Kul Tirans: Putting the Pagan in Druids

Ok, big disclaimer here: I get that a lot of people identify with paganism as a rather benign, nature-worshipping religious/spiritual lifestyle and I don't want to offend anyone who uses that word to describe themselves.

But one of the things about Druids in a lot of RPGs and particularly in WoW is that they tend not to feel very scary - generally they're one of the most unambiguously Good with a capital G classes in the game.

And that's fine.

But what about the creepier, scarier form of Druidism? The kind that scared the hell out of the Romans, who, despite being the quintessential pagans, had a much more urban and less mystical religious belief structure.

I will say that with the Worgen, the link of Druidism with Warcraft's equivalent of werewolves is certainly an example of scary druidism, but they often fail to emphasize the scariness of the Worgen now that they're a playable race (something I really wish they'd start pushing.)

But man, if you wanted creepy druids, well... behold:

(Thanks to MMO-Champion.)

Yes, that's travel form for Kul Tiran Druids. All of their shapeshift forms that we've seen so far (which have been Bear, Cat, and now this) have this feel to them: skeletal faces, fleshy bodies, and then gnarled wooden roots for legs.

It's pretty clear that the Druids of Kul Tiras have derived their druidic practices from the Drust - a group of humans who lived there prior to the Gilnean colonists who would become the Kul Tirans. We know Gilneas had its harvest witches, but I would bet that Kul Tiran druidism had to borrow from the Drust, given the way that their forms look like the witch fetishes the Drust used against their foes.

It's interesting to see how the two new Druidic races (not counting Highmountain Tauren, who are certainly connected to Cenarius) seem to have come by their powers totally independent of Malfurion's teachings. The Zandalari demonstrate this by having all dinosaur-based animal forms, while the Kul Tirans have these odd wicker-man creatures.

Man, if I weren't sold on making a Kul Tiran druid before, you can bet I'll be doing it now. (Oh man, and with tier 15's Haunted Forest set for transmog when I'm not using the Heritage set...)

I feel kind of bad for my old Night Elf, who I've had since Vanilla, because I think my Kul Tiran might be taking over his spot as main Druid.

Enter the Void (Elves)

You might notice that I've written a lot more about Void Elves than other Allied Races, but there's a good reason for this: Void Elves are the most unprecedented race they've ever added to the game. One could argue that Draenei give them a run for their money - back in 2007 (or probably 2005 when BC was announced, which notably didn't mention the Draenei) the only previous version we had seen was Akama and his Broken Draenei (then simply called "Draenei") in the Frozen Throne expansion (in fact, Akama had what we'd now call a "Lost One" model, which is like a Broken Broken Draenei.) The notion that these were the same people as the Eredar, but uncorrupted, only came about with BC and a fairly big accidental retcon (Sargeras was corrupted by the Eredar in the original lore, not the Nathrezim,) but one that I certainly think has been great for the game (Draenei forever!)

The only hints we got of the Void Elves were the fact that Alleria had been delving into Void magic to fight the Legion - all stuff we found out in a patch that also included the first hints at the Allied Races.

It's actually a bit odd (and, one could argue, somewhat shoe-horned in) that Alleria, a Hunter, would be doing this kind of experimentation. Her parallel-research counterpart, Magister Umbric, is presumably a mage, who would very likely be interested in researching all sorts of things.

But we don't really know the motivation here. Magical addiction was sated after the Sunwell was reignited, and now that it also emanates holy magic, we're even starting to see some Blood Elves in BFA having their fel taint removed, getting golden eyes rather than green (or arcane blue.)

So what's the deal? Why would this group of Blood Elves go for this very dangerous magic?

Let's be frank here:

People have been begging for Alliance High Elves since Blood Elves were first made a playable race. The problem is not lore: we've had small populations made playable races, and while the High Elves are definitely a small minority (sticking to the old name and rejecting the Illidan/Kael'thas Fel magic era) one could hardly imagine that the Void Elves are any larger.

So while yes, the Alliance does have true High Elves among their ranks, they are NPCs only. The reason for this is that they just look too similar to Blood Elves. Consider the following two scenarios:

Blizzard gives the Alliance one more race than the Horde, unbalancing the factions. Cue outrage from Horde players.

Blizzard gives the Horde a brand-new, or perhaps Allied Race - but a more profound variant like the Nightborne - and the Alliance is underwhelmed by the very minor visual distinction they get.

So rather than High Elf, they gave us Void Elf, and cooked up a justification to make some blue/purple elves that looked distinct enough from Blood Elves to feel like a true Allied Race (though I'd argue Highmountain Tauren are pretty damn close to the original model.)

But I don't really blame Blizzard for doing something like this. Oftentimes kludgy solutions to existing problems generate a lot of interesting story. Let me remind you of the problem with the Draenei when they were introduced as a playable race - if it hadn't been for that error and subsequent retcon, we never would have gotten the drama of returning to Argus, having Velen confront the man he thought of as a brother, and the fleshing out of the Burning Legion as something that didn't just destroy, but recruited.

So yes, I'll come out and say that it's weird that a Hunter, even one so experienced as Alleria, would be the one to pioneer and master the power of the Void, and that she just so happened to do return to Azeroth while a group of Blood Elves were doing the same thing, but now that we've got that in the lore, Blizzard needs to do the due diligence of exploring just what it means to be a Void Elf.

The other Allied races all have some pre-existing content to show what their lives are like. Maybe the Lightforged are kind of thin, but we can at least assume that they live a very regimented lifestyle and have been at war for so long that it's the only thing that feels natural to them.

But given that we've never seen the Void as anything except utter chaotic evil, with Shadow Priests tolerated in society just about as well as Warlocks are (Forsaken being the exception,) we really need to get a feel for who the Void Elves are.

First off: What sort of person becomes a Void Elf?

The Void Elves are volunteers, delving into extraordinarily dangerous magics in a way that Blood Elf society - the same that happily embraced fel magic to sate their magic addiction - consider taboo. What made them feel they needed power, and what made them accept this avenue to power?

How many are there?

We're told that the High Elves like Vereesa are an incredibly small minority, such that Blizzard basically says "if you want to play a High Elf, that's what Blood Elves are there for." But does this mean then that Void Elves are a larger population? What in Blood Elf society led to such a huge number of people embarking on this utterly dangerous quest?

What is day-to-day life for a Void Elf like?

Did Void Elves bring their kids? Are there going to be little Void Elf children running around, sprouting tentacles occasionally? Do the Void Elves actually live in Telongrus Rift? (Which, by the way, is heavily implied to be the planet Sargeras cut in half, meaning that on top of void corruption there's also a dead titan embryo floating among the ruins.)

What does the Alliance think of them?

Lightforged Draenei joined the Alliance the same time the Void Elves did. We're talking literally black and white (or I guess purple and yellow,) and while I think the vast majority of the Alliance is fine or even eager to have the Lightforged join their ranks (most Alliance societies have some form of Light worship) wouldn't the Void elves be literal anathema to their religious beliefs? And on top of that, what about the fact that until recently, these guys were members of the Horde? The Horde does have some former Alliance races in their ranks (like the Blood Elves, for example,) but the Alliance has never inducted former members of the Horde into their ranks. Between the Void and the Horde, there's a lot of reason for the Alliance not to trust the Void Elves.

What do they think of the Alliance?

Let's be clear: there's resentment amongst the Blood Elves toward the Alliance. They felt abandoned in the Third War, and some might associate the Alliance with Arthas and his attack. Now granted, if they've been willing to get along with the Forsaken, it would seem illogical to blame the Alliance for Arthas. But they can blame it for Garrithos. They're also not very happy with their treatment at Jaina's hands in Dalaran, even if Khadgar and the other members of the Council of Six restored the Blood Elves to the city. And all those things happened when the Void Elves were Blood Elves. Hell, your Void Elf character might have been locked up in the Violet Hold by Jaina back during Mists. And now you're expected to be buddies with her.

What do they bring to the Alliance?

Admittedly, the main thing that any new race brings to the game is a new archetype to play as. I'm going to get a little spoilery, so if you don't want anything about the Siege of Lordaeron scenario at the beginning of BFA revealed, skip down. Basically, when the Alliance is cornered, Alleria shows up with Mekkatorque and brings in a bunch of backup troops through Void portals. Now, is transportation really the main thing that they're bringing? I really want to get a better sense of what benefits they're getting from their void delving.

What are they bringing to WoW?

The biggest thing, of course, is what the addition of the Void Elves brings to World of Warcraft? I do think we need to see more of and flesh out the Void as a cosmic force. The Void Elves are in a unique position to do so, seeing as they are the only race who are inherently connected to it. We just need to see them do so.

The Problem With the Horde is the Innocence of the Alliance

My favorite aspect of the Warcraft setting is the idea that both sides are good guys. It's easy to have villains, who tend to be self-centered, greedy, or zealous, fail to cooperate with other bad guys. Any would-be conqueror of the world is not going to be eager to team up with someone else who also wants to be on top.

But putting forth two factions that both, ultimately, want what is best for the world but nevertheless hate each other is an empathetic and actually quite realistic portrayal of what people are like. The vast majority of real people simply want to get by, live their lives in relative safety and comfort. It's the people who decide that that life can only be achieved by preventing others from getting their way that lead us into conflict.

Now, the Horde has a legacy of aggression. During the First and Second Wars, you really can't make an argument for their being good guys, as they had just come off a prior genocidal campaign against the Draenei and they were backed by the Burning Legion. They had made their own world unlivable and had invaded Azeroth, never once reaching out the locals and saying "hey, our world is screwed up. Mind if we move here?" Instead, their campaign began with death and destruction and continued that way until the end of the Second War.

But I also think that it's very much worth pointing out that the Horde as it was then was incredibly different than it is today. The Orcs have had Durotar for the last decade or so, and while it's a rugged land, it is unquestionably theirs. And Orcs are now just one of the many races of the Horde. The Orcs may have come as invaders, but they share their faction with plenty of Azeroth-native people.

