The idea for the Dragon Isles has a lot of set up, and I would personally like to see Chromantus return as the main villain. I would personally like Azshara to be the one who “wakes him up” as she has enough arcane magic, a grudge against the world and has worked with N’Zoth like Deathwing - the one other being Chromantus respects.
Other than Azshara, if the Void lords decide to make a direct play, one of them could wake up Chromantus. While he requires arcane power to reawaken, maybe the theft and harnessing of a few Pillars of Creation could provide that.
Given the latest retcon in Shadowlands, maybe the Nathrezim could play a role. They’re all about “infiltrating the cosmic forces”, so I could imagine them harnessing arcane power to wake up Chormantus; maybe revenge, maybe a distraction, maybe even Azshara and Denathrius working together. While I prefer Azshara to wake up Chromantus of her own volition, this idea could give the Nathrezim something to do with the new retcon (if we have to stick with it).
Back to Azshara, her attempt at godhood is purely headcanon - based on her line about no longer dealing with “intermediaries” but seeking the true “throne of power” - could be interesting. Having her kick off the expansion by bringing back Chromantus is something I think would straddle the line between mortal adventures and cosmic wars, and a good idea.
I’m not completely against the idea of the Dragon Isles being something similar to the Broken Isles, but I never really envisioned them as being more than a content patch.
It just never seemed like the size or story was there to completely carry an expansion.
There’s two things;
I would much rather see Chromatus as just a content patch villain, similar to Ragnaros in WoW classic, as I do not think the lore/story is compelling enough to create him as a “big bad.”
Nor do I think another “big bad” should be done, at least not for awhile so story can be built up.
I would feel very jaded and cheated if the way we just let Azshara walk away in Ny’lotha lead to her unleashing a new enemy for us to fight.
We let Azshara walk away in Ny’lotha because we just didn’t care. We understood what she did and why she did it and was like alright, we’ll let you live so you can help us fight the “bigger bad.”
For her to come back and be the end boss, would feel forced.
Edit:
I would much rather it be a contingency plan of N’zoth’s.
“That which was sunken shall rise.”
“All that were sleeping…shall be awakened.”
The dragon isle has sunk, and N’zoth (in the dagger) raises the Isles, along with unleashing a sleeping Chromantus…etc…
The Dragon Isles were indirectly mentioned in Exploring Kalimdor, so that, in addition to previous hints, makes me believe that the Dragon Isles will be a focus next expansion.
They are supposed to be a home for all dragonflights. I don’t know if that means they are where the dragons originate. If that is the case, I expect to see elemental dragons, which dragons evolved from. Gryphons and wyverns share an acnestry with dragons too, so they may also be there.
No, no, no, no, no!! No to the Emerald Dream. No to any world beyond ?Azeroth. The solution to fixing the problems of Shadowlands isn’t repeating one of them.
So how about my second idea? The Dragon Isles are surrounded a magical veil, and when that veil is crossed we see they’re bigger inside it than they are outside, like the TARDIS. So no worlds beyond Azeroth, just magic superseding the laws of physics.
I’m fine with it. I really have nothing to add. I’ll admit I don’t know much about the lore regarding the Dragon Isles, including their size. The Broken Isles were certainly big enough for a full expansion. Are the Dragon isles smaller?
I mean, dragons aren’t a thing I’m largely either interested in or disinterested in. A feeling I also shared with Pandaren, but I loved MoP, so I’d give it a fair chance.
There’s not much lore to the Dragon Isles, other than it’s a mythological home for the first Dragons. The place was first concepted as a level 70 raid during the original planning for WoW before TBC was ever thought of, and it’d be located off the coast of Quel’thalas with Naga being the main enemy. If that had happened then it would’ve been a small zone, but as it is now the place is nearly a blank slate for fresh ideas to be placed onto in the same manner Pandaria was. The Broken Isles were much smaller in Warcraft 3 and were retconned in Legion since most of the zones wouldn’t have been able to fit on the landmass that had been previously established. A lot of the appeal of the Dragon Isles is that it’s a concept that has been around since before WoW but hasn’t been put to use yet.
The size of the Dragon Isles isn’t exactly shown so we have no idea. It’s located in the North Sea west of Quel’Thalas according to the plan for WoW Alpha.
The Northern Islands are also located in the North Sea. More specifically where Exile’s Reach is supposed to be. It’s size is unknown too so it also can be made an Expansion.
The only Isles in the Great Sea besides Kul’Tiras, Crestfall(Island Expeditions) and the Broken Isles are Darkspear Islands(which apparently survived the Volcanic Explosion driving off the Darkspear and Horde) & Zul’Dare and we have no idea how big they are either!
The South Seas’ Islands include Pandaria, Zandalar, Kezan, Lost Isles(from Cataclysm), Plunder Isle and Tel’Abim.
The North Sea has 2 Expansions worth of Continents left, Great Sea also has 2 Expansions worth of Continents left and the South Seas has 3 Expansions worth of Continents left!
