Sketches of Dracthyr from the Vanilla WoW era!

With WoW: Dragonflight, the Dracthyr come into play as a new race. These magical dragon warriors are the result of Neltharion’s research before he became the Aspect of Death (aka Deathwing). These hybrid creatures (similar to the worgen) can assume humanoid and dragon forms. The Callers are available to both factions, but as a Dracthyr you can only choose the class of the Callers. You can find out more about Dracthyr in this article.

Contrary to Neltharion’s previous experiments, the Dracthyr were nearly perfect. To create the perfect soldier, Neltharion fused the life essence of dragons with the DNA of mortal races that once roamed across Azeroth. Neltharion’s original idea was to combine the strength and magic of dragons with the cunning and ingenuity of mortals. The Dracthyr were a complete success, but Neltharion had to put his research on hold. Nefarian, Deathwing’s son, later resumed his father’s research. He created the Chromatic Dragonflight and a strange being named Maloriak that was quite similar to the Dracthyr.

Dragon sketches from the Classic era of WoW

So the concept of hybrid dragons is not new. Posted a on Reddit WoW player named xperio28 a sketch from the book Art of World of Warcraft (from 2004), which shows a dragonkin that is very reminiscent of the Dracthyr. What’s exciting is that many of the drawings from the book predate the release of Vanilla WoW (buy now ) were made.

There’s even text in the artbook describing the dragon creatures:

A large pup that has grown to human size preys on other dragon pups that larger dragons feed on.

There’s a lot going on in the WoW community right now about the appearance of the Dracthyr discussed. Many WoW players find the sight of the wiry Dracthyr to take some getting used to. They think the dragonfolk are too small. Although Blizzard’s developers said that you can adjust the appearance and body size later, the dragon model seems much too weak even with maximum dimensions.