Initial Impressions of Dragonflight

The latest World of Warcraft expansion has been out for about two weeks. I have reached the new level cap on at least one character (my raid toon, obviously). As I embark on the first raid of this expansion, let me share my initial impressions of Dragonflight.

The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

I’ve been on a Clint Eastwood kick recently, so I will use the title of one of his best films to break down my initial thoughts.

The Good

I thought about saving “the best for last” but I want you to know all the good things first. The items that fall under “the bad” and “the ugly” are mostly “me things”. You’ll see what I mean if you stick around for that part of this post.

So far the story is off to a much better start than the last expansion. The dragon aspects have always been one of the more interesting characters in this game. It’s exciting to get back to some familiar lore.

The Dragonriding is probably one of the best new mechanics the game has had in years. In the beginning, I struggled a little bit. When landing to engage a mob, I would accidentally fly back up into the air. I had grown so accustomed to “attacking to dismount” from normal mounts; it just took a little muscle retraining to overcome it.

At this point, I wouldn’t say I’m an expert dragonrider but I’m doing better. Ironically my 8-year-old is becoming a better dragonrider; perhaps it’s from watching all of those How to Train Your Dragon series on Netflix.

The Bad

Now we get into the less favorable things. As I said before, these are probably just “me things”. In other words, they are just things I, personally, don’t particularly care for but I will eventually get used to them.

There are So Many Quests! On a typical expansion, I complete all the side quests because I want to make sure I’m not looking for XP after I complete the campaign. This is not an issue in Dragonflight. I eventually stopped doing them and I still reached 70 before completing the campaign. There is no shortage of quests, that’s for sure.

They changed the timing of World Quests. Instead of resetting daily they now stick around for 2-3 days. This is an unexpected change. Perhaps it was mentioned somewhere, but I don’t read everything Blizzard publishes, just in case a spoiler is slipped in. It’s not a huge deal for me, I can adjust to it, it just complicates the gearing-for-raid initiative.

The Ugly

Now we get into the ugly. It’s unfortunate that there are issues in this category. Let’s start with Launch Day. It was a typical launch day where things bugged out. It all started with all of us standing on the docks (or zeppelin towers if you’re those other guys) watching our boat disappear. I think what really annoyed me the most is that my daughter was looking forward to it and the issue wasn’t fixed until after she had gone to bed.

Strike One, Blizzard.

Then there are the performance issues. I’ve been getting nailed with serious lag spikes that have, literally, killed me. A dragon once dropped me into lava but the game lagged just as I fell into it. By the time the lag spike ends, I’m dead and trying to find a spot to rez that isn’t in lava or surrounded by elites.

Strike Two.

The final strike is the oddest issue I’ve ever had after playing this game for 18 years. It started with a quest chain in the final zone; I entered a portal and the world would not render! Everything was black; I could only see the outlines of NPCs. In fact, I couldn’t even see myself! The problem is I had to complete this quest line in order to unlock World Quests. I submitted a ticket but worked out a way to still complete the campaign.

It doesn’t end there. In one particular zone, the world still doesn’t fully render. It’s like flying through the zone in the middle of the night. When I land, I can see the NPCs and whatever I need to do to complete quests, but it’s just so strange how dark the zone is for me. This does not happen on my wife’s computer.

Conclusion

Despite these weird issues I’ve been experiencing, I’m still enjoying myself. My hope is that the world rendering issue will resolve itself if it hasn’t been resolved already. Sometimes developers ninja-fix bugs so they can avoid admitting there was a problem.

I haven’t taken an alt through the Chromie questline yet. I’m reluctant to do that because I don’t want to see if the issue still exists. Then again, I didn’t really get to experience that questline the first time.

What are your thoughts? Did you have any of the issues I described?