World of Warcraft: Dragonflight’s next update, Seeds of Renewal, has been revealed, and in addition unlocking dragonriding across all of Azeroth, it will allow for players to run dungeons all on their own, albeit with a little help from some NPC followers.
Dungeons in WoW typically require a five-person group, with one tank, one healer, and three DPS. The upcoming addition of Follower Dungeons, as they are called, puts a new spin on the formula. Follower Dungeons will let players put NPCs in roles usually reserved for other players in a dungeon party. This feature will work with all eight of Dragonflight’s normal-difficulty dungeons, with a difficulty that will scale depending on the number of human players in a party.
As Blizzard notes, the mode is intended to let players learn dungeons or new roles “at their own pace.” Ever wanted to try tanking, but didn’t want to be exposed to pressure from other players when you don’t know where to go in a dungeon or how to do a certain mechanic? Follower Dungeons removes toxic players from the equation so that players trying to learn the dungeon or their class can do so in a more stress-free environment. It’s a feature that sounds similar to the new, bite-sized Delves activity coming in WoW’s 2024 expansion, The War Within, which will also support the use of an NPC companion and scales with the number of human players in a party.
Follower Dungeons could be a real game changer when they arrive in Seeds of Renewal, but that’s not all that’s coming with the update. As mentioned above, dragonriding, a feature introduced in Dragonflight that turned the act of flying into actual gameplay instead of simply a passive speed boost, will be usable across the entire game come the update. Being able to dragonride anywhere has been a request from the community ever since players first got their hands on the feature during the Dragonflight beta, so it’s great to see it finally become usable across all of Azeroth.
A new weekly event coming with Seeds of Renewal, Azerothian Archives, will see players dig into the history of the Dragon Isles to earn rewards, and there will be new customization options for Trolls, Draenei, and Warlock demons. Last but not least, Worgen players have something to look forward to, as the update will introduce a questline that will see the Worgen finally reclaim their homeland of Gilneas, which was lost during the events of the game’s 2010 Cataclysm expansion. With the Night Elves finally receiving a new home in the form of Amirdrassil in the game’s latest Guardians of the Dream update, it makes sense that Blizzard would want to give the Worgen, who have been living as refugees for years, some closure.
Blizzard has not announced a release date for Seeds of Renewal, but the update will be live on the game’s public test realm later this week. WoW, which will celebrate its 20th anniversary next year, was certainly the star of the show at BlizzCon 2023, where Blizzard announced what was next for WoW Classic alongside three modern WoW expansions all at once. In the meantime, Cataclysm Classic will arrive in the first half of 2024, while a new season for the game’s “vanilla” servers, called Season of Discovery, sounds like it will turn the two-decade-old MMO on its head.
The products discussed here were independently chosen by our editors.
GameSpot may get a share of the revenue if you buy anything featured on our site.