Lords of the Fallen

 Having hit a point in Cyberpunk 2077 where I'm high enough level and kitted out with such advanced Chrome that basically no fight is really a challenge anymore, and with what I imagine are a bunch of different bummer endings to choose from (I assume,) I found my attention wandering.

A couple months ago, Lords of the Fallen was one of the free PS+ games, and I decided to uninstall the absurdly enormous Diablo IV (it was over a hundred GB) to make room for it.

I've only played one non-FromSoft Souls-like game before, which was Lies of P, a game that, frankly, did an excellent job of evolving the formula and trying out new and interesting tones and stories.

Lords of the Fallen is a bit more in tune with the Dark Souls-like formula, giving us a medieval fantasy world where barely-explained elements are at play. Ages ago, the demon god Adyr was locked away, and the prison holding them is under threat. While the initial guardians of this were empowered by the benevolent (we assume) deity Orias, it turns out that in order to deal with the evil monsters assaulting the land, we need a "Dark Crusader," who walks outside of Orias' light.

The Dark Crusader carries an Umbral Lantern, which allows them to return from death, and that's our central justification for our character being able to respawn.

One of the core gameplay mechanics that sets the game apart is the Umbral, the realm of the dead that exists in parallel to the living world. When we die, or when we use the Umbral Lantern to go there, we actually transition into the Umbral. This gives us a sort of second chance at life (I believe there's a similar thing in Sekiro, the only FromSoft Souls-like I haven't played). While we can still fight enemies in the living world while in the Umbral, more monsters appear there. But there are also elements of the environment that are different in the Umbral. Bridges seemingly made of massive spinal columns will appear where there are just deadly gaps in the living world, and it seems the Umbral is devoid of water, so deep lakes suddenly become traversable depressions in the ground.

The Umbral is the most impressive thing about the game. Even when we are in the living land, we can shine our lantern into the Umbral Realm, which lets us, for example, pass through gates that are unobstructed - though funnily enough, if we happen to shine the lamp where an Umbral-only monster is, it can attack us.

The Umbral's dual role is where some of the frustration in the gameplay comes from: sometimes you'll need to shift into the Umbral in order to progress through an area, but doing so will also mean you can't get your second chance at life. Leaving the Umbral requires you to either rest at one of the checkpoints (which are flavored as reliquaries of various heroes) or to find certain nodes that allow you out, but which can only be used once until you reset things by dying or resting (the thing that, like most Souls-likes, also respawns enemies).

Combat works similarly to your standard Dark Souls, but like Lies of P, they incorporate a parry mechanic. You can block with a weapon or shield, and this will cause some of your health to become Withered - if you hit the enemy back, you can regain that withered HP. If you perfectly time your block, you won't get withered and you will wear down their stamina. Enough perfect blocks and you will stagger them to get the chance for a critical hit. (So, quite a bit like Lies of P).

Playing on the standard difficulty, the game's opening is pretty forgiving, though I've faced a few challenging areas. Right now, my biggest challenge is just navigating a labyrinthine swamp where enemies use various poison abilities - multiple times, I've found myself looping back around to the checkpoint and not sure where I'm supposed to go to proceed.

In terms of stats, there's the usual Strength and Agility, and Endurance and Vitality give you more Stamina and HP, respectively. For magic stats, there's Radiance and Inferno, with the former allowing you to cast more classical "holy" magic and the latter giving you more kind of warlocky fire magic. There is, however, a third option, which is Umbral magic, which seems to scale with both Radiance and Inferno, kind of like Pyromancy in Dark Souls III (or Death Magic and Golden Order Fundamentalism in Elden Ring).

In terms of story, I'm naturally skeptical about any perceived benevolent authorities. Indeed, after beating the second boss that got a cutscene (I've had three seemingly minor bosses) I was able to get a flashback where someone (I'm given to understand Orias) said something like "Come to Orias, grant me your flesh so I may retain my divinity," which sure seems to suggest that this Orias figure ain't the benign figure that people claim them to be.

So far, it looks like the game is a bit more linear than the likes of Dark Souls or Bloodborne, with regions leading into one another. Our first major boss leads us into our hub where NPCs gather, including, actually, the first major boss, who says she was resurrected by Orias' grace and acts as our healing item upgrader.

