Dragonflight Alpha - Thaldraszus Questline Preview

[Stoy]

Dragonflight Alpha - Thaldraszus Questline Preview
Thaldraszus is the final zone that players get to experience in the Dragonflight expansion. In this post, we'll quickly go over the zone questline and highlight important events. Story Spoilers Below!

Valdrakken, City of Dragons

• The story of this zone starts at the conclusion of the Azure Span. Kalecgos wants you to meet him at the Seat of the Aspects atop the dragon stronghold of Valdrakken in Thaldraszus.
• There, Kalecgos explains the events of the Azure Span to the other aspects. They become concerned that the Primalists may be prowling within the city and need to be found and driven out.
• You search the city for infiltrators and discover that the Primalists are attacking Commander Eranog's Garrison at South Hold.

• There, you assist Guardian Velomir in finding lost comrades and defeating Primalist forces.
• After collecting materials from the Magmasworn camps, you use a ballista to take out their flying drake forces before reconvening with Velomir.
• You search a lookout tower for the missing commander. Here you discover that Commander Eranog is willingly allowing the Primalists to sack the gate in return for the powers contained within a magically burning stone given to him by the Primalist drake Magmatalon.
• Magmatalon shatters the stone, transforming Eranog into a flame covered monster. Eranog leaves to go meet his new "masters" as Magmatalon vows to burn what remains of the garrison to ash.
• Velomir has you slay Magmatalon to prevent the garrison from being destroyed, and you then reconvene with Captain Drine back in Valdrakken to let her know what has transpired.

Time Management

• Nozdormu then alerts you that a time anomaly is threatening the isles and he has sent Chromie to the Shifting Sands to correct the flows and return us to the one true timeline. You are tasked with helping her.
• Chromie tells you that an Infinite Dragon is trying to corrupt the Bronze Oathstone in the Temporal Conflux. If anything happens to it, it would cause a massive upheaval in the timeways. This could potentially leads to Murozond, and so she will hold off the drake while you help Dante below.
• Andantenormu is a bronze drake in the form of a Tauren. He wants you to find a new Timewalker recruit who has gone missing in the valley.
• You find Siszerathel winded from having just escaped some crazed bears. After retrieving her gear for her, you are then tasked with getting some Temporal Collectors from the area while charging her staff with time energy from slain wildlife.
• Back at the Shifting Sands, Dante wants to teach you how to be a Timewalker. During the process, there is a backfire in the timeways that sends you to the past in the Northern Barrens. Dante comes through a timeway to retrieve you, and warns you that wielding time magic improperly can have serious consequences.

• Dante then explains that various time periods have been crossing over into ours in the valley. He wants you to collect temporal residue from enemies to study. Siaszrathel joins you to help close time rifts with her staff.
• Closing the final rift causes a drake with a male Nightborne visage to come through. His name is Aoenormu.
• Back at camp, he explains that he and other Timewalkers were pulled into these time fissures and brought to a timeline much like ours, but in chaos with few left to save. He doesn't know where the others are, and suggests you train further to help.

• You train further with the staff by assisting bronze drakes with the time anomalies, and then reconvene with Chromie at the Temporal Conflux platforms.
• There, Chromie is holding Eternus in a time bubble to buy time. She asks you to empower the staff further while freeing Timewalkers.
• You then use the staff to free the wardens and destroy a large time elemental.
• With the threat dealt with, all that is left is to release Eternus and and deal with her. When freed, Chromie and Eternus fight, clashing bronze and infinite magics and tossing them into an uncontrolled trip through the timestream.

