It’s been a long time coming, but WoW fans can finally rejoice: the Emerald Dream will be a full-fledged, playable zone in Dragonflight Patch 10.2.
The Emerald Dream has been a central point of WoW’s lore since the game’s inception and has been consistently teased over the course of the last 19 years. Whether it was through allusions to the Dream in Classic WoW via Night Elf lore, background info dumps on it during Cataclysm, or revelations regarding its status in Legion, the Emerald Dream has always been a dimension that Blizzard has teased WoW players with.
Now, we’re finally getting the chance to explore it head-on.
The Emerald Dream is an alternate version of Azeroth created by Ysera and the Green Dragonflight to represent what Azeroth would look like without any interference from the mortal races.
In Patch 10.2, though, we’re going to be interfering extensively with the Dream as players will be tasked with stopping Fyrakk from claiming the power of the newly planted world tree Amirdrassil for himself.
The Druids of the Flame, who played a massive role in the events of the Cataclysm expansion, will look to potentially appoint Fyrakk as the new Firelord, and his rise to power begins with his crusade through the Emerald Dream.
In the early 2010s, the Emerald Dream was consistently thrown into the mix when it came to theories and projections for a possible new expansion. Before (and during) the release of Cataclysm, it felt as though WoW’s overarching story could take a natural turn into the Emerald Dream. But instead, players were greeted with a sharp change of pace toward Pandaria. Still, the door for an expansion in one of WoW’s most iconic locales is always open, especially with the vastness of the Emerald Dreamscape in mind.
According to Blizzard, we’ll be entering only a portion of the Emerald Dream in Patch 10.2 that’s roughly the same size as the Ohn’ahran Plains.
With that said, it’s possible we could explore even more of the Emerald Dream soon, considering just how big and expansive it is.
In the Emerald Dream, we’ll be meeting a new faction of Druids known as the Dream Wardens, who will provide players with a new renown track in the upcoming patch. Additionally, the Emerald Dream will be where the expansion’s next raid will be located. Raiders will have the opportunity to go inside Amirdrassil and fight Fyrakk, preventing him from taking the world tree’s power for himself.
A release date for Patch 10.2, as well as the third season of Dragonflight, has not yet been revealed, although players should expect them to hit WoW’s live servers before the end of 2023.
