World of Warcraft: Dragonflight announced during Blizzard livestream

Azeroth and its heroes are taking to the skies in World of Warcraft’s latest expansion, Dragonflight. Blizzard announced World of Warcraft: Dragonflight on Tuesday, during a livestream that included a preview of the expansion.

The expansion’s announcement included a cinematic trailer that gave players a look at Azeroth’s history, before revealing how dragons returned to the modern world to vanquish an ancient threat.

Dragonflight will put Azeroth’s Dragon Aspects at the center of the Warcraft story for the first time since Cataclysm back in 2010. The Aspects have sought the help of the world’s mortal heroes in order to restore their powers and to stop a newly emerging evil. To do this, players will journey to the Dragon Isles, which will be split up into five different zones. Players can also navigate the Dragon Isles through the air using Dragonriding, which seems to be somewhere between gliding and flying.

Image: Blizzard Entertainment/Activision

The new expansion will also add a new race called the Dracthyr: shapeshifting dragons with draconic and humanoid forms. The Dracthyr will only be able to play as the Evoker, a new class that’s also being introduced in Dragonflight. The Evoker is a class that can only be chosen by Dracthyr characters.

The Evoker has two specializations to choose from: Devastation, World of Warcraft’s first new ranged damage-dealing spec since the game’s release, and Preservation, a healer. The Dracthyr can join either the Alliance or the Horde and will start in their own special starting area, at a higher level than other starting races and classes.

Image: Blizzard Entertainment/Activision

As well as these larger new features, Dragonflight will also include many smaller updates that will be welcome additions to fans. Professions are getting a massive upgrade in the form of work orders, which will allow players to recruit each other more easily to create items, as well as new profession equipment, and a new specialization system. Blizzard is also upgrading World of Warcraft’s basic user interface for this new expansion, though they didn’t preview much of what we can expect from it.

Perhaps the largest systematic addition in the expansion is the game’s new talent trees. The system is reminiscent of the talent trees that World of Warcraft used to have, and will give players dozens of options and combinations to customize their class exactly how they want to play it, according to Blizzard.

Dragonflight does not have a release date yet, but Blizzard said to expect news of the expansion’s alpha sometime in the near future.