Introduction 
I like doing my own little reviews of expansions and have done so for the last few. Mostly just to collect my own thoughts and to reflect on the game experience upon completing it.
It’s entirely personal and super subjective and through the lens of someone who’s played since day 1 and who is not easily impressed. So take it for what it is.
I’ve structured it so it’s easy to skim through. Click the summaries if you want the walls of text containing my arbitrary reasonings.
For inquiring minds. 
How it works:
= Worst ever.
= Mediocre.
= Respectable.
= Amazing.
= Best ever.
Categories:
- Music, sound, and voice acting.
- Classes, talents, and features.
- Professions, rewards, and itemization.
- Raids, dungeons, and PvP.
- Art, cinematics, and cutscenes.
- Story, lore, and quests.
- Tldr conclusion
As follows:
Music, sound, and voice acting
Summary
The music is less than what I have come to expect from Blizzard. Too often Dragonflight tries to imitate the music of other expansions, like Grizzly Hills in Northrend or various elemental notes from Cataclysm, rather than inventing its own musical identity.
The greatest disappointment is the main title theme – The Isles Awaken – which captures the thrill of dragonriding perfectly, but fails utterly at creating a memorable theme for dragons. Most notable entities in WoW have their own theme or motiff. Arthas, Illidan, Gnomes, Stormwind. We all know the music associated with these. Dragons don’t really have any music associated with them, and if there ever was a time to make it, it would be now. But I don’t think The Isles Awaken does a very good job at that.
The sound design feels like too much, too often.
The ambience in particular feels like a horn of plenty. If you’re surrounded by trees in Valdrakken, then you’ll hear both woodpeckers, eagles, bees and crickets, and the rest of the whole animal kingdom. It’s too much and I feel like there’s something to be said for the quiet simplicity of Elwynn Forest or The Barrens. Less is more.
There is more voice acting than there has ever been in WoW before, but Blizzard doesn’t use it to great effects.
Where voice acting is valued is when it’s used for notable characters, like Bwonsamdi or Genn Greymane, to add identity to their personalities, or to various NPCs during important quests or story moments to make them more immersive.
And whilst Sindragosa’s voice actress is fantastic, and Wrathion’s voice actor is awesome as always, too often the voice acting is used for minor NPCs and irrelevant gossip, like introducing and finishing a world quest. That particular Dwarf NPC gets annoying to listen to every time you do a climbing world quest. If the spoken lines were more varied it would be an improvement, but it’s sadly more repetition ala “A turtle made it to the water!”.
Classes, talents, and features
Summary
The new talents lose their shine quickly. For one because we’ve had talents for many years before, even many of the new talents are old ones brought back, so it doesn’t feel like it’s really new. It’s more a return to old.
Beyond that, then despite years of experience with talents, Blizzard still seem to struggle with the same design issues, i.e. the balance and degree of customization.
The scope also not much greater. If you hope over to Classic WoW and have a look at the talent trees you get to play with there and compare to Dragonflight, then the new talent system is hardly an upgrade or evolution of the old. It’s mostly just safe and familiar.
The Evoker class follows in the line of Monks and Demon Hunter with a modern design that is dynamic, simple yet deep, and movement-driven. It works. And it showcases that Blizzard can actually modernize their gameplay approach if given a clean slate to work with. It’s a nice and fresh take on a caster and healer, for those seeking that.
Dragonriding is sweet. It’s perfect in all ways, minus some people getting sick from it (which Blizzard will hopefully sort out). The actual dragons leave a lot to be desired. Even with all the customization options unlocked they still look like crap compared to the good old dragon models.
But the flying? Man is it perfect. It conveys the feeling of soaring and gliding. The speed is there and the flapping of the wings on take-off is super satisfying.
The races are a great way of introducing the feature and are just as fun and different as any other expansion feature of old, be it Torghast or Warfronts or The Farm.
It’s a total win and a superb job by the developers, and whenever you’re elsewhere than The Dragon Isles and you use your normal flying mount, you really just wish that you could use Dragonriding everywhere.
Professions, rewards, and itemization
Summary
Blizzard always tries to overhaul professions. And the result always leaves more to be desired.
I think the problem is that these days WoW rewards so much gear, from so many activities, so frequently, that the design space professions used to occupy no longer exists.
Dragonflight doesn’t really address that, but simply tries to shoehorn professions into the mix of activities as an alternative path to gear, that will likely soon fade into obscurity as always.
Speaking of rewards, it feels to me as if Blizzard struggle to come up with new cool ideas. The first tabard or title you got was pretty special. The first mount you bought was sweet. And the first time you took to the skies on a flying mount was incredible.
Now we have dozens of tabards and titles, hundreds of mounts, pets, and toys, as well as a wardrobe so big that every teenage girl would get jealous. And for me at least it’s starting to get uninteresting to get yet another mount, or yet another toy, or pet, or title, that I will likely never use and which will only add a number to an increasing collection of forgotten stuff.
Blizzard tries to make dragonriding customization the new reward thing to be excited about, but it doesn’t excite me very much at all to get a spiked tail or a horned chin option.
WoW desperately needs a new evergreen reward that’s super exciting and game-altering like mounts and transmogrification were when they got introduced.
Dragonflight just regurgitates the same junk we already have in spades, which is starting to feel like anything but rewards.
Raids, dungeons, and PvP
Summary
Same old, same old. That’s perhaps the best that can be said.
