Story in a new expansion expanding on Cataclysm

Lore Story
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I’ve been thinking about what will happen in the expansion after Shadowlands and I liked that it expanded on the Wotlk storyline, but in this thread I wanted to write down and discuss what could have been in an expansion that expands on the Cataclysm lore.

First off, I don’t know if there are any dragons stronger than Deathwing and Wrathion that could be a new main villain, but if they added a new continent or world occupied by a new dragon race that was playable with a new hero class that could shapeshift to various dragon forms like a “Dragon Master” with lore tied to the dragonflights I would be very interested( hero class with same abilities as alexstrasza the life bender). A new threat rises with connections to the dragonflights that will unleash a calamity on Azeroth greater than Deathwing’s destructions and the Horde and Alliance must fight together and conquer the new continent and form an alliance with a new dragon race, but some of the dragon race being completely evil of course with a new dragon that could utterly destroy Deathwing and make a mockery of his demise.

I felt the idea was interesting and I feel like WoW was missing a proper dragon race standing on two legs and more humanlike that was playable similiar to Broodlord Lashlayer from BWL, but with a different look and more updated that could be black, blue, red, green, yellow and with fire breathing racial.

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I don’t know if it would have to follow the Dragon & Cataclysm related subjects specifically, but definitely something with a “panazerothian” vibe would be great. I’ve made up that word because obviously BfA was meant to be “Azeroth centric” but everything was very much revolving around the specific zones, and the reuse of older zones was came across as cheap.

Cataclysm made the right choice of spreading the new zones around the map, revamping older zones and actually making us (speaking for myself at least) interested in seeing what’s going on everywhere. That I would love.

Now as for a dragonkin type race… I mean could be interesting but I feel like the lore gymnastics would have to be too great. Why not deepen some of the existing races and make them playable, or simply further improve on all existing races? The whole “this island/continent was hidden for so long and we had never seen it until x event uncovered it” has already been done a couple of times…

That being said, I’m sure there could be some space for adding some landmass in what would be Azeroth’s Pacific ocean, though again, I’d like there to be some better justification for it and overall would prefer deepening everything that’s already there.

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They already have deepened the existing races like adding the story of the Zandalari, Nightborne, Lightforged even with the introduction of Argus and Blizzard will of course deepen the existing races even more instead of my idea here, but a dragon race with a capital that could remind abit about BWL, blackrock mountain, deepholm could feel like classic Warcraft lore.

In terms of gameplay, a proper new class based on dragon powers like dragoons from other mmo’s would be cool and I felt that it fits almost as much as demon hunters. Think of all the possibilities in gameplay with abilities based on dragon powers like the dragoons in FFXIV, but more WoW like.

I can understand wanting to deepen everything that’s already there, but it doesn’t mean a dragon continent or world with many referances to the dragonflights lore wouldn’t be cool.

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I wouldn’t say that allied races added depth to existing races. If anything, most of them were a cheap lip service to otherwise interesting ideas. Where’s the capitol of the Dark Irons? Where’s Suramar and High Mountain? Still instanced or neutral. Why can’t there be more race specific quests that offer even more good looking heritage armor and weapons? Stories that explore the races and their problems as oppose to just specific npc heroes? That’s what I mean by deepening the existing content.

Don’t get me wrong, I really enjoyed content that relates to the Dragon Aspects, their role and titanic origins. I just struggle to think of a creative and interesting unexplored aspect of them (pun not intended). If we go down to the path of having a new sub continent full of dragon related lore, how do we justify them? Is it going to be another “these dragons laid dormant until such and such accidentally woke them up and now their very hungry but some of them are nice about it”? Did the Titans straight up ignore them when they empowered the 5 famous ones? Do they not relate to Galakrond? Where were they during all these super important world shattering events? So many questions, so little time!

I mean blizzard are becoming increasingly notorious for retconning stuff lately, and I just can’t think of any way that would introduce the dragonkin without the use of said nefarious retcons (ok this time maybe I did mean to make the pun).

I mean how would you introduce them?

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Here is my take on introducing them.

The powers the titans found when they created the dragon aspects from Galakrond came from another world sealed off by the “Dragon Masters” where Galakrond was created(the dragon homeworld) that was controlled by a massive dragon far stronger than Galakrond and he was the one to open a rift to Azeroth and send in Galakrond to gain knowledge and show their enormous strength to Azeroth.

