A Reddit Dystopia: Friendship Dragon

As a nonraider, my heart sank when Blizzard announced the Uncorrupted Voidwing would no longer be available after the expansion dropped. This made the mount seem so far away off for me. Then I remembered Friendship Bird, maybe there would be something similar. A couple of groups come out of the woodwork to help those just like me get their mounts under Friendship Dragon.

I didn’t think I would get into a group so quickly. Well, I bit the bullet and joined this discord, A Reddit Dystopia, who will be called ARD. I was watching FUTplaying stream the runs. Friendship Dragon looked easy and like fun. They make it look easy, to get in you just have to enter the lottery, this makes it completely fair so everyone has a chance to get into a run.

After the run, I was highly pleased and ecstatic. Not only was it easy to get in, they didn’t expect you to do anything. I was even touched by the fact that FUTplaying reached out to me personally after hearing in his stream chat from me that I had gotten in, to make sure I got an invite to the raid. As such, I had reached out and had the pleasure of interviewing ARD.

Q. What started your friendship runs?

A. We originally started the friendship runs to provide mounts to quite a few of our wonderful community members who for any number of reasons may not have been able to get the mount themselves. We had such a blast doing this that we decided we should do it more often and to a larger audience. Quite a few of the people that we helped obtain the mount had offered money to us as a thank you for helping out. We thought that that money would do a whole lot better in the pockets of the fine folks over at St. Jude!

Q. How did ARD start?

A. Our founder, Toombz, started ARD because he was sick of the toxicity and negative nature that can be group finder. He wanted to create a safe place for people to enjoy this wonderful game and make new friends without the negative nature of group finder. From there he started posting on Reddit about getting people together for a group back in Emerald Nightmare. Quite a few people joined up and it kept going from there.

Q. What else does ARD do besides friendship runs?

A. A little bit of everything WoW related. We pride ourselves on providing an inclusive community for anyone to be able to enjoy this fantastic game. ARD has over 10 raid teams going currently ranging from heroic groups to mythic groups. There are also have community learning raids throughout the week where we explain the mechanics to defeat the boss and work with anyone who wants to dip their toes into raiding! We have consistent M+ runs ranging from low-level keys to high-level keys, PvP groups, and countless transmog runs. One of the newest events is a transmog competition hosted by one of our raid teams. It’s a real hoot!

Q. Do you plan on continuing this in Shadowlands? 

A. Yes, yes, yes and yes. There’s nothing that could get in the way of us keeping this going through Shadowlands and BEYOND!

Q. Will you guys ever extend this to the alliance or will it always be horde only?  

A. That’s a great question and one I get asked quite often! We are working on extending this to the alliance side as well. I’m hoping that come Shadowlands we’ll have Horde and Alliance carry groups getting people their wonderful new mounts!

The community, ARD, does great things for players including Friendship Dragon. They give everyone the opportunity to obtain their mounts while raising money for St. Jude’s Children Research Hospital. It’s also not that hard to make sure you meet the requirements. Don’t have your legendary cloak? It only took me a few hours of my time to get it and then an hour wait to get my name pulled out of the lottery. Who can’t beat that?

Do you have your Uncorrupted Voidwing? Will you be getting it? Consider utilizing A Reddit Dystopia and their fun runs, who knows, you may even walk away with some new friends as I did!