World of Warcraft Dragonflight Alpha: Dragon riding is soooo good, Blizzard can delete normal flying

That Dragon riding in World of Warcraft: Dragonflight is for me (and probably for many others) one of the most interesting aspects of the upcoming expansion. There hasn’t been much new information on Dragon Riding since the add-on announcement, but thankfully the feature was available on the internal alpha test build that we got access to before the official alpha launched. In addition, Production Director Patrick Dawson explained a few things to us in an interview. So I immediately strapped on my aviator goggles and took to the skies – don’t worry, (almost) no kites were injured during the flight attempts. Here’s what I found out about the new game mechanics.

WoW Dragonflight Alpha: Dragon Riding Content:

Kite Riding vs. My Expectations (Spoilers: Kite Riding Is Better Flying!)

You know that flying scene from How To Train Your Dragon (1) where Hiccup briefly loses his footing on his first test flight, but catches himself and dives Toothless toward the cliffs and rocks in front of Berk? That thrilling moment of flirting with his controls notes and just navigating the obstacles by feel? That was exactly what I expected from the dragon riding in Wow Dragonflight. And to make it short: Yes, they were fulfilled.

After spending several hours on it, I can safely say: kite riding is sooooooo good! If I have my way, Blizzard might as well delete normal flying. It’s easy to see how much time and effort the development team put into this game mechanic to make it feel “right”, and they succeeded. For my part, I’m hooked and reluctant to return to flying in Shadowlands. There where I aim my mount at the target, enable autorun and watch YT videos on another screen for 2 minutes because there is nothing else to do.

I’m also not worried that dragon riding will become (too) boring over time. The small flights are just too much fun for that. Several times during the quest I found myself using a forest or rock as a slalom course, or using a high place as the perfect starting point and seeing how far I can get. In the end I ended up somewhere completely different than the actual quest point. Also “dropping” with the dragon in the middle of the quest spot, killing and looting everything and then jetting off with a mighty swing in the air and a barrel roll to the next quest location… It will probably never seem so boring to me, like normal flying.

What is kite riding and what is the difference to normal flying

Dragon Riding is an additional means of travel to normal flying with mounts and is (unfortunately!) only available on the Dragon Islands. According to Patrick Dawson, however, they’re keeping the option open to add it to other locations in the future – they want to listen to what the community has to say, so get the “why can I only fly in Dragonflight” posts ready for the forums .

Unlike normal flying, in World of Warcraft: Dragonflight it will be possible to befriend and ride dragons from the start. In fact, it’s an integral part, as Patrick says the Dragon Isles are the largest landmass added to World of Warcraft to date (yes, larger than Northrend), and most importantly, it’s criss-crossed by many vertical terrain features. To overcome these faster, the dragon riding is extremely helpful.

The biggest difference between kite riding and normal flying is the physics. With normal flying you only have to specify the direction and activate autorun, the rest is done by the mount in a constantly straight trajectory. When riding a kite, on the other hand, you have to be much more active: As with real airplanes, you have to pay attention to the drive, the air resistance, the lift and the weight / gravity in order to stay in the air, cleverly avoid obstacles and reach the goal. This is done with the help of skills and terrain. If you don’t take advantage of both, the dragon will simply sink to the ground or you won’t make it to the desired location.

Dragon Riding Interface – it’s all about “Elan”

As soon as you sit on a suitable dragon (or use the “Soar” racial ability as a Dracthyr), you will see the “Peace” bar and a row of crystals below the bar. Its function is quite intuitive, but we’ll break it down below. In the absence of an official term, we will simply call the crystals Elan crystals in the following.

• vigor bar
  Elan is basically the stamina of your dragon / dracthyr or the fuel for dragon riding. As long as you are on the ground (whether on foot or on a kite) or if you reach a “high speed” while riding a kite – this can be recognized by increasingly visible air vortices and speed lines, swelling sound effects (from a quiet hissing to a… loud screeches in the air) and a blue glow that wraps itself around the dragon – the panache bar fills up. When the bar is full, a crystal is activated and the charging process of the bar starts over as long as not all vigor crystals are activated.
• Vigor Crystals
  We had 3 of these crystals available to us in the internal alpha, but we expect to unlock more as you master dragon riding. In a way, each crystal stores a full bar of vigor, which represents the resource for the dragon riding skills. For example, the entry skills “Skyward Ascent” for rapid ascent or “Surge Forward” for fast forward acceleration each consume one of these Elan crystals. Later, other abilities such as “Whirling Surge” – a barrel roll with which you accelerate very quickly, consuming three crystals – are added.