Big Time Adventurer

• Nozdormu shows up and says that the two must be found as their clash is ripping through the fabric of time itself. He has you gather your allies, and then explains that he has located a moment in time where we can find them.
• You travel with your companions to the Primalist Tomorrow timeline. You must rescue bronze drakes while killing Primalists and use a Chrono Crystal on Chromie and Eternus. They are then sent into a new timeline and you return to Nozdormu in the present.
• Next, you must journey to a past timeline called Azmerloth, which is a version of Dragonblight where Murlocs reign supreme.
• You kill some murlocs with the help of friendly faction murlocs and even the Murloc version of you. Then, you must get in the Hopper vehicle to help kill Deathwingurlugulll, which is obviously the murloc version of Deathwing.
• You then return to the present and let Nozdormu know what happened.

• Chromie has been located and you are sent to the Gnoll war in Elwynn Forest. You literally race through time and through three different timelines (Gnoll War, The War of the Shifting Sands, and the Pandaren Revolution) before entering the Black Empire.
• You find the two drakes, who have come to a truce, and defend them from minions of N'Zoth while they open a portal back to the present.
• Nozdormu allows Eternus to go since she helped fix the problem she started. As she leaves, she states that the time of Murozond is nigh.
• With the timeline and Oathstone restored, Nozdormu tells you to return to Valdrakken to let Alexstrasza know what has transpired.

The Mother Oathstone

• With the Oathstones secured, Alexstrasza can now activate the Mother Oathstone at Tyrhold. Koranos describes that the guardians will be reawakened there and can't guarantee if they will be friendly or not.
• On the cliffs of Tyrhold, Alexstrasza says that activating the Oathstone will give the aspects back their powers. You are asked to assist here, but the stone doesn't react. Raszageth arrives and mocks Alexstrasza before leaving to resurrect the Incarnates. Alexstrasza gives chase and you are forced to deal with a Primalist Protodrake named Ezrigeth.
• After, Nozdormu arrives and laments that timeways will bend to a dark future if Raszageth succeeds before their powers are restored. He begs you to find Alexstrasza.
• You find her just outside the entrance to the Vault of the Incarnates raid where she vows to stop Raszageth.

[Cynicalnerd]

This is so bad. It’s like made for tv movie bad

[Progenitor Aquarius]

Time travel. Yes! Keep coming! That’s what I need! More powar!

[TheRevenantHero]

The story is shaping up to be as poorly written as Shadowlands, holy shit.

[Chickat]

How is the zone even unitized if half of the quest line is fine travel to old maps?

[FelPlague]

How is the zone even unitized if half of the quest line is fine travel to old maps?

"half" uhhh what?
You spend 1 minute doing ONE quest in 3 old maps, and then do 3 quests in dragonblight...
then 1 quest for about 3 minutes in an old raid.
in what world do you think that is half of the quest line?
also this isnt even all the quests in the zone, just the main story questline, there is a fair few side quests all over.

[Chickat]

"half" uhhh what?
You spend 1 minute doing ONE quest in 3 old maps, and then do 3 quests in dragonblight...
then 1 quest for about 3 minutes in an old raid.
in what world do you think that is half of the quest line?
also this isnt even all the quests in the zone, just the main story questline, there is a fair few side quests all over.

Literally half of their overview is the timewalking part with 1 or two questlines before that. The zone is big. Its weird that these zones are only using like 1/3rd of available space for the main questline. Thats different to how they did it before.

[JacobMarley]

Sounds cool - much different to what we've had in the past. All for it.

[LolFrank]

This is so bad. It’s like made for tv movie bad

Living up to your name. With a foundationless opinion, your response will be the start of a never-ending echo-chamber for all rats to thrive on.

[Soeroah]

I can't say I'm not a little disappointed - I had hoped "big time adventure" would be a repeatable piece of progression content like Deaths of Chromie or Horrific Visions, but that seems unlikely if it's just a quest chain. This is also how I wanted an inevitable Murozond raid fight to go, but again, not sure they'd tread the same ground.

It'll be a very fun quest chain and I wish I didn't know about it ahead of time, but wish it could've been bigger.

