The War Within 11.X Patches & World Soul Saga Speculation Thread

[Woggmer]

Can we compile a list of plot threads/changes that need to be reflected when (Ion confirmed it's a when, not an if) the revamp happens? Trying to think of how many zones already have new stories seeded into them (or plots that were dropped and never progressed past Cata) and how many would need new ideas from the ground up.

Here's a few confirmed ones (based of questlines from Heritage Armor quests, Allied Race acquisitions, and other additional questlines):

• The Cult of Ragnaros making a return to topple Moira as Queen of the Dark Irons and return it to the old Monarchy by trying to bring back Ragnaros and restarting the pact their former king made with the Firelord. (This is lead by High Justice Grimstone [that one dark iron dwarf we meet in the arena in Blackrock Depths that we never dealt with).
  
• The Scarlet Crusade returning in a larger force and occupying Fenris Isle, the Forsaken dealt with some of them, but the rest escaped including two named high-ranking officials named Crusader Alrick (Champion of the Scarlet Crusade), Inquisitor Fairbell, and Huntmaster Scarborgh. All three of these named NPCs may be replacements to other familiar named NPCs in the Scarlet Monastery like High Inquisitor Whitemane, Renault Mograine (his successor Commander Durand in the MoP version), and Houndmaster Loksey (Houndmaster Braun in MoP).
  --[The interesting thing is that the Scarlet's were using Fenris Isle as their base of operation against the Forsaken, but before that.. that island was under the Bloodfang Pack's jurisdiction in BFA and it was re-affirmed in the Exploring Azeroth: Eastern Kingdoms book.]
  
• Similarly, Southshore was retaken by the Alliance (via BFA Mission Table) and is undergoing the clean up and restoration (according to Shaw's notes in Exploring Azeroth)
  
• When the Scourge went rampant, they attacked Lakeshire in great numbers. It's unknown how much damage was done, but several people including the Blacksmith, did die when the Scourge attacked.
  
• When we recruited the Mag'har Orcs, we didn't just bring only them with us... We brought other races like Ogres, Gronn, Goren, Saberon, and Botani. The Gronn and Ogres stayed with the Mag'har while the Goren fled to Durotar while the Saberon and Botani fled to Northern Barrens.
  
• In the Orc heritage armor quest, the player meets with the Spirit of Thunder Ridge, Owa'nohe, to aid her and receive a blessing of the land. Gathering seeds from the flooded ridge and planting them near Owa'nohe's remains.. This will allow Thunder Ridge to grow trees and the Thunder Lizards will return to the land again.

This is only the newly added stuff. There's also the Mission Table Quests from BFA in relation to the achievement known as Azeroth At War which detail a list of different quests from Kalimdor to Eastern Kingdoms, establishing which areas the Horde and Alliance are occupying. I'm not gonna list all of them because the current list is big enough as it is and having to look through the other unfinished plots from Cata is going to take a while to check each one... but the most prominent one being Bael Modan in the Southern Barrens.

The only one I'm unsure about is that the Human Heritage Armor quest resolved the issues that the Defias had and we probably won't be seeing the Defias again. Though, it does point out the corruption behind the Stormwind Nobility and that there's a chance they might mess everything up depending on how deep the corruption is.

[MCMLXXXII]

Ball Modan is Khaz Algar? It's far enough from Uldaman...

[Ersula]

Demons were a major theme in WoD, especially in the latter half of the expansion.

That's a good point. And when 10.3 hits, I'm sure that will foreshadow a great deal about what 11.0 will be about. Unfortunately the Expansion will already be revealed by the time that happens.

The mount is literally called the Algarian Stormrider. That is evidence that it is an elemental.

As you've already pointed out, there are more instances in WoW of Gryphon Riders being called Stormriders, than Elementals being called Stormriders. So the evidence is stronger that it's not an elemental.

Ball Modan is Khaz Algar? It's far enough from Uldaman...

Ball Mountain? Ball... Mountain... Someone add ball mountain to the Blizzcon hypetrain

[huth]

The mount is literally called the Algarian Stormrider. That is evidence that it is an elemental.

No, that is completely worthless. Names are arbitrary. It can be whatever Blizzard wants it to be.

Your whole argument is based entirely on assumptions, namely that "storm" must somehow reference elemental themes and could not possibly reference anything else.

Calling that a stretch would be rather generous.