Not only that, but many of their people have long-established homes that have been with their people for generations. The Blood Elves have their ten-thousand-year-old city of Silvermoon. The Forsaken... well, that's complicated and soon to be moot so let's set that aside. The Tauren have returned to their ancestral home of Mulgore, and their Highmountain brethren don't seem to be in any danger of losing their home territory either. The Nightborne are probably very eager to get the hell out of Suramar after being stuck there for ten thousand years, but they've got a home to go back to. And they're about to integrate the Zandalari Trolls, literally the oldest civilization with the oldest home city on the planet.

The Horde's not outcasts: it's the establishment.

And that's a kind of ironic place for them to be, given that that early Horde was so built on the idea of being exiled and struggling for a place to survive. Sure, you can argue that the Orcs, Goblins, Darkspear Trolls, and now the Forsaken have all lost their homes, but the Alliance has Draenei, Lightforged Draenei, Gnomes, Night Elves, Worgen, and Void Elves - which is actually more "Outcasts" than the Horde. (Granted, with the destruction of Undercity, the Worgen might be able to return to Gilneas, but that merely evens the factions for "exiled people.")

There's also a question of responsibility: Of these exiled Horde races, only one can really put the blame for their exile on the Alliance. Three of the Alliance ones can blame the Horde (you could say four if you count the Draenei, but I think they blame the Legion more than the Horde.)

The "both sides have their points" argument that I do believe Blizzard should be making (it is, again, I think the biggest strength of the Warcraft setting) is undercut by how we see the factions behave. The Horde starts conflicts. If you truly had a faction that simply wanted to find a place in the world for itself, you'd see a more diplomatic approach. Following the Siege of Orgrimmar, the Alliance did offer concessions to the Horde to help encourage peace. They ceded Azshara, and agreed to pull out of Orgrimmar and allow Vol'jin's ascension to Warchief. They didn't have to do that.

Now, the chaos at the Broken Shore at the beginning of Legion could have been mitigated easily if the Horde had simply sent envoys to the Alliance saying "hey guys, we're really sorry we had to retreat, but there was another portal behind us and Vol'jin got fatally injured and we were about to die. Crappy battle, am I right? Anyway, we should probably regroup and figure out a better way to fight these guys."

But diplomacy might not make for the most exciting story. Frankly, whenever I hear people talking about putting the "War" back in Warcraft I always feel I need to point out that we've been at constant war against the Lich King, or Deathwing, or the Iron Horde, or the Burning Legion. But if the conflict between these factions is necessary to the story (and has to remain in a kind of story stasis - to be frank, if this were a limited series of fantasy novels I feel like the obvious end would be a permanent merger of the factions) then the Horde's crimes and aggressions have to be mirrored by an equally culpable Alliance.

Which is to say that the problem with the Horde might not be with the Horde, but with how Blizzard writes the Alliance.

One could actually argue that both the Garrosh-era war and the Sylvanas-era war were started by the Alliance. In Wrath, there was a coup in Undercity that allowed Putress to employ the plague against the combined forces at the Wrath Gate. Besieging the city, the Alliance killed Putress and then Varian, having seen the whole Royal Apothecary Society and its plague-making capabilities, decided that any Horde that allowed such work to be done needed to be destroyed.

Likewise, while the Broken Shore events sparked the conflict, it wasn't until Greymane went hunting after Sylvanas in Stormheim that the two factions began to truly clash - fighting to prevent Sylvanas from enslaving the Val'kyr.

See, yes, the Alliance is technically starting these conflicts, but in both cases, they're doing so in response to something horrific the Horde has done.

It's rare for us to see the Alliance acting in cruel or selfish ways. The only really good example I can think of the Alliance pursuing its war against the Horde without regard for the world as a whole is when SI:7 kidnapped Thrall on the way to the Maelstrom in the Goblin starting quests. Thrall was of course needed to help stop the Cataclysm, but the Alliance was interfering with that.

Yet in nearly every other circumstance, when there's a chance for peace, the Alliance gives the Horde the benefit of the doubt. And that makes the Horde look like assholes for acting like brutes.

So how would I fix this?

Well, one idea I had a long time ago was having a group of Draenei who are looking for revenge against the Orcs for the genocide on Draenor - a relatable motivation, but one that could get out of hand. Like, maybe their goal is to just wipe out the entire Warsong Clan, even those who were born after the massacres.

Another is to make use of the Alliance's more morally questionable races. I've never felt that they properly used the Worgen. Yes, Genn's more aggressive attitude has helped push the conflict, but they're still operating like humans. I want to see some creepy wolves stalking through the night, hunting their enemies for sport. We see a little of the hardcore methods used by, for example, the Bloodfang Pack in Silverpine. I want to see way more of that type of Worgen. The type that would strike at the weakest and maybe even eat their foes. Seriously, guys, we've got freaking werewolves on the Alliance. Let them be real monsters!

And of course now we'll be getting the Dark Iron Dwarves and the Void Elves. I get that they're trying to introduce some new nuance to the Light/Void conflict, with X'era representing something of an evil or at least not exactly good version of the Light. But I feel like you could use the Void Elves' ability to touch the edge of madness to inflict terrible curses upon their foes. Imagine a Horde quest chain where you come to a village or something where people are going insane, and eventually you find out that the Ren'dorei are using their Void magics to inflict this upon the people in the name of the Alliance. The Dark Irons have a history of slavery and of course pyromania. The former might not sit right with the tone of the game, but having the Dark Irons torching Horde settlements seems perfectly in line with their MO.

The point is: the Horde needs a reason to hate the Alliance. Right now the only real reason is "they're the other side." Give the Horde a reason to hate the Alliance and the Horde will start seeming more sympathetic without losing any of its edge.

Beta is Here! Not Much Has Changed!

The BFA Beta has officially begun. What that means for those of us who have been testing in the Alpha is simply that our characters have been wiped. Thankfully, they say they don't plan to do this again. We cannot currently copy over our existing characters, so it's back to square one.

The build itself does not appear to be significantly different, with a lot of the same bugs and issues still affecting it. The one major thing I've noticed is that some of the Battle of Lordaeron scenario parts are balanced a bit better.

So what have we got?

Right now I think all but a couple of the dungeons are open for testing. I believe Siege of Boralus and King's Rest remain to be opened. They've done some testing for Uldir, though I believe only one boss.

A lot of what is missing is polish to the leveling zones like adding voiceover lines and stitching up some broken terrain.

We're now just under four months away from the expansion's launch, and I think Blizzard will be pretty busy.

We can probably expect the pre-patch to land about a month or a month and a half before the launch of the expansion, which means I'm going to have to start really grinding away at Highlord Kruul when the Mage Tower is up.

My guess about the sequence of events is that we'll likely see the Burning of Teldrassil two weeks before the expansion launches, and then the Siege of Lordaeron one week out, so that the scenarios that lead into the new continents will be available when the expansion officially launches.

If the pre-patch comes out at six weeks before the expansion, that would put it some time around the beginning of July, which means that most of the testing needs to be done in the next two months, as we're getting close to May here.

And of course the PTR for 8.0 has got to be up for a bit before the patch comes out - I'd guess around the beginning of June.

The timetable is getting pretty small, so I'd keep a close eye on new Beta builds. There's a lot to get in there.

Saurfang and the Horde

We're still in Alpha/Beta, so bear in mind that the spoilers I'm going to be talking about are all subject to change. Still, with the expansion less than four months away, I also don't really see them changing too much.

Varok Saurfang is a funny character for WoW. There are certainly WoW characters who have become important despite not having existed in the RTS games. Take Garrosh, for example, who was only introduced in Burning Crusade but had an enormous impact on the story of Warcraft. There have now been more expansions to WoW than there were Warcraft RTS games and expansions, so it makes sense that this is where the lore of the Warcraft universe is created.

But Saurfang is an oddity because I don't think they ever meant for him to be an important character.

All the major cities as built in vanilla had elite, named NPCs who were there to serve as extra-tough guards in case members of the other faction came in and attacked. Saurfang was just supposed to be a big speed bump in case the Alliance attempted to attack Orgrimmar through the front gate.

But he caught on in popularity, becoming something of a meme, due to that toughness. Blizzard caught on quickly, and made him into an important NPC in the Ahn'Qiraj events, having him lead the Might of Kalimdor - the first of WoW's united Alliance/Horde forces to take down a bigger threat. He's been played a bit like a kind of Saladin character - the worthy adversary that even his enemies admire.

In BC we met his Mag'har son in Outland, who would then go on to die to the Lich King and be raised as a death knight for us to fight in Icecrown Citadel. Saurfang himself was sent along with Garrosh, and we began to get a sense of his personality: Saurfang was the old veteran who had seen the depravities of the Old Horde and wanted something better for his people. He'd become a figure in the resistance against Garrosh and with Thrall retired and Garrosh dead, Saurfang has emerged, sort of by default, as the racial leader of the Orcs.

Not bad for a kind of random NPC.

Now, it appears that old Varok is going to have some interesting stuff to do in BFA.

Spoilers to follow.

BFA Alpha Dungeon Impressions

I've now run four of BFA's dungeons, two on Kul Tiras and two on, or at least associated with, Zandalar.

I'm not going to get super-in-depth, but let me give the basic rundown:

Atal'dazar:

This is one of those interestingly laid-out dungeons in that it's actually quite compact. There are four bosses, arranged around a kind of square pit with bridges spanning the middle. You can go fight one boss at the bottom of the pit at any time. You then need to fight your way around the rim of the pit to get to one of the other bosses, and killing them opens up a quick shortcut to the next boss (whichever you pick, north or south.) The final boss becomes available when the others are down.

The dungeon aesthetic is really cool, as a kind of ancient golden city, in keeping with the larger Zuldazar feel.

THE MOTHERLODE!!:

Yes, that's the correct spelling of the dungeon name.

This is a Venture Company Azerite mining operation that you go find. I don't think it's actually on Kezan, and appears instead to be some island (I don't know where the instance portal is.)

This dungeon has you kind of circle around the final boss, fighting a very large number of trash packs (you'll want to pull carefully here.) There are some interesting new shredder/robot models here, and the final boss fights in a kind of goblin-themed updated Mimiron's Head (I believe he drops a recipe for engineers to make the mount.)