The game is pretty cool, but I hit a point going through that swamp area (the Forsaken Fen) where I just started to feel kind of trapped and frustrated and so told myself to take the rest of the day off from it.

I'm also playing this about as blind as I can - normally with this genre of game in particular I try to be a real completionist even on my first playthrough, but I'm just sort of letting it wash over me. I haven't yet tried out any spellcasting, though my plan is to do a mix of Strength and Radiance as my key stats (I just haven't found a weapon that scales with both yet).

Doors and What Details We Can Glean from IGN's Control Resonant Preview

 By a wide margin, my most anticipated game of 2026 is Control Resonant. Its antecedent, Control, seized me in 2023 and made me a Remedy Entertainment obsessive (the timing was great, because it got me to play Alan Wake Remastered right in time for the release of Alan Wake II). Basically, I am expecting to be obsessed and posting lore theories about it on this blog for years, so get ready.

For now, though, we are only getting some glimpses at the game, and I think the previews are focusing a lot more on the gameplay than the narrative, which makes sense - not only do they want (need) to sell it to a larger audience who might not yet be initiated into the mystery cult, but they also don't want to spoil too much of the big twists and reveals of the game.

Given how satisfying it was to control Jesse Faden in the first game, it's a real gamble to both swap protagonists and also change from a 3rd person shooter to a melee brawler. I have faith in Remedy, though - not that the gameplay will necessarily be the best, but that the gameplay will be good enough that it won't get in the way of enjoying the story. (While Alan Wake II was a huge achievement, I don't think anyone adored its take on survival horror combat. It was my first survival horror game, but I then went on to play the Silent Hill 2, Resident Evil 4, and Resident Evil 2 remakes, and... well, I think those were a bit more polished).

I did play Devil May Cry 3 way back in college, though I had to set it to the easy difficulty (which you only unlock after dying several times). I often find that action games can sometimes feel a bit weightless when you have to hit an enemy ten times or more to actually kill them, contrasted with something like Dark Souls where every strike feels impactful (and it's just a matter of actually finding the opportunity to get that hit in). But what I've seen of Control Resonant's combat seems like it's trying to give the impact of your attacks a satisfying, chunky feel. We'll see once I get it in my hands.

Anyway, IGN posted a video of some previously-unseen mission, which takes you into a spatially-warped train station. Somewhat less combat-focused (though there appear to be some Mold enemies - I don't know if we're mostly going to be just dealing with the Hiss and the Mold outside of the Resonant bosses, though Remedy games tend not to have an enormous amount of enemy variety, so I'm going to assume those will be the main ones,) the bigger challenge seems to be navigating the environment while trains shoot past at strange angles, forcing you to dodge out of the way.

It does really look like levels will make ample use of the gravity-shifting capabilities that Dylan has - I'll be very curious to see how difficult it is to remain oriented as you explore these warped spaces. In an earlier preview, as you passed through some series of replications of the same apartment, there was guiding colored light and music that helped you get out of it, and I expect the level design team will have some clear visual cues to help you understand what the path forward is.

One thing I noticed is that the strange doorways we saw in the Paranatural Manhattan trailer appear to be our fast-travel nodes. Given the game is going to have a pretty huge world, it looks like, you had to expect that there would be something like this, basically equivalent to the Resonant Points in the first game.

In terms of story, it appears that Dylan does actually have some way to communicate with Jesse while in The Gap (the weird extradimensional mental space, not the clothing store). Jesse claims that she woke him up to give him the opportunity to run, not for him to help.

I'm really curious to see how this sibling dynamic plays out. Jesse is the older sister, of course, and while there's obviously the whole "ex-Hiss" part of Dylan's backstory to process, I also think it'd be interesting to see where the points of tension in their relationship were before the Ordinary AWE. After all, even siblings who are close still have issues (my older sister and I are close, but we have our conflicts now and again).

Jesse's protectiveness is admirable, but I can also imagine that Dylan might have been sort of underestimated. I mean, after almost 20 years being raised by the FBC, he's sure to be all kinds of messed up in a lot of ways. I can imagine that Dylan might struggle with the fact that Jesse formed an image in her head of what he might have been, and not necessarily what he really was like. Dylan probably isn't really sure who he is, especially after the trauma of being part of the Hiss.

