Blizzard announces six new ‘World Of Warcraft: Dragonflight’ content patches: “We need to do better”

Blizzard have detailed a plan for the future of World Of Warcraft: Dragonflight, admitting that they “need to do better”.

In a blog posted to the WoW website, executive producer Holly Longdale said: “It’s been an inspiring month for the World of Warcraft team, as we’ve watched the world soar over the Dragon Isles, defend their Renowned allies from the Primalist threat, stay awhile and listen to tales of regret, craft inspired items, delve into dungeons, and make vast, vast quantities of soup.

“But this tale is just beginning. A WoW expansion is not a single moment in time but a journey —we know that the merit of an expansion hinges on the sustained quality of its entire arc. Years after its release, Legion is remembered fondly as much for the 11-week content update cadence that served as the framework for its first year as it is for artifact weapons or Khadgar’s brilliant dad jokes.”

Longdale went on to detail how they are planning to release “six content patches, fairly evenly spaced, over the course of 2023.

“This will include two major updates, the traditional pillars of our expansions—with new zones, raids, and seasonal rewards—but in between those, we want to keep expanding and evolving our world with new world events, updates to systems, and evergreen holidays, new dungeon experiences, new narrative chapters and cinematics that can serve as epilogues or as prologues to the next major step in the adventure, and, most importantly of all, more opportunities for us to respond to feedback and change or add elements based on what we’re hearing is most needed by our players.”

She added: “The goal is simply more Warcraft: more story, more content, more rewards, more events, more tech improvements, with less downtime between them. I don’t want to spoil everything, and I’m confident that there are at least a couple of surprises coming along the way that no one is expecting. And some of the details simply aren’t decided yet, because your feedback will help shape exactly what we prioritise in these updates.”

Read the full update here.

A trial version of the Dragonflight expansion is now also available until January 2, 2023 for players with either a subscription or active Game Time.

The expansion was first confirmed back in April. Earlier this summer, Activision Blizzard announced three digital versions of Dragonflight (Base, Heroic, and Epic, costing £40, £55 and £75 respectively) alongside a £130 physical release.

It was announced earlier this summer that World Of Warcraft: Dragonflight will be removing gendered language from its character creation menu. In the existing game, when creating a character players are presented with either ‘male’ or ‘female’. However, Dragonflight will be changing this to ‘body 1’ and ‘body 2’.