The quality of the raid and the dungeons is like every other raid and dungeon. Similar amount as well. Varied scenery, layouts, boss fights, and so forth.
It’s an ice-cream cone with 5 scoops, but it’s the same 5 scoops we’ve always gotten.
I do miss the time when a raid tier would have multiple smaller raid instances, rather than getting a single medium-sized one.
PvP usually gets one new thing. A Battleground, some Arena maps, or a gameplay feature like Warmode. This time it’s Solo Shuffle. It’s Arena for all the people who have always wanted to try Arena but found group-making too intimidating, bothersome, frustrating, or time-consuming. Which is most people.
It works surprisingly well as a concept and is a definite improvement to Arena as a feature in WoW. More people will play Arena now, and more people will stick with Arena now. That being said, the game loop of Solo Shuffle can be a terribly frustrating affair and you once again get the sense that WoW is trying to be something it is not made to be. Plus, the queue times are horrible if you’re not a healer.
Art, cinematics, and cutscenes
Summary
The art team usually get nothing but praise for their work, but this time I think there is some criticism to go around.
If everyone just rewinds their mind to the time when The Dragon Isles and playable dragons was mere forum speculation, and then compares what their own fantasy had conjured to what the art team has presented, does it pass the smell test? Personally, I would say no. None of the dragon shrines feel like the dragonflights manifested in an awesome artistic way. They’re more like small outposts. The greatest wonder of The Dragon Isles – Valdrakken – doesn’t hold a candle to previous places like Zandalar or Suramar in terms of majesty and awe. And the Dracthyr model doesn’t really make me wish I could race change to that. It’s not strength and fury like an Orc, or familiar and simple like a Human, or elegant and aesthetically-pleasing like a Blood Elf. So what is it, and who’s it for?!
My biggest gripe is probably the fact that The Dragon Isles doesn’t hold much dragon DNA. It feels like Blizzard tends to use the same art formula for every expansion now. Have a handful zones. One of them should be like Nagrand. One of them should be like Grizzly Hills. Include the mandatory desert place and you have a standard template for most expansions, rather than something unique and different.
It really doesn’t feel like I’m getting many, if any, new visual impressions playing through The Dragon Isles. Even the mysterious Titan facilities is all stuff I’ve seen before.
Where’s the boldness in the art vision?
There’s two cinematics – intro and launch – and whilst they’re very well-made like always, they don’t really have much oomph to them. At least compared to previous expansion cinematics, I don’t feel that these stand out in any real way.
The legacies animated shorts had 3 chapters, which is less than what we’ve gotten before. They tell a story where even the nerdiest lore geeks struggle to find much meat on the bone, so to speak. And again, as a standalone experience, they really don’t stand out like Daughter of the Sea or Harbringers - Gul’dan.
The in-game cutscenes have improved considerably in quality, especially the facial animations are getting really good at conveying emotion. There aren’t as many as in for example Battle for Azeroth, so it’s perhaps quality over quantity.
Story, lore, and quests
Summary
Tough, but fair, I think.
What do I seek in a story from an expansion called Dragonflight with a launch cinematic filled with dragons? You guessed it, dragons!
But you’re really not getting a whole lot of dragons in Dragonflight.
The Waking Shore is 30% Dragonscale expedition story.
The Ohn’ahran Plains is 90% Centaur story.
The Azure Span is 80% Dragonscale expedition, Kirin Tor, and Tuskarr story.
Thaldraszus is 20% random NPC story.
I am quite dissapointed in that. I feel like between WotLK, Cata, and Dragonflight, then Dragonflight provides the least amount of dragon storyline of the three.
Beyond that, most of the storylines in Dragonflight feel like forgettable fluff. Small isolated storylines about some Tuskarr who’s a painter or a Drakonid who’s a gardener, and you have to help them with their problems, which is meaningless in the grand scheme of things, and not very deep either. There are a few that stand out, like the dragon in the Waking Shore who’s reflecting on his past as he looks over the landscape. But it’s hit and miss with way too many misses.
The main campaign is also not very strong. Three moments stand out. Alexstrasza fighting Raszageth, Kalecgos fighting Raszageth, and Chromie in The Black Empire. Those are the highlights, and they’re no more impressive than those of past expansions, though they are few.
The Dreamer questline with the green dragonflight is probably the best storyline of all in the box product. It’s full of dragons and it showcases the green dragonflight in all its dreaming dragon glory with voiced NPCs, cutscenes, phasing, zone travel, and so forth. There’s no other like it in all of Dragonflight. And that is a major problem.
Tldr conclusion
Summary
It’s a familiar take on a WoW expansion. It’s more WoW for those who already love WoW. And it’s an expansion that focuses on the core gameplay activities with a conservative approach.
Its greatest achievement is that it does very little very wrong or very controversial.
Its biggest flaw is that it does very little that’s very new or very amazing.
I’ve got ~5 days played on my main character when the core gameplay grind starts to really kick in, which feels similar to past expansions.
There doesn’t seem to be much in the way of a different leveling experience for alts, like other expansions have had. That is both good and bad.
I think existing players will really like Dragonflight, because they don’t have many reasons to be upset about it. Content, if not complacent players.
I think people not playing WoW will struggle to see why this should be the time to join or get back.
And I think people who are getting tired of WoW are not finding this to be a potion of rejuvenation.