murlocs

Patch 10.1.5 brought Time Rifts and 10.1.7 brought Dreamsurges to Dragonflight. I meant to talk about them a little so here we are, a season late.

Time Rifts

Time Rifts gave us some interesting lore tidbits around what if scenarios without really delving into time travel shenanigans. I thought it was fun addition and recommend seeing each of the different time rifts.

These are the timelines you visit:

Azmourne – the Scourge rule Azeroth
A.Z.E.R.O.T.H. – King Mechagon has taken over Azeroth and defeated organic life
Azmerloth – everyone is Murlocs
Azewrath – the Burning Legion won the War of the Ancients
Azq’roth – the Black Empire rules Azeroth
Warlands – the Horde and Alliance never worked together and continue to fight
Ulderoth – the Titans rule Azeroth

Azmerloth might be favorite! During the time rift, you visit Mrrglblight (Dragonblight) during what was the Dragon Soul raid in our universe. Varian Wryngrrlgulgll and Thrallgrulgulgul lead their forces against Deathwingurlugull. If you keep doing the time rift quests, you’ll even meet Alulgultasza de Urgl-Blalul <Queen of the… Murloc… Dragons?>

Here’s the Gill’dan battle pet. Even Gul’dan was a murloc in this timeline!

Poor Bolvar.

In Azmourne, you might come across the Scourge version of yourself.

In the Warlands, the Horde and Alliance continue fighting aerial battles.

This is the Gold-Toed Albatross, one of the mounts you can earn. I farmed the time rifts until I could purchase everything – a variety of mounts, pets, transmog sets, weapons, etc. It was also a useful source of items to put through the catalyst for LFR gear; I like to use world content to collect LFR appearances on classes I don’t play seriously.

Dreamsurges

Dreamsurges were a lot more boring in my opinion with a lot less rewards, but I still did them to buy all the rewards.

This is the Duskwing Ohuna mount.

This mount is actually pretty cool looking – the Renewed Magmammoth. I enjoy all the mammoths this expansion!

Barter Boulders

Lastly, I thought I’d mention that I finished the Barter Boulder grind with the Loamm Niffen!

The final item I needed was the nifty Ponzo’s Scheming Topper. Will I use it much? Probably not. But I have it!

Dragonflight’s pre-patch event provided a nice way to level alts. I had 6 max level characters when the pre-patch released, and on the day of Dragonflight’s release, I had 18 level 60 character! And yet I still don’t have a level 50+ highmountain tauren to unlock their heritage armor.

Please note that I’ll be discussing quests in this post without regards to spoilers.

The expansion release was a mess for me at first. Apparently things were okay the first half hour or so, but by the time I tried to play, Orgrimmar and Durotar were empty, and I kept getting “instance transfer aborted” error messages. On the plus side, I got to ride my rocket indoors!

Eventually I was able to see everyone. Like most people, the zeppelin did not want to show up for me. Eventually I saw a reddit post suggesting you could summon people to a dungeon in the Dragon Isles, and it worked! Thank you to my guildmates for summoning me to the Isles!

The Waking Shores

Once we reach the Dragon Isles, we have to backtrack across the zone from the dungeon to where we should have arrived. Cool zeppelin!

Alexstrasza’s new model is detailed and looks great. I’m looking forward to helping the aspects more!

Bulleto and I are little whelps!

The lava mammoths are amazing enemies. I need to level a hunter because I want one, and I can’t wait to get a mount.

This was from a later zone, but I thought I’d include it here. These were just a temporary buff, but it was fun to ride them!

I don’t know what to think about Sabellian vs Wrathion, and I could write a lot more about them. Wrathion acts like he’s always acting in our best interest, but he’s made a lot of stupid decisions and then didn’t even show up in Legion. Are we supposed to remember that, or was that bad writing? On the other hand, Sabellian hasn’t even been around in years. Who should I hope becomes the new aspect?

Hanging out with Bulleto!

Did… did Bulleto transform into a whelp and take a little lava bath in that cauldron of lava? I think so!

I didn’t think I’d like dragonriding much because my friend and I use two person mounts a lot while questing.

I was quite surprised to see you can enable the ability to let someone ride your dragon with you. They even get to turn into a little whelp! Of course, we now know dragonriding is super awesome and amazingly fast!

Ohn’ahran Plains

I never really cared about the centaur previously, and I still wouldn’t say they’re one of my favorite races. However, their inclusion in Dragonflight just makes the world seem so much more grounded. I like seeing races that were present in classic. And I love the architecture and world around these Maruuk centaur!

Especially cool is Sansok Khan, the tall centaur on the right in this screenshot. She’s the leader of her clan, and she’s deaf. Okir, the centaur next to Sansok Khan, speaks on her behalf, translating Sansok Khan’s sign language. Sansok Khan’s quest text starts with As Sansok Khan signs, Okir vocalizes. The dog next to Sansok Khan is Basran. It appears you can pet him as you can other dogs in World of Warcraft, but when you click him, you get this: You extend a hand to offer Basran pets, but he stays stoically next to his khan. Basran is currently working and you should not pat service dogs on duty. How amazing is that? I really like the representation, and she’s a cool character in general.

This was one of the longest quests I’ve ever experienced – or at least it felt that way. You escort the caravan and listen to the centaurs tell their history. It was a little hard for me to focus, but I still like to soak up all the lore.

I love how green and beautiful the zone is.

Yay, we get to ride him!

I thought the green dragons’ area was pretty too.

The Azure Span

Who knew a powerful mage could control their mirror images independently? Kalecgos knows, apparently.

Seeing Sindragosa, or at least a simulacrum of her, is an amazing moment. We don’t really know how sentient this is, but she sure feels like a character in her own. I hope we interact with her more!

Finally, we get to the tuskarr! This is the best and cutest race in the game, and you better believe I would be a tuskarr if they ever made them an allied race. I can’t believe Blizzard said there are no plans for allied races in Dragonflight, but I’m still hoping.

I really thought the tuskarr for which we were searching was dead, but his feign death tricked me. Bulleto is so upset that he feigns death.

Relaxing with Kalecgos and our new tuskarr friends.

During a quest with some tuskarr and Kalecgos in which we’re battling the decay, the tuskarr Kaqiata dies. Her dying words are “Please, tell my son Rowie in Iskaara that I love him. And I’m sorry.”

We meet her son Rowie later and help him “defeat” this yeti. This was a such a cute quest!

We also helped the tuskarr say good bye to Chieftain Ponoliak and learn about their funeral ceremonies. It’s another sad yet touching quest.

The tuskarr children are just super adorable!

And so is this frog!

Some tuskarr children want to help this abandoned baby gnoll they named Scraps. I thought it was cute, and I’m looking forward to this being referenced again later I’m sure.

This quests tasks us with helping Elder Poa with her stories. Elder Nappa suggests we get Elder Poa a new story – even if we have to make it up! Elder Poa takes the quest answers and spins a story from it.

You can also read it here.

This one is Bulleto’s!

The zone ended with the blue dragonflight coming together to help Kalecgos. It was to be expected from the major story beats of the zone but was exciting nonetheless!

Thaldraszus

Eventually we reached Thaldraszus, the final zone and home of the dragon city Valdrakken. You’d think a city made for dragons would have chairs spaced a little further apart.