It has a very goblin aesthetic - lots of environmental devastation and oil slicks, mine carts, and the like.

Tol Dagor:

This is a big prison off the coast of Tiragarde Sound that Alliance players escape shortly after they arrive in Kul Tiras. A bit like Vault of the Wardens, you reverse the process, sneaking into the prison through the sewer and then working your way up to the roof where you can fight the Warden.

There are some interesting ideas here, like a boss who runs at 50% and releases a ton of prisoners to slow you down as you chase him.

Waycrest Manor:

Man, if you wanted a proper haunted house dungeon, this totally gets that feel, but in a different way than Karazhan or Black Rook Hold. The Manor is fairly labyrinthine, with many narrow corridors and doors to search through. You'll find three bosses on the main floor - one on each of the west wing and the east wing and one in the courtyard, and once you have the three preliminary bosses down, you can find a rather narrow, nondescript door that lets you down into the basement, and through there you descend into some ancient Drust ruin where the penultimate bosses are. From there, you descend further to fight the final boss.

This place has a fantastic atmosphere and while I'm sure groups will quickly figure out the most efficient route through the house, if you want to go in blind with a bunch of friends I think you'll have a really good time exploring.

The Daughter of a Knight of Stormwind

Big Spoilers for a Character You Haven't Met Yet!

There is a new character we meet in Kul Tiras who appears as if she will be a recurring figure throughout the expansion, and perhaps beyond. We know her only as Taelia, and when we first arrive in Kul Tiras, she is amongst the people who help us begin to establish a foothold on the island.

Spoilers to follow:

What Happens to Alliance vs Horde After BFA?

BFA promises to put the conflict between the two player factions center-stage. It's reflected in a lot of the expansion's features: each faction has its own continent (though of course we get to go to the other one at the level cap, meaning that for most of the expansion you'll experience it as kind of one bifurcated six-zone continent,) we have Island Expeditions in which we race to grab resources faster than the other side can, and then we have Warfronts, where we battle it out with the other side over key locations (I missed the actual Warfront test, but if you were disappointed that Arathi Highlands barely got a revamp in Cataclysm, the Warfront version of it looks totally re-done, including the terrain. It almost makes me wish that they'd do this for the whole old world, but, you know, not, because I remember what happened with Cataclysm.)

The faction conflict has played a major role in earlier expansions - Cataclysm saw full-scale war break out in many of its low-level zone revamps, and Mists put a lot of focus on the war while we were exploring (and exploiting) this new land we had found.

But even if the faction war was very close to the center of an expansion like Mists, it hasn't really been front-and-center since perhaps Vanilla (and even then, while the cinematic and advertisements emphasized the conflict, the actual story was much more about faction-neutral threats.)

Take, for example, the settings: while the individual zones are all new, we have a long history with both Zandalar and Kul Tiras. Many Alliance characters (those who were around during the Second War) might very well have been to Kul Tiras before. The Zandalari have been perhaps more isolationist in their history, but both factions got to know them decently before Zul turned the empire against the rest of the world. One assumes that before Zul started preaching that Zandalar was reasonably open in communication with the rest of the world.

Obviously, it remains to be seen just how much we deal with the faction conflict in this expansion. I'd honestly not be terribly surprised to see something of a stalemate that ends not in some grand peace treaty but more like a de-escalation at the end of the expansion.

Conflicts are difficult to resolve. If you look at world history, simmering rivalries don't tend to go away once a war ends. World War II was largely launched by Germany as a kind of retaliation for their loss in the previous World War. It was only after an utterly devastating defeat and confirmations of the horrific crimes their country had committed, not to mention a very forceful division of the country into different occupied territories, that Germany really made a lasting change toward peaceful co-existence.

And there's no real "end of history" as long as there are still people around. The best people can work for is a longterm peaceful state that they try to preserve as long as they can.

So matters settling between Alliance and Horde is not the be-all-end-all of their relationship or even individual identities. We've seen with the Void Elves that sometimes members of one faction will leave (or be chased out) and join the other. Hell, if the Void Elves made a push for it, you could even imagine Silvermoon City becoming an Alliance city once again.

There's also, of course, the gameplay mechanical problem. Even if the story absolutely justified a longterm peace and unification between the two factions, there's still so many aspects of the way that WoW is built that make peaceful cooperation not work. If I take my human to Orgrimmar, I'm going to get swarmed by guards and potentially other players (even as a PvE player, you get flagged in the other faction's cities.) So as much as my character might have bonded with that Orc Hunter - we've gotten to know each other and realized that actually, we're really both looking for the same thing in this world - the game's mechanics would not let me go visit her nice apartment in the Valley of Honor.

So we can talk about two things: story changes and mechanical changes.

Story-wise, I could imagine a kind of "stay on your side" solution to the conflict. If the Forsaken abandon Lordaeron, fully relocating to Kalimdor, that would leave the Eastern Kingdoms basically in full Alliance control (even the Searing Gorge/Burning Steppes region would now be in Alliance hands, with the induction of the Dark Irons.) The only Horde territory would really be Quel'thalas, and perhaps the factions could negotiate a peaceful "leave the Blood Elves alone" treaty. With the Eastern Plaguelands between Quel'thalas and the rest of the continent, I could imagine the Alliance leaving them be.

Meanwhile, the Night Elves might leave Kalimdor after the burning of Teldrassil (though I'd imagine far more bitterly) and settle in the Eastern Kingdoms, leaving the 'Myst isles as the only real Alliance territory there, which the Horde might respect given that A: it's not actually on the continent and B: the Draenei are basically never aggressors.

There would still be serious conflicts (I imagine a big splinter-faction of Night Elves unwilling to leave Kalimdor and a total mess left behind by the Forsaken) but without many contested borders, you could see the conflict start to die down.

But you could go farther if you changed gameplay mechanics.

I have no idea what the population of WoW players is these days. They used to publish this, but as things started to decline toward the end of Cataclysm, they eventually stopped talking about those numbers (presumably because it wasn't as effective as bragging rights.) There's still enough players to do stuff in game, thankfully, and I imagine that that will hold as long as they put out expansions more like Legion and less like Warlords. But one of the oddities of WoW is that you're always only playing with half the players. What if you could group up with the other side?

Now there are areas where this wouldn't work: battlegrounds, warfronts, and faction-conflict-centric content would probably never really work for cross-faction grouping (though we've seen them straight-up do this on Ashran, so we know that the technology exists and that they're willing to do it sometimes.)

But Blizzard claims that BFA is going to "resolve" the faction conflict. Most of us, I think, assume that this will not really change the fundamental mechanics of the game, but will simply allow them to focus on other stories moving forward.

But what if they're actually thinking of something more radical?

People have wanted cross-faction grouping for basically all of WoW's history. But we also know that Blizzard doesn't like doing something in WoW unless there's both a gameplay and story justification. As much as we might have wanted Demon Hunters as soon as we knew that Blizzard was willing to add classes to the game, we didn't get them until Legion because we needed to justify them.

A lot of people kind of groaned when we discovered that the next expansion would be focused on a conflict that many players find played out. But what if that's the whole point: Blizzard wants to end the faction conflict, and once they have, that will open the possibility of grouping up with your friends regardless of faction?

Take the change to the PvP servers: In BFA, PvP will be entirely opt-in (unless you go to an enemy faction's location or instanced PvP like a battleground. Essentially, it means that PvP servers will now be the same as Normal PvE ones.

Could that reflect the future of the story?

Any time peace is made, you have people with grievances who aren't ready to stop fighting. Now, you'll be able to declare your stance on peace mechanically. Sure, the leadership at Stormwind may decide to sacrifice Ashenvale in the name of an end to war, but if you're some Kaldorei guerrilla who's not going to let some 20-year-old human give away the forests you fought 10,000 years to protect, you might flip on that PvP flag and take on any damned greenskin who wants to log your trees.

Thus, the conflict between the factions becomes more of an individual choice for players and characters, while those who aren't interested in fighting against each other can work together to fight the other threats to life on Azeroth.

Alliance and Horde Intros to Battle for Azeroth - Part Two: The New Continents

SPOILERS

Following the Siege of Lordaeron, the factions are keen to regroup and figure out what to do next. These two events take place in a clear sequence, so we'll start with the Horde.

Alliance and Horde Intros to Battle for Azeroth - Part One: Siege of Lordaeron

SPOILERS

While I believe it existed in earlier builds, the latest build gave us the intro quests that open Battle for Azeroth. I suspect there's more to see (the Burning of Teldrassil will, I believe, also see player involvement,) but these events cover what I imagine to be some combination of the pre-expansion story content and the journey to the two new continents (and then of course carries on through said continents.)

So, we begin with the Siege of Lordaeron.

Lines of Succession on Azeroth

Leaders die. While they range from absolute unquestioned authority to loosely held rallying figure, each of World of Warcraft's races has had some sort of leader. But even in the relatively short period of time that WoW covers (I believe the canon is that each expansion is about a year, meaning that we're at less than a decade at this point,) we've seen many leaders depart. Of the eight original playable races, only the Night Elves, Gnomes, and Undead have not seen a change in leadership (and one could argue that the Night Elves' leadership was at least adjusted with Malfurion's return in Cataclysm.) We've seen deaths - Vol'jin, Cairne, Varian - retirements - Thrall - people turned to diamond - Magni - and in one case, the violent overthrow (and later, death) of a Warchief - Garrosh.

With the two factions going to open war and greater upheaval likely to come, how do the various races of Azeroth plan to deal with such changes?

Humans:

Stormwind just underwent an upheaval, with the death of Varian Wrynn. Anduin was a sort of acting monarch when he was a young child, though Bolvar Fordragon was regent for him. But now that Anduin is an adult, he's also taken on leadership of Stormwind and it seems the Alliance in general. As someone so young, succession is probably not something he's given a lot of thought to, but with the violent world he lives in, Stormwind doesn't really have much of an heir at this point. Theoretically the House of Nobles might put forth a potential successor if the Wrynn line were to die out, but no one really likes them, and their influence seems minimal at this point. Indeed, there's not a real clear successor to the throne of Stormwind, and while Genn Greymane has been a close advisor to Anduin and is sort of a human king, I doubt that many Stormwindians... Stormwinders? would be happy to see the King of Gilneas take over.

