Hello internet, Taliesin here and today we
are talking World of Warcraft Dragonflight and we are talking YOU returning to WoW to
PLAY Dragonflight and everything you need to know to make that happen because look I
don't want to make a big deal out of it or anything ok but we all noticed you haven't
logged in for a while and that's fair enough you know life happens (apparently for other
people I hear that's definitely a thing) but I KNOW you internet, I know you've seen those
glorious Dragon Isles zones and Tuskarr and shiny new UI and talent trees and Tuskarr
with little hats and majestic dragon filled skies and proper old school fantasy vibes
and Tusakrr with glasses on and in-depth new professions and crafting systems and tuskarr
making a tasty soup and I know that little WoW tingle has been flaring up again. And Internet, I understand because there is
a tonne of exciting new features in Dragonflight, both long awaited and unexpected and we are
going to tell you all about them today so that when you take your first steps (or, um
flaps I guess) into the new game you can pretend that you knew about them all along and that's
ok we will keep your secrets no one need ever know so JOIN US for our 7 top tips for returning
players in World of Warcraft DRAGONFLIGHT ok, gogogogogogo Ok first thing first, let's get you character
sorted and ready to go by looking at some of the core new features of Dragonflight and
of course the return of an old friend, TALENT TREES! Allowing you to customise your abilities and
talents more than ever before, for every situation imaginable, ANY TIME YOU WANT. And that's all well and good, I don't think
I need to sell you on how fun talent trees are, but the thing I REALLY like is how easy
they are to use. Individual builds can be saved, named, and
IMPORTED or EXPORTED meaning that you can drop that DPS Holy priest build, or pure auto-attack
Fury Warrior build or - and I kid you not – the no Moonkin form Balance Druid build
in your guild discord and they can see that you were right all along, it CAN be done,
and I DID IT, who's laughing now Eh? (also, um, does anyone know of any guild currently
recruiting because I'm suddenly available). There has also been a massive UI customisation
overhaul, giving you complete control over how your WoW gaming experience LOOKS with
nearly every element of the shiny new interface adjustable to your tastes, no matter how bad
your taste is. And if you think that’s a bit hard to navigate
well… don't forget the search function, which seriously
like YES THANK YOU also save-able and shareable as individual character profiles or across
your entire account. I'm also a big fan of some of new accessibility
options, like the new INTERACT key, which when enabled allows you to automatically interact
with object and NPCs just by facing them and using a keypress instead of mouse buttons,
ACTION TARGETING, which automatically selects enemies as you approaching them, and PRESS
AND HOLD CASTING so that you can spam said enemy with all the smites you've got without
even having to take your finger off the smite button, all things considered you might find
that WoW is just a whole lot easier to play than you remember it. And so now you've created your evoker and
got it all set up, let's play some WOW – oh wait, you did create your new Dracthyr Evoker
didn't you? Ok fine off you go there's only llike 15 scintillion
customisation options you get on with it and in the meantime we'll talk about... Yeah, let's play some WoW, and we're at the
good stuff – launch day! Dragonflight brings us a whole new continent
to explore – the Dragon Isles – make sure you click on the CROW'S NEST option that appears
on the boat ride over for a proper eyeful as you arrive – and in my opinion, it's
an absolute banger. After a couple of years hopping around different
plains of existence in Shadowlands, the Dragon Isles feels like a return not just to Azeroth,
but to the kind of classical fantasy aesthetic and feels that will envelope many returning
players like a big warm snuggly blanket, but, you know, a spikey blanket with MASSIVE SHOULDERPADS
because it is still WoW after all. And my top tip here is don't forget to EXPLORE
because it's easy to look at the huge zones, which you can zoom about via the new DRAGONRIDING
feature, more on that later, and assume that you won't NEED to go searching in every little
nook and cranny of the isles like you might in past expansions where you had to spend
the first patch or two on foot. But that's not the case at all – Blizz tries
to make that obvious to the player I think in the whole VIBE of the expansion which is
like, yeah this is an expedition of DISCOVERY, your main buddies are the explorers league
and the relinquery, and the world is so beautifully realised and detailed and ALIVE feeling that
what I found on the beta is that far from making me skip stuff, the ease and entertainment
that dragonriding brings to travel in Dragonflight actually really ENCOURAGED me to look around