It also probably doesn't help that the FBC has affixed a device to the back of his skull with an explosive in case he becomes a danger to them.

One of the complaints I've heard about Control is that Jesse's characterization is a little inconsistent - she expresses a kind of impatience and indifference to the FBC at some points but then also seems to be fascinated by the strange paranatural world that it represents. Monty Zander, a YouTuber whose critiques I enjoy a lot, felt that "The Sibling" in Alan Wake II's Night Springs DLC, which is a kind of version of Jesse, felt more lived-in and compelling as a character.

What's going to be really interesting about Control Resonant is that, even if Dylan was a major character in Control, his role in that was primarily to be a mouthpiece for the Hiss. We didn't really get much of the "real" Dylan there.

That brings up an interesting question though: When people are changed by diseases and other things that happen to them, are they not just as much the "real" versions of themselves? I really wonder how Dylan is going to reckon with what it felt like to be part of the Hiss, and also what it feels like to no longer be connected to it. Like, I imagine that the terrifying thing about it was that it probably felt really good, even if he understands on another level that it was warping his body and bringing about apocalyptic terror.

I want to say it's like 46 days until the release?

Dual-Wielding in 5.5

 I'm sure I did an exploration of this when the 2024 PHB came out two years ago, but I thought I'd do a revisit.

When you're a weapon-wielder in a fantasy RPG, there are basically three ways you typically go: you either have a weapon in one hand and a shield in the other, a big two-handed weapon, or you wield a weapon in both hands. (There was a paired set of shields in Dark Souls III that I always wanted to build a character around, though I think you couldn't even get it until you made it into the Ringed City DLC).

It's pretty obvious that the intent behind a "sword and board" build is that you're sacrificing a bit of damage in the name of survivability (though depending on the game's mechanics, this need not always be the case). But both the dual-wielding and the "great weapon" style (we'll call it that because that's the general language used for it in D&D) are oriented toward doing lots of damage. Generally, the way they work is that the two-handed weapon is meant to hit very hard with each swing, whereas you make up for the lightness of dual-wielded weapons by making more attacks.

This is very true in D&D, and is, I think, even more true in 5.5.

Broadly speaking, I think that there's a feat that's designed for each playstyle, though there are others that might come into play (Polearm Master works great with two-handed reach weapons, though it can also work quite well with a spear-and-board or quarterstaff-and-board build).

Great Weapon Master was significantly changed in 5.5, but I'd argue it's more powerful now. I initially did a bit of math to compare it to the 5.0 version and found that even in tier 1, when the bonus damage is only +2, it's going to do a bit better than the old version.

(Quick and dirty version: if you've got a +5 to hit with your weapon, attacking a Goblin Warrior with the old version gives us +0 to hit and we deal 2d6+13 on a hit. With an AC of 15, that means we have to roll a 15 or higher, or a 30% chance to hit. So, our 20 average damage is only 6. With the new version, we need to roll a 10 or higher, so we've got a 55% hit chance. Our damage is only 2d6+5, or 12 on average, but that means 6.6 average damage, so we're ahead. Crits aren't really affected by this. Against a Zombie, to be fair, it's 65% of 20, or 13, versus 80% of 12, or 9.6, so it's not a always better.)

Still, the Great Weapon Master feat is an obvious go-to for players who want to wield a Heavy weapon. Indeed, it's actually recommended even if you're a ranged weapon user, as this will buff Heavy Crossbows and Longbows (it feels like a Hunting Rifle should also be a heavy weapon, and maybe a Musket. Let firearms be viable in D&D!)

Now, there's also a fighting style for Great Weapons. The bad news is that it actually sucks. Even its best-case scenario, a 2d6 weapon, winds up getting only a very slight increase in damage, going from 7 to 8 average damage.

By contrast, the Two Weapon Fighting style actually adds a fair amount of damage each turn, letting your bonus attack from the Light property to add your ability modifier. Not only does this mean potentially 5 more damage per turn (which someone with the Great Weapon Fighting style would need to make 5 attacks to get from its fighting style feat, which is going to require something like an Action Surge) but it also just makes the character easier to run because you don't need to remember not to add your ability modifier to the damage...*

Then, the corresponding General Feat is, appropriately enough, Dual Wielder. The 5.0 version of this allowed you to dual-wield non-light one-handed weapons, such as Rapiers, Longswords, or the like. It also let you draw and sheathe them together (which is kind of now just a base ability in the game) and would give you +1 to AC while dual-wielding (half-making up for not having a shield).