It's also funny how Iridikron being an elemental dragon is relevant for your percieved future content, but somehow he and his siblings being elemental dragons is completely irrelevant to Dragonflight. If it's a big deal in the next expansion, then DF is an elemental focused expansion. If DF is not, then Iridikrons inclusion in the next is irrelevant.

You don't get to choose your premises based on the desired conclusions. Nobody does.

- - - Updated - - -

That's a good point. And when 10.3 hits, I'm sure that will foreshadow a great deal about what 11.0 will be about. Unfortunately the Expansion will already be revealed by the time that happens.

Well, technically that no longer counts as foreshadowing.

[Mecheon]

They're a theme, but not the main theme.

Regardless though, they're a massive part of this expansion. We've seen a lot of elemental stuff out and about

Demons were a major theme in WoD, especially in the latter half of the expansion. We still ended up getting Legion right afterwards. Sylvanas was a major player throughout BFA and even appeared in the opening cinematic. She remained a major player in Shadowlands and showed up in that cinematic as well. Blizzard seems to be having pairs of expansions bleed into each other. Dragonflight is highly likely to bleed into 11.0 storywise and thematically.

Legion made a massive effort to not just do everything in the same fel green we'd had during the later half of WoD. And, yeah, it'll bleed into the next one, storywise and thematically, but like... From what we know, the bleeding in is "Iridikron and Knaifu are out for revenge against the Titans". There's nothing about elements in that. Heck, one of the elemental lords is about to bite the dust.

The mount is literally called the Algarian Stormrider. That is evidence that it is an elemental.

"Windriders" aren't elementals, yet they're called Windriders. Its an evocative name. There is no evidence it is an elemental. Elementally themed, sure, but if it turned out to be a recolour of the Storm Drakes from Legion, that'd fit the name as well

The heroic mount for Dragonflight was a dragon, and it didn't have dragonriding animations either.

It does now, due to the dragonriding animations being passed to all drake model ones. Can't use it for dragonriding, sure, but gryphons are the one model in-game that doesn't share one of the 5 dragonriding rigs, yet has dragonriding animations. Wyverns and Pterodax get them from two of the mounts, gryphons were given them wholly unique for some reason.

It is doubtful that its going to share the model or animations of that ice elemental, since it's likely a storm elemental and could very well be using an entirely new model with new animations.

Thematically though, elementals are close to one another. It is incredibly unlikely they're going to have an ice elemental in one them and then immediately a second elemental.

TBF, Bolvar was on the cover of Shadowlands, and he is the Lich King. Further we accessed the Shadowlands by destroying the Lich King's crown. There were other Lich King elements in that expansion as well, so it's not like he was completely off with that prediction. As for the remaking old expansions theory, there is some truth to it. WoD and Legion completed TBC's story. BFA and SL completed WotlK's story. There is evidence that Dragonflight and 11.0 will complete Cataclysm's story. We're already halfway there with the aspects getting their powers back.

He said "Lich King" specifically. Its just the 'remaking old expansions' theory prettied up. He got it wrong with BfA being faction war and old gods as he just put Old Gods, its entirely possible he's either gotten it wrong or plans have changed. A many years old speculation from before BfA can't really be held as the eternal thing, given how many changes to Blizzard happened in the meantime.

Like. That was probably written when Bwonsamdi was supposed to be evil (before it turned out we liked Bwonsamdi) and Vol'jin was supposed to be the person you rescue in the early BfA quest rather than Talanji. And that's just the simple stuff we know changed

But they've never been called Stormriders, and it is doubtful that the expansion mount has been datamined to that extent. Last time we only datamined a single texture from the dragon flight expansion mount.

We only have a single texture this time as well. Its odditiy is not fitting onto any existing model. We know a new gryphon is on the way, its just a matter of where its going to turn up

Cool. My main point is that "Storm riding" is elemental themed.

There's plenty of elemental names in the dragon races. Brimstone Scramble, Sulfur Sprint. They're probably just going to spawn a tornado somewhere and we fly through it due to the new area being the whole Bermuda Triangle thing so we gotta fly through the storm to get in

You're right, they don't have to, but they have in the past. BFA's mounts for example did represent the upcoming faction conflict for example.

We got one that is, and one that isn't. Hardly enough information to say one way or the other.

Saying that the elements isn't the strongest part of Thrall's theme is like saying that magic isn't the strongest part of Jaina's theme. I mean he united the Orcs through Shamanism. Shamanism is a big part of what makes Thrall who and what he is. The other problem with believing that it's something besides elements is the datamined stuff that is likely from 11.0 that is very clearly elemental themed.

