The Dragon Isles are a floating plothole

Lore Story Forum
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Hi! King’s honor, friends!
Let’s get one thing straight first: I’m having a blast this expansion. It’s super fun, can’t wait for the raid to open. The story is also going in a nice direction, the questing experience was super fun.

That said, the entire premise of the expac is it’s weakest point so far.

1 - The Dragon Isles, apparently, alredy existed as an archipelago BEFORE the sundering, as we see in the flashbacks in both trailer and legacies. This is unheard of and is never adressed in any way that i’ve noticed. Are there other landmasses we don’t know of that were never part of Kalimdor?

2 - The dragons left to fight the Legion and turned off the Isles with a bunch of people inside for no apparent reason. The djaradin slept, the dragonkin either just vibed around or went mad, the centaur kept centauring i guess but for what purpose? Did the isles run out of magic batteries or something? Then why seal it off with third parties inside who i’m guessing did not consent 100% with that? Being sealed off for god knows how long in an island with 4 huge evil imprisioned protodragons must have ruined someone’s day for sure.

3 - Just like that, the Isles turned back on for no reason at all. The dragons are called back and have some very touching moments, like Stay a While, but still, 100% out of the blue. Did Azeroth do it ? Why?

So far, it feels like they are building a very intersting and engaging story over a very frail basis because it looks cool, and I fear this approach may hurt the payoff later.

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Your first point is kinda pointless. Azeroth is a fantasy world, real world comparisons dont always apply.
If the creators say it was its own landmass (island, archipalego, whatever), then thats what its always been until the creators say otherwise.

For #2, I’d wager they didnt want the Legion to use it for their purposes. So, lock it up. Why they couldnt retuern after? I dont know, or cant remember right now.

#3, i mean… we’re still in the first few pages of the story. Maybe it’ll be revealed later, or maybe i missed something.
Could we Sit a While before jumping to conclusions?

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This isn’t that unusual or unexpected. We’ve known for a while that sailing to the west of Kalimdor has seen no ships return, and certainly not any ships landing on the east coast of the EK. The premise that something exists on the other side of the world has been hinted at before. That the Dragon Isles are not part of the OG Kalimdor supercontinent is not that big a deal.

The reason’s pretty simple; keep the Legion away from all the titan magic and tech on the island. Leaving the other races to live on the island isn’t exactly unethical; it’s their homeland, after all. I can’t imagine a situation where races who have a large island, full of life and food and magic, are somehow punished by not being force migrated from the only lands they ever knew.

The island didn’t “run out of magical batteries” (I like that phrase and will find somewhere to use it); they were hidden away until the beacon was re-ignited, which we saw in the first cinematic.

As mentioned, the mystery of how the islands “turned back on” (you type things the way I type things, and I kinda love it) isn’t a mystery; we saw it happen in the cinematic, when stoneboi squeezed the beacon back together.

Why he suddenly felt a call to do it isn’t exactly know, but it’s most likely because the primalists reed Razegeth from her prison.

I do agree that a lot of this should be explained better.

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But they hadn’t freed her yet. Stoneboi wakes up one day, opens the garage door for the first time in 20k years or something, then the dragons come and get to check out the place, and then the primalists arrive and break the thunder chicken free, otherwise how would they do it with the isles sealed off? In the Wrathion short story we see the Grimtotem loot piñata talk about how things are about to change and stuff before Wrathion and Kalec even understood they were feeling the call of the broodlands. Somehow the primalists knew the isles were on the verge of awakening/had just awakened before most dragons, enough to plan for it and assemble an invasion force.

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This was an awesome description.

It’s like my head is a World Tree and you’re like a Keebler Kaldorei describing how I see WoW.

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So I have a bit of a theory here that the other incarnates are in stasis, but Razagath wasn’t due to how she was locked up. She could feel when Neltharion died through the elements… so what if that worked both ways. When the Old Gods were alive the whispers of the weakest incarnates would of been drowned out by the void, but then we went and discorporated them leaving the field open for her to reach out through the elements and begin making small moves.

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Interesting theory. So with n’zoth taken care of, she was free to reach out from inside the prision, maybe ask for help from the elemental planes, that contacted shaman fanatics all over the world? We did spend 2 years offworld dealing with baldie so they got free real estate to raise numbers.

That still does not explain how she knew the isles would wake up. Maybe she just wanted tehm to wait? Keep growing and waiting for the day something would happen and then seize the opportunity? That seems like a terrible plan, but I would not put it past her as she can wait for however long necessary and given the quest experience, planing far ahead is not really her forte as she had her schemes thwarted in all levelling zones and then just called me names e bounced

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We don’t know the full timeline here, but I’m pretty sure the primalists just sorta found a way to the island.

During the Dracthyr intro, you witness the dragons returning and the primalists are already freeing bad dragons. Razzy’s already out before the Flights even arrive. Heck, the primalists are doing their shenanigans while the dracs are coming out of their nappy.

I took this to mean the beacon getting smushed is what alerted the Flights to come and also woke up the dracs.

Basically, the sequence of events I see in my head that makes this all make sense would go like this:

The Primalists figured out a sneaky way to the Dragonlands via chicanery, involving Google Maps or Magmatha Grimtotem and her Doomrock thing.

