Suggestion: Make unlocking the Emerald Dream easier for new/returning players

Gameplay Quests & Achievements
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Hey all,

I’d like to suggest a skip or streamlined unlock for the Emerald Dream zone (Guardians of the Dream). Right now, getting in as a fresh or returning character is genuinely rough.

The current requirement

If you boosted or never played Dragonflight, you can’t just walk in. Shandris Feathermoon - who starts the actual unlock (Fire Season / Coalition of Flames) - won’t even appear until you’ve done the full DF main campaign (10.0) and the Embers of Neltharion / Zaralek Cavern campaign (10.1). That’s several hours of older content before you reach a ~20-30 min chain that’s the only part actually about the Emerald Dream. There’s no official skip.

Why it’s a problem now

We’re several expansions past Dragonflight. People heading to the zone today aren’t there for the story - they want mounts, pets, old transmog, or the druid form customizations (including the non-LFR version of Amirdrassil). Walling all that behind a whole expansion’s campaign across two content patches is unintuitive, especially for returning players who don’t want to redo a campaign gate to reach content that’s now several patches old.

A few ideas that could help (any of these would be great):

  • Auto-unlock the Valdrakken Emerald Dream portal at level 70, account-wide.

  • Let Shandris always offer the Coalition of Flames chain, regardless of DF/Zaralek progress.

This isn’t just me - there are already multiple threads here and plenty of discussion on Reddit, Wowhead, etc. asking for exactly this, or just confused about why Shandris won’t show up. It’d be lovely to see this get a quality-of-life pass at some point.

Thanks for reading!

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Can’t tell you how much I agree on this.

Wanted to visit the old raids because I was fighting depression during Dragonflight and could not play, but as soon as I saw I had to play through another campaign I gave up.

I may take it up and go anyways, but still, two expansions away it should be just easier than that.

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Bumping before this closes - still exactly the same in the current patch: Shandris won’t offer Coalition of Flames until 10.0 and Zaralek Cavern are both fully cleared, so new/returning players still eat two patches of old campaign before reaching the actual Emerald Dream content. No skip exists, and it only goes account-wide after that gate.

Thanks for sharing your experience, @ShadyXLVII - sorry that’s what pushed you off. Anyone else who’s hit this, add your case - the more of us on record, the better.

Would genuinely appreciate a dev or CM take on whether this is even on the radar - even a “no, and here’s why” beats silence. Still hoping for either the level-70 account-wide auto-unlock or Shandris always offering the chain regardless of campaign progress.

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