and explore much more than I have done in previous expansions. I think many of you will understand what I'm
trying to say if I tell you that the vibes and PHILOSOPHY of these zones reminds me a
lot of Grizzly Hills – a sense of a place where people live and exist and go about their
business that you can be witness to, with some brilliant sound design and skyboxes and
just SPACES to EXIST in. I don't want to be a dweeb here but it is
bringing the WORLD back in to World of Warcraft. So my advice is that whatever you are doing
in the isles, be open to changing course. If you an interesting looking cave, check
it out, if you see a couple of NPCs chatting, go and listen in, if you are doing an outrageously
enjoyable DRAGON RACE or time trial and the course takes you through an area you're not
familiar with, go back and check it out after you've completely mercilessly destroyed your
fellow racers with your chad dragonriding skills and left them eating your dust... or
your, air I guess I suppose they're eating your air, because in my experience on beta
Dragonflight really seems to reward players who take a moment to look around and take
it in, from the little hidden quests and character moments and environmental storytelling dotted
around, it’s felt like coming home for me, and I haven't even been anywhere! There are EIGHT new dungeons going live with
the launch of Dragonflight, as we've come to expect, which thematically tend to tie
up storylines which we start and play through in the levelling campaign. From a game structure point of view these
are a really good way of getting your characters geared up to a certain level and of course
the REAL fun comes when they open up as Mythic+ dungeons in Season 1 but I wanted to take
this section just to highlight a couple of my favourite little moments, like the magical
academy Algethar, where players get to take part in a giant game of Lish Laroth, or Talon
Toss. Oooh, a ball throwing game in a magical academy? That is an incredible idea. Guys, I think that’s got some real potential. Or my personal favourite, the Nokhud Offensive,
which is an instanced version of the ENTIRE Ohn'ahran Plains zone and where you and your
dungeon team get from boss to boss via your dragonriding drakes. This dungeon is CONSIDERABLY easier to traverse
with a fully levelled up drake (which you can do on day 1, more on that later) and if
you REALLY don't fancy it even then, you can use the new RIDE-ALONG feature to turn into
a little whelp and auto follow a party member who IS comfortable taking the reins and you
can just focus on the boss killing good stuff. But I love this dungeon, it feels great to
be swooping around freely with your homies and I HOPE they take this further and have
full on dragonriding BOSS fights in future dungeons and raids. In many ways Dragonflight feels like a return
to the core principles of WoW, and that could also be said for the endgame, which feels
like a wiping of the slate after what we are going to call the AP era of WoW, so a lot
of things that we've started to consider progression staples in recent times are gone – like
mission tables? What Mission tables? An infinite currency grind connected to your
core player that you have to make sure to keep up with week to week throughout the expansion
forever? Nope, completely gone. And that's a big deal, because when there
is no AP grind, and your characters power basically just comes from the gear that they
collect from dungeons and raids (and don't forget fully functional TIER SETS are back
from the very first RAID in Dragonflight!) and crafting and PVP and the world, that means
there's room at endgame for a much more OPTIONAL journey, and Dragonflight fills that gap with
the RENOWN paths of the four main factions of the isles, and a couple of smaller scale
reps on the side for good measure. Renown is basically a remodelling of faction
reputation but with LOTS more rewards at MUCH more frequent intervals and because there's
no AP equivalent, ALL those rewards are COSMETIC or just unconnected to player power. So in the Waking Shores you unlock exploring
transmogs and ROCK CLIMBING minigames and Drake customisations and new questlines and
portals around the Isles and toys and pets and titles and stuff like that, The Tuskarr
have BACKPACK transmogs to unlock, and new fishing holes and mini games to access across
the continent, as well as their own extra quests and recipes and pets you get the idea,
cool stuff to have and fun to colllect but nothing any player NEEDS to stay up to date
with raiding or whatever, and the fact that you're CONSTANTLY pooping new ranks and rewards
from the four factions is actually a surprisingly good motivator and makes world and side quests
feel really worthwhile. There's also the Black Dragon reputation where
you choose who to back as new leader of the flight between twink Wrathion and daddy Sabellian
for even more cool cosmetics including the BLACK DRAGONSCALE customisation for your drakes
which actually that kind of is mandatory really now I think about it, like who doesn't want