Dwarves:

The Dwarves have the benefit of having three leaders, but there's a tricky issue here which is that Muradin doesn't have any children, and so his heir would, logically, be Moira, who already represents the Dark Iron clan. Moira has her own son (who really shouldn't be a baby anymore) who she considers the proper heir to both the Bronzebeard and Dark Iron clans. But even if we see a rapprochement between Bronzebeard and Dark Irons (as made possible by the Dark Irons' addition as an Allied Race,) having one person (either Moira or her son) representing two clans would make the Wildhammer Clan very uncomfortable, as they'd be guaranteed to be outvoted in any decision in which they dissented.

Gnomes:

Though he has been leading the Gnomes for a very long time, technically High Tinker Mekkatorque is a democratically elected leader - more of a President than a King. This means that if he should come to harm, there is a mechanism by which the Gnomes could choose a new leader. Tinkmaster Overspark is probably a logical successor in the case of an emergency.

Night Elves:

Tyrande and Malfurion both lead their people, and both are the heads of their own organizations - the Temple of Elune and the Cenarion Circle, respectively. Malfurion's successor in the Circle could actually be Hamuul Runetotem, but given that he is a Tauren loyal to the Horde, it's very unlikely that the Night Elves would even consider him remotely as a leader. On the other hand, Tyrande has priestesses who could take over the Temple, but what I think is more likely is that Shandris Feathermoon could take over Night Elf leadership in a time of crisis. She is the head of the Sentinels and is Tyrande's adopted daughter, meaning that she has a familial connection and plenty of credibility as a leader.

Orcs:

Currently, High Overlord Saurfang is the leader of the Orcs. But this old veteran serves primarily as a military leader. Granted, the Orcs tend to be fine with the military and politicians being intertwined. There is presumably a line of command that flows down from Saurfang, which means they've most likely got contingencies in place. On the other hand, in a real leadership crisis, it's not unthinkable that the Orcs might attempt to pull Thrall out of retirement to lead them once again, even if he'd be reluctant to do so.

Trolls:

Thankfully, in BFA it appears that they are at least acknowledging the existence of another WCIII Troll character (in fact, was Vol'jin even in WCIII?) But it's not totally obvious what role Rokan has in Darkspear society. With the recruitment of the Zandalari Trolls, it would be easy for the Darkspear to fade in relevance, though I'd hope the Horde would reward the Darkspears' long service with appropriate power and respect. But even if we can claim Rokan as the racial leader of the Darkspear Tribe, we don't have much else to go on if something happens to him.

Tauren:

Baine took over after Cairne's death in standard primogeniture succession. But Baine does not appear to be married or have kids, so it's not clear who would take over. Unlike Malfurion, Hamuul is less central to Tauren leadership (though he has played a big part in Horde politics - he was the one who brought in the Forsaken. So you can blame/thank him for Warchief Sylvanas.) The most important thing is that the Tauren should be very careful to never let Magatha Grimtotem back into Thunder Bluff, though I'm sure that she'll try if anything happens to Baine.

Undead:

The identity of the Forsaken is tied so closely to Sylvanas that it'd be hard for anyone to replace her. That being said, Nathanos Blightcaller is her right-hand man (and if they were both still alive, would probably be her consort. Windrunners all seem to be really into humans.) Another possibility could be Lillian Voss, who seems to have a more... positive... outlook. She doesn't wish to spread the curse except to those who consent, and she considers the curse a common ground that makes the Forsaken one big family - not necessarily the rigid cult of personality that Sylvanas has created. With Undercity falling and Sylvanas at the top of the Horde heap, the Undead should definitely be thinking about contingency plans.

Draenei:

Similarly, it's hard to imagine the Draenei without Velen. On the other hand, we've actually seen that on Draenor B, but while Draenor's Draenei had the Council of Exarchs, it's not clear that our own have that other level of governance. I'd imagine that without Velen, we'd probably see the Draenei reinstitute it, with Vinidcator Boros perhaps as High Vindicator, Romuul as Chief Artificer, etc.

Blood Elves:

Lor'themar does have Rommath and others who serve with him on the council, and Lady Liadrin has taken a prominent role in Blood Elf affairs. The Blood Elves already dealt with their big power vacuum problem so I don't think they have much to worry about now.

Worgen:

Tess Greymane is Genn's daughter and is presumably the heir to the throne (given that Liam is dead.) Ironic, of course, that a member of the Uncrowned would be, well, crowned, and Tess is not a Worgen. That being said, the Worgen generally identify primarily as members of the kingdom of Gilneas - they're still human on a certain level, and so I doubt anyone would have a problem with Tess taking over.

Goblins:

Oh boy. Wouldn't the Bligewater Cartel love to get rid of Gallywix? While technically a member of the Steamwheedle Cartel, Gazlowe would be a reasonable person to take over for Gallywix, and there's also Boss Midna. I'm not too worried about the Goblins.

Pandaren:

So here we have an odd situation. Ji and Aysa lead their respective factions of the Pandaren, but they're also clearly close to one another. The role of the Pandaren, particularly in the Horde/Alliance conflict, is not very clear. Arguably, Taran Zhu is the closest thing to a racial leader for the Pandaren, but do the Wandering Isle Pandaren treat him that way?

Lightforged Draenei:

Technically speaking, I think Turalyon is the leader of the Army of the Light, now that X'era is dead. Given that the Lightforged really care far more about devotion to the Light than race, I don't think anyone would have a problem with that. And as a strictly regimented military organization, it seems clear that Captain Fareeya or Lothraxion could take over.

Void Elves:

Alleria seems to be taking the role of racial leader for the Void Elves, but should anything happen to her, we'd probably see Magister Umbric, who independently led his people down this path, take over.

Highmountain Tauren:

Mayla Highmountain is the High Chieftain of the Highmountain, but there are other tribal leaders who could step in if there's a problem.

Nightborne:

Thalyssra is clearly the main leader of her people - having led the whole Dusk Lily rebellion. Valtrois, Oculeth, Silgryn, Lunastre - any of these could take over should there be a problem.

I'm going to wait to find out more about the yet-to-be-implemented Allied Races, as it's likely we'll see new NPCs added to flesh them out.

What's Important on Kul Tiras and Zandalar?

Now that we know that Azshara will be a major boss early in Battle for Azeroth - the equivalent of Gul'dan in Legion - there area  lot of questions to be asked regarding what will come next.

We've moved pretty far past it as a model, but the Burning Crusade had an interesting system for dungeons and raids - Hellfire Peninsula, Zangarmarsh, and Netherstorm each had dungeon hubs with three dungeons a piece that then had an attached raid that would conclude the story of the dungeons and the zone. BC of course was pretty ambitious in terms of how many dungeons they had at launch (15,) which was made easier by having similar aesthetics and enemy types in the connected ones. As of Cataclysm, we've tended to get more distinct, but fewer dungeons, and it's actually fairly rare to see dungeons firmly attached to raids the way they were in BC and Wrath (and of course in Vanilla, many of its biggest raids actually required you to clear your way through a dungeon to even get to the entrance - Naxxramas was originally going to require you to go through the dead side of Stratholme.)

Nowadays, however, Blizzard is pretty happy to conclude certain stories within dungeons - I think a really great example of this is Skyreach, which finished off the story of Spires of Arak, even though I bet a lot of people wouldn't have minded an Arrakoa-themed raid.

Now Legion actually returned a bit to the BC model - we had Darkheart Thicket thematically connected to the Emerald Nightmare, we had Court of Stars and the Arcway leading into the Nighthold, Halls of Valor and Maw of Souls leading into the Trial of Valor, and then of course new dungeons added with Tomb of Sargeras and Antorus (though Seat of the Triumvirate was very different thematically from Antorus, and set on a different fragment of Argus. Can I just take a brief aside to mention how impressive 7.3 was? I mean, three legit-sized zones, each with a different feel? More like a mini-expansion than a patch.)

At this point, we only have two raids confirmed for Battle for Azeroth, and one of those we really only know who the final boss is (though if we don't get to see Nazjatar before we kill Azshara I'll be pretty disappointed. I'm thinking it ought to be a new zone somewhere between Kul Tiras and Zandalar.)

While historically, plenty of final raids have come in zones that were added (or in the case of Warlords, made accessible) later in the expansion, one could probably expect that we'll get at least a couple more within the continents around which this expansion revolves. So let's go zone-to-zone and think about what we might find there!

Nazmir:

This seems like the obvious place to start because it's the one zone we already know contains a raid. The plot of Nazmir, and indeed a lot of Zandalar in general, revolves around the Blood God G'huun, who was created in this Titan facility in an ill-advised attempt to reverse-engineer the Old Gods. Given that we have both a dungeon (The Underrot) and a raid (Uldir) in this zone, I don't think there will be much story that remains to be told, so we can probably move on.

Drustvar:

Drustvar has one dungeon in it (every BFA zone has at least one dungeon,) called Waycrest Manor, which seems likely to be the expansion's haunted-house dungeon (we got the gothic/vampire look in Blackrook Hold in Legion - maybe this will have more of a Victorian ghostly feel?) As this dungeon looks to be tying up both the story of the Waycrests and that of Gorak Tul, the ancient Drust leader, I suspect that there's not going to be much story left to tie up in Drustvar, unless they decide that we're going to learn a lot more about the Drust later on.

Zuldazar:

Zuldazar has two dungeons in it already (King's Rest and Atal'dazar, the latter of which I've actually run at this point,) but as the oldest city on Azeroth, there's probably a lot of potential for story hooks here. The question is really how much of Zandalar's story will be wrapped up in Uldir. I'd hope it isn't completely, as we're going to have a lot more time to spend there. But given that Zul is a boss in Uldir, I'm tempted to suspect that new stuff will have to happen after Uldir for there to be a big climactic thing to do in Zuldazar.

