Ha that's quite amusing actually, when you consider Itharius was originally relaxing in a Swamp beforehand, moving up to Northrend as ambassador of his respective flight is a nice promotion.

Meeting Alexstrasza in-game will be a treat. The fact that the Black Dragonflight has an representative there also raises an eyebrow. I was under the impression that the Black Dragonflight was the enemy to all. It'll certainly be interesting to see how even they're involved in fighting against the Blues, and of course who named her the ambassador and sent here there. *Wink*

Chromie was standing in a ruined inn in a city overrun by the Scourge, I'd say she moved up in rank quite a bit as well.

The fact Nalice is even allowed in there is significant. The other flights must consider Malygos a pretty serious threat if they allow one of Neltharion's minions to stand amongst them.

And what exactly is the Ruling Council? Does that refer to the Aspects?

This isn't unprecedented in the in-game scenario. In Light's Hope Chapel there are ambassadors from the Scarlet Crusade (granted there is the immediate threat of Naxx). Also, during the AQ40 war effort, there is a Horde general in Ironforge to update Alliance toons on the Horde's progress, and I would assume there is an Alliance general in Horde capital cities during AQ40 opening as well.

Nalice being there is according to the lore of the place. Supposedly, it's already basically the Accorded Neutral Ground of the 5 Dragonflights. though the Blues betrayed it.

(Off topic: yes, that was a Dresden Files reference)

Well we don't know if she was standing in a ruined inn exactly...it's kidna hard to explain but Bronze Dragons have themselves all over the place(time) all the time. So while she could be in the city at that point, she could be in a million other places as well.

The Scarlet Crusade and the Horde/Alliance tensions don't nearly compare to the atrocities that the Black Dragonflight is guilty of, their constant state of mine(Which is insanity), or that their master's intentions for that matter which have never been a good thing.

Edit: So it's a neutral ground, that explains that. Still speaks volumes if the Blue Flight has broken said neutrality and the Black Flight hasn't after all these years.

I just thought of something else. What if the Black Dragonflight is there as an "enemy of my enemy is my friend" thing? Say Deathwing is somewhere cooking up some nefarious scheme, but Malygos' tampering with the ley lines is messing up the plan? So we go kill Malygos, and finally Arthas, and then Deathwing pops up and goes "now that the dragonflights are weakened by infighting, I'm free to launch my plan to take over the world!".

I personally don't buy for a minute that Arthas is supposed to be the endboss of WotLK. Burning Crusade was sold with Illidan as the biggest threat, but Illidan was the endboss of BT, which shares difficulty/tier with Hyjal. Then, we were surprised with KJ as the true endboss of BC. Even if the Sunwell was not intended for BC, Blizzard should have at least given Archimonde equal billing as Illidan when designing BC.

I was actually thinking of it as something you're likely to see in various cartoons. You know, where the main villain teams up with the good guys because another villain shows up. "Destroying the world is our thing! How dare the blue dragonflight try to beat us to it!"

And whats not to say that another Burning Legion demon will not be the end boss of WoTLK?

Burning Legion would like a dead Arthas afterall. Maybe it present an opportunity for them to ally with Arthas again. Maybe what Malygos is doing will attract them to Azeroth again in a full new strength.

I find it highly unlikely that Arthas or the Lich King (in case they get someway separated again) will not be made the final boss of WoLK.

• Blizzard already said that the Lich King would be the end-boss of the expansion and that he was going to be patched-in on one of the final patches (they made no such claim about Illidan on BC).
• The only high-ranking Demon left that is able to take the place of an "endboss of an expansion" is probably Sargeras(yes, he is kind of dead too, but not dead dead like Archimonde and Kil'jaeden ). But Sargeras is too big, he deserves an expansion on his own.
• Same with Neltharion, he is too big to be a "surprise boss", he deserves an expansion of his own
• Kil'jaeden being the final boss fits with the theme of the BC expansion (Neltharion and Sargeras don't fit with WotLK)

As such the end boss of the expansion will most likely be Lich King related, either Arthas, the separated Lich King or some sort of creature that inherited the will of the Lich King/Arthas.

Blizzard is confident that can stretch WoW's lifetime for a bit more still so saving characters like Azhara, Neltharion and Sargeras for future expansions would make perfect sense for them.

Well, it could be a new entrant into the Lore? After all, Blizard has that luxury since Warcraft is their creation.

The end of TBC, is just not an end to a story but further advances the Burning Legion story. If WoTLK just ends up with a dead Arthas, that would be it, the end. I guess I will go with the Black Dragonflight storyline, it would make sense for them to advance that and probably have Deathwing for the next expansion.

Err, what?

As far as I understood, KJ was merely banished back to the Nether instead of being killed.