It is not his biggest part of his theme. His whole restoration, helping the orcs, building Orgrimmar, turning the orcs from nothing and building them up into the force we know today, that's Thrall's theme. He's not just 'the elements guy' they bring out whenever elements are in danger. He's not Magni and wanting Azeroth's woouns healed.

We had Gul'dan in WoD and Legion, and we had Sylvanas in BFA and Shadowlands. Iridikron is probably following suit and will also be a major antagonist in 11.0. An elemental dragon seems to fit the situation quite well.

We've just had an elemental dragon doing elemental stuff. Given he just stole, y'know. The overwhelming hunger of a certain Old God corrupted giant protodrake, and vanished into a void portal with probably Knaifu, why would we assume elemental and not, y'know, something more along those sides? We're about to have a massive elemental confluence of ice and fire in the Dream, why would we just immediately go back to the same theme?

So you're saying there aren't inherent themes within the character? That's laughable.

I'm saying people can pick and chose what themes he represents. To you its elements the whole way. To others, its his healing, much as he healed the orcs, he can heal Azeroth, therefore we're 100% going to get a world revamp. To others, its Outland and his family. He's not just "The elements guy, who only comes up when there's problems with the elements and fixes it like a plumber". He's Thrall.

[Teriz]

As you've already pointed out, there are more instances in WoW of Gryphon Riders being called Stormriders, than Elementals being called Stormriders. So the evidence is stronger that it's not an elemental.

But there ARE elementals in WoW called Stormriders, and they happen to show up where we also find titan facilities and Earthen, which are related to Khaz Algar.

There's also a datamined pet called Squally, which very well could be a smaller version of the mount, and also an air elemental.

[AOL Instant Messenger]

Can we all just like... collectively agree to not engage in this bottomless pit of an argument? Pleeeease?

The Teriz post cycle always follows the same pattern. Teriz posts something that everybody disagrees with, everyone knows Teriz will not change his mind, everyone engages with him on a front he won't concede or even dare to budge on anyway and that will produce no value to the overall discussion, the argument goes on for several pages of people arguing in bad faith for some completely inexplicable reason.

[Teriz]

No, that is completely worthless. Names are arbitrary. It can be whatever Blizzard wants it to be.

Your whole argument is based entirely on assumptions, namely that "storm" must somehow reference elemental themes and could not possibly reference anything else.

Calling that a stretch would be rather generous.

Well storms are elemental themed in WoW. We have storm elementals for example. We even have storm elementals literally called Stormriders. Also I'm pretty sure that we ended up with Dwarven shaman because of the gryphon storm riders.

So how is stating that a mount called Algarian Stormrider is likely an elemental a stretch?

It's also funny how Iridikron being an elemental dragon is relevant for your percieved future content, but somehow he and his siblings being elemental dragons is completely irrelevant to Dragonflight. If it's a big deal in the next expansion, then DF is an elemental focused expansion. If DF is not, then Iridikrons inclusion in the next is irrelevant.

Where did I say that they were irrelevant to DF? My point was that recent WoW expansions bleed into the following expansion. This was the case with WoD and Legion, BFA and Shadowlands, and it's likely to occur with DF and 11.0.

[Mecheon]

But there ARE elementals in WoW called Stormriders, and they happen to show up where we also find titan facilities and Earthen, which are related to Khaz Algar.

There's also a datamined pet called Squally, which very well could be a smaller version of the mount, and also an air elemental.

"Stormrider" is also a Druid Tier set from Cata that makes you look like a Druid of the Talon, and that's more relevant than a one-off mob from the Storm Peaks

Sometimes an evocative name is just an evocative name.

The Teriz post cycle always follows the same pattern. Teriz posts something that everybody disagrees with, everyone knows Teriz will not change his mind, everyone engages with him on a front he won't concede or even dare to budge on anyway and that will produce no value to the overall discussion, the argument goes on for several pages of people arguing in bad faith for some completely inexplicable reason.

I have faith one day I can actually convince him to have, y'know. Media literacy.

One day. One day....

[Ersula]

There's also a datamined pet called Squally, which very well could be a smaller version of the mount, and also an air elemental.

I get that but its just as likely that's the name of a baby stormrider gryphon. It's named Squall because it can fly, like naming a dog Scratch.

And the other recent reference to this term is from the Stormhammer flavor text:

"The weapons of a Stormrider are renowned across azeroth with many mastering the power of the storm itself."