In practice, though, this only winds up raising the damage of the weapons by 1 each, as you go from d6 weapons like Scimitars and Handaxes to d8 weapons, the highest value for a one-handed weapon (with the exception of the 5.0 lance, though only when you were mounted).

The new version of the feat looks really weird when you first read it - it allows you to make a bonus action attack without adding your ability modifier with any one-handed weapon, as long as you attacked this turn with a light weapon. If you wanted the pseudo-Titan's Grip (that's a WoW reference) effect, you might find that odd. But the point is not to let you wield heavier weapons. Instead, it comes down to weapon mastery, and specifically, the Nick property.

Nick allows you to make your off-hand bonus action attack as part of the attack action, preserving your bonus action. This is great if you need the bonus action for something like Smite, moving Hunter's Mark, or whatever.

But the Dual Wielder feat then allows you to take that unused bonus action and do what you were going to do with it anyway, which is to make another attack. This one doesn't add the ability modifier, so you will still need to remember that (if it did dual-wielding would be significantly more powerful).

Thus, I think the intent for most dual-wielders in 5.5 is that they will be making two more attacks than they would if they only had a single weapon.

Now, I don't know if this will always work. In 5.0, the three classes that got Fighting Styles had curated lists, and Paladins, for example, didn't get Two-Weapon Fighting. While they now have access to it, the change to Divine Smite has also made it a little less appealing, as we might want to save our bonus action in case we land a critical hit.

The math is very complicated, because many light weapons have the Vex property, so while you'll need a Nick weapon for your off-hand (the Scimitar generally being the optimal one, though a Dagger can also work, especially if you want to pair it with a Shortsword and take the Piercer feat,) and so the actual hit chance you get three attacks into a turn where previous hits are granting advantage is, well... you've seen me slog through that on this blog.

Still, I think generally when I've done all that math, it's pretty rare that a dual-wielding build actually outdamages one based on Great Weapon Master, regardless of class.

That being said, I don't generally build for pure optimization. I'm not doing all sorts of funky multiclass builds, and vibes are, to me, more important than being super-powered in D&D, because, well... the game's kind of balanced to let players win most of the time. I wouldn't make a, say, Paladin who had a +0 to Charisma (which one of my friends threatened to do when we were starting a campaign - now he's multiclassed into Warlock, so obviously he didn't) but "not doing the most possible damage" isn't the same as "doing terrible damage."

With all of that out of the way, then, how would we want to build a dual-wielder?

First off, let's talk classes that it works for. Obviously, you'll want to play a class with Weapon Mastery. This does mean it's not as appealing on a Bladelock (who also runs into the problem of only having one Pact Weapon at a time) or a Battle Smith Artificer. Valor Bards might go for Sword-and-Board instead.

But this means that Fighters, Rogues, Paladins, Barbarians, and Rangers are all decently situated to be dual-wielders.

I think the playstyle fits thematically well with Rogues and Rangers in particular. You can play a Strength-based Ranger (I did for the first 5 levels of Tomb of Annhilation, though the campaign fell apart shortly after we got to Omu) but both classes I think are intended more to be Dexterity-based. For Dex-focused characters (with the exception of heavy ranged weapon users,) Great Weapon Master isn't an option, so you're sort of forced to try something different anyway.

Fighters, Paladins, and Barbarians are all typically Strength-focused, but Strength-based dual-wielding is totally doable - the feat lets you use either Strength or Dex as a prerequisite and as the stat that gets boosted by it. This means that your options are slightly expanded, as you can use Handaxes, Light Hammers, and Sickles, which are all Light weapons that don't have Finesse.

I think where you might run into some friction is in how much you need your bonus action. Barbarians will need it at the start of combat to get into their Rage, but typically, once that is active, they'll have it up for the rest of the fight (and if you have multiple fights in quick succession, or burn a rage outside of combat before a fight, you might not have to pay that price). And then, getting to add their rage damage bonus to another attack is nice.

