Blizzard would like you to please give them some money now for their upcoming “all the dragon things we could come up with” World of Warcraft expansion Dragonflight.
Dragons are a thing
Announced back in April (on 4/20 no less) you can roll up the dragon race to play the dragon class on the dragon island where you will fly around on a dragon and do all the dragon things with your dragon pals while seeing all the dragons and dragons and dragons dragons dragons.
I swear, if Hemet Nesingwary isn’t out there asking you to collect dragon poop it will be a travesty, because Blizzard is going so deep on dragons that I’m starting to wonder if they’ll have a dragon colonoscopy quest for us. We’re going all in, so why not go ALL the way in?
After the descent from “good” to “bleh” that was the Legion, Battle for Azeroth, Shadowlands expansion progression, I still need to be sold on this being more than a few gimmicks to get me to buy a box.
A more expensive box.
When I was looking at expansions and pricing and pre-orders back in late 2019, Blizzard was charging $40 for the base Shadowlands box, $60 for the Heroic option, and $80 for the Epic expansion ride.
But inflation is hitting in places beyond the gas pump, and Blizzard wants ten bucks more for each level now.
Dragonflight pre-order pricing
And then there is the physical collector’s edition box, which will set you back $130.
Once again, you don’t get a character boost with the base box, something we got the last time an expansion was $50. You need to pony up another $20 for the boost… though given the price of one ala carte is $60, that might be a deal if you feel you need one.
There are also some in-game pre-order bonuses, but you will need to have the Shadowlands expansion it seems. It is there in the fine print. A chance to sell even more boxes, though at least they’re selling some of those at half price right now. (Though if you shell out the $90 for the Dragonflight Epic edition you get a $20 copy of Shadowlands if you didn’t own it already. So I guess if you didn’t own Shadowlands and wanted a character boost it would be cheaper to buy the $90 virtual box. But I don’t need either.)
I guess if you’re really into dragons, you’re probably all in. But some of the things they’re bragging about are not all that impressive in the context of the game’s history.
Level 70? What, again you mean?
Meanwhile, the most interesting part of the announcement is in the fine print, as it
World of Warcraft: Dragonflight will be available on or before December 31, 2022.
I had written off a 2022 expansion launch for Dragonflight previously, just based on Blizzard history. Announce an expansion and ship it in the SAME CALENDAR YEAR? Unpossible!
But there it is, on the page, as immutable as any web content… which means they’ll change it the second they need to and maybe comp you a mount for your faith in pre-ordering if they do. I wouldn’t bet money against that happening.
I guess the plan for 2022 is Diablo Immoral for Q2, Wrath of the Lich King Classic for Q3, and Dragonflight for Q4, with whatever Overwatch 2 really is somewhere in the middle, and however many Hearthstone expansions they can fit into a calendar year. Oh, and Warcraft Arclight Rumble. How could I forget that?
They have to keep up the product roll outs to make whatever metrics they promised Microsoft when they signed the deal to be acquired. Remember that from back in January? It slips my mind some days, but all of this may soon be Microsoft’s problem.
I think I might wait until WoW is on the XBox Game Pass PC to come back to retail. We shall see.
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The Ancient Gaming Noob 
“Diablo Immoral” – That’s not a typo, is it?
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Either they will change the release date if needed as you said, or release it even if it needs more time, and “it’s done when it’s done” is truly dead. Sad either way.
… or maybe they will finish a software project on time, but that might be a world first, so I’m not banking on it.
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@Bhagpuss – Not even a little bit.
@Archey – Indeed, it is possible that they are far enough along that they’ll be ready to go for a Q4 launch. But historically it seems like a short run between announcement and launch, they have been over optimistic before, and there were the disruptions of last summer that I am sure had some impact on productivity. But maybe a dragon expansion is easier than I think.
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I’m still trying to decide whether it’s worth it to actually jump into Retail for Dragonflight, and Blizz aiming for Q4 2022 doesn’t exactly help me any. I’d much rather poke around at my own pace and then decide, but I’ve also got a lot of other things to think and do –MMO wise– before Retail even comes up on the menu. Oh well.
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@PCRedbeard – I am not going to say “never,” because I have eaten those words before. But I am not sorely tempted either, I am not even engaged enough to attend to the details of the announcements. But sometimes that works in my favor. Sometimes it is better to go in cold with low expectations and find enjoyment in what you get. We’ll see.
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Not only do we get to level to 70,we also apparently get talent trees! Whooo! History really is circular, apparently.
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I am not enthused, at least at the moment. Not into dragon people riding dragon mounts. Not really into dragon people at all actually. But I’m sure it seemed like as good an easy idea as any b/c look at how much cash that GoT pulled in. 😐
I’m also not amused at the price increase. To me, recent inflation is all the more reason not to increase the price on a game. I guess I’ll have to decide if it’s worth $50 to make a video of opening day.
Needless to say though, if they’re implementing paired programming and TDD this thing won’t see light of day before the end of the year anyway.
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As if Blizzard read this post, they’ve now announced that there’ll be an XP boost in the run-up to Wrath to make it easier to get caught up. They want your business, Wilhelm!
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@Shintar – I saw that, and it does change the equation a bit. It would be better if there was a solid timeline to a Wrath Classic launch, but it does make it more likely that we’ll show up.
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