It doesn’t make any sense to me. Primalists appeared pretty much the second the Dragon Isles were rediscovered. Out of nowhere, hordes of pissed off shamans were rampaging across Azeroth in the prepatch. Where did they come from? With the Incarnates imprisoned and forgotten on a lost island, how does anyone know they exist and why did they decide to join them when they got their asses handed to them by the Dragonflights?
How did Kurog find out about Raszageth? Why did he choose to free her? How did he know where her prison was, and why did he free her specifically, and not the three Incarnates all imprisoned together? If he could smash open one prison, why not another? How did anyone become a Primalist when there were no Incarnates to bestow primal energies on them or their proto-dragons (a la Eranog), and how did they get to the Dragon Isles before we did?
I came up with a possible prepatch story that would’ve answered most of these questions. Don’t mind the formatting, I typed it up on Discord originally, where I couldn’t be bothered to press the shift key.
Summary
the dragon isles come back and the aspects fly off back to the isles. overjoyed at the sight of their home, they send messengers back to azeroth to tell the mortal races that the wondrous lands are found again. however, primal proto-dragons (who, being in stasis, wouldn’t have been weakened over time) tail these messengers back to azeroth, kill them as they get close, and instead veer off to start gathering intel. with the messengers dead, it’d give the primal proto-dragons a couple of weeks to recruit.
as you’re doing the pre-quests, rather than the extremely dull primal storms event, there could’ve been an sl-style questline where, while waiting for the boat to be finished, a small group of primalists attack goldshire/razor hill as a dragon messenger corpse washes up on shore. the attackers are almost entirely night elves and trolls, so you’re dispatched to the nelf encampment in stormwind (alliance) and the sen’jin isles (horde) to investigate.
there, you find a primal proto-dragon in visage form (or speaking through someone else, if proto-dragons can’t have visages) preaching to those two maligned races about how their home was destroyed, their people were massacred, and the titans (ignoring the fact the nelves aren’t descended from titan constructs) did nothing to help them in those three years since (alliance) and that they’ve been utterly stagnant and weak and with the help of the primalists, they can regain their power and begin rebuilding their empire (horde). there could also be some nice rp for nelf and troll players where they can get special interactions.
as particularly pissed off nelves and sullen, ambitious trolls take the proto-dragon up on his offer, they become a much larger force of primalists who can forcefully convert doubters (of which there would surely be many) and begin the trek not just back to the dragon isles (which explains how they got there faster than you) but also disperse into azeroth to recruit other races with their fancy new powers. you report back to the shipmaster.
after this, part 2 of the prepatch event begins, which can be simply the primal storms event and it can play out vanilla. the primalists are pushed back to the dragon isles and the story unfolds as-is.
Maybe this sort of thing will be addressed some other time, but right now it’s not something I can ignore. It’s too weird. But if there’s any explanations, I’d love to hear them.
When you read description of kurog grimtotem he was pupil of magatha