Fighters are actually among the least bonus-action-dependent classes, with mainly just Second Wind to use in an emergency. The only downside to dual-wielding as a Fighter is that they're already the class that gets the most attacks (well, Monks might disagree,) thus diluting how proportionately higher the damage overall is by adding attacks. That said, Fighters don't actually hit this point until level 11, so in tiers 1 and 2, it should be a pretty good benefit. Also, because Nick makes one of your off-hand attacks (and if we get really into the nitty gritty, technically by using the Nick attack as part of your action, this then lets you attack with your "main hand" weapon with the Dual Wielder feat bonus action attack) part of your Attack Action, that means you should be able to do it again when you Action Surge. So, by level 5, if you have the Two Weapon Fighting Style and a Nick weapon in the off hand, you can make 6 attacks in a single turn when you Action Surge. I think the fact that you can get so many attacks at higher levels does start to favor Great Weapon Master more, but prior to level 11, dual-wielding is going to be pretty sick on a Fighter.

Paladins, I think, are going to run into the most trouble, because they're actually quite bonus-action-happy, with Smite spells all taking a bonus action, but also with things like Lay on Hands now using a bonus action. The dual-wielder feat can still be good when you want to play conservatively (if your campaign is a bit more focused on slow dungeon crawls) but it might not be worth the feat if you're constantly skipping that attack to use Smite. All that said, you get a little more benefit from Radiant Strikes at level 11 if you're making more attacks, and while a single d8 more damage isn't going to be as good as the 8 damage you'd be getting from Great Weapon Master each turn, it does bring dual-wielding up a bit.

Rangers, of course, are classically depicted as dual-wielding when they're not using a ranged weapon. They are, to be fair, also pretty Bonus Action-dependent, thanks to Hunter's Mark, but at least as we've seen with the Hollow Warden, the folks at WotC are starting to give players some options that don't revolve as much around that spell (something I wish they'd realized when designing the 5.5 PHB - Hunter's Mark is a perfectly cool spell, but as long as it's preventing you from using any other concentration spells, it shouldn't be a central class feature). Honestly, outside of Hunter's Mark, they don't necessarily have a ton to do with their bonus action (except for the Beast Master and Drakewarden). I expect that if future Ranger subclasses follow the lead of the Hollow Warden, dual-wielding could very well be the default for Rangers (the Demon Hunter surely ought to be focused on dual-wielding).

Now, Rogues: Rogues do like to use their bonus action a lot. But they have sort of the opposite of the Fighter's issues, which is that they're the only martial class that doesn't get Extra Attack. Thus, that additional attack is worth that much more, proportionately. Furthermore, Sneak Attack does a lot more damage per turn if you have more chances to hit. To demonstrate: a level 8 Rogue has, say, +7 to hit and does 4d6 (14 average) damage with Sneak Attack. If they're attacking a target with an AC of 18, that's a 50% hit chance. So, the Sneak Attack damage is 7 average (ignoring crits). But if we attack twice, there's a 75% chance one of those hits, so it's now 10.5 average damage. If we attack three times, it's a 93.75% chance to hit, or 13.125 average damage. Yeah, there's diminishing returns, but getting that second attack pretty significantly increases the damage we can do, before we even get into the weapon's damage itself (Rogues don't get Fighting Styles innately, but it's maybe worth considering picking up Two Weapon Fighting at an ASI level even though it doesn't help us bump Dex).

    Now, I think what I'm starting to realize about this is that, in a vacuum, just fighting with two light weapons can be quite good. In a world without General Feats, it might even be better than using a two-hander in some cases. I think the main thing that makes it seem less viable is just how powerful Great Weapon Master is (even if we're only paying attention to the added PB's worth of damage to each Attack Action attack). The Dual Wielder feat is a little finicky. It's the most obvious feat to pick up if you want to enhance the damage output of a dual-wielder, but it's also a feat that I don't think is quite as mandatory for a dual-wielding character as Great Weapon Master is for a character using Heavy weapons.

