I always thought it was an etheral (non-physical) realm, in which one druids (and emerald dragons, obviously) can only enter through slumber.
But now with the current patch, seems it’s actually just another physical realm, since anyone : non-druid players, their mount, their pets, non-druid mobs, even elemental mobs, etc… can invade, and even interfere with, at any time.
I dont know, feels so strange. Am i the only one ?
if we can do it in shadowlands, anything is now possible.
Your mind perceives it as such.
You see green I see orange, etc.
I think Blizzard themselves didn’t know what to do here. They probably meant for it to be a dream world but how would they explain it? They clearly wanted the player to go there in this expansion but how would it fit into the story? Take a sleep serum? Portal? So I guess they just made it a physical area. I don’t think they care too much.
Blizzard seems to struggle when they have to take some of their more “special” Warcraft lore and translate it into the WoW setting, because everything in WoW has to translate to the content formula of zone design and gameplay loops and hubs and NPCs and so on.
So it all ends up feeling very conformed, even if lore-wise places like The Emerald Dream and The Shadowlands are not supposed to be akin to playing around in Elwynn Forest and The Barrens.
And Blizzard seem hesitant to veer too far from their tried and true and experiment with the content design, favoring the sausage factory approach instead, so to speak. Just more of the same.
I was curious what they were going to do with that but it turned out it wasn’t a lot 
I’m guessing if they had tried to come up with ways to portray this well, it might have annoyed a portion of the playerbase, or caused visual issues, depending on the execution. This was probably the easiest solution with the least potential hassle.
It’s a bit of a bummer tho. The Emerald Dream as described in the past in books and such sounded mystical and mythical. It’s not really hitting those notes imho.
Look, you’re totally right and I agree HOWEVER theres literally no way this could be corrected to be put in its original perspective.
Think about it.
This is the only way we can experience The Dream without borrowed power, The Maw scenario where we couldnt mount up things we didnt like at all let alone allow just druids to enter it , lmao.
I always thought it was meant to represent what the world would look like without any mortal races and all of that and now it’s full of buildings and roads and supermarkets and all that stuff.
We still don’t know what exactly Emerald Dream is (and only heard opinions from several different factions), but current consensus seems to be that it is a multi-layered Titan workshop for the world(s) where Titans can work independently from restraints of rulesets of other worlds. Given that this layer of 10.2 corresponds with normal Azeroth, it should be probably following mostly the same physical laws that normal world does. And you (and your mounts) has been on that layer before multiple times, although usually just in parts afflicted by Nightmare.
eh the dream has been a physical place since legion was you asleep during the expansion ? it feel like people keep trying to find things to nitpick
back in legion there was a whole emerald dream raid called the emerald nightmare with xavius honestly to mean ignorent people try to debat the lore without actually knowing the lore it’s rather sad if your going to crap on the game at least know what your talking about
Which is why mythological concepts shouldn’t be explored too much in-game, and should stay as background material to enrich the world setting. Like it used to work in the first iterations of the game.
Instead of seeking to one-up themselves with each expansion, they should just tell more stories rooted in normal stuff.
Think of it like the shadowland, it’s like another plane of existence almost. I’d post the cosmology chart blizz made for chronicals but don’t think I can
It originally was in the dream but it was then birthed into reality through the tree, which now holds a place on azeroth.
So yes it was in the emerald dream at once point but its now in reality, that’s my take from it.
The Emerald Dream was, if I recall correctly, always meant to be a sort of “beta realm” of Azeroth.
A pre-release, uncorrupted/untampered version of the Titans’ world with nature in full ascendancy.
I think it keeps quite well with the lore. It was going to be visitable in Vanilla, supposedly. A pocket-dimension, so to speak. The fact that Fyrakk and Co. can enter is because they forced their way in. The rest of us were just “allowed” by the Dream Wardens.
I think there are many layers to the Emerald Dream. Some layers are more-or-less in the physical realm such as Moonglade or bits of Valsharah. Some are close to the physical realm such as the Dream ways which are just through a thin veil of existance. Some are in the realm of the dead, such as Ardenweald.
The one we are entering here must be quite close to the phsical realm to allow the new World Tree to grow out into it.
This is a zone where you can enter while barely having a nap rather than being in full blown REM sleep.
We probably haven’s seen 10% of the Emerald Dream in all our visits to various aspects.
we were also in nyalotha like that…its all a dream or something…something
blizzard writers and quest makers are stuck in twitter instead of game -design
no you are right
in my opinion it could be next expansion
I suggest you read Stormrage. Good novel. Horror-ish. But it explains how the Emerald Dream works.
This topic was automatically closed 30 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.