The creator of Galakrond was unheard of by the dragon aspects from Azeroth until one day after Shadowlands, the dragon rulers of this other world who had been spying on the events that took place in Azeroth through secret “dragon agents” including the killing of Deathwing. After hearing of Deathwing’s fall the dragon agents opened up a rift in Azeroth and traveled back to their dragon homeworld and gave the news of Azeroth’s unrivaled strength and the capability to end even the likes of Deathwing himself. After the dragon masters had heard the news they deemed Azeroth as a worthy opponent for war and to show Azeroth’s heroes a final showdown and to never take the dragon aspects lightly, for their ancenstor Galakrond’s creators were much stronger and seized to avenge Deathwing and to show Azeroth’s heroes that they will never hope to prevail against the true creators of dragons.

In the homeworld of dragons there were some parts of the dragon race called “Dragonborn” that were more civilized and wanted to prevent the dragon master’s destruction of Azeroth the dragonborn had been spying on in the dragon homeworld and to stop Galakrond’s creator’s scheme and decided to aid the horde and alliance instead and when the dragon masters opened up a rift to Azeroth from their homeworld, then the dragonborn appeared in an attempt to stop them in destroying Azeroth and traveled through the rift together with the evil dragon masters and the dragonborn kept their intentions secret and
dragonborn took control of a continent in the Azeroth pacific where they built their new home and a capital in hopes of preventing Galakrond’s creators evil scheme and give the horde and alliance information on how to stop them. The dragonborn had some mythic champions from their homeworld with formidable power and could defend themselves against their new enemy also known as the the dragon masters who were after revenge after Deathwing’s fall.

I tried to make the lore behind it make some sense. EDIT: Galakrond’s creator from the dragon homeworld had some sort of insane power like immortality?point is he was very, very old and somehow survived centuries and decades. EDIT: Wrathion didn’t die aswell I removed that.

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I can see something interesting coming out of a scenario like this. A lot of character development around the existing dragon aspects, Alexstraza, Kalegcos etc. Some development around Titan Keeper Tyr and other titan / dragon related lore would be awesome too.

I feel if they’d use this to explore more early dragon history it would be pretty cool. You’d imagine that the existing aspects would be pretty confused to learn about their true origins so they’d want to confirm things. This could create a series of cool caverns of time dungeons, where we fight alongside the younger, uncorrupted aspects, witness their titanic empowerment, and even maybe a raid where we get to defeat Galakrond himself.

The one thing that would bug me a bit personally is something like that:

It’s basically exactly what bothers most people, including myself, about the Jailer. It’s this whole “oooh you thought this guy was the big baddy? No no no, here’s the big daddy baddy who’s responsible all along wink wink nudge nudge”. It just put the Arthas, Ner’zhul and Lich King relationship in a very strange place. How can we avoid this whole, “turns out someone else was responsible all along” vibe? Going to deviate a bit and try to add my twist on your idea.

Re-reading the wiki page for Galakrond and spotted this line:

“Galakrond who once hunted with his fellow proto-dragons and was seen as benevolent suddenly changed and became terror that caused the other proto-dragons in prehistoric Azeroth to fear him.” (my emphasis)

h ttps://wowpedia.fandom.com/wiki/Galakrond

Maybe your ideas could play around that “suddenly changed”? Maybe the draconic master race sought to corrupt him instead of them being his creators? Could put the dragons on an interesting direction. Maybe all worlds can have native dragons, but this one “draconic master race” seeks to either eliminate them all because they want to be the only ones, or convert and empower them all because they think they should be ruling the universe as the superior race? (totally kind of turned your dragons into fascists, sorry.)

Then your friendly dragon race from their native world, still is a splinter faction that believes that dragon can peacefully co-exist with all species and so forth. Would create an interesting threat and conflict towards our dragons and our world which matters to us. Dragons have helped us countless times, now we got to help them.

Just some thoughts, what do you think?

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First of all, why would you want a villain? The point of having a villain is that this character is instantly labeled as wrong at worst or “bad take on a good idea” at best, and thus, the only “job” of a villain as a concept is seemingly to just be a loser existing to justify the ideas of someone else.

Secondly, raise Galakrond? That thing could be more problematic than all aspects combined.

Should we though?
:thinking:

/offtop
They do just fine in a humanoid form. Hard to stand on 2 for a creature with 4.

The question is, if you get a glimps into the past, and it does not propagate in any way into the present, be it new takes on old ideas, reviving some long lost cultural aspect, or finding oneself at odds with what was done, does it deepen anything?

