Dragonflight Beta!

I got into the World of Warcraft Dragonflight Beta and this is a bit of info and a few thoughts in no particular order.

But remember that this is a BETA and all information is subject to potential change. Nothing is written in stone.

First up, the new talent trees. Old players and those who play classic are familiar with how the talent trees used to be; huge and hard to use. Then they changed them to a choice between three options every fifteen levels or so. Now? It is amazing!

Every class has two trees, one generic for the class, and one for the spec. At first glance they look really intimidating, but once you look more closely, it's not that complicated. It pays off to go over all the talents and trace a path down to the higher level talents you want. On top of that, different aspects of the class, like AoE abilities, healing and so on tend to be on one side of the tree. You can even choose to leave abilities that you don't use. So far I'm very impressed with the new system, just be aware that once Dragonflight comes, it is going to take time to go though all your characters, and you need to let it take that time. 

Check them out on Wowhead: https://www.wowhead.com/beta/talent-calc

Lets talk about the new UI next. It is very different, and a lot of the elements are super small. Bags, buttons, character window, all is much smaller than it used to be. On top of that, most of the UI is now customizable. Right click your character portrait and choose edit layout and you can move the action bars, resize them, you have a lot of options. You can even choose where you want your character portrait to be. There is also an option in the game options to re-scale UI, so if you fiddle with that and perhaps shrink the action bars, I'm sure you can get the UI to be what you need it to be. There is also a new bag slot, but that one is for specific crafting bags only.

I haven't had time to check out the new crafting system, so we're skipping that.

I did however try out the new race, the Dracthyr. This new race of dragon people start at level 58 and have their own start zone. I hope Blizzard re-balances some of the mobs in the start area, because I died a lot. That said, it was a very enjoyable journey and they did a credible job teaching you to play this new race. But why do you need to learn how to play a race you ask? Because Dracthyr can only be Evokers, either as mid-range DPS casters or as healers. They can't take any of the normal classes at all, but that is fine because their class really lean into being a winged dragon-person. They also have a humanoid form, and holy hell do they get customization options! No other race comes even close to the amount of choices you get here. Oh, and they can fly! Not just glide like Demonhunters, (they can do that too) but actually take off and fly.

This flight mechanic uses the same mechanic as they new drakes that can only fly in the Dragonflight zones and that is not always easy, but super fun when you get it to work.

From what I have seen of the first zone in the Dragon Isles, it is nice. Nothing too stand out, but after the mess that is Shadowlands, I'm so happy that it feels like Azeroth again. Some of the changes are big and sweeping, but I have high hopes that the new expansion will feel like World of Warcraft again! Rogues can even survive getting an add in a fight again, unlike now...

I don't know when the beta ends, but if possible, I'll bring you more insights at a later date, but this will have to be enough for now. Join me again next time and until then, have a great and safe week!