Andrestrasz

[Bolty]

If you've played for a long time you likely know that south of Silithus, over the mountains at the south end of the Ahn'Qiraj instance, there's a cave at the edge of the Kalimdor continent. It's been there since vanilla; I remember swimming out to it back when you had to swim all the way from Feralas or Tanaris to get there. Its layout was eventually used for an actual purpose in the Burning Crusade where there were quests to save the Sporeggar people from being slaughtered by moss giants.

This cave, however, has been empty for 8 years.

In patch 5.3, Blizzard added a sleeping red dragon, Andrestrasz, in the cave.

*head explodes*

He's level 5 - fifth expansion clue? A tribute to someone's 5-year-old? Eh?

This reminds me of the Faerie ring that Blizzard kept expanding during Cataclysm and for which there's no explanation as to why it's there. It drove me nuts last expansion just because there was no point to it, yet Blizzard kept evolving it with every major patch (first the circle was there, then they added the fey dragons, then they added the song event). So it wasn't something that a bored programmer threw in there in a one-time move, unless that same bored programmer kept expanding it patch after patch...

You can be sure people will be watching this cave to see if anything else happens.

[Bolty]

To date, this tweet is the only word about the NPC Andrestrasz from a Blizzard employee.

[DragonKing]

(Faerie ring)
They were probably pointing hints towards the Emerald Dream // Nightmare, which if I remember was what Cat. could have ended up being at one point. as to why its still growing, maybe that's whats to come after this new expansion.

You can normally see signs in game that point to the next expansion as early as go time (they will all string together in one way or another), but you see the most signs at the point of endgames final few patches. and at that point its not long before they announce the next one which if youve followed the clues that closely you already know what it is.