Don’t read further if you don’t want spoilers. I don’t really have any spoilers to share but I don’t know what else everyone else knows, so I figured I’d put that on the top.
Which bosses do you expect to see and/or think we’ll see in Dragonflight?
So my starting group -
Dragons (Because it’s named Dragonflight):
Nozdormu / Murozond - Not surprising choice since he’s a dragon that may or may not go bad in the future at some point and that we may or may not have killed in the future/past/future because he’s corrupted into believing something worse than the Hour of Twilight will happen.
Galakrond - Another not surprising choice. Proto-dragon who ate dragons and got defeated by the eventual aspects. Rezzing him wouldn’t seem out of the cards (ha, Hearthstone reference). I don’t think Arch-Villain Rafaam will show up as a boss, just as a nod to his role in Hearthstone. League of Explorers are around, why not?
Chromatus - If you’re going to kill off dragons, might as well toss in this guy. I doubt he’ll get the respect he deserves, whereas the first two could be end bosses, he’d show up somewhere in the middle of a raid with us having to fight multiple heads at a time. Maybe.
Dragon-Adjacent:
Odyn - I just replayed some of the artifact weapon quests and ran into the remainder of the Skovold lineage who reminded me that Odyn ordered his entire family slaughtered (which included the young children and the shieldmaiden wife). Nice. Toss that on top of what he did to Helya and I won’t shed any tears if we actually kill him. He was also very anti creating the dragons in the first place, so I wouldn’t be surprised to have him show up as an off-shoot final raid boss (not the primary threat, but a secondary one). Maybe he’s going to try to use something at the Titan facility to re-originate … something … something … I have no idea.
The Twilight’s Hammer and/or Xal’atath - No it’s not one person, but possibly revealing someone (or just adding new characters) to bring the Twilight Hammer makes a bit of sense. N’zoth’s death at Ny’alotha means, in essence, the Old Gods are “freed” from their ancient prisons and could try to return to Azeroth to end the world. Supposedly Nozdormu was convinced the Hour of Twilight was better than what would come if it were averted, so maybe they tie in with his conversion to Murozond. They could try to open a portal to the Void (oh my) and … something … minions of Old Gods, Void Lords, tentacles … and that talking dagger turned walking corpse (Xal’atath) would definitely make sense to be involved. It won’t happen, but I would buy every item in the shop if they’d make Calia Menethil revealed as the new leader of the Twilight’s Hammer. They did it with Archbishop Benedictus! … I know, it won’t happen, whatever.
Dark Horse (Not the comics):
Azeroth (World Soul) - Bear with me here, I have a 3.5 week old and sleeping is something that is a distant memory at this point. The land is “awakening” or something which is part of the intro to Dragonflight. What if that awakening is Azeroth herself? I don’t know if we all die when she awakens, but at the very least she’s been stabbed by a cosmic sword (and that wound has to have festered at this point), fed on by at least one Old God and … whatever it was that Zovaal was doing to it … so she could be “not ready” to make her grand exit/entrance. Perhaps planting a new World Tree will help soothe her back to sleep (because clearly a pod from the realm of Death would heal her, I don’t know, I’m making this up as I go). Maybe the Titan facility on the Dragon Isles is actually for monitoring her development and we’ll need to beat her up and put her back to sleep while some group tries to awaken her early (could be the Hour of Twilight folks, could be Odyn thinks she can just tough it out).
Long Shots (It’s Blizzard):
Thrall - It wouldn’t be an expansion if someone major from the Horde wasn’t on the chopping block. Elements running amuck? The world Shaman will save us! Oh no, wait, he’s joining the elements! Murder time. Since there were some Trolls being thrown around I thought maybe Zekhan might hit the bricks, but it wouldn’t carry the same emotional value as killing off Thrall. His death seals how important it is to have an actual Black Dragon Aspect instead of a mopey Orc Shaman pretending to be one and how important it is to not be a member of the Horde story because you will die.
Tyrande - It wouldn’t be an expansion if the Night Elves didn’t suffer something (whether real or imagined) so I’ll throw in Tyrande. The power of Elune and carrying around the seed burdened with all the souls of her people and … something … renewal … something vengeance … she goes angry priestess. Then, after we beat her up, we’ll find out the only way to truly purge her of her madness, is by Ysera, another touched by Elune and the Winter Queen (because why not?). Malfurion sacrifices himself to bring Ysera back, who saves Tyrande after the fight.
I’d love if we find out Yogg-Saron was just chilling, bidding his time in Ulduar and finally reveals himself to be alive this entire time in the last patch.
Therazane. As part of the Black Dragonflight quests. Ebonhorn says “When Deathwing shattered the Wolrd Pillar of Deepholm, he earned the ire of the Stonemother and her forces. I fear they may blame me for my father’s crimes.” Therazane sends one of her own children for the Black Dragonscale and after we defeat him he tells us that the Stonemother is watching us. I would think that the primalists we fight are in some way connected to her. Either we fight along with her, or against her, she’s going to have a part to play in Dragonflight.
