One element of World of Warcraft that has frequently garnered criticism from its community is the growing number of discarded features that have piled up over the years: introduced for an expansion or two, and then forgotten when some new fancy thing replaces it. Looking at you, artifact weapons.

But with Dragonflight, production director Patrick Dawson says the team wants to focus more on improving existing features for the long haul rather than implementing a bunch of new stuff it will throw away later.

“That’s one of the things we really wanted to engage with, with Dragonflight, is to try and make as much of it for evergreen World of Warcraft as possible,” he says. “That’s why you see things like the HUD updates, the talent updates, and the crafting system, those are all fundamental, core things about World of Warcraft that will continue outside of Dragon Isles and beyond Dragon Isles.”

Dawson is referring to several of the key announced features of Dragonflight. It’s implementing a much more customizable HUD with an even sleeker default design that’s intended to reduce the need for addons for casual play, and a major overhaul to professions that will touch all eras of crafting, not just Dragonflight’s added recipes. It’s also bringing back talent trees, albeit much more modernized and easy to reconfigure with new features like loadouts and default talent sets for those who don’t want to look up theorycrafted guides every patch. Dawson reassures that Blizzard intends to keep the trees around for multiple expansions as opposed to its criticized tactic of adding a new power MacGuffin with its own abilities each time around.

That philosophy doesn’t just apply to explicit features either, Dawson says. We also discussed the new elements that the hero class, the Dracthyr, are bringing to the game. For instance, Dracthyr Evokers can use “empower” spells – basically spells that have different effects depending on how long they’re charged up. For now, they’re limited to just the Dracthyr, but Dawson says Blizzard is open to looking at how they might work with other classes later on once they have a better idea of how Dracthyr play in raids, PvP, and high-level dungeons.

And then there are the Dracthyr customization options, which are far more robust than any other playable race to date.

“We definitely spent a lot of effort in making sure we could customize the heck out of them,” he says. “I think we have the ability for every single player on the planet to make their own, unique Dracthyr customization so we don’t have any duplicates. That’s how many we have. By orders of magnitude too, it’s not just a small amount.”

While it’s true that Blizzard has worked to add more options to some of its older playable races over the years as well, Dawson differentiates that from what the team has done with the Dracthyr. Updates to older characters are, he says, more in the interest of representation and allowing players to see themselves in their characters rather than gunning for sheer robustness. But Blizzard is always looking to do more. So while Dawson doesn’t think we’ll see many updates to other races for Dragonflight’s release, there may be future opportunities for updates down the line – perhaps for customizable diverse body types, a feature that the Dracthyr are pioneering currently in the alpha.

There is, however, one element that Dawson says is sticking with Dragonflight only: the new dragon riding feature.

“I think dragon riding is the one thing that felt thematically tied to the area that you’re going to, so that one is kept a little more with the theme of the Dragon Isles,” he says. “But other than that we’ve been trying to expand into more evergreen things.”

We also spoke to Dawson about how Dragonflight’s Dragon Isles are the largest expansion continent Blizzard has made yet, as well as why the studio is making big changes to how it tests new content. Blizzard is on the cusp of opening up its Dragonflight alpha to the first wave of players, so we’re sure to hear more about Dragonflight in the coming weeks. For now, you can check out our full preview of what we’ve seen so far.

Rebekah Valentine is a news reporter for IGN. You can find her on Twitter @duckvalentine.

After four long years, Ragnarök is almost upon us. Kratos has seen more than his fair share of bloodshed over the years while removing multiple gods from their seats of power, and now that we have a release date for God of War: Ragnarök, we don't have much longer to wait until he does the same with the Norse pantheon. It's safe to say that Ragnarök looks to be one of the biggest releases in the latter half of 2022, and many of us on staff are excited to see where the story will take us after the events of God of War 2018.

Welcome back for another edition of Let's Talk About. Today's topic is God of War. Is God of War: Ragnarök your most anticipated game for 2022? Are you spending extra to get the Collectors or Jotnar edition? Do you prefer the original God of War games or the new style in 2018's God of War and the upcoming Ragnarök? Which moments from the franchise stand out the most for you? If you're not a fan of God of War, what game is your most anticipated release for the rest of the year and why? Let us know in the comments.

Jada Griffin is IGN's Community Lead. If she's not engaging with users here, chances are she's developing her own games, maxing the Luck stat in her favorite games, or challenging her D&D players with Intense combat or masterful puzzles. You can follow her on Twitter @Jada_Rina.

Hellboy and Abe Sapien are far from the weirdest characters created by Mike Mignola. That honor may rest with a Civil War-era hero named The Amazing Screw-On Head. And with that comic being reprinted in a new 20th anniversary collection, fans are being treated to a lost story from Mignola's archives.

IGN can exclusively reveal a preview of that story, dubbed "Axxor, Slayer of Demons." Check it out in the slideshow gallery below:

For those unfamiliar, The Amazing Screw-On Head was a one-shot comic released through Dark Horse in 2002. The story revolves around a sentient robot who works as a secret agent for the Lincoln Administration. Inspired by classic action figure lines of the '80s and '90s, The Amazing Screw-On Head can attach his head to different bodies, each with powerful abilities of its own.

While the original comic remains, to date, the only to feature the character, it was later adapted as an animated pilot episode in 2006, written and executive produced by Hannibal's Bryan Fuller.

To celebrate the 20th anniversary of the comic, Dark Horse is releasing a new hardcover collection called The Amazing Screw-On Head and Other Curious Objects. That book will include roughly 40 pages of new material, including the Axxor story. The book will be released in comic shops on July 20 and bookstores on July 26.

