Several Blizzard developers have referred to Dragonflight as the “Third Era of World of Warcraft,” citing changes to the narrative direction and significant changes to key game ideas in the future expansion.
Preach Gaming is a famous streamer who quit covering World of Warcraft in July 2021 after becoming disillusioned with Shadowlands. With Dragonflight on the horizon, Preach returned to the MMO that launched his streaming career, starting with a tour of the Blizzard facility. He just revealed his discoveries on Twitch.
Preach interviewed many key World of Warcraft developers on the trip, including general manager John Hight and game director Ion Hazzikostas. The developers discussed how their design principles had evolved throughout the sessions. Recent expansions have mainly depended on mechanisms that are only available for one expansion, such as Azerite, Island Explorations, and Covenants. It made conceptual sense to WoW since the systems were created for certain periods of the game, but it seemed to fans like World of Warcraft was fielding ideas just to declare them failures and ditch them. World of Warcraft will strive to avoid such problems in this new period, instead relying on mechanisms and keeping them evergreen.
This “Third Era” mentality, according to Hazzikostas, will apply to World of Warcraft’s storyline as well. Preach compared the narrative flow of World of Warcraft, which comprises expansions with self-contained tales, to Final Fantasy 14’s long-form storytelling. While World of Warcraft cannot and will not imitate Final Fantasy 14’s approach, it does want to begin producing lengthier narrative arcs that span many expansions.
The “First Era” of World of Warcraft was presumably from Vanilla through Wrath of the Lich King, with Cataclysm ushering in the second. Assuming that is the case, people are eager to see what the World of Warcraft will accomplish in its “Third Era.” The “Originally Era” is what first drew players to World of Warcraft, as seen by WoW Classic, but it lacked convenience and narrative direction. The “Second Era,” on the other hand, updated the game in key ways, such as Transmogrification, storyline chapters, and Cross-Faction play, but sometimes missed the charm that brought players to the game in the first place. If World of Warcraft can take the greatest features of its past eras, the “Third Era of WoW” may be just what the game needs to flourish in today’s market.
World of Warcraft is now accessible on PC. Dragonflight will be available on November 28th.