Meanwhile with Kurog Grimtotem being with the Primalists, and Magatha being datamining… I am expecting Magatha and her loyal Grimtotem like Cor and Gorm to be bosses as well. Depending on the circumstances, I can see Cor and Gorm being that duo-boss fight with Magatha being the final boss of a dungeon or near the end of raid.
I would really like to know what the Elemental Lords think about all this. The Primal Incarnates are arguably competitors for their thrones, so I could totally see them working with us out of self interest if nothing else.
Exploring Kalimdor confirms Magatha is working with the Twilight’s Hammer and she also posseses the power of the Loa Arikara, The Spirit of Vengence. It seems like she will be a villian.
This book also hints we will be revisiting Dire Maul at some point.
I’m going to throw out one other hair-brained idea:
Azeroth (World Soul) - Bear with me here, I have a 3.5 week old and sleeping is something that is a distant memory at this point. The land is “awakening” or something which is part of the intro to Dragonflight. What if that awakening is Azeroth herself? I don’t know if we all die when she awakens, but at the very least she’s been stabbed by a cosmic sword (and that wound has to have festered at this point), fed on by at least one Old God and … whatever it was that Zovaal was doing to it … so she could be “not ready” to make her grand exit/entrance. Perhaps planting a new World Tree will help soothe her back to sleep (because clearly a pod from the realm of Death would heal her, I don’t know, I’m making this up as I go). Maybe the Titan facility on the Dragon Isles is actually for monitoring her development and we’ll need to beat her up and put her back to sleep while some group tries to awaken her early (could be the Hour of Twilight folks, could be Odyn thinks she can just tough it out).
Good call! Didn’t even really think about it, but the elemental lords in general (and Therazane in particular) make sense.
I hadn’t seen that datamined (and don’t have that book)! Yeah I would expect them to pick up the Magatha thread. Hopefully, one way or another, we get some sort of justice for Cairne.
Then Exploring Kalimdor is wrong because it says she’s been captured by the Twlight’s hammer, and no one has seen her since. Maybe the text is wrong. There’s a lot of errors in this book it seems.
In retrospect it must be wrong because she was a follower in Legion and she appeared in that expansion. So, I suppose you are right, the book is providing misinformation.
While there are errors in the book, it does mention that Magatha had escaped from the Twilight’s Hammer… on the very same page. You are getting caught in the wording no one has seen her since, which in retrospect was poor word choice for the book since no one should have gotten caught in the wording.
“Hello, I’m writing a lore book for World of Warcraft!”
“Oh, that’s neat; you must play the game quite a lot then.” Blinks " ‘Play the game’? Why would I ever do that?"
It be interesting to know where the primalists even came from. Like, are they just rebranded Twilight Cultists who threw away their team void T-shirt when N’zoth got anime lasered to the face?
Or are they competing organizations? Twilights enslaved elementals, which Primalists do not (so far)… so there is some interesting room for them to both be in ideological competition.
Primalists are led by Galakrond’s Fan Club of Proto Dragons: The Primal Incarnates.
They sought to become embodiments of Elemental Magic embracing it.
They became Fire, Air, Earth and Frost.
They took the place of the Elemental Lords as Azeroth’s chosen embodiments of the Elements(which explains why Elemental Lords can now be killed deader than dead in the Plane they are bound to whereas before they would just come back which was why they were bound to the Elemental Planes in the first place).
Incidentally both Air and Earth Primal Incarnates include Lightning in their form. Air has Purple Lightning while Earth has Yellow Lightning.
Blue Lightning as shown with Lei Shen is Titan Magic.
Interesting how Water has been replaced with Frost in Azeroth’s mind. Or perhaps Frost was Water’s true form all along…
If Frost is indeed the Element’s true form then Water is just another form resulting from Decay just like Slime is.
So as far as I recall, the Elemental Lords fought against and then were enslaved by the Black Empire. Then the Pantheon locked them away. Later Rag and Al’Akir decided to join up with Deathwing (to end the world) but for the Twilights, the elementals were useful tools.
From what it sounded like they primalists are more focused on the elements themselves. They were raging on Azeroth before the Old Gods after all.
Nozdormu has been done to death. I am not optimistic about Blizzard’s ability to write something unique and interesting for him. But, I expect him to be in the mix.
I do not know if Blizzard will go with the whole Odyn option or not. I would love to have him be one of the main antagonists. That story could get very dark, and strike to the roots of the franchise. The way he forced his will upon Helya was dark and struck to the roots of the franchise. Justice upon him would be grim.
The Grimtotem are making a appearance, so I expect some more of them. I have been ranting about the uniqueness of a Tauren themed raid/patch for years - and that may be in the cards! I used to loathe Magatha for what she did to Cairne, but her snark in Legion during the Shaman quests won me over. Where once I wished to slay her, now, I do not mind her around. Whether we put her down, or help her subdue some more evil Grimtotem/Feltotem, I am just plain down for the awesome pre raid cinematic of angry threatening Tauren stomping about!