You Can Finally Play as a Dragon (Kind of) in World of Warcraft: Dragonflight

ign.com:

Given that the next major expansion to World of Warcraft is themed around dragons, it's only natural that we finally get to actually play as a dragon with the new Dracthyr Evoker hero class. It may not look exactly like the dragons we're used to seeing fly around Azeroth, but that's probably for the best — the actual Dracthyr have quite a bit more going on.

We spoke with game director Ion Hazzikostas and narrative director Steve Danuser ahead of the announcement about the Dracthyr, beginning with a fundamental question: why make a combination hero class/race where Dracthyr can only be Evokers, and Evokers can only be Dracthyr?

Hazzikostas says that the team started with the concept of the Dracthyr race, and came to the conclusions about the Evoker class organically from the lore.

"Once we really got excited about the idea of chasing a customizable full player race that delivered the fantasy of being a dragon, being a descendant of the dragons in Azeroth, well, then the natural next question was: what classes can they be or should they be? Pretty rapidly, we realized that none of our existing classes was exactly the right fit. The fantasy of being a dragon— they call down powers that are different than what mages or warriors or any of our known classes do. And of course, by their nature, they have these unique physical gifts, like literal wings and claws, the ability to unleash breath weapons…An elf is never going to be able to literally take flight and do a soaring deep breath over their enemies. Only a Drakthyr can do that."

Danuser broke down the Dracthyr a bit further for us, describing their magical abilities that are tied with each of the five dragonflights: blue, red, green, gold, and black. As shown in the Deep Dive