Amazon delivers the Primes or maybe a wizard did it, but they get on the island. They start mucking about, trying to figure out how to Prison Break the bad dragons. They set off the alarms, which alert the Aspects that someone’s tresspassing.

Wrathion and Kalecgos have no clue what it means because they haven’t been to the Dragonlands and never read their aspect manuals, so alarms are mysteries to them. Alex starts flying right away so she can be there in time to stop Stoneboi from inspecting the floor.

The alarm also wakes up the dracadactyls, as alarms are designed to do. The dracadactyls do things, the primalists do things, Stoneboi offscreen smushes the bacon, suddenly everyone’s GPS works again, Alex catches Stoneboi so she can pose for a cinematic, while Wrathion and Ebony know their place isn’t to be in cinematics, so they go to the small island.

Nozdoodoo tells Alex they should turn the alarm off because it’s really annoying, so they go to the small island just in time to see that the junior aspect and Ebony have managed to not do anything except get smacked around while the bad guys gloat and run away to be bad.

Alex tells everyone to go get some mortals now, because throwing enough mortals at it can solve every problem in Warcraft.

…

This is likely not the chain of events, but it explains things best in my head.

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I’m loving the way you type
But the timeline of events has been laid out during an interview, and you are mostly correct about the ending, but the start of it all is just stoneboi waking up after millenia. Malfurion would be proud. They could throw sleepovers

" The events that you saw in the original pre-render cinematic that we released with our friend Koranos, aka Stony Tony, climbing the titan building and lighting the beacon – that is kind of the instigating incident, and so you can think of that kind of happening first.

So dragons start coming back to the Dragon Isles, they begin visiting some places that they haven’t been to for a long time. Imagine some off-camera time of them just kind of coming, getting the lay of the land, that sort of thing.*

In amongst that, we have Ebyssian and Wrathion who also come back to the Dragon Isles, and they get this feeling, they can sense something is going on, something related to black dragons, and that’s what kind of draws them to the Forbidden Reach, and so they find that as these primalists have come back, it’s started kind of an alarm that was setup by Neltharion long ago that causes the Dracthyr to start waking up.**"

That’s from Danuser ( transcript here https:// warcraft.blizzplanet. com/blog/comments/dragonflight-launch-interview-with-steve-danuser-and-maria-hamilton)

*In the kalec cinematic, when he goes to kharazan, khadgar says “i did not expect to see you again so soon”, as in, after the fancy cinematic some time indeed passed with the dragons just vibing there - but not much time, as the “soon” implies. One quest has an npc state they have been working on te valdrakken spa for a couple of months, trying to make it usable for both mortal races and dragons. I’ll go out on a limb and assume the first mortal settlers arrived after the dragons, but before us, in what i assume to be a 6-8 month window starting from the cinematic. The numbers are just a guess.

**Many people speculate how or why Sabellian felt the call of the Isles since he was in low polygon limbo for 15 years (the Kalecgos special, as I like to call it) . I wonder if he didn’t feel the call, instead feeling the alarm wich kinda makes no difference to be honest

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You are now officially a member of my besties. We both speak the same language, therefore besties.

If this is the timeline, it does make sense. It could still mean the Primadonnas just basically followed the bacon and snuck on Prison Island, given the whatever that stopped people finding it had been gone after the bacon smushing.

It still leaves the mystery of what made Stoneboi smush the bacon in the first place, which was your original query, so…

I got this.

Azeroth got the news that people did not approve of this whole Shadowlands business. She was mad because she knew we hadn’t even begun exploring her butt, the opposite side of the planet, so she figured maybe if she tantalized us with some of her nose, we’d be interested in her butt. So she poked Stoneboi awake, he smushed the bacon, Azeroth’s node lit up like Rudolph, and next expac we explore her butt.

Azeroth is a very saucy lady.

… Beyond that, I got nothing. A wizard did it. Or maybe Magmatha Grimtotem poked Stoneboi through the elements so the Primadonnas could find the way to the prison to free Razorgif.

I’m at least 20% sure we’ll get an explanation this expansion, 15% sure it’ll be in the next one, 10% sure it’ll be the one after that and 55% sure it’ll be in a tweet.

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lol , in the best way

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I think the islands were actively cloaked when the dragons left. With the cloaking gone, the Isles are probably as easy to see as looking out your window from northern Eastern Kingdoms, so to speak. I don’t think they’re difficult to find in any way under normal circumstances.

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Where are all these Primalist lunatics coming from? Are they recruiting in Stormwind and Origrimmar? Are they coming by boat? Where are they sailing from? There’s not many harbors big enough to outfit the fleet needed to arrive in numbers that rival the major powers of Azeroth. Is Razagath carrying them over in her mouth like a momma crocodile?

Can The Horde and Alliance not somehow dominate the sea-way and stop these Primalists before they even arrive? Where’s their landing point? How are they feeding this army of foreign invaders?

The primalists make little sense within the context of the information we have so far. A lot of what’s going on has yet to be explained.

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Perhaps they (primalists) came via the maelstrom/deepholme direct to Dragon isles.

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Ever since the events of BfA, the Horde and Alliance have held a deep aversion to boats. The acquisition of boats is still too sore a subject for the leaders of both factions, and so they have abandoned the entire idea of large scale navies for fear their navies will once more become a half-baked plot point in a half-baked expansion.

Leave the boats alone!!