Dark Horse is also marking this anniversary with a new Amazing Screw-On Head fine art print. Featuring a new image from Mignola and colorist Dave Stewart, this print is being sold exclusively through Dark Horse Direct.

The print measures 18" x 24" and is priced at $49.99. It's limited to 300 units worldwide. You can preorder an Amazing Screw-On Head print now.

Both of these releases are being timed to the upcoming first public screening of the documentary film Mike Mignola: Drawing Monsters. The premiere event is being held at Los Angeles' Million Dollar Theatre on Saturday, August 13. Tickets are available for purchase now.

That documentary will offer Mignola fans another glimpse of a lost project, as it turns out Mignola worked on a Thor animated series based on traditional Norse mythology.

Jesse is a mild-mannered staff writer for IGN. Allow him to lend a machete to your intellectual thicket by following @jschedeen on Twitter.

With World of Warcraft preparing to roll out its Dragonflight alpha this week, one notable concern is that, if Dragonflight is indeed intended to drop this year, this will be the shortest alpha/beta cycle World of Warcraft has had in recent memory. But Blizzard says this is due to a change in how it’s doing testing, and not a cause for concern.

Speaking to IGN ahead of the alpha release, production director Patrick Dawson reassures that Dragonflight will have plenty of time to cook. For one, he says, it’s been in development since before Shadowlands shipped, and the team has had about as much time working on it as they have any other expansion.

But to answer the question of the late alpha, Dawson admits that while it’s coming at an “awkward” time compared to past alphas, it’s just because Blizzard is shifting how it handles public World of Warcraft testing pretty dramatically.

“In prior alphas…we’d have a two, two-and-a-half-month-long process where different things came online in a haphazard and less structured way,” he says. “Maybe you’d get one zone, then have to wait two to three weeks, maybe even longer for the next zone. Systems wouldn’t come on at a consistent rate, that kind of stuff.

“But…one of the models we liked was how we do things like raid testing. What we do is we open up a boss for people to focus on, everybody plays that boss, we get great, focused feedback on that, and then we shut it down and move onto the next boss. Likewise, we looked at our alpha strategy, and we said, ‘How can we get that type of feedback out of an alpha?’ And the answer was, instead of having this long alpha, let’s compress it a bit and focus the feedback on specific things each and every week.”

What this means for Dragonflight, he continues, is that while the upcoming alpha is focused on one zone, the Azure Span, it won’t be available in the alpha for the duration of the test. Once Blizzard gets focused feedback on that specific zone, they’ll shut the Azure Span down, and open up a completely different zone.

But there’s another reason for the new model, aside from just testing efficiency. World of Warcraft is a very heavily community datamined game, between its alphas, beta, and public test realm. But this time, Blizzard wants to keep more secrets back from the public until it’s ready to fully release them.

“Let’s not spoil everything in the alpha,” Dawson says. “Let’s not spoil everything in test. We’ll make sure to test that level of gameplay so that everyone has a quality experience when they play, but there maybe are some things we’re going to hold back a bit to surprise and delight the players.”

We also spoke to Dawson about how Dragonflight’s Dragon Isles are the largest expansion continent Blizzard has made yet, as well as how Dragonflight is building more evergreen updates than expansion-specific. Blizzard is on the cusp of opening up its Dragonflight alpha to the first wave of players, so we’re sure to hear more about Dragonflight in the coming weeks. For now, you can check out our full preview of what we’ve seen so far.

Rebekah Valentine is a news reporter for IGN. You can find her on Twitter @duckvalentine.

World of Warcraft’s dragons come in all shapes, sizes, and colors, but historically, its most important and interesting dragons have been, well, really darn big. So it’s unsurprising that their home in WoW’s upcoming Dragonflight expansion, the Dragon Isles, needs space for all of them to hang out.

Which is why, according to production director Patrick Dawson, the Dragon Isles are the biggest continent Blizzard has ever made for an expansion.

“This is the biggest expansion continent we’ve ever done, and that was designed with dragon riding in mind so you can traverse it a little more simply,” Dawson tells IGN. “It’s the land of dragons. They need space.”

When you think of pure geographical size, it’s easy to limit that scope to just horizontal size, but critical to Dragonflight’s alleged enormity is its verticality. The Dragon Isles are built for dragon riding, one of the biggest new features being added this expansion, so there need to be enough heights, valleys, and open spaces for WoW players to rapidly zip, flip, and barrel roll all over the continent.

In fact, the Dragon Isles are so expressly designed around dragon riding that Dawson says Blizzard is unlikely to ever break the feature out of Dragon Isles and take it to other zones, though it’s certainly considering bringing the existing flight feature into the isles at a later point if it makes sense.

For now, Blizzard is focusing on getting the feel of dragon riding just right. In our preview of the pre-alpha, our dragons only knew a couple of flight tricks, but Dawson reassures us that we’ll unlock plenty more flight abilities as the story progresses and won’t always be running out of stamina at the bottom of a hill.

And because the Dragon Isles are so large and flight-focused, he hints that Blizzard may have taken some cues from Mists of Pandaria’s cloud serpent riding and the unique flight side quests and minigames that came with that to give dragon riders more activities to do across the isles.

“I think there’s some stuff we’ll show in the alpha and some stuff maybe we’ll hide and keep back so players can experience it for the first time in release,” he says.

Blizzard is on the cusp of opening up its alpha to the first wave of players, so we’re sure to hear more about Dragonflight in the coming weeks. For now, you can check out our full preview of what we’ve seen so far, and hear more from our interview with Dawson on how Dragonflight is building more evergreen updates than expansion-specific, and why the studio is making big changes to how it tests new content.

Rebekah Valentine is a news reporter for IGN. You can find her on Twitter @duckvalentine.