Tiragarde Sound:

Tiragarde Sound has three dungeons (Tol Dagor, Siege of Boralus, and Freehold,) but what's interesting about them is that none feature Lady Ashvane, who is the main villain of the zone, as a boss. I believe that Siege of Boralus covers her main attempt at a coup against Katherine Proudmoore, but it seems like she might come back as a raid boss later on, not unlike Zul. Would that raid be here? It's a big zone, but the primary interesting features are covered pretty well by the Freehold dungeon and Siege of Boralus.

Vol'dun:

The plot of Vol'dun (I haven't finished it) mostly revolves around a group of Setherak (the cobra-people) who have turned on the Trolls and each other. There is certainly a plot against the Snake Loa, Sethrallis, but there are also a lot of stories about how this was an area where the minions of the Old Gods caused havoc, creating the desert from an area that was jungle. I could imagine an Old God-themed raid here, but only if it doesn't step on Uldir's toes too much.

Stormsong Valley:

There is a dungeon here called Shrine of the Storms that absolutely has some big Old God stuff going on. Apart from the Naga attacking in the west and the Horde attacking in the north, the Shrine seems like the main place you'd find raid-worthy stuff going on. The Shrine dungeon could simply have us exploring the well-known parts of the massive island on which it stands, and a raid could have us delve deep into the island's interior to find something worth fighting.

It remains to be seen what other raids we'll come across. I suspect we might be seeing a lot popping up on other islands later in the expansion, but I'd also like to see them use the massive zones that they've created.

Well, Well, Well, Block Rating, We Meet Again (Though You're Not the Same)

If you're not Protection-specced (Warrior or Paladin,) you've probably never thought much about shields. Sure, Holy Paladins, Elemental Shamans, and Restoration Shamans have historically worn a big dinner plate on their backs (the expectation was was so strong that they had to give The Silver Hand a 30% boost to your armor in addition to its other effects,) but these guys are too busy casting to pull their shield out and block an attack.

And honestly, if you're not a tank, the only times you'll really worry about defensive stats are when soloing or PvPing - and the former generally tunes things so that you're not going to worry about it too much while the latter encourages myriad defensive gameplay styles like kiting or stunning in addition to straight up damage reduction.

The point is: if you don't play Protection, this is going to be wonky about something that really doesn't mean much to you.

Ok!

Way back in the day, Shields had a value called "Block," typically followed by some number comparable to the armor that it gave you (I think generally lower, maybe half or something.) This was your block value. What it meant was that when you blocked an attack with a shield, the damage reduction was subtractive, rather than multiplicative (by a less-than-1-factor - so arguably divisive.)

Your Block Value was then further altered by two things: you would find block value on armor (you'd also get Block rating, which would increase your chance to block,) and you would gain block value as you increased your Strength, which makes a certain logical sense, as it's as if the stronger you got, the more of an impact you could absorb by holding up your shield.

The interesting consequence of this was that, depending on a fight, block could be enormously powerful or not very powerful at all. I started tanking raids in Wrath, during which this system was still in place (I suspect that the introduction of the Death Knight, as a tank that wore plate but couldn't make use of any of these block-related stats, might have been what convinced them to get rid of them, as DKs had to either search high and low for gear that only had defense/dodge/parry/hit/expertise - all stats that don't exist anymore - or just use gear with useless stats.) Fighting the Scourge, one often found oneself fighting off large swarms of weaker minions - skeletons and ghouls and the like. When the main source of damage is not the power of the hits, but rather the frequency, blocking shined, as you might only take some small percentage of the actual damage of the strike.

However, a block value of a 1,000 was not all that impactful when you were getting hit for 30,000 by some powerful raid boss. You had to rely on other forms of mitigation or use a tank with very high "effective health" (a kind of value determined by max HP and total damage reduction) like a Blood Death Knight or a Feral (what would become Guardian) Druid.

Anyway, in Cataclysm, they changed the way that shield-blocking worked: Instead of a set value, blocking would reduce an incoming hit by 30% (raising to 40% in Warlords.) Paladins got a mastery that increased their chance to block (by the end of the expansion, Paladins' main goal was to get a 100% block chance) while Warriors got a mastery that increased that chance by a lesser amount, but also gave them a chance to block for 60% instead. They got rid of block value on gear because it no longer had any meaning, and they got rid of block rating because the only specs that would care about that stat could simply go for mastery instead.

Then, I believe in Mists, perhaps concerned about Paladins' ability to hit 100% block chance (meaning any further mastery was useless,) they made some changes. First off, they added more effects to the Paladin mastery, tying it into self-healing (initially something called Bastion of Glory, which would buff your next self-applied Word of Glory each time you used Shield of the Righteous, stacking up to 5) but they also changed how block was calculated: While previously you would put dodge, block, and parry all together to kind of push regular blows off the table (in Wrath and earlier, you also had to worry about crushing blows from raid bosses, which required getting crit-immune from defense rating and then getting sufficient avoidance/block to get rid of these as well,) the new system would first check if you had dodged or parried, and then within the circumstance of having been hit, they would then apply your block chance.

Of course, what this meant was that as your pure avoidance went up, your block chance would effectively go down: consider if you had 20% parry, 20% dodge, and 40% block chance. Originally that would have meant that you only had a 20% chance of getting hit. Under the Mists-and-later system, that 40% block chance would only apply to the remaining 60% after dodge and parry would apply, meaning that it was more accurate to call it a 24% block chance.

And so has it been for nearly eight years. And now it's back... but here's the thing:

Blizzard has started to change the wording of certain things on gear - you never see anything called a "rating" anymore. While something like Strength increases your attack power by a flat amount (if you use Strength,) ratings would scale with level, becoming less effective (and thus requiring more) as you got to a higher level.

But while gear used to have special green text that would say "increases your haste rating by 374" they now tend to just say +374 haste.

And as it turns out, when I started writing this very post, I didn't think about that change in terminology. And it appears that block on the shield isn't a value - it's a rating.

So block rating is back: but it does not do what it used to. To increase your chance to block, you'll still focus on Mastery.

Block on your shield will increase the damage reduction of a block.

I think you'll only ever see block rating on shields now, but this now becomes a very important stat for the shield. My Paladin on the Alpha has a block rating of 1716 - all coming from his shield. That translates to a 35% reduction in damage when he blocks. We can probably assume that as one progresses at the level cap, one will be getting fancier and fancier shields with higher block ratings. I wouldn't surprised if, by the last raid tier, shields will be blocking for as much as 50% (maybe more?)

This could push shield-wearing tanks to really favor mastery, because blocking becomes a more and more effective means of damage mitigation as they get better shields. By contrast, mastery might be undervalued in early tiers like Uldir, as we might have shields that aren't blocking for all that much at 120 when we first hit the level cap.

It's really wonky, and I'm sure a lot of theorycrafters will be furiously working out the relative value of these stats. I think what's interesting about this is that just as weapons are becoming less important, with ability damage now being determined entirely by attack power, shields are playing a much more active role than they have previously, when they've basically just been a nice chunk of armor and a prerequisite tool you needed in order to take advantage of the block ability.

Magic the Gathering returns to Dominaria

So the big caveat to this whole post is that I haven't played Magic for probably over ten years. Still, the game is a huge part of my background in both nerdy games and fantasy fiction. Indeed, looking back on my childhood, I didn't really read a whole lot of fantasy until I got to Lord of the Rings as a Freshman in High School. But Magic was a giant thing for me in the background.

I started playing when I was eight (maybe seven?) in either second or third grade (I'm a June baby, so each school year I spent was almost entirely during one numerical age.) Anyway, my first cards were a booster pack of Fallen Empires cards and then a big box (60 cards) from the Revised Edition, in which I got a Royal Assassin, which kind of steered me toward Black decks moving forward.

I played up though about sixth grade, and then picked it up again in Magic Online in college, using an emulator to play the PC program on my Mac.

Anyway:

For the last decade+, Magic has generally had each major block of card sets take place in a new plane - the core concept of the game is that players are Planeswalkers - former mortals who have ascended to become essentially gods, and travel between various planes. Thus, we've gotten places like Ravnica - a plane that is just one enormous city - and Mirrodin - an artificial plane in which even the biological life incorporates mechanical and metallic elements.

But the world that the game was initially set in was a place called Dominaria, and while there was a brief return to this plane in the Time Spiral block, that was over ten years ago.

So it's pretty exciting to see a return to this original plane.

While Dominaria doesn't have quite the high-concept pitch of some of the more recent creations (Innistrad, the gothic horror plane, or Zendikar, the dungeon-punk plane,) Dominaria also has ages worth of history, with the ancient Thran, the Brothers' War, Urza's thousands of years fighting the Phyrexians, the crisis of the Mirari. Personally, I have a soft spot for the Sarpadian era - probably a footnote in the lore as it was about the fall of empires on one continent following the Brothers' War, but it's the story from the first booster pack I bought!

Anyway, I don't know if I'm likely to get into Magic again any time soon - I think my CCG play is mostly casual Hearthstone - but I do get a pang of nostalgia hearing about Dominaria again (which, to be fair, is probably by design.)

Allied Race Concept: New Lordaeron

Riffing on my previous post, I thought it would be interesting to think about the various races who have not gotten an "Allied" equivalent.

So far, we've seen or have confirmed Allied Race variants of Blood Elves (Void Elves,) Tauren (Highmountain Tauren,) Draenei (Lightforged Draenei,) Night Elves (Nightborne,) Orcs (Mag'har Orcs,) Dwarves (Dark Iron Dwarves,) Trolls (Zandalari Trolls,) and Humans (Kul Tiran Humans.)

That leaves Gnomes, Undead, Worgen, Goblins, and Pandaren left to give "sub-races" to.

Personally, I find the cross-faction allied races the most interesting (even if, as a primarily Alliance player, I'll grumble about the fact that the Nightborne ditched us.)

As I wrote about in the previous post, the Forsaken have a bit of an identity crisis - or perhaps I should say that they ought to have one. In truth, the Forsaken have mostly been shown embracing their newer, post-human identity, viewing living humans (though more recently Worgen) as their biggest adversaries.

And yet, there are some scattered NPCs out there who don't feel that way.