This is how dragon riding works in WoW Dragonflight

The dragon riding already works great in the alpha and basically the system is 99% complete. As soon as you do your first rounds and get to grips with the Dragon Rider mechanics, you can intuitively learn the rest in a few minutes.

Basically, a riding dragon or dracthyr is always “just” a glider. While a very good one – you can go amazingly far without doing anything – sooner or later you lose speed/momentum and slowly sink to the bottom. You have to actively intervene to gain speed, altitude and range and you can do that in two different ways:

• Dragon Rider Abilities (Flying Maneuvers)
  As a dragon rider, you can and must perform various flight maneuvers that allow you to climb or gain speed. At the beginning of the kite pilot career only the most basic flight maneuvers “Skyward Ascent” and “Surge Forward” are available. But as you explore and learn more about the Dragon Isles, questing will also teach you new skills that will help you stay airborne longer.
• Accelerate through game physics
  Gravity is the second method of gaining speed and momentum. Whenever you descend, your dragon will pick up speed. How fast and how much it accelerates depends on how hard you press your nose against the ground. If you reach a “high speed” during the descent (as explained above in the point “Kite Riding Interface”), you also regenerate vigor for further flight manoeuvres.

  Think of it like an aerobatic pilot at an air show: for example, you climb into the sky with your kite in a straight line, but you lose more and more speed as you do so. Eventually, you’ll reach the point where you’ll stall in the air, nose-dive or sideways, and nosedive toward the ground. Your dragon puts the wings close to the body and gets faster and faster, which is shown by various optical and acoustic effects.

  In turn, you can use this momentum to bridge distance when you switch back to horizontal flight. It is important here that you can never reach your original starting height with such a maneuver. So it’s not an option to level up permanently, but it’s a handy way to progress through the often up and down terrain of Dragon Island.

Dragon Ride Time Trial – Greetings from the Firebird’s Challenge

Not only is kite riding a more fun way to get from A to B, there are also some obstacle races you can complete to unlock achievements. They are shown on the map with a turquoise hourglass icon and are similar to the races in Spyro or the Darkmoon Faire’s “Challenge of the Firebird”. In other words: you have to fly along a defined route, passing various checkpoint portals and making it to the finish line in the shortest possible time.

So far, each course has been available in two levels of difficulty: In the easy version, you can get to know the route. There is no time limit, no obstacles and you don’t have to use your skills as often and meticulously to stay in the air. In the difficult version there is only 8 seconds between passing two checkpoints and you lose momentum much faster, which is why you have to use skills more often to make it to the next portal in time.

On top of that, there are obstacles on the route – e.g. B. Rising frost bubbles that slow you down when touched – complicating things. To compensate, there are Green Mist Clouds that restore a Vigor Crystal when collected. They are often not so easy to reach, but are necessary to complete a course as quickly as possible or at all.

The different types of dragons and customization options to customize

So far we know 4 different types of dragons that will be available for dragon riding in World of Warcraft: Dragonflight: proto-dragons, ptero-dragons, wyverns and the classic dragons, which you unlock one after the other in the four level zones of the dragon islands. In the internal alpha, we had two of them – a red “Renewed Proto-Drake” and a green “Windborne Velocidrake” – immediately available to use as guinea pigs, and a third – a blue “Highland Drake” – could be unlocked during the course of the quest line in the Azure Mountains will. Apart from their appearance, however, there are no differences between dragons when it comes to dragon riding.

When introducing Dragonflight, the developers also showed that you can customize your riding dragon. Unfortunately, this feature was not yet available. We’ve continually received manuscripts for ears, noses, chins, horns, dragon armor, etc. as quest rewards, and professions can probably unlock one or the other customization option. However, the Manuscripts can only be redeemed near the Rostrum of Transformation, which we were desperately looking for (possibly to be found in Valdrakken, which we lacked access to). Sooner or later, however, the function should end up on the alpha or beta server. I’m already looking forward to it.

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