As someone who loves dragons in almost any form and enjoys getting new pets in World of Warcraft, it isn’t a huge surprise that the Fracture in Time whelpling daycare questline is an activity I love. I’m at a point in the patch cycle where I’m more or less done with raiding; I’m doing some dungeons, but not that many because I don’t care much about having all the best gear. This makes a perfect storm of timing for the whelpling daycare. It’s a fun, chill activity I can do a little of every time I log in. However, I didn’t expect how much thought and care went into the storylines with these whelps.
One aspect of the whelpling daycare which some people find frustrating is the “time gating” in it. Although I don’t think that’s the right word, but I also can’t think of a better one. Each day there are a few quests to do and one or two dailies as well. All told, at most, I would say it probably takes me about 15 minutes to do what is available on any given day, and that’s mostly because I get distracted often, so I’m going through things as quickly as I’d like to. However, I like these bite-sized snippets because if I only have a short window to play, I know I can knock those out quickly. It also makes sense logically as we are teaching the whelps various lessons, and having a bit of downtime for them between lessons makes sense.
However, I also like the time between sets of quests because it gives me a bit more time to think about everything, and I don’t think any of these quests would have resonated with me in the same way if I could have just charged through everything. I’ve often found that I will remember questlines as short and not very involved when I can quickly proceed through the whole thing. Then, when I play an alt, I’ll discover there was much more to the questline than I remembered. Having the very short gaps between everything lets me sit on what was last done in a much more satisfying way.
I also probably wouldn’t have noticed the deft hand they’ve taken with helping each of these whelps. The black whelp had an issue because she was afraid of ducks, so our task was to help her overcome that fear. The way everything is handled with the quest text and dialogue makes it clear that no one is looking down on or berating her for having that fear.
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World of Warcraft Dragonflight Fractures In Time Impressions
It was just, “How can we help this whelp?” Similarly, the red whelp was a bit bossy. The line about her having an actual list was hilarious. Her exclamations during the game of tag were also on point and reminded me of running LFR early in a patch cycle. However, although some characters expressed frustration with the whelp, they didn’t demean her. It would have been so easy to come at this from the “you’re a problem” angle, and I appreciate them taking the time to go a different way with it.
I’ve only just started on the bronze whelpling, so I still have a bit of a way to go with this activity. However, I also appreciate that I don’t feel pressured to log in daily for this. Sure, it has taken me over 16 days already, but that’s fine. Since there’s no player power tied to this, it’s purely down to when I have time and want to work on it. Having a reasonably busy life, and I’m not sure if anyone has noticed, but this summer has been (and is continuing to be) jampacked with great games.
As much as I love this activity, I greatly appreciate the freedom to do it at my own pace. There’s a weird psychological trick that happens where if something is available all at once, I feel like I need to do it immediately. However, having something roll out over time removes that pressure. Even as far behind as I am now, knowing that it isn’t all there to do right now keeps that pressure off.
One regret, I wish I had started doing the daycare questline on one of my alts instead of my main. One of the common rewards for quests, and especially for the dailies, is flightstones. My main has been capped on those for ages, and anytime I use what I can, I immediately cap again. I’ve even taken to upgrading random things I get to see if they unlock other trasmog at higher ilvls because I don’t have much to spend them on. However, my alts are kind of flightstone starved. So, if I had thought about it, I would have just done this on my alts instead. If nothing else, I wish I could access the dailies on all my characters without doing the main daycare storyline again.
I’m roughly halfway through the whelpling daycare storyline and do not show any signs of getting bored with it. I can’t wait to see how things go with my bronze friend. Then I have the blue and green whelps to take care of, which are the ones I look forward to the most. I hope Blizzard keeps adding small things like this in future mini-patches. I also hope they continue to put this much care into how they tell the story they want to tell. It’s nice to break from world-ending/timeline-ruining threats for a bit.