The fact is that most of the Forsaken were, in life, members of the human kingdom of Lordaeron. They lived under the benevolent rule of King Terenas, and presumably had assumed that this style of leadership would continue under his son Arthas. While you could make the argument that Arthas had already become a villain by the time Frostmourne stole his soul, the prince that the people knew had not really shown such signs of wickedness - he was charming and being trained by Uther the Lightbringer himself. What could go wrong?

Lordaeron was the most populous and probably the strongest of the human kingdoms (though I'd say Stormwind has now surpassed it at its height.) This was, of course, what made the Scourge so devastating and what splintered the Alliance. But one has to think that some of the Forsaken pine for that earlier era.

Being Forsaken - or to be broader, being a free-willed Undead - means a couple things: the person is still a walking corpse, rotting with bones exposed. But their memories and personalities are restored to them. On the other hand, some things do change about them - positive emotions like joy and love are muted, as if the volume knob was turned down to 1. Negative emotions, on the other hand, are left alone, and while this doesn't necessarily turn them into rage monsters, it does mean that bitterness, anger, and sadness are all felt more strongly. The senses are also affected - sight and hearing seem fine, but smell and taste are, mercifully, also less sensitive.

So what does one do when there's really not much of a possibility of feeling good and happy? Generally, the answer has been to dedicate oneself to a purpose. Many Forsaken have taken the Dark Lady as that purpose - ensuring that her will is served. This puts pressure on Sylvanas to come up with a worthy goal for her people, and the current one is actually a pretty good one: finding a way to perpetuate themselves (there's a Darwinian argument that such a goal would always be the most effective one.)

But that's not the only goal that the Forsaken could work toward.

Many Forsaken fought bravely in the name of the Alliance during the Second War. And some might look to the revulsion and loathing that they receive from the living and understand and even sympathize with it. After all, if you're Forsaken, there's a good chance the reason you died in the first place was because people just like you killed you. Hell, your best friend might have turned into a zombie, killed you, and then you both got your free will back to become best friends again.

I would imagine there's a fair number of Forsaken who wish nothing more than to be able to walk the lands of the Alliance once more - some might actually be from Stormwind, having left as refugees after the First War and then staying in Lordaeron after the Second. Or they might have old friends in Ironforge that they can't visit anymore.

And indeed some of them might be horrified at what has happened to Lordaeron. The Scourge wrecked the country, yes, but Sylvanas has labored tirelessly to re-make it in her image. A statue of a High Elf stands in the center of Brill, a town that was built for and lived in by humans.

For those who remember the name Menethil, not for the betrayer that would become the Lich King, but for the generations of benevolent rulers who go back thousands of years, perhaps there is a sense that this is not the right way.

And while she is reluctant to use that last name, we now know that Calia Menethil, daughter of Terenas and sister to Arthas, rightful heir to the throne of Lordaeron, is alive and well.

So there are the seeds here of a group of Forsaken who, if given the chance, would happily join the Alliance, fighting to restore Lordaeron to its former glory, and see their living kinsmen rebuild what they had lost.

The big question is whether the Alliance is willing to take them. While there's a big hurdle in the instinctive disgust that humans have for the undead, the fact that the Alliance has Death Knights in its ranks kind of makes that point, if not moot, then at least less cut-and-dry.

The only other case of the Alliance taking in former members of the Horde is the Void Elves. But this was a special case - the Blood Elves were also former Alliance members, and there was even a sense, briefly, that they might switch sides again. On top of this, the Void Elves are exiles from the Horde, and would show very little fractured loyalty due to their outcast status.

And actually, these two qualifiers could apply to what I'm calling "New Lordaeron Undead." They're former Alliance (indeed, potentially founding members,) and they're also very likely to be outcasts - if they denounce Sylvanas, who is not only the leader of the Forsaken, but now commands the full force of the Horde, they're probably going to be chased out of Horde territory.

Now there's a bit of a hitch here:

The Alliance is going to attack Undercity at the start of Battle for Azeroth, and while they don't get to quite occupy it, the city is going to be vacated (I guess if the Horde doesn't get to claim the burned-out Teldrassil, the Alliance shouldn't get Undercity.) Thus the "New Lordaeron" forces are unlikely to be kicked out of Tirisfal by the Forsaken, as the Forsaken themselves will have been kicked out by the Alliance.

It's possible that the Alliance might encounter such a faction hanging around Tirisfal, but given the huge defeat the Horde has suffered, I'd bet most would assume that they're not outcasts looking to re-join the Alliance, but rather a really transparent ploy to infiltrate the Alliance.

There's also the practical question of appearance: Allied Races don't get to just be marginally different-looking versions of existing races (sorry High Elves,) and so you'd need something to really draw a distinction.

One possibility is that the New Lordaeron are those who have gone through a ritual similar to Nathanos. But the big problems there are A: those would probably be the most loyal to Sylvanas and B: that would probably count more as a human-variant Allied Race than an Undead one.

The solution for the first issue could be something a bit out of left field: What if they were restored by the Lich King? While Bolvar looks like he's starting down the villain route, I don't think we should fight the Lich King again. To me, a more appropriate premise for a new Scourge expansion would be if there's a rebellion within the Scourge against Bolvar - either killing him or driving him to exile. That "unbound" Scourge we were warned of would be a sufficient raising of the stakes, and we could finally see if it was true that we needed to crown a new Lich King. Bolvar, with his deep ties to Stormwind, would make a natural ally, though this would of course create a conflict with Calia, and might even throw the whole "New Lordaeron" premise out the window.

The Will of the Forsaken

Consider the position of the Forsaken:

They are, by far, the least trusted mortals in the world. They're also in a horrific state by their very natures. Sure, Blood Elves suffer withdrawal if they're cut off from magic, the Orcs have a history of demonic taint that they have to reckon with, and the Worgen transform into wolf-men any time they're under stress. But the Forsaken are dead, and yet not dead. Normal life went out the window the moment that they died, and coming back has put them in a bizarre position where their former allies or even family members revile and fear them.

Their entry into the Horde was a controversial one. In fact, they had reached out to both the Alliance and Horde and found no luck until Hamuul Runetotem had the idea that perhaps they could use Druidic magic to cure them - restoring them to life as they had once enjoyed.

Yet in the fourteen years of World of Warcraft, there seems to have been precisely zero progress in making the Forsaken human again. And if that were a success, what would that even look like? The bridges with the Alliance have been burned so thoroughly that one wonder what would happen if the Forsaken were suddenly human again. Would we have a bunch of humans in the Horde? Would the Orcs feel comfortable with that?

In fact, there are a few cases of the Forsaken restoring undead to a more familiar type of life. Nathanos Blightcaller was the beneficiary of a very disturbing necromantic ritual, and his body now appears largely as it did in life - free of rot and exposed bones - but marked by the power with red eyes and sallow skin. The price of this ritual, however, was his still-living nephew, a paladin captured by the Forsaken. There's a zero-sum quality to such a ritual that seems to make in impractical to perform. In fact, the only individual who appears capable of doing so without such a sacrifice is the Lich King (it's how he makes Death Knights, though I don't think that's the whole process.)

Presumably because of the opposition they faced in the form of the Scarlet Crusade and other such living humans, the Forsaken have forged their own cultural identity, largely embracing the monstrousness they are accused of in both ways benign (spooky Victorian architecture and skull motifs) and genuine (developing flesh-melting plagues and experimenting on prisoners.) The fact that their leader is not a former human but a former elf suggests to me that there is an ulterior motive here - while the High Elves and Humans were allies in the Second War and had worked together since the Troll Wars, there was historically a bit of subtle racial resentment between them, and Sylvanas would probably prefer not to be seen as a carpet-bagger ruling over a stolen human kingdom. If they're neither human nor elf, then there's no reason Sylvanas shouldn't rule over the Forsaken.

The Forsaken have historically been highly independent of the greater Horde - they have their own war machine of Scourge-like forces and magic at their disposal. Indeed, the Forsaken have often acted in ways that the greater Horde would probably not approve of. The Horde has often held the Forsaken in their back pocket as a kind of dirty secret trump card - something they can deploy if they're desperate.

But now that Sylvanas is Warchief, that fringe faction is now at the top of the hierarchy. It's pretty clear that while both Thrall and Vol'jin preferred peaceful co-existence with the Alliance, Sylvanas doesn't believe such a thing is possible. She has always followed the "best defense is a good offense" philosophy, which of course leads to confrontation. There's no Horde leader with more enemies in the Alliance, and now that she's center-stage, well... look at the next expansion.

But what about the Forsaken themselves?

Many Forsaken see Sylvanas as a savior - she was the one who rallied them to fight the Scourge and carve out a piece of Lordaeron where they could be safe. She gave them purpose and acceptance when the rest of the world either rejected them or wanted them exterminated.

That has led to a serious cult of personality - consider that one of the thing you always hear Forsaken NPCs saying is "Dark Lady watch over you," as if she's less of a political leader than some kind of goddess. And that has led the Forsaken to act with a single-minded purpose, putting moral questions aside in the name of serving Sylvanas.

But the Forsaken are defined by having free will. They are not undead thralls to Sylvanas the way they had been to the Lich King before they were freed. We've seen some reject her - Leonid Bartholomew is with the Argent Crusade, Alonsus Faol is with the Conclave. Her actions have been far to extreme for some of their kind.

Sylvanas has made it her mission to find some way to perpetuate her people. She's used Val'kyr to raise fallen humans, but it's pretty clear this isn't sustainable, as it requires constant war, and while we don't see it a lot in-game, the people raised aren't necessarily going to join her side. She wants a way to keep the same people she's already had alive, and raise them if they ever die. It's the only way that the Forsaken could survive in a peaceful world.

But there are some who don't really think it's worth it. We've heard through one of the preview chapters of the new novel that while Sylvanas has been in Orgrimmar running the Horde, the people at the Undercity have created their own local government in the form of the Desolate Council. Some on this council are not interested in perpetuating themselves. We don't really get their reasoning, but allow me to speculate:

I suspect that many of the Forsaken don't see their state as one that is meant to last. They only wish to live out the lives that were taken from them and then move on just as a normal human would. Furthermore, some might feel nostalgia for the ancient kingdom of Lordaeron. They don't want a world of walking corpses and spooky spiders and bats everywhere - they'd prefer to see Lordaeron become the place it was before the Scourge.

