Image: Blizzard Entertainment
Blizzard has big plans to capitalise on World of Warcraft: Dragonflight’s success.
World of Warcraft's latest expansion Dragonflight has been one of its best-received expansions in recent history, so it should come to no surprise that Blizzard plans to double down on its success. In a new blog post, Blizzard has promised that Warcraft will get six content updates over the course of 2023 via an ambitious new roadmap.
In a blog post penned by Warcraft’s executive producer Holly Longdale, the company admitted that recent expansions have failed to push out the continuous content updates that made older expansions like Legion so successful. All of that changes with Dragonflight, as the company prepares to ‘nurture’ Azeroth as a living world. Longdale wrote:
In planning out the road ahead following the release of Dragonflight, we've been mindful of the duty we owe our players to nurture this living world and, frankly, the need to do better than we have at times in the recent past. Our goal for Dragonflight is that there should always be something right around the corner, with a new update hitting our test realms shortly after the last one is live and in your hands.
So, what does this mean? For Dragonflight players, it means six content updates are coming in 2023, including new raids, zones and seasonal rewards to keep them engaged at all times. There will be two major content drops, and then four smaller updates added in between to keep players coming back for new world events, story quests and dungeons.
All that starts with the upcoming 10.0.5 patch going live next year, which adds a Trading Post system that lets players earn a bunch of cosmetic rewards, and allows Poor and Common-quality items to be used as transmog appearances. That means you can dress up however you want now, without having to worry about stats. After this update goes live, a new quest campaign with more replayable world content will hit the PTR and set up the next chapter of Dragonflight.
According to Longdale, by the time players wrap up that new quest, “it should be obvious what our next destination must be.” The producer is careful to say that there is no specific formula for the size or shape of the updates outlined in this roadmap, which means that some will definitely be smaller than others, but all of them will bring new stuff. She writes, “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.”
Here’s the 2023 roadmap:
Blizzard is also running a trial version of Dragonflight for anyone who hasn’t picked it up yet, available to anyone with a Warcraft subscription or active Game Time. This trial runs until January 2, 2023, so try it out while you can. Former story chief Chris Metzen is also returning to Blizzard as Warcraft’s creative advisor, which should delight longtime fans of the MMO. Hopefully, the next year of Warcraft brings it back to its former glory - or at least allows it to touch Final Fantasy 14’s current acclaim.