Ironically, this is sort of the opposite of the Fighting Style feats, where I think you'd be a fool not to take Two Weapon Fighting if you're dual-wielding, but I'd actually recommend not taking Great Weapon Fighting because its benefit is so marginal that you'd probably be better off getting some non-damage-oriented Fighting Style (Defensive's always great, though I also like Blind Fighting). To be clear, Dual Wielder is far better of a General Feat than Great Weapon Fighting is as a Fighting Style feat, but I do think there are some circumstances where you might just enjoy the benefits of the Nick property and call it a day. (I think I did that with by Oath of Noble Genies Paladin build, though that might have also gone for a Dex-based Sword-and-Board Dueling build).

Building a WoW D&D Adventure: The Cube of Agham

 There's such a wealth of factions and locations in World of Warcraft, an MMO that has been around for over two decades, and which has had a new expansion release every two years. If you're unfamiliar with how an MMO like WoW works, a new expansion is an enormous endeavor: Typically, it involves the addition of a new landmass (a "continent" in game terms) with multiple zones (kind of thematic regions) that have extensive storylines told through quests, usually with one major throughline quest chain and then various side quest chains. Then, each expansion also comes with several dungeons and raids (raids are basically higher-stakes dungeons that you have to have more players for, and are where the major villains of an expansion's story are confronted in very elaborate boss fights). Expansions even have major patches, spread out over the two years between their launch and the launch of the next expansion, which will often add new zones and new raids (sometimes also new dungeons and other such thing,) so it's truly a massive amount of content, and they've done this every two years since the game launched in 2004.

What this means is that there's just an absurd number of places and storylines existing in-game that you could crib from to build a D&D adventure around, basically simulating an existing questline.

But we're not going to do that, obviously. We're going to come up with something original.

Now, I had a first draft of this post that detailed an adventure in which a Scourge Death Knight allies with the Coven of Drustvar to open a conduit to the necromantic powers of Thros, the realm form which the ancient Drust drew their death magic. I think that could work fine, but I'm going to try to do something a bit different.

WoW's game mechanics are focused primarily on combat. A dungeon is really a series of combat encounters, with the rare and occasional bit of puzzling (there's a dungeon from the Legion expansion in which the final part involves you going into a party disguised as an elven aristocrat looking for rumors over who is the secret Burning Legion agent hiding amongst the guests). But if we're going to have the flexibility of a TTRPG, why don't we try for some kind of plot that involves the other pillars of play?

First off, let's pick a zone. We'll go with the Blasted Lands. This region, in the southeastern corner of the Eastern Kingdoms, is central to the history of Warcraft, as it was here that the Guardian Medivh (basically the most powerful living Mage, sworn to protect the world,) possessed by the Dark Titan Sargeras, opened the Dark Portal, which linked the world of Draenor to Azeroth and allowed the Orcish Horde to invade Azeroth, leading to the First War (aka Warcraft I).

Originally the Black Morass, a vast, dark swampland, the energies of the Dark Portal desiccated the land, turning it into a barren desert. Since that initial invasion, the Burning Legion used it to try to invade Azeroth again (at the start of the Burning Crusade, WoW's first expansion) and later, the portal was hijacked to link Azeroth with an alternate timeline and allow the alt-history Iron Horde to invade through it.

Now, if we assume we're setting this during the modern WoW timeframe, the Legion has been pretty much scattered to the winds, the Iron Horde failed and its Mag'har Orcs were incorporated into this world's Horde, and the Horde and Alliance have been at peace for a few years (with Alliance forces even permitted to stay in Silvermoon, the Blood Elf capital).

So, here's how I see the Blasted Lands looking: both Alliance and Horde need to maintain a presence there to keep watch over the Dark Portal. Tensions between them have certainly lowered since the end of the Fourth War (the events starting in Legion and ending in Battle For Azeroth,) but there are still some simmering resentments and rivalries.

Perhaps the party is sent there by the Kirin Tor, a major faction (neutral, but perhaps Alliance-leaning, as it was the ruling magocratic body of the Human city-state of Dalaran, which was sadly blown up at the start of The War Within). A mage, Eldridge Cosper, had sent a message to Archmage Modera (one of the Kirin Tor's Council of Six, its highest office) that they had discovered something very important that he couldn't discuss via remote communication, but that he would travel to Stormwind to meet with her and speak in person. Cosper never arrived, and so Modera sends the party to go find what happened to him. 