[KOUNTERPARTS]

This is why I don't read the MMO-C write ups of questing zone story/progress. It kind of frames it out of context in some cases and it is not as impactful as seeing/experiencing it in-game yourself. It sometimes feels like watching clips from films and TV shows on YouTube-- short 1 - 2 minute clips that if you already do not know what's going on, it makes no sense to you. You don't understand it's place in the larger narrative.


I think they shouldn't post any spoiler-ish shit (story/lore related) to begin with-- let the posters make their own threads to spoil it and discuss it if they want to.

[TheRevenantHero]

Living up to your name. With a foundationless opinion, your response will be the start of a never-ending echo-chamber for all rats to thrive on.

Foundationless opinion? My guy, the quest line is literally laid out here and it's absolute trash. But since you need to defend everything Blizzard does, you whip out the ad hominem.

[wushootaki]

Honestly, a version of Azeroth completely dominated by Murlocs is EXACTLY the type of WoW humor that needs to be done with something like the Infinite Dragonflight. They need to push the ideas even further. There is so much you can do with the infinites as a villain.

[FelPlague]

Literally half of their overview is the timewalking part with 1 or two questlines before that. The zone is big. Its weird that these zones are only using like 1/3rd of available space for the main questline. Thats different to how they did it before.

1- no it is not...
2-Cause it is unique and interesting

[Chickat]

1- no it is not...
2-Cause it is unique and interesting

You act as if I'm complaining. I was just curious. And, at least 40% of all the above text is about the time travel bits. Thats a significant part of the zone.

[FelPlague]

You act as if I'm complaining. I was just curious. And, at least 40% of all the above text is about the time travel bits. Thats a significant part of the zone.

Most of the time travel bit is not in old zones, it is in a future version of the zone where the enemies win.
1 quest has you quickly run through 3 old zones
then you have 2 quests to do in dragonblight
then you do 1 quest in the black empire
thats it for the time travel stuff that is old zones.


SO I went and checked my footage.
I spent about 2 hours doing the Thaldrazzus main story questing

11 minutes of it was in old zones, partially because I was confused during the running part, and was having too much fun in the murloc part.


the reason they speak about it so much, is that it is super detailed and interesting, a quest that takes about 30 seconds has you run 3 super important spots in wow history, so of course they spend forever describing it, same with the next quest which is just a 3 minute defend quest.

[Celement]

Most of the time travel bit is not in old zones, it is in a future version of the zone where the enemies win.
1 quest has you quickly run through 3 old zones
then you have 2 quests to do in dragonblight
then you do 1 quest in the black empire
thats it for the time travel stuff that is old zones.


SO I went and checked my footage.
I spent about 2 hours doing the Thaldrazzus main story questing

11 minutes of it was in old zones, partially because I was confused during the running part, and was having too much fun in the murloc part.


the reason they speak about it so much, is that it is super detailed and interesting, a quest that takes about 30 seconds has you run 3 super important spots in wow history, so of course they spend forever describing it, same with the next quest which is just a 3 minute defend quest.

I kind of wish they toyed with this idea a bit more. Maybe for an expansion make an " instanced" world you can portal into that is unique kind of how outland and wod works.

[Nynax]

This is so bad. It’s like made for tv movie bad

tbf "made for TV" is doing pretty good for WoW right now, and it's not like it has ever been much better. It could still be "should never have been released" bad.

[Chickat]

Most of the time travel bit is not in old zones, it is in a future version of the zone where the enemies win.
1 quest has you quickly run through 3 old zones
then you have 2 quests to do in dragonblight
then you do 1 quest in the black empire
thats it for the time travel stuff that is old zones.


SO I went and checked my footage.
I spent about 2 hours doing the Thaldrazzus main story questing

11 minutes of it was in old zones, partially because I was confused during the running part, and was having too much fun in the murloc part.


the reason they speak about it so much, is that it is super detailed and interesting, a quest that takes about 30 seconds has you run 3 super important spots in wow history, so of course they spend forever describing it, same with the next quest which is just a 3 minute defend quest.

Oh, okay, my bad. I was just judging the entire questline based on the description given on the news post.