"Renowned across azeroth." Dwarves are renowned for riding gryphons but while there are some elemental mounts for players, the practice of riding an elemental like a mount is completely unheard of in WoW's lore.

[Teriz]

Regardless though, they're a massive part of this expansion. We've seen a lot of elemental stuff out and about

No different than WoD into Legion or BFA into Shadowlands.

Legion made a massive effort to not just do everything in the same fel green we'd had during the later half of WoD. And, yeah, it'll bleed into the next one, storywise and thematically, but like... From what we know, the bleeding in is "Iridikron and Knaifu are out for revenge against the Titans". There's nothing about elements in that. Heck, one of the elemental lords is about to bite the dust.

I don't have much desire to dip too much into current DF lore. My point is that DF having elemental themes doesn't stop blizzard from making the next expansion have strong elemental themes as well.

"Windriders" aren't elementals, yet they're called Windriders. It's an evocative name. There is no evidence it is an elemental. Elementally themed, sure, but if it turned out to be a recolour of the Storm Drakes from Legion, that'd fit the name as well

Well again, there are elementals in WoW that are specifically called Stormriders. The mount is called Algarian Stormrider. That's evidence that it is an elemental.

It does now, due to the dragonriding animations being passed to all drake model ones. Can't use it for dragonriding, sure, but gryphons are the one model in-game that doesn't share one of the 5 dragonriding rigs, yet has dragonriding animations. Wyverns and Pterodax get them from two of the mounts, gryphons were given them wholly unique for some reason.

Great. I do believe the point is that the heroic mount for the expansion doesn't need dragonriding animations. It just needs to be a cool mount.

Thematically though, elementals are close to one another. It is incredibly unlikely they're going to have an ice elemental in one them and then immediately a second elemental.

Why would it be unlikely? Not everyone buying the expansion is going to be able to obtain the BlizzCon mount. Further if the expansion theme is elementals then having an elemental for BlizzCon mount and an elemental for expansion mount isn't a problem, especially since they're different elementals.

He said "Lich King" specifically. It's just the 'remaking old expansions' theory prettied up. He got it wrong with BfA being faction war and old gods as he just put Old Gods, it's entirely possible he's either gotten it wrong or plans have changed. A many years old speculation from before BfA can't really be held as the eternal thing, given how many changes to Blizzard happened in the meantime.

Again, I think saying Shadowlands is about the Lich King and BFA is about Old Gods is pretty damn close to accurate. I mean we did fight N'Zoth at the end of BFA, and once again Lich King Bolvar was on the cover of Shadowlands and the portal to shadowlands was above Icecrown.

We only have a single texture this time as well. Its odditiy is not fitting onto any existing model. We know a new gryphon is on the way, its just a matter of where its going to turn up

Uh no, you have an entire text map of the Gryphon model. If that's the heroic mount from 11.0, that's one of the biggest leaks we've ever seen.

We got one that is, and one that isn't. Hardly enough information to say one way or the other.

Well you said it NEVER happens. I'm just pointing out that it has happened before.

It is not his biggest part of his theme. His whole restoration, helping the orcs, building Orgrimmar, turning the orcs from nothing and building them up into the force we know today, that's Thrall's theme. He's not just 'the elements guy' they bring out whenever elements are in danger. He's not Magni and wanting Azeroth's woouns healed.

You do understand that he did almost all of that through the power of Shamanism correct? He literally built them up by turning them away from demons and restoring their Shamanistic heritage.

We've just had an elemental dragon doing elemental stuff. Given he just stole, y'know. The overwhelming hunger of a certain Old God corrupted giant protodrake, and vanished into a void portal with probably Knaifu, why would we assume elemental and not, y'know, something more along those sides? We're about to have a massive elemental confluence of ice and fire in the Dream, why would we just immediately go back to the same theme?

Because he did that in 10.1.7 and we have a lot of expansion to go. And yes we're about to have a bit elemental confluence, but that doesn't stop the next expansion from continuing those themes. Again, just like we had HFC in 6.2 and got Legion in 7.0. Demons, demons, and more demons.

I'm saying people can pick and chose what themes he represents. To you its elements the whole way. To others, it's his healing, much as he healed the orcs, he can heal Azeroth, therefore we're 100% going to get a world revamp. To others, its Outland and his family. He's not just "The elements guy, who only comes up when there's problems with the elements and fixes it like a plumber". He's Thrall.

