Ponder, if you're up for it, why I've managed to post two blog posts in as many days?! … it must be world of witchcraft!
But lets press on:
Players of WoW – (I say, having never played a druid) have precious few encounters with The Dream. It is, for the most part, a green filter applied to the general world map, with draw distance and focus greatly reduced while some tentacle based mobs run at you... along the course of which you use The Dream to circumvent some real-world annoyance, or retrieve X item from the Dream to use in a real world ritual.
It is essentially about as game changing as the KalVir mists.
Except it's not... from Malfurion's first journeys into The ED, through to the tales from Stormrage (the novel) The Dream remains a key fabric of Azeroth.
WoW Insider describe it, perfectly, thus:
The Emerald Dream, a kind of palimpsest dimension that lays beneath and mimics Azeroth. It is, essentially, the first draft of creation, the blueprint to which the world would be returned to in the event of reorigination. It's Azeroth before the original Sundering, before intelligent life, as it was the second the Titans considered their creation complete. The reason Ysera of the dream is charged with protecting and safeguarding the Dream is that it is the world's base state.
So the dream is a parallel world, a backup copy without mortal influence that the titans would use to reboot Azeroth to a state before Mortals crawled it's surface and the Old Gods tainted everything.
That... begs a few questions: (and I'm really asking here, I'm not being my usual British cynical self, I'm totally up for being called out and called wrong here people, the comment box is right at the end of this...)
So why are their Elven buildings in The Dream?
In the Hyjal quest in which you free Staghelm (yeah, bloody brilliant idea that was) – you are told to transport the soon to be Thrall breaker (who can apparently stun 4 Aspects with his cologne... really blizzard?) through the Emerald Dream, in order to avoid the wars going on between him and safety.
You do the deed, killing what we can assume are creatures from the Old God taint (The Nightmare), on the way, and the soon to be daftly named Majordomo is free.
Yeah, couple of questions, the first being: If this is a back up copy of Azeroth before mortal influence, Why do we appear in the clearly mortal built barrowdowns when escorting the guy out? Who built them in the dream?
The second, which I'm more than willing to let slide, would be why do In-Azeroth points of reference match up to The Dream at all?! In The Dream there was no Sundering, which means every point in 'real' Azeroth is hundreds of miles offset in The Dream...No?
Where are the trolls?
The Dream is “essentially, the first draft of creation, the blueprint to which the world would be returned to in the event of reorigination. It's Azeroth before the original Sundering, before intelligent life,”
So where does that leave the Trolls? They where about before the Titans showed up... Potentially the Tauren were too... The ED back up, as well as some how being before mortal interference (but having mortal built buildings in it(... ignores the fact that the Trolls, (possibly Tauren) and Spider People (yes I'm calling them that), were all about before the Titans. The Titans appear to have created a back up copy of just the operating system, and not the native programs from when they arrived. Which is actually quite understandable, but still the troll druids must be pissed to find they have been removed from the 'backup' copy given that they are the native species!
The Least Protected Backup in History.
What do you do when you back up your data? You burn it to something physical and offline, stable and as removed as possible to interference. What did the titans do? Apparently they made their safety feature not only into a parallel world, but a convenient thoroughfare!
Druids are popping in and out of the place all the time. These are mortals, which as you have already seen from the races before your second coming, Titans, are susceptible to Old Gold whispering. So do you lock you're backup copy away from these massive security risks? No apparently you make it a free for all... I've been to the dream ON A DEATH KNIGHT! You let the play things of Arthas wander about in your backup copy?! You are beyond moronic!
For that matter why did you leave your back-up connected to the corrupted original in the first place? For the makers of everything that was monumentally stupid!
More Backups
Presumably Azeroth isn't the only planet the Titans hit, and assuming the Legion hasn't managed to ravage ALL The planets ever visited by The Titans (although they might have) One would assume the Titans went to an equal trouble to create backups and reorigination sequences for all their worlds? I wonder which have been rebooted?
But it's just a dream world... right?
When Malfurion enters The Dream It is as if he is 'jacking in' to The Matrix. His physical body slumps, while his mind goes astral projecting, and can avoid magical barriers and observe real world things for free.
But hang on, I've twice gone into The Dream as a solid being, once, in Wrath, to retrieve an object from The Dream, and one, as mentioned, in Hyjal, I was sent, material body et al, to transport both mine, and Staghelm's physical body through the dream, to safety.
So why do I go in there whole sale, and Malfurion has to Jack In leaving a venerable body?
Is it a dream world or a solid parallel universe in which matter can exist?
When I first hear the idea of The Dream being the next expansion, I was hella' excited, but thinking about it – the ED is possibly the most cobbled together lore idea WoW has out there: It's a cyber punk ideal in a high-fantasy world.
To my mind Blizzard cheated, using The Dream for general questing, making it a mostly annoyingly-green short-cut, with contradictory lore. This domain of Ysera seems to lack so much actual definition that it is more a fan fantasy play land than a real contender for an expansion.
But do you know what The Dream does? It makes me hope I've misunderstood something and some really clever poster is going to barrel in in the comments and set me straight. Because I'd love to believe the ED is in fact a perfect nuromancer/matrix fantasy mash up in WoW, and not just a green screen filter that they have shoved over standard game play, and then tried to justify in some grand but almost unconnected novel.
I really didn't want to end on a down note here, but I hadn't realised my musings left a few large holes in The Dreams goings-on.
Here's too hoping I've grasped a colossal wrong end of the stick, but, until then, be aware of which end of the dream stick you're grasping, and...
Here's too hoping I've grasped a colossal wrong end of the stick, but, until then, be aware of which end of the dream stick you're grasping, and...
Swear Allegiance!
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