It’s not much of a secret that the most well-received feature from World of Warcraft Dragonflight has been the addition of Dragonriding, a new way to fly mounts that takes advantage of active abilities, increased speeds, and the new expansion’s wide landscapes.
The feelings of diving, swooping, and gliding throughout the Dragon Isles at eye-watering speeds has been something WoW players have received with open arms and are desperate to see stick around after the conclusion of the expansion, whenever that may be. In a recent interview with the WoW developers, it became a bit clearer that Dragonriding may be sticking around for the long haul, even after the player base moves on from Dragonflight.
In Patch 10.2, Dragonriding will be evolving further into a system known as “Dynamic Flight.” This iteration of the Dragonriding mechanic will encapsulate far more than just dragon/drake mounts as a new mount, the Fire Owl, will have the abilities and feel of Dragonriding mounts that have become staples in this expansion.
“We absolutely have absolutely loved how [Dragonriding] is working,” Crash Reed, WoW’s lead user experience designer, told Dot Esports. “This is definitely something that we’re looking into and Dynamic Flight is the first step in that direction to see where we can go and what we can do with this new system.”
With the addition of the Fire Owl mount, the Dragonriding system is moving to a place where dragons aren’t even needed. If more mounts are able to be added into the framework of Dynamic Flight, we could progressively reach a point in WoW history where flying as we know it in Dragonflight becomes the standard for all mounts.
We’re likely nowhere near that point just yet, but a world where every mount in the MMO uses this technology doesn’t feel so much like a pipedream anymore.
In Patch 10.2, players will also be able to use Dragonriding in a new setting as one of the raid bosses in the upcoming raid, Amirdrassil, will require players to zoom around the encounter on their Dragonriding mounts.
“Players will be zooming around the boughs of Amirdrassil on dragonback, using their Dragonriding mounts during the encounter,” Taylor Sanders, WoW encounter designer, told Dot Esports. “Players will see a lot of Amirdrassil during the raid, and we think that will be a really cool experience.”
Additions like that one should give players a bit of comfort in the idea that Dragonriding, which will likely be fully renamed “Dynamic Flight” at some point in the future, will stick around even after Dragonflight. For Blizzard to implement something this cool only to rip it away at the end of an expansion would be like shooting itself in the foot, especially considering just how much players have loved the feature.
Players will have even more of an opportunity to use their dynamic mounts in a new piece of content, the Eastern Kingdoms Cup, which will introduce Dragonriding races to many of the zones on Azeroth’s eastern continent, just as the Kalimdor Cup did last month.