After that we will have no choice but to move into the Veiled Sea and the Forbidding Sea.
The Frozen Sea between Northrend, the North Sea, the Great Sea and the Veiled Sea has nothing in it according to sources at the moment.
I suppose if I were to design the zones for the Dragon Isles, I’d have one zone each dedicated to the blacks, blues, bronzes, greens and reds, with a dragon city being in the center though I don’t know what that city would look like. The zones color schemes would match their flights and have an appropriate ecosystem for each (earthy plain, snowy mountain, sandy desert, emerald jungle and autumnal forest). They would be callbacks to zones such as Thousand Needles, Winterspring, Tanaris, Feralas, and Eversong.
I’d give the Blue Dragonflight Zone traits of Coldarra & the Nexus, Red Dragonflight Zone traits from the Ruby Dragonshrine, Green Dragonflight Zone traits of the Emerald Dream, Bronze Dragonflight Zone traits of the Caverns of Time and the Black Dragonflight Zone traits of Deepholm and the Obsidian Dragonshrine.
Ironically Maldraxxus if we recall was Scourgeholme and Plaguewood Up to Eleven so the Dragon Isles being Zones embodying the Dragonflight Territories Up to Eleven is well expected.
On that note, how would you like to see the sterilization of the dragonflights handled? Would you like it to see it cured by magic the dragons have on the Dragon Isles? Or maybe a cosmic force does it. How about, if Chromantus returns, he offers a cure for it (whether he has one or not, that would be a major driving force for conflict in the story).
Based on the original plan for the Dragon Isles, with an Old God Temple on it and stuff, I wouldn’t be surprised if there was a void based presence upon them. So I can easily see the Twilight and Black dragonflights being enemies. Though with the Black dragonflight, I see a civil war based fight where Wrathion, Ebonhorn, and hopefully Sabellian unite against whoever leads the enemy in an attempt to finally save the flight from it’s path of destruction. I wouldn’t be surprised if they placed Serinar or Sabellian in the role, the former since Nalice left Wrymrest Temple to serve Deathwing it’s easy to assume the same for him and the later because I can see Blizzard being that lazy and just going Deathwing’s son is the bad guy, when Sabellian is actually rather chill. Like he actually refers to Rexxar as a friend, but it’s left ambiguous if Rexxar knows his buddy is a black dragonflight.
Now since the Island Expeditions had us face young black dragons, I think they could be the key to fixing the flight’s sterility. While we did fight twilight young, it was revealed in a quest that eggs within Grim Batol were dug up by the troggs and hatched as a result. Anyways so I can see a magic based cure at play, but titan science also being at play since we do know that there are more “Uld” complexes on Azeroth and we are bound to encounter one eventually so why not on the Dragon Isles.
And on the topic of “Uld” complexes on Azeroth, since Blizzard has taken to have expansions flow into one another (ex: Archimonde throwing Gul’dan into the portal to Azeroth allowing him to start Legion) it’s possible that the push to go to the Dragon Isles would be to find the complex to help heal Azeroth since is being attacked by Zovaal in the raid.
Meanwhile while I am excited at the idea of Chromantus returning, I can’t really see him as big bad material. A patch boss, like Ragnaros or Kel’Thuzad, definitely but the finale boss of an expansion, no. Chromantus was more of a vessel of destruction, committed to serving Deathwing, and the closest we got to any real desires on his part was him wanting to mate with Kirygosa.
Yeah it was interesting reading that Ghostcrawler regretted using the portal hub system for Cata. Made the world feel small and disjointed. So it is funny seeing blizzard basically do the same thing with Shadowlands. Just Oribos uses flight paths instead of portals with the exception of the maw / korthia and the upcoming zone.
Also it would be a silly move to have a book villain be the main villain of a story. Every expansion antagonist has at least being referenced or appeared in the games prior to their encounter*. Even if they featured more so in the novels prior to their expansion. Deathwing for example. Chromatus has only appeared in Twilight of the Aspects. I was actually expecting him to be in Dragon Soul. Where the Twilights hammer recovers his body from the Eye of Eternity while trying to prevent us from getting the focusing iris.
The reason why I say this is because you can just tell there will be outrage from being “forced” to read “secondary material” to get the backstory behind this “new” antagonist. It is why it took forever for the MCU to start including their netflix heroes into the movies. As one of them makes a cameo in No Where Home.
I think they had trouble creating the proper model for the guy, hence why he was a no-show and we got a brand new character Ultraxion, who when defeated has a chance to drop a chromatic drake mount.
I think they’ll use Galakrond as the main threat if they do Dragon Isles, given he’s the OG.
I’d hope that the expansion is more like MoP though, in that it’s a relatively self-contained series of islands with their own storyline that we’re just exploring. Maybe keep the final antagonist hidden for the initial part of the expansion so it feels less immediately life-and-death.