the Black Dragonscale unlock and ANOTHER major form of progression is of course in the new
PROFESSIONS system, which I'm not going to get into tons of detail about now but with
so many different areas to specialise in, and the new WORK ORDER system where you basically
pick up commissions to fill to improve your skills, it's another optional but incredibly
rewarding (and potentially very lucrative) way to spend your end-game days. There's even a unique transmog set available
for open world PVP kills in Warmode if you like, Dragonflight is very much “optional
grind” expansion this first patch, and that's a big philosophy change that might take a
while for some players to get used to but I think it's a GOOD one, done really well
and a LOT of people are going to have a lot of fun with it. If you haven't played WoW for a moment there
are some BIG quality of life improvements that might be new to you, like, you know you
can group with players on the opposing faction now right? Horde and Alliance running dungeons and raids
together (if the group leader has enabled it) mass hysteria! There's also the INSPIRATION Catalyst, which
allows players to turn standard NON tier items of raid gear, dungeon gear, PVP Gear AND certain
open world gear into TIER set pieces, meaning that players can work towards unlocking their
tier set and bonuses no matter what content they prefer (and which I can't lie, works
as quite nice bad luck protection for raiders like me too), but the BIG feature which will
be new to EVERYONE and which is we've touched on already today is DRAGON RIDING, the new
momentum based flying mechanic which will be your main way of traversing the Dragon
Isles. Dragon Riding takes a minute to master and
has a talent tree that needs to be unlocked by collecting Dragon Riding GLYPHS from around
the map to reach its true potential, but all glyphs are THERE waiting to be picked up at
the start of the expansion meaning that you can collect them ALL the moment you pick up
your first drake a few minutes into the questing. It's almost 3 times faster than normal WoW
flying, is a lot more fun in my opinion, and enhances every other aspect of the game with
its presence. Drakes are customisable to an absurd degree
with some COMPLETE transformations that drop from certain bosses and achievements and which
will undoubtably continue throughout the expansion, and the best thing of all? ALL your Dragonriding progress, from you drakes
to their customisation unlocks to the glyphs you've collected to upgrade them – are completely
ACCOUNT WIDE because Dragonflight is also OBJECTIVELY the most alt friendly expansion
in World of Warcraft HISTORY! Those RENOWN REWARDS we saw in the last section? All of them apart from like, supply crates,
are account wide unlocks. All that transmog but also mini-game unlocks
and fishing hole unlocks, it's all account wide and I've got to tell you, it feels pretty
good to step off the boat on an alt and before you've even picked up a quest, mounting up
onto a fully levelled up Dragon Riding Drake and zooming all over the map doing World Quests
and picking up treasures that you've unlocked on your main, top stuff. And you know, at last. A couple of weeks into the expansion, as usual,
comes season 1, with the opening of the Vault of Incarnates raid but a new structure to
a lot else, like the 8-dungeon Mythic Plus pool featuring FOUR Dragonflight dungeons
and 4 Dungeons from returning expansions, meaning that season 2 will have a compete
100% different dungeon (and loot table) lineup to it's predecessor, a really good change
that I'm looking forward to see play out. Different dungeons every Mythic+ season is
awesome. For PVPers there's new Solo-que arena, including
RANKED mode which look you asked for it fam don't blame me ok this is something YOU SAID
YOU ALL WANTED and even the raid is the first in modern WOW to release all difficulty modes
at the same time, something that will definitely have an interesting impact on the the RACE
TO WORLD FIRST but much more importantly, the race to world first for guilds a bit like
Immortalis, the TRUE race that all the cool kids, started by my guild called (and this
might not be a massive surprise to you) IMMORTALIS to create a competition that we might actually
win but which we, uh, don't often win (CURSE YOU OTHER IMMORTALIS'S and especially you
A BIT LIKE IMMORTALIS you guys suck). Oh yeah one last thing, if you ARE returning
to the game for Dragonflight then that's great and I think you're going to really enjoy it
but don't forget the RETURN TAX. A new rule that I-I mean Blizzard invented
very recently where NO LOOT will drop for you if you don't send 10,000 gold weekly to
Myffanwy on Argent Dawn EU, that's M, Y, F, F - - Ok that's enough Tali, there's no return tax
don't worry. Thanks for joining us for the video today
and if you ARE returning to the game for Dragonflight then I hope it was useful and that we see
you soon! I'll be in the Azure span, hanging out with
the tuskarr. I already did all the Tuskarr jokes From me, Evitel, and Taliesin, until next
time, cheerio!