I must admit that I'm not familiar with the exact details of the end of the Kil'jaeden encounter, so this may have been a wrong assumption.

However this detail does not invalidate anything in my previous post.

If I had to guess, I'd say that Wyrmrest has a lot of magical power flowing through it; note their comments about the redirection of nearby ley lines. Controlling the Wyrmrest Temple would likely mean a lot of magical power and energy to bleed off, as well as being able to possibly dragoon the other Flights into his scheme.

Given that Malygos just shook off madness, I don't know if blizz would drop him under control instantly.

But what if Malygos's shaking off of the madness was influenced by parties yet unknown to us? It would be really hard to digest a scenario in which the Blue Dragonflight ceases to exist (and probably make lore-nerds really really unhappy).

What if the Black dragonflight is using it as a way to get back into the Dragonflight group?

One of the things I have heard from people is that in its current state Deathwing would not be a worthy adversary for an expansion pack, maybe Blizzard plans to correct that with WoTLK.

Well according to a Blizzcon lore panel (link), it was Tyrigosa taking the Netherwing to Malygos that helped him regain his sanity. And the Netherwing were spawned from the Black Dragonflight. Conspiracy? Dun dun dunnnnh!

Honestly though I think it's likely he's attacking Wyrmrest just because they are trying to stop him.

But surely, what makes Malygos, one dragonflight more powerful than the other dragonflights combined?

Edit: Link to Lore Panel Q&A available?

Or perhaps simply the element of surprise was on the Blues' side. If the other dragonflights didn't believe anyone would attack Wyrmcrest they wouldn't have bothered defending it heavily (after all, not even the nutjob Deathwing attacked it) and Malygos would have had a clear edge. That could actually be used to explain most of what the blues have the other dragons on the defensive.

It would also work well as a chronological storyline. When you enter Northrend the other flights are reeling from a surprise attack (The Nexus 5 man at level 71-73). As you progress the other dragonflights slowly begin to organize and start counterattacking (Wyrmcrest leveling area, The Oculus 5-man in the high 70's). At the time of raid level content the other four dragonflights are fully involved (and winning through numbers if nothing else) and the Blues are desperate enough to throw their supreme commander into the fray as a last ditch effort to win (level 80 raid instance).

Of course that is just random speculation.

I thought that there were instances early on where players actually save blue drakes/dragons and ride them for aerial combat. What I'm looking at is that this will be a theme occasionally, and it started with Kalecgos. I'll weigh in with the idea of posession by an outside power (perhaps the Lich King or KJ/Sargeras making another attempt, perhaps the leader of the Infinite Dragonflight). The following is PURE speculation, please skip if you don't want to bother with it.

Getting the drop on the Bronze Dragonflight sounds like a rather tall order to me, unless they think it's 'supposed' to happen that way. I would expect that one dragonflight can take on the others combined if the fight is in their element in some fashion. None of the others could do any sort of time-bendy stuff to the bronzes, the greens are nigh-unstoppable in the emerald dream, and the blues can win any magical contest. As part of aligning the ley lines, they're making sure that whatever fight will happen will be magic-based, and therefore give then an unfair advantage.

As custodians of time, we watch over and care for Nozdormu's realm. The master is away at the moment, which means that attempts are being made to dramatically alter time. The master never meddles in the affairs of mortals but instead corrects the alterations made to time by others. He is reactionary in this regard.

The timeways are currently ranked in order from least catastrophic to most catastrophic. Note that they are all classified as catastrophic, meaning that any single one of these timeways collapsing would mean that your world would end.

The bronze dragonflight has more important tasks than protecting some old bones buried under snow. Neither the blue dragons nor the scourge alter any of the timeways, so Chromie is likely only there (among many other places) because tradition demands it.

None of the Dragonflights apart from the Red have any dedicated force there, to be honest. As said, the Bronze have their hands full with the Infinite Dragonflight. The Green are still struggling against the Nightmare, I'm willing to bet the main reason Ysera is even there is because Alexstrasza asked her. As for the Black, well, who knows what they're doing. It could be a trick by Deathwing, or it could simply be a Forsaken-style alliance of convencience ("Don't worry, we won't do anything. Malygos is the real threat, focus on him, not us."). Hell, Nalice might even be acting independantly, only Metzen knows for sure.

The ambassadors being there seems more symbolic than anything. The force opposing Malygos seems to be mainly the Red Flight, the Kirin Tor and the players.


And I wonder if we'll learn anything more about the Nightmare. With Ysera being in the game I hope we'll get some updates about that, it's been awefully quiet lately.

It really would seem that the Bronze flight would be the most powerful assuming they didn't maintain the "____ is supposed to happen" belief. By controlling the flow of time they hold much more power than any of the other flights combined and are effectively omniscient.