As it stands, simply joining the Alliance once again doesn't seem to be on the table. The envoys Sylvanas originally sent to the Alliance never made it to their destinations - though the wording there in Chronicle is fascinatingly vague. The assumption, I assume, is that a couple of Scourge-looking zombies walking up to a human city would be killed before they could say "Before you shoot me, let's talk! We're not Scourge!" But one wonders if perhaps someone who had an incentive to keep the Forsaken and the Alliance at odds might have offed them.

It seems unlikely the Forsaken are going to change any time soon. They have a privileged position in the Horde and their tactics have worked so far.

But we also know that they're about to suffer a devastating loss. The Forsaken will lose the Undercity, and likely be driven out of Lordaeron. The land they fought to keep for so long, performing horrific acts to do so, will slip from their grasp.

Sylvanas is not going to come out of that looking great. While she does return to defend Undercity, it's almost certain that some will decide that her responsibilities as Warchief prevented her from safeguarding her own capital. And if the attack is seen as a response to the burning of Teldrassil, the Forsaken might seriously begin to question just what they've gotten out of being part of the Horde. Whatever foul things the Forsaken do, they've always been very conservative in their path of conquest. Sylvanas only ever made a claim to the subcontinent of Lordaeron, and apart from the war on the Lich King, the Forsaken have generally stuck to that as their combat territory. Teldrassil, to Forsaken who probably wouldn't give a rat's ass whether Orgrimmar had enough lumber, is a giant over-extension of forces that could have been used to defend the Undercity.

What, then, is left for the Forsaken?

When they lose their home, will they become dominant in Kalimdor, or will they find that their beloved Dark Lady doesn't have time for them now that she leads the entire Horde? What of the Forsaken who stay behind? Are they going to be forced into guerrilla combat against the Alliance reclamation of Lordaeron? Or might they decide to try again, to aid in the re-establishment of the Kingdom of Lordaeron and renounce their ties to Sylvanas and her Horde?

Dueling Evils and Dueling Goods

One of the central ideas of the Warcraft setting, starting in WCIII, is that there are two groups of genuinely heroic forces that are nevertheless locked in opposition with one another. One has to wonder, if the Orcs had seen through Kil'jaeden's deceptions and resisted corruption by the Legion, we might have seen the mortal races all band together on Azeroth. If you think about it, a lot of the races on either side don't really have that much of a beef with the others, but faction loyalty leads to conflict. Take, for example, the fact that the Nightborne have very little reason to hate the Alliance, but by befriending the Blood Elves, they wind up getting swept into that whole Horde faction, and are thus enemies of the Alliance by default - indeed, the Blood Elves themselves were on the cusp of returning to the Alliance, but it was the actions of some Blood Elves loyal to Garrosh and then the debatably justified reaction on the part of Jaina Proudmoore that severed that potential rapprochement.

I doubt that the Highmountain Tauren and Lightforged Draenei were eager to start fighting each other - they presumably had no idea the other existed a year ago, and neither group has any real conflict when it comes to territory or ideals.

In that way, you could say that the real villains of the Warcraft universe are the factions themselves - not the people within them, mind you (though some would qualify,) but the very tribalism that the factions represent.

But that factor might also be working in Azeroth's favor when it comes to its villains.

Both the Burning Legion and the Void Lords effectively wanted to destroy the universe. But their versions of that destruction looked different. The Legion saw worlds charred to ash, perhaps the only surviving version of the universe one so flooded with fel magic that ordinary life - that which was vulnerable to void corruption - was incapable of flourishing.

There's actually a kind of interesting philosophical question to be asked regarding the Burning Legion: Had Sargeras succeeded in creating his Fel Pantheon, with Fel Azeroth working by his side, and the universe had truly been purged of anything the void could corrupt... what would that look like? What would Sargeras triumphant have looked like? If everyone was a demon, would there not be any real reason to massacre or conquer? Probably it would still happen: you'd have a totalitarian dystopia of cruelty and oppression, or perhaps Sargeras would simply wipe the board clean, leaving nothing by ash as soon as he had convinced himself that the Void was robbed of its prize.

The use of chaos to produce a singular end could be thought of as a kind of magical heat death of the universe - you burn out everything until the whole universe is just warm embers, entropy leading to its ironically inevitable conclusion.

While Sargeras required a well-regimented crusade against existence - a very Titan (order-based) way of using demons (chaos-based) - the Void Lords seem to not really have a plan so much as they're just tossing Old Gods at the wall and seeing what sticks. The goal is corruption, but as we've learned more about the nature of the Void, we can speculate a bit more on the nature of that corruption:

The Void is either total non-existence, meaning that their ultimate aim is to reduce the physical world to nothingness, or it is pure potential. We see that people who follow the Void actually see it as more of the philosophy that "Nothing is true," and therefore anything could be. In this sense, it's less non-existence, but more of a lack of illumination - anything could be hiding in the darkness.

Both come off as evil because both involve the destruction of our reality. Seems like a good metric.

But Warcraft now has an issue, which is that the Burning Legion is pretty definitively ended. That leaves the Old Gods and their Void Lord creators as the only cosmic threat in the setting.

Now, of course, one way they seem to be dealing with that power vacuum is by focusing back down to the ground level. We're seeing the more mundane warfare of Alliance and Horde coming to a head in BFA, and a lot of the zone plots involve more conventional military threats, like Lady Ashvane in Tiragarde Sound or Spoilers McSpoilerson in Zuldazar.

Still, those magical threats are generally what draw us to the fantasy genre - even Game of Thrones/A Song of Ice and Fire, while they focus a great deal on the various powerful houses, has always had the White Walkers lurking in the background.

The Old Gods and their general side of things are very useful villains thanks to the fact that they come in many different flavors. The Nightmare felt very different from C'thun's Qiraji forces in Silithus. Likewise, the Void-affiliated Ethereals feel very different than the corrupted Titanforged in Storm Peaks.

But the problem is that they can't be the only threats Warcraft faces. If everything boils down to Old Gods every single time we face a supernatural threat, it'll get old really fast, even with all the different flavors.

So how do we preserve the separate evil forces in the Warcraft universe?

First off, the Legion's end does not mean that all demons are gone. One could easily see these beings of chaos, now robbed of a Titan's discipline, could splinter off into their own factions.

Second, I think that the undead present a great potential as a new magical threat. Yes, it seems that Chronicle Volume III confirms that the Scourge is truly a product of Kil'jaeden's power, but with the introduction of Helya and the hints at whatever being it was that gave Odyn the power to turn her into the first Val'kyr, we could see some big bads coming out of the Shadowlands.

Third, having something from a "good" side go evil in a logical way can be very effective. Malthael from Diablo was really interesting as a villain. The Mogu were also cool to see as Titanforged beings who took their role in safeguarding the world as a license to be total jerks. Now that it seems that Hakkar has nothing to do with G'huun, perhaps we could see more of the darker side of the Wild Gods.

Should Blizzard Just Punt and Make Alliance High Elves?

If you were going to talk about the most player-requested "sub-races," the feature that would come to form eventually as Allied Races, I think that you would probably list Mag'har Orcs, Dark Iron Dwarves, and probably the most requested: High Elves.

After all, High Elves have been around since Warcraft II. It wasn't until the Frozen Throne expansion that we started to see Blood Elves as a thing. With Mag'har and Dark Irons coming in 8.0, this is the one that is probably most requested, but also probably the least likely to actually happen.

Because there's a big, tentacled elephant in the room.

Void Elves are, of course, former High Elves, as well as former Blood Elves. The Alliance has a race of elves from Quel'thalas with the lithe elf look, as opposed to the brawnier Night Elf/Nightborne look.

Allied races are all based on existing races, and while we're going to see more physiological variation with the Zandalari Trolls and Kul Tiran humans, most of them are, cosmetically, mainly defined by a new color palette. Lightforged Draenei go from the blue-on-blue scheme of the standard Exodar residents and replaces it with gold-on-grey.

The Void Elves take the Blood Elves, who tend to have pink skin and green eyes, and turns them blue or purple with blue eyes. It's a pretty radical and instantly-recognizable departure from the standard Blood Elf model.

High Elves have two problems, though one might be a symptom of the other.

The first is that they just look too damned similar to Blood Elves. The only real visible difference is that High Elves have blue eyes while Blood Elves have green. And with Blood Elves getting holy-themed golden eyes as an option in 8.0, even that distinction may collapse.

Lore-wise, the High Elves are still permitted to commune with the Sunwell - Quel'danas, post demon invasion, is neutral territory because Lor'themar doesn't want to be held responsible for allowing his politically opposed kinsmen devolve horribly into Wretched. The Void Elves don't need that connection, as they sate their magic addiction by channeling the Void, and indeed, they are not permitted to visit the Sunwell's font of now both Arcane and Holy magic, for fear of tainting it.

So presumably, with the Holy magic coming from the Sunwell now, High Elves would have an equal chance to derive those holy-golden eyes to complement their arcane-blue ones, which would make some indistinguishable visually from some Blood Elves. Granted, in a post-Pandaren WoW, I don't know how much of a problem that is.

The other big problem is that the Alliance already has Void Elves. Now, certainly, the very existence of Allied Races means that Blizzard clearly doesn't have a problem with factions having two races that look very similar to one another, and so the notion of High Elves and Void Elves existing together on the Alliance is not inherently absurd. But on the other hand, this would mean not only a fifth Elf race, but also a third race from Quel'thalas.

If they ever decide to make, say, Wildhammer Dwarves or Grimtotem Tauren as a playable race, this would be a great time to add in High Elves, but at the moment, Quel'thalas has enough going on.

So is it likely? I think not. But on the other hand, would it be such a bad thing?

I'll just come out and say that I've never been much of a fan of playing elf characters for whatever reason. I don't know - something about the arrogance and the pretty-boy looks probably clashes with some element of my personality that formed from always being a big, stocky, hairy guy. But I'm clearly a minority, as people freaking love playing elves (we've got two in my D&D group.)

