Thanks to datamining, most of us already knew that Malfurion was going to sacrifice himself in some way in order to restore Ysera back to life, and while that initially seemed kind of silly and a bunch of people were upset by it, I ended up being okay with it given that Malfurion has done basically nothing for the entire length of WoW - he peaked in WC3 and that was it. So of course I’ll take an infinitely more interesting character like Ysera over him.
However, the questline falls apart very quickly after Ysera is brought back. Not only do we get a nonsensical scenario where we emerge from the Emerald Dream, into the Ancient Bough, and yet somehow we’re still “inside the Emerald Dream” (this makes no sense - is it a dimension or a physical place we can go to, please make up your mind), but then, after going through all that trouble to fight a bunch of bad guys and sacrifice Malfurion to bring Ysera back, she ends up stepping down and promoting her daughter Merithra as the leader of the green dragonflight - going even as far as to say that she’ll make her the Aspect too as soon as they’ve regained their full powers (whatever that means).
Am I the only one disappointed by this? I get that they were trying to go for a bittersweet finale, but it only comes across as bitter in execution. Why sacrifice Malfurion and give Ysera such a cool entrance if she’s going to step down five minutes later and be like, “nah, I don’t actually wanna lead or anything, I just didn’t wanna play Shadowlands anymore.”
I am fine with it for the most part. Ysera’s back temporrily (at least dialogues seem to suggest such)
As for the emerald dream, it’s like twisting nether. You can GO there like as if it was a physical place but you can also be there while being on Azeroth, as it overlaps to the realm as well. It’s been like that since old novels I think, can be a bit iffy at time, but tldr is, itis another realm that overlaps with the physical realm.
It’s more of a personal take, but I prefer it this way. Ysera’s been dead, and was infused with a literal portion of a ‘titan’ of death to be brought back, it makes sense for her to be tied back to Shadowlands, and having lost that connection to the dream.
Besides, Merithria’s arcs been slowly been hinting at since bfa, I much rather have a new stable char being developed slowly than to have yet another char be magically brought back with zero consequences.
And well, only reason they brought her back briefly was to have her aid in saving the emerald grove, and I think having their powers restored refers to fights regaining their full powers, you know aspectral powers. Mother dragon stone is still not powered, so they are still ‘mortals’ and not at fullpower.
Yeah there was a wod quest for it, in oshugan, you phase into the nether to break shadowmoon totems that are weakning the barriers between realms. You appear in the real world still with a different skybox. Imps can even phase into nether, dhs also in game mechanicly has a skill called netherwalk
Can we extrapolate from this that phasing into other dimensions is something possible in the general sense, or is it specific to the Emerald Dream and Twisting Nether?
There’s a similar quest with void, there’s even a toy for it IF my memory serves me right…So that checks void, nether, dream, and of course than we have the veil and shadowlands though they are slightly different but in general it seems to be a common concept.
This is just to prep her daughter. And Malfurion wil obviously return. Being killed off for no reason during the ongoing plot is a privilege reserved for Horde leaders only.
Malfurion giving up his life to bring back the green dragon aspect only to have her immediately give her intent to make her daughter the dragon aspect as soon as he’s out of earshot definately felt very dastardly to me.
i don’t think it was instant but she can’t really go back to her role shes a part of the winter queen now a aspect of death if you will unlike that poser deathwing even her cloths and dragon form are reflections of her new nature heck all the npcs point out how her nature has changed
even her cloths and dragon form are reflections of her new nature heck all the npcs point out how her nature has changed