After hitting Valdrakken renown level 30 on my main, I went to the rep vendor to buy the dragon taming manual to mail it to my hunter alt, only to find out that I can't do that. Instead, I had to do this whole rep grind all over again on my hunter alt. I did get double rep on my alt until renown level 20, but still... that was frustrating. And perhaps a waste of time too. I got the dragon taming manual, and... there are only two dragon models that you can tame. And one of them, the Veilwing, doesn't even fly like the NPC mobs. The tamed pet version walks on the ground. It's a dog with wings. So the only real dragon pet you can get is the Fey Dragon. There is also the Cloud Serpent, but I already got that from the Cloud Serpent rep I reached exalted on my main over 10 years ago, and it's bigger than the Fey Dragon. It would've been cool if you could have tamed one of those big proto-drakes, or those Draenor Fey Dragons. and they flew rather than walked.
I did the Time Rift and Dreamsurge events. They still suffer from the same flaws that plagued the Primalist Future and Tuskurr soup events, in that they are nonstop high intensity for too long and with no breaks. You're furiously bursting down mobs for 10 minutes straight. The Time Rift event is probably the "best" one thus far given that it has you flying around (though the Researchers Under Fire event also did that) and there is the chances that you might get the minigame with the hourglass which helps spruce things up, but it's still not very fun. The green orbs that spawn around the Dreamsurge zone that you can fly through to get currency are neat, though ultimately both the Time Rifts and Dreamsurge events are rather grindy.
For Dreamsurges you get about 30 currency per event (which happens once every 30 minutes), and a piece of gear costs 100 currency. That is 1,200 Dreamsurge currency you need to gear up a character (you can buy everything except trinkets). You can also get about 50 more currency in between Dreamsurge events by doing world quests, killing empowered rares in the area, or flying through the green orbs, but it will still take a few days just to get one character geared, whereas with prior catchup systems like Timeless Isle of the Forbidden Reach you could be fully geared in less than a of couple hours.
