World of Warcraft’s New Expansion ‘Dragonflight’

Earlier this month, Wowhead discovered strings in the public source code of the World of Warcraft website, which indicated that the name and theme of the next expansion dubbed “Dragonflight” may have been accidentally leaked.

Since last month, Blizzard has confirmed official news of the game’s next expansion, and these website updates may have been designed to accommodate that. It was finally revealed on Tuesday, April 19. Blizzard also recently registered for the web address dragonflight.blizzard.com in the wake of the rumored leak. Wowhead notes that this website seems to have been certified last week.

Information about the leak was also initially shared over the past couple of days by a user on the MMO-Champion forums. Back in 2015, Scaleface provided details about Legion, the 2016 expansion. Recently, we are seeing Scaleface teasing us about this new World of Warcraft expansion called Dragonflight.

Expectations were high in the weeks leading up to its release, with Blizzard being quoted as saying: “We’re excited to show you what we’ve been working on and where your adventures in Azeroth will go next.” Newly registered web certifications had also reinforced the concept with some encrypted items and new back pieces.

There was also the mention of Base, Heroic and Epic purchase options for Dragonflight in the website’s public source code. World of Warcraft’s last expansion, Shadowlands, also had these three purchase options, but it didn’t include either a new race or a new class. So in line with many open rumors, we expect that “Dragonflight” would feature the addition of either a new race, a new class, or even both.

According to a Reddit post that expertly summarized the leak, we expect to see an introduction of the next playable race called dracthyr and the return of the original talent trees. The playable race will likely feature humanoid dragons that aptly fit the theme of the expansion. They will be neutral at the onset, just like the Pandaren that was launched in 2012’s Mists of Pandaria expansion pack.

There are suggestions that a new playable class called Evoker, which casts Arcane spells, will be introduced as well. The leak also suggested that there will only be two columns in the talent trees this time instead of three. 

Although most of this information hasn’t been confirmed, there have been longstanding rumors that the next WoW expansion would be set on Azeroth’s mysterious Dragon Isles. In fact, days before its release, rumors were rife that the core theme of the upcoming expansion would revolve around Azeroth’s dragon flights.

The dragon flights were historically empowered to steward the mortal races of the planet and protect the natural order but have been sidelined lately as player factions became more powerful, and in-fighting between different flights threatened their very existence. A previous expansion, Cataclysm, saw the black dragonflight championed by the ruthless Deathwing almost wipe out Azeroth in its entirety.

Several other leaks associated with the new “Dragonflight” expansion have also been accumulating and circulating online. Some noteworthy examples are the images of the dragon race and expanded talent tree, along with details on the new Evoker class. Currently, more images have almost confirmed most of this to be true.

Posters and promo art for the game that appears similar to the actual Blizzard art also started circulating the web just two hours after the leak. The art depicted red dragon queen Alexstrasza next to a dragon, and the “Dragonflight” logo was located on the bottom left of the poster.

Although the authenticity of the posters hasn’t been verified as of yet, the fuzzy quality and ostensibly inconsistent colors don’t add a lot of credibilities. According to skeptics, the color registration doesn’t include any yellow, despite it being used most of the time. Many have even concluded that someone mocked the image up themselves.

There’s no official word on the exact features that the new expansion will possess, but we expect to see the introduction of a new class with a dragon theme that will perhaps resemble the oft-requested “Dragonsworn” theme from in-game lore.

This has already been an incredibly busy year for Activision Blizzard, and there are talks about the company being involved in several legal proceedings. World of Warcraft has been experiencing a bit of a downward trend in recent years as Blizzard concentrates on engagement padding over fun at the behest of Activision.

Multiple allegations of misconduct by the company started springing up in the middle of last year. Microsoft announced in January that it would acquire Activision Blizzard for $68.7 billion. Several US Senators have accused Microsoft of protecting Activision Blizzard’s CEO Bobby Kotick after news of the sale got out.

There are high hopes that the purchase of Activision Blizard by Microsoft, whose shareholder culture focuses on Azure, will enable World of Warcraft to become more of a game again.  This should also bring hope to players that wish to sell or buy WoW Dragonflight accounts. Although the deal isn’t expected to be sealed until next year, we’re expecting to see some significant changes coming very soon.