Phew… I left pre 9.1 (community was the main reason, content was kind of focused on fast M+, I wanted Raiden, metagaming became a factor that pushed the community so hard on perfect/min max methods that it became toxic… I was ahead , just for context, but pre-nathria (where I cleared a legendary 6/9 before stopping) and in fact BFA (which I still love) has continued to get…more e-sports.

Dragonflight looked cute in the ads, maybe “late enough” maybe that’s the casual heroic rendering (and some dungeons with friends playing for fun, not maxing out, happy at +12) that global content wants to do sometimes can enjoy. Global content in particular has always fascinated me, and the dragon-flying “minecraft Elytra style” game also fascinated me (I love flying, but air swimming very quickly became something of a “tomtom-set direction, tap autoplay, go away”) . As far as I’m concerned, a perfect combination of freedom and fun.

But I’m back to scribbling because of this… “this year” isn’t very long anymore. Add (American) holidays to that, and they’re already pretty short. Dragonflight has it all (but so did SL, every area was conceptually great), and the theme looks great, but we’re not quite into alpha yet. We don’t even know anything about dungeons except for 3 names (Neltharus, Life Pools, and Uld-something). We know more about pre-patch than the expansion itself!

It’s probably a WOTLK-style continent, in feel, in the world, in exploration, and of course dragons, but less than half a year while there isn’t even an alpha, it’s too short for this game IMHO.

This is a red flag for me. I don’t pre-order and will decide based on it. Release…