Yeah, I never said its elements the whole way. I'm saying given the current context of an expansion dealing with heavy elemental themes, seeing Thrall on the key art kind of hints towards more elemental thematics coming our way. I mean sure, there's other themes that Thrall is a part of, but elemental thematics is a very big one.

Anyway, there's not point to ridiculously long posts like this that pretty much breaks down to opinion, so I'll let you have the last word.

[Marlamin]

Out of curiosity, is there any chance you'd be willing to elaborate on which models/spells use the textures, or would that be flying a little too close to the sun?

It's mostly just "unclear" and with no direct ties I can't tell where shared textures end and where other unrelated unused textures begin, so this is mostly educated guesswork. Broadly speaking storm/air/wind elementals, primalist totems and generic wind spell effects.

I'll write up a bit of a technical breakdown (check this post later, will take me a bit to write up).

Okay, this took a bit longer than expected because I ran into something else that I'll mention at the end, so posting this as a separate post because it's quite long. Here goes!

(Tinfoil hats required after this point.)

I'll refer to this mount as Unknown Mount A, it spans 2 encryption keys which I'll refer to as key 1 (added in 10.0.7, assets) and key 2 (added in 10.1.5, database entries). Them splitting things up can be indicative of them battling datamining encrypted things, so this post could very well end up making that even more difficult in 11.0 and beyond but I don't particularly mind that as it only prevents future story spoilers from being leaked (something I try making a point of not talking about publicly).

Key 1 - Various ranges of encrypted assets. By ranges I mean sets of file IDs that are close together.

• Range 1 4788406 (1 file, the model)
• Range 2 5098357-5098370 (13 files, unknown, likely model related files)
• Range 3 5140802 (1 file, unknown)
• Range 4 5205012-5205014 (2 files, unknown)
• Range 5 5207547 (1 file, unknown)
• Range 6 5262986 (1 file, unknown)
• Range 7 5338901-5338939 (18 files, all sounds)
• Range 8 5342460-5342518 (30 files, all sounds)

Key 2 - Various encrypted database references all needed for adding a mount; spells, sounds, mount table itself and the interesting one "GlideEvent" which, in simple terms as it's a bit more convoluted, defines the dynamic flying spells a mount can use (fly upward, etc), hence this likely being a mount that supports dynamic flight. One of the records ties this key to the model file in Key 1.

Now, due to the way Blizzard's filesystem deduplicates files to save on disk space, if they have an encrypted texture that is exactly the same as they use for a different model (mount, creature, spell, whatever) which is not encrypted these "encrypted" files will show up as not encrypted and will fall "outside" of the ranges I mentioned above. I can still manually check if they're supposed to be encrypted elsewhere in the game files, but we can read them perfectly fine as unencrypted duplicates exist. I call these "shared files". I reported this to Blizzard back in April 2022 after some story leaks happened this way, but it's still an issue today so I'm not really fussed about talking about this specific method publicly.

So, with that in mind, lets look at range 4. For simplicity lets assume it starts at 5205012, range 4 has only 2 encrypted files that we can't see (5205012 and 5205014), but inbetween there is 1 shared file we can (5205013), and after 5205014 there are 11 shared files we can read. Reminder, all these shared files are supposed to be encrypted. All these are texture files.

First lets look at 5205013: """ ..yep, that's just a tiny almost invisible square. Based on the file's MD5 hash we can cross-reference it with other usages of the same file which gives some very generic results, but does contain some elementals/primalist stuff but nothing worth mentioning yet.

Moving on to the 11 shared files after 5205014 starting off with 5205016 and following with gaps of 1 (no file inbetween):



..branches, cool. This one is only used in 5 other places a wind missile spell, a windelemental and the goal for the dragonriding world quidditch quest. More elementals, okay. Starting to get suspicious.

Speeding up..

5205018: Only known model that uses it is a smoke effect.
5205020: something previously used as explosion smoke.
5205022: wind/more elementals.
5205024: ...and more.
5205026: ...and more.
5205028: ...and more.
5205030: Hmm, Shadowlands but looks generic enough to not mean anything.
5205032: More generic use.
5205034: +1 for wind.
5205036: More wind/storm/air usage.

After the above usages I'd say it is likely that all these "supposed to be encrypted" files likely belong to the same range/encryption key although there is no hard link and point to a mount with lots of wind effects. Not definitively an elemental, but at the least similar elements as elemental models.

