The next World of Warcraft expansion is Dragonflight: here are the details

destructoid.com:

Blizzard has announced the World of Warcraft Dragonflight expansion today during their “expansion reveal” stream: two months after their canceled BlizzCon 2022 event would have taken place (the opening for today even had BlizzCon nostalgia shots in it). This is the ninth expansion for World of Warcraft, a feat in and of itself.

Presented by Holly Longdale (lead producer WoW Classic), John Hight (franchise general manager), and Ion Hazzikostas (game director and VP), the roundtable of devs noted that they “needed to do better,” and incorporated feedback into the future of the game. They reiterated cross-faction play is part of update 9.2.5, as a way to give people more chances to play with one another, as a “closing chapter for Shadowlands.”

Dragonflight, however, is the near future. It’ll be “going back to Azeroth,” and plays off of events from thousands of years ago. “The awakening of the Dragon Isles,” will be the key component, which has “removed the [convenient] concealment” of the region that cordoned it off from the rest of Azeroth.

While the initial reception to the current expansion (Shadowlands) was fairly positive, fans have turned on it over time. Not only did the game itself fail to compel people to log in on a constant basis, fail to deliver interesting updates, and fumble storylines for long term classic Warcraft characters; but the series of Activision Blizzard scandals have soured the perception of the company as a whole, leading fans to leave in droves for Final Fantasy XIV.

A lot of pressure is on Dragonflight to deliver the goods and actually shake up WoW in a meaningful way that also goes over well with long term fans; many of which are the lifeblood of the game. It’s an unenviable position from a