustrating part of the addon experience basically peaked after one week when either progressing the events or accessing the NPCs at the Obsidian Citadel made me almost quit for the day since I was deadlocked in my reputation progress by this.
Another individual gripe is the summoning of the “Ancient Protector” near Tyrhold which seems like badly implemented or never tested by the team. It is somewhat clear how it is supposed to work but it is just pure frustration when dealing with the process alone and almost like a guessing game when it’s going to work.
Looking forward I hope that there will be (and as it seems work is put into this) more long term casual incentives to play outside of raiding/5man/pvp be it just for cosmetic unlocks or story progression outside of the main campaigns. And I hope that stuff like world events or features like the Brawler’s Guild will get additions or partial overhauls in the - not necessary near - future of this game.
2 Likes