Also, bonus find while going through the above that I only just noticed, attentive readers will note that almost all of the "shared usages" have another unknown use at 5202xxx ID range, all of which are also supposed to encrypted. The only file that is actually encrypted there is 5202917, which is the key that also contains the "Fyrn" battle pet (as revealed by the achievement names), which leads me to speculate that whatever Fyrn will end up looking like is very similar/related in nature to whatever this mount will look like. Maybe this mount and Fyrn are similarly connected like the Algarian Stormrider and Squall are but under separate keys? Hmm!

TL;DR Hopefully nothing that should show up on news sites *stares at youknowwho*, but still some pointers towards "windy stuff".

[Ersula]

Not definitively an elemental, but at the least similar elements as elemental models.

This is going to be the coolest Gryphon ever.

[Teriz]

I get that but it's just as likely that's the name of a baby stormrider gryphon. It's named Squall because it can fly, like naming a dog Scratch.

It is likely, but I wouldn't say it's as likely. I believe that making them too closely tied to Dwarves in that manner makes the mount and the pet a bit too race specific.

And the other recent reference to this term is from the Stormhammer flavor text: "Renowned across azeroth." Dwarves are renowned for riding gryphons but while there are some elemental mounts for players, the practice of riding an elemental like a mount is completely unheard of in WoW's lore.

Well yeah, because expansion mounts are almost never a part of the expansion's actual lore. Instead, they're representative of the expansion's theme.

For example, there's no Tangled Dreamweavers on the dragon isles, and there's no Enscrolled Everwyrms in the Shadowlands. There's going to be no Algarian Stormriders in 11.0 beyond the expansion mount. That makes it a bit unlikely that we're talking about Dwarven gryphon riders here.

[Marlamin]

This is going to be the coolest Gryphon ever.

If it's not a gryphon I'll end up being disappointed at this point thanks to this thread. Hopefully it's cool regardless.

- - - Updated - - -

For example, there's no Tangled Dreamweavers on the dragon isles, and there's no Enscrolled Everwyrms in the Shadowlands. There's going to be no Algarian Stormriders in 11.0. So that makes it a bit unlikely that we're talking about Dwarven gryphon riders here.

Weren't the Enscrolled Everwyrms the taxi mounts when you left from Oribos?

[Hitei]

Also, bonus find while going through the above that I only just noticed, attentive readers will note that almost all of the "shared usages" have another unknown use at 5202xxx ID range, all of which are also supposed to encrypted. The only file that is actually encrypted there is 5202917, which is the key that also contains the "Fyrn" battle pet (as revealed by the achievement names), which leads me to speculate that whatever Fyrn will end up looking like is very similar/related in nature to whatever this mount will look like. Maybe this mount and Fyrn are similarly connected like the Algarian Stormrider and Squall are but under separate keys? Hmm!

Stormwinder;Squally mount pet seemed like a likely thing to me. I still strongly believe that those two are probably the spooky gryphon and then a baby version.

My gut reaction, given how this hypothetical mount appears to be built out of existing assets, some of them pretty old(?). Is that what you found here is probably the rewards for Cata Classic Epic edition.

If that parallels Wrath, we'd expect at least a mount and pet for that, and an air elemental would be well in line with Cataclysm thematics, since they can't do a Deathwing mount/pet when we already have those.

[Teriz]

Weren't the Enscrolled Everwyrms the taxi mounts when you left from Oribos?

Those were Anima Wyrms.

[Hitei]

Those were Anima Wyrms.

They're the same thing.

[Marlamin]

Stormwinder;Squally mount pet seemed like a likely thing to me. I still strongly believe that those two are probably the spooky gryphon and then a baby version.

My gut reaction, given how this hypothetical mount appears to be built out of existing assets, some of them pretty old(?). Is that what you found here is probably the rewards for Cata Classic Epic edition.

If that parallels Wrath, we'd expect at least a mount and pet for that, and that'd be well in line with Cataclysm thematics, since they can't do a Deathwing mount/pet when we already have those.

Assets aren't super old, the non-generic ones are mostly from Shadowlands/Dragonflight which would be on par with most models they make nowadays. If Cata Classic is a thing, these could indeed be for that, but honestly nothing to go off on regarding that based on these files alone.

They're the same thing.

*has flashbacks to earlier pages*

[flan1337]

The fact we still don’t have a fake leak wow logo in a dwarves theme is so sad. You would think fanfic leakers would start to catch up to where we are right now