Cosper was Forsaken (sentient, free-willed Undead and members of the Horde), so when the party gets to Nethergarde Keep, they find that the leadership there was not too happy about having him around, and refused to give him quarters in the fortress. The party might then travel to Dreadmaul Hold, the Horde base in the Blasted Lands, but find that they were also sort of hostile toward Cosper, and refused to allow him to stay there.

So, the party then has to search the Blasted Lands for wherever Cosper actually is. Along the way, they might have various side quests (I'm really eager to start running more sandbox-like adventures once I wrap up my Ravnica campaign - I just don't know that that style would work for players in tier 4,) which could hint at a few things:

First, that the Shadow Council, insidious warlocks who controlled the Old Horde from behind the scenes and were working in league with the Burning Legion, has actually infiltrated both the Alliance and Horde garrisons here.

Second, that the Dark Riders of Karazhan have been seen in these parts - the Dark Riders being cursed undead horsemen who seek out powerful artifacts, commanded initially by the possessed Medivh to gather them all and bring them to his tower of Karazhan nearby in Deadwind Pass.

Third, that no one has heard anything out of Surwich, the village on the southern coast founded by refugees from Gilneas (the kingdom whose population is mostly Worgen now,) for several days.

Eventually, the party will discover that Cosper had uncovered a powerful artifact carried by a member of the Shadow Council into Azeroth during the First War. The artifact, the "Cube of Aghan," has similar properties to the Sargerite Keystone (a relic used by Illidan in Legion to create a portal in the sky between Azeroth and the Legion's home planet of Argus - which is also where the Draenei originally came from). The Cube could be used to connect the Dark Portal to any number of other worlds, which, naturally, makes it extremely dangerous.

The party would have to deal with Shadow Council forces trying to follow them in their search for Cosper, and maybe need to expose the double-agents in Nethergarde and in Dreadmaul Hold. Then, they'd need to find out what happened to Surwich:

There, Cosper accidentally activated the Cube. While it is less powerful if not connected to something like the Dark Portal, it did manage to conjure in a number of dangerous creatures - perhaps these are aggressive plant creatures that have taken over the town and the nearby Tainted Forest. Maybe they need to get to Cosper and the Surwich residents, who have been taken into the forest by the plant-monsters, before they're consumed.

And then, of course, they would be harried by the Dark Riders - though perhaps they might decide that Karazhan would be a good place for the Cube to be stored, which is not the solution that Modera or Cosper would be happy with. Maybe the Riders take the Cube and the adventure culminates into an incursion into the famed haunted Wizard tower (which is, by the way, one of the most popular raids in the game's history, back in Burning Crusade - it was later also revamped as a "mega-dungeon" in Legion, though they learned their lesson and kept the original raid accessible by giving the dungeon a different entrance).

Naturally, I'd like to see what kind of monsters we get in the book, but I think you could do a lot of this with stuff from the Monster Manual. Shadow Council members could use Cultist stat blocks (maybe using Fiend Cultists for their more powerful forces). Depending on the level, the plant monsters at Surwich could use Blights. Dreadmaul Hold also has its fair share of Ogres. Depending on level, you could make the Dark Riders either Wraiths or Death Knight Aspirants. And the various monsters out in the Blasted Lands could include a number of monstrosities like Bulettes and Basilisks. There would also be plenty of demons there (I think fiends in general can stand in for Burning Legion demons - arguably they're more Lawful Evil in contrast to the Void's Chaotic Evil aberrations).

I think this premise for the adventure could be relatively linear if you wanted, but if you took the time to sprinkle in subplots and sidequests, you could make it a pretty fun sandbox adventure. I actually think this might work as a tier 1 adventure (though maybe start everyone at level 3) or it could be good for early tier 2. Cosper, I'd say, is probably either a Mage or, if you wanted to make him more vulnerable, maybe just an Apprentice Mage. I think the quest can be completed whether Cosper survives or not, as long as the Cube is secured.

Now, I think this could also be relatively self-contained, or it could be part of a larger campaign about resurgent cosmic threats. If you wanted this to lead into a larger plot, perhaps you cut the Dark Riders part and the Cube has already been claimed... but maybe the Shadow Council didn't get it, and now it's in the hands of Twilight's Hammer (or Twilight's Blade, the