The long awaited next chapter for long running MMO World of Warcraft, Dragonflight, is now live.
Originally revealed nearly two months ago, Dragonflight’s main appeal is the addition of dragon steeds. It isn’t just a new mechanic, and a new ride to add to your character’s traversal methods. Dragons and dragonriding are central to the storyline of the new expansion. Just to drive home just how much this expansion is about dragons, it also introduces a new player class, the Dracthyr, and a new setting in the Dragon Isles. Humans and orcs can even work together as they face a new/old common threat.
In the launch trailer they shared two weeks ago, they previewed some of the new characters coming to the game, in a way that is definitely intended to evoke Dreamcast’s How To Tame Your Dragon / Dragonriders of Pern franchise. It also showcased one of the franchise’s legacy characters returning in a big way; Alexstrasza.
Alextrasza is the queen of the dragons and the guardian of all life in Azeroth. She was a central character in many events in the lore of World of Warcraft. Of course, the fact that she’s a dragon makes her pivotal once again in the story of Dragonflight. In the trailer she is seen restoring forestry and life in the lands using her fire. In the story of the new expansion, she returns to the Dragon Isles as orcs and humans discover it for the first time.
However, also featuring in the trailer is Raszageth, attacking other smaller dragons in her wake. Raszageth is a leader of the ancient threat to humans and orcs alluded to above, namely, the Primalists. The Primalists are a rebellion against the order of dragons, who believe all the other races should be subjugated to the dragons because of their superiority.
In the lore of Dragonflight, Raszageth was originally sealed away, and was recently released by a new generation of Primalists, 20,000 years after she was originally sealed. As you can see in the trailer, Raszageth is many times larger than the dragons you will be able to ride as mounts, and she is a central villain in the new story.
If this all sounds fun to you, unfortunately you won’t be able to play it anywhere else than on PC. As recently as a few days ago, a Blizzard staffer made it clear that there are still no plans to port it to any other platform, even after they added controller support. FWIW, this is all intended to get their legacy players back in to check the new content out.
You can watch Dragonflight’s cinematic trailer below.
Source: Gamerbraves