I guarantee you that if they added High Elves, even with Void Elves already existing, you'd get a ton of players making High Elf characters.

And I think the challenge of giving them a distinctive visual look from Blood Elves might produce some cool ideas. What if male High Elves were able to grow full beards? You could really play with the idea that High Elves, unlike both Blood and Void Elves, have spent far more time with humanity, perhaps adopting some of their styles and looks.

Likewise, you might imagine that the High Elves had taken more of an effort to reconnect with the Night Elves. Perhaps these Highborne descendants look at what has happened with the Blood Elves and have decided that they really want to explore a connection to nature through Druidism.

Lastly, I think there's the potential for a really interesting plot development:

Silvermoon has been Horde territory since Burning Crusade, but that was thanks to the fact that the vast majority of Blood Elves resented the Alliance enough to join the Horde. The High Elves are a fragmentary remnant of Alliance loyalists, but now they have the Void Elves - exiles who were brought into the Alliance by Alleria. If Quel'dorei and Ren'dorei were to move in concert, they might be able to challenge Sin'dorei dominance of Quel'thalas.

Now, I'm not advocating taking Silvermoon away from the Horde. But what if it were to become a neutral, Sanctuary city?

The Draenei and Blood Elf starting zones got essentially no change during Cataclysm, and they definitely show their age. They're also in this bizarre state where they're connected to the Eastern Kingdoms and Kalimdor lore-wise, but are actually on the Burning Crusade/Outland world servers.

I don't know what kind of plot would justify it, but what if these zones were to be remade, and part of that remake would show the progress of time. Imagine a Silvermoon rebuilt thanks to the defeat of the Scourge, but in this case, the western half of the city (which is currently in ruins) is now the Ren'dorei/Quel'dorei district.

If Battle for Azeroth is meant to "resolve" the Alliance/Horde conflict, then maybe the elves of Quel'thalas could have something of a rapprochement, or at least a very shaky peace agreement. And I'd love to see the subtle distinctions between what the three groups in the city want out of their districts.

And then, of course, you'd get something that I'm always a fan of - a city of intrigue. It'd be like Berlin during the Cold War, but you know, fantasy and not real so less horrible!

So you wind up pleasing a big part of the fanbase (and pleasing the other parts because that first group will finally shut up) and then have a really cool story hook for the future.

I've really kind of talked myself into this as a good idea...

Azshara's Place in Battle for Azeroth and What Comes After

In an interview, encounter designer Morgan Day mentioned that Azshara will be the "Gul'dan" of Battle for Azeroth - presumably meaning that she will be the final boss of BFA's first big raid. This opens up a whole lot of questions.

At the moment, the only raid we have confirmed, other than the one that we know solely as "the one with Azshara in it" is Uldir. With eight bosses, Uldir is actually just as big or even bigger than some existing full tier raids (Trial of the Crusader had 5, Firelands 7, and Dragon Soul 8.) Still, as the first raid of the expansion, under the model they've used since Mists of Pandaria, the first raid is meant as something of a warm-up, putting Uldir in the same category as Mogu'shan Vaults, Highmaul, and Emerald Nightmare.

Of course, with the removal of tier sets for raiding, there's actually not much that defines a non-tier raid from a true tier raid. The only real distinction will be the item level of rewards.

On the other hand, I suspect that we'll get a couple of larger raids - with 10 or more bosses - that would fit the traditional "tier raid" model. Clearly Azshara's raid will be one of them.

But there has always been a question since BFA was announced as to what role the villains would play within it.

It would not have been so crazy to thin that Azshara could be BFA's final boss, but instead she seems to be a villain we deal with early in the expansion. So who does that leave?

Well, as much as I've focused on the likelihood that the Old Gods are deeply involved (no pun intended) in this conflict, I do think that, given the emphasis the expansion is putting on the Alliance/Horde conflict, it would be odd not to address that in a raid setting.

The real question, then, is how one does major PvE content that has you fighting the opposite faction. We've had instances in the past, particularly in Wrath of the Lich King, where we get a mirrored experience - the Nexus has a heroic-only boss from the opposite faction, Trial of the Champion and Trial of the Crusader has a single fight against opposite-faction champions, and Icecrown Citadel has the gunship battle - but in each of these cases, this has served as a distraction from the larger challenge.

Because in storytelling terms, the other faction has always been more of a rival than an antagonist (well, maybe not always, but since WCIII.)

There have been some mentions that the Siege of Boralus dungeon will have the Alliance defending the city while the Horde invades, though that doesn't really jive with the bosses for it in the dungeon journal, which suggests more of a collaboration between one of the Proudmoores' rival families and the Naga. Perhaps the invasion is actually just how the Horde gets there and then inadvertently winds up saving the very city they had come to capture.

Still, we've come a very long way since Warcraft I, which was written to have different story endings depending on which side you had chosen. Only later were the two campaigns stitched together to form a single canon of the First War.

It would be very hard to make Sylvanas and Anduin the final bosses of Battle for Azeroth, unless you were to suggest that while one faction was killing the other's leader, they left their own undefended, which would mean we'd need a fifth Warchief and the Wrynn line would be extinguished.

But as long as we're talking final bosses, let's talk potential final bosses:

Anduin Wrynn: It would be really freaking sad to see the most idealistic faction leader, and one who has only just become an adult, either put in a position where both factions would turn on him, like Garrosh, or for him to be cut down by the Horde. Frankly, unless the Horde truly believes in total eradication of the Alliance (which I think goes farther than what most actually want,) Anduin is the kind of leader the Horde would want in the Alliance - one who will take opportunities for peace and be able to see their side of the issues.

Sylvanas Windrunner: As much as I don't want her to just turn into a raid boss, I can't say it wouldn't be justified. Sylvanas has arguably crossed the villain threshold many times already, and her protestations of "only trying to save her people" are hard to listen to when "saving them" means enslaving or slaughtering others. But we already fought Garrosh - do we really want every other Warchief to be a raid boss?

Anduin and/or Sylvanas Together: If they had totally different final raids for Alliance and Horde (but mechanically identical? For balance) facing the other faction's leader could make sense, but again you have the issue of upheaval once again so soon after both factions' leaders just died at the beginning of Legion.

Others, like Nathanos and Genn: If we're sticking with the divided raid, it could make sense to make the factions fight a particularly militant member of the other side. There's less upheaval, but still a focus on faction conflict.

N'zoth: Ok, moving on to serious faction-agnostic threats, we've got to come out and talk about N'zoth. There's absolutely Old God stuff happening in a bunch of Battle for Azeroth content, and it's not all around G'huun. When you consider that Kul Tiras and Zandalar are both being sought out largely for their naval prowess, the God of the Deep would be a pretty logical big bad. As a master manipulator, it could even be that he's pushing the conflict forward. And with Azeroth wounded, N'zoth, as the last totally healthy Old God, is probably in the best position to push his advantage.

Azshara: We've had raid bosses come back in the past - both Kil'jaeden and Archimonde are the final bosses of two raids each - but it's very unlikely this would happen in the same expansion. Kael'thas and Anub'arak managed to do the same-expansion Dungeon-and-Raid thing (actually, you can count the Lich King for that too, though you don't come anywhere near even hurting the Lich King in the Halls of Reflection encounter,) but for full-fledged raid fights, I think it's very unlikely we'll see Azshara as the final boss of two during BFA itself.

Azeroth: Man, what a crazy twist that would be - to have us fight Azeroth the Titan. Maybe we'd need to do it to cleanse her of Old God corruption? This one's a stretch, but not outside the total realm of possibility.

The Lich King: Ok, this one's probably not inside that realm, at least for BFA. I would not be shocked to see the expansion that follows BFA to feature the Scourge, but for BFA we're only getting a few references to necromancy and the Shadowlands in Drustvar and possibly with our interaction with Bwonsamdi in Nazmir.

Mag'har Orcs and Dark Iron Dwarves Coming in 8.0, Zandalari Trolls and Kul Tiran Humans Later

Well, despite Zandalari being in the announcement trailer, it looks like the Horde will be getting Mag'har Orcs first.

Given that Dark Irons and Mag'har were two of the oldest requested "sub-races" (sorry High Elves. Enjoy the void!) it's probably not such a bad thing to see these guys coming together. Obviously, KT Humans and Zandalari fit corresponding roles in the expansion, so it also makes sense to get these guys at the same time.

I believe the intent is that completing the War Campaign (a big max-level quest chain,) will be what unlocks Mag'har and Dark Irons.

Regarding the inhabitants of the two continents, my guess would be that we'll get them fairly early. I would predict we'll get them in 8.1, given that their models are already mostly in-game.

It also looks like there will be greater variation in models. Much as Orcs are going to get the option to change their posture in barber shop (I'd assume this applies to Mag'har as well,) it appears that Kul Tiran Humans will be able to go for either bulky or skinny physiques (I assume this means that if you want medium, you'll have to go with your standard Stormwind human.)

Additionally, they've announced the class options for these two next races:

Dark Iron Dwarves: Warrior, Paladin, Hunter, Rogue, Priest, Shaman, Mage, Warlock, Monk

Notably, I don't see Death Knight on this list, which I thought had previously been suggested. While the Dark Irons were certainly around to be turned by the Lich King, it sounds likely that they don't intend to add new Death Knight races in the future, which I think is a damned shame, but maybe they'll change their minds!

Mag'har Orcs: Warrior, Hunter, Rogue, Priest, Shaman, Mage, Monk

So here we see the standard Orcs minus Warlocks (which makes sense, as that's the main thing that makes the Mag'har - not hanging around with Warlocks) but adds Priests, which is presumably due to the Shadowmoon Clan, who have a more Priestly culture (including Shadow Priests.) I might quibble with Mages, given that standard Orcs didn't get those until Cataclysm, which I figured was justified by the fact that they were hanging out with a bunch of Trolls, Undead, and Blood Elves, which the Mag'har from Draenor B weren't.

What I find kind of interesting about these two additions is that both Dark Irons and the former Iron Horde Orcs have a history of heavy industry. Granted, in the latter case they were merely copying the industrial power of the existing Horde, but it's clear that at least the Blackrock really dove in headfirst at the whole industrialized warfare thing.