WoW: Is Dragonflight the remake of Mists of Pandaria?

In October 2011, as expected at the time, the developers of the popular online role-playing game announced a new expansion. The main theme of this early knowledge was an island that suddenly emerges from the mists after millennia. Their inhabitants are part of a new, albeit unexpected, player race that is also strongly tied to a newly introduced class. What’s more: At the beginning of their adventure, this people can’t really make up their minds whether they want to belong to the Horde or the Alliance – first see what these two strange factions have to offer and only then will the decision be made: red or blue? Oh yeah, and as much as the World of Warcraft players were wondering, they couldn’t learn anything about who or what actually is the great threat they must fight to save Azeroth.

Incidentally, that we at buffed asked at the time, who the boss would be, and the answer was Garrosh, but no one believed us, let’s drop that… Anyway. Fast forward eleven years.

As expected, in April 2022 the developers of the popular online role-playing game announced a new expansion. The main theme of this early knowledge was an island that suddenly emerges from the mists after millennia. Their inhabitants are part of a new, albeit unexpected, player race that is also strongly tied to a newly introduced class. What’s more: At the beginning of their adventure, this people can’t really make up their minds whether they want to belong to the Horde or the Alliance – first see what these two strange factions have to offer and only then will the decision be made: red or blue? Oh, and much as World of Warcraft players care (buy now ) also wonder they can’t find out anything about who or what the big threat is that they have to fight to save Azeroth.

No, you are not caught in a time warp. You’re just caught up in the general community “feeling” that Dragonflight is like Mists of Pandaria!

dragon islands? Pandaria 2.0!

You will probably have already guessed that this comparison is absolutely not made out of thin air. At least if you take a sober look at the well-known features of Dragonflight. The descriptions we formulated at the beginning of the announcements of the extensions can be easily exchanged. If you pack them spongy. But apart from that, comparisons also come to mind when it comes to the continents.

The Dragon Isles, hidden in mist… like Pandaria.

Source: Blizzard





Like Pandaria and the Wandering Isle, the Dragon Isles and Forbidden Isle (the Dracthyr starting area) have been cut off from the outside world since the first cataclysm millennia ago and now just appear. A concept that developers have been using since the beginning of World of Warcraft anyway: something suddenly appears. Mostly from a cloud of fog. boom! Cool!
It was the same with Northrend, the Broken Isles and with Kul Tiras and Zandalar, although the Battle for Azeroth areas with faction division followed an interesting and new concept to date.

There’s this look of zones!

If we look at what we already know about the Dragon Isles zones, at least in terms of looks, that also aligns with Pandaria. Like the Jade Forest, the Awakening Coast features elevations in the form of massive, columnar mountain structures. Embedded in between is a green jungle.

The Plains of Ohn’ahra are reminiscent of the rather flat Valley of the Four Winds in general look. Did someone say or think Kun-Lai Summit when designing the Azure Mountains? Yeah, okay, maybe we’ll throw in some Krasarang Wilds right away, only with the difference that the foothills of the Azure Mountains are not dominated by a jungle, but by a coniferous forest. Grizzly Hills and such! And they were great too!

Only Thaldraszus might not have much in common with Pandaria zones. Because Dragonflight expects vertical rather than horizontal area progression due to dragon flying, Thaldraszus would be more like the Vale of Eternal Blossoms embedded in the mountains of Pandaria anyway. Especially since Thaldraszus is the capital for our heroes. So it would be less like the Dread Wastes or the Townlong Steppes… oh, oops! We notice a small but subtle difference.

Dragonflight’s Dragon Isles will feature just four zones aside from the Dracthyr-exclusive Forbidden Island at the start of the adventure. These in turn should be huge and extensive. We wouldn’t be surprised if there weren’t some reminders of Townlong and Dread Wastes as we explored the Dragon Domain.