Sure, draenei supposedly got a bit of lore from Argus and WoD. How did it change what the draenei are? Well, it didn’t as far as I can see.

The devs still can’t figure out to split PvE and PvP balance in the game.

I don’t want to sound negatively, but there is IMO a “theory” and practice. On paper, that could be a great take on what we have with new possibilities opened up for all classes. In practice we have classes filled with +% dmg passives, conduits, legendaries, trinkets, etc. So, maybe removing most if not all +% things from talents and progression systems 1st would be more useful step?

Idk, what you’re saying sounds interesting. But then I look at how the devs approach things, and my reactions switches from excitement about something new to “how about we fix what we have 1st”.

gl hf

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Enough existing dragons standing on 4 and they have such dragons aswell from the dragon homeworld, but a new dragon race with a different look than the dragons already in the game that stands on two legs like the"dragonborn" from neverwinter online can look very cool. Example: similiar body structure as Broodlord Lashlayer standing on two legs and without wings, some with wings, but more refined than him with more improved graphics, color, and facial details on the levels of current WoW’s facial detail like the Worgen.

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Here is a good illustration on deviantart that I can use as an example for the type of look I was thinking about for a new dragon race with a more humanlike body structure

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Dragons are (probably) descended from the elemental air and stone dragons. They were curse of fleshed into proto-dragons and then uplifted by the Titan Keepers into the dragons we now know.

The “homeland” of the dragons (or atleast a mythical island heavily associated with them) is the Dragon Isles.

Dragons do not exist (or atleast are not native too) other worlds in the Warcraft cosmos.

Also, while I would love for the Drakonid to become a playable race, I’d rather have Blizzard focus on the currently playable (allied) races.

https://wowpedia.fandom.com/wiki/Dragon_Isles

https://wowpedia.fandom.com/wiki/Drakonid

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I appreciate the correction on lore and the thought struck me as I was writing it that dragons didn’t exist in other worlds in the Warcraft cosmos, but it could have been cool if they introduced it in an interesting way that one world was in fact completely unknown and kept secret and sealed off by someone when until one day something unbelievable happens?

Another take on it that could have been cool was a Drakonid race that became high in population had built massive zones and a capital underneath the Dragon Isles as if the Dragon Isles had something similiar to Deepholm.

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iicr there are oversized fairie dragons on alt-Draenor, e.g. Moonglow.

Also, it’s possible to spot some dragons on Elunaria:

https://wowpedia.fandom.com/wiki/Eonar_Drake

So it happened that all 3 places (Draenor, Azeroth, Elunaria) were visited by the Pantheon in one way or another.

gl hf

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Oh that’s cool didn’t know.

Generally, making so some form of dragons not being unique to Azeroth, don’t think would be a distasteful retcon. If anything, we could use the official lore as you mentioned Shadowtwill!

What’s not to say that elemental spirits got cursed of flesh from other old god infested planets, but found other means to become empowered that doesn’t necessarily relate to titans. Maybe said dragons beat their own old gods without any external help, which could explain why they’re so fond of themselves and decide to go on their own quest to “free all the dragons” or some jazz like that.

Otherwise, relating back to the title of the OP, expanding on Cataclysm could also follow a more elemental centric lore? Something that would go further than “elemental lords are arguing, Ragnaros bad, Watery dude good”…

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So far the origins of the dragons seemingly come from could be traced to elementals. And elementals can be found on other planets. So, something like convergent evolution or interference of the Pantheon could still fit the current lore without contradicting much afaia.

gl hf

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Well, then I stand corrected as well! Never knew Elunaria Dragons were a thing honestly!

That said, I do not consider the Fey Dragons as “actual” dragons, they certainly aren’t akin to the varied dragonkin we have on Azeroth, Outlands and the Shadowlands, they also do not appear to have evolved from the same way or seem to be even native to their own “homeworlds” (Azerothian ones apparently come from the Emerald Dream, and we have no lore whatsoever about the Draenor ones).

I think Fey dragons are called that because they just seem to have a superficial resemblance to actual elemental-, proto- and normal dragons.

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Well I hope Blizzard will expand on the Dragon Isles. I don’t know much about the isles in total size and stuff but splitting the isles into multiple zones and giving it some rich lore would have been interesting. Maybe they are saving the Dragon Isles for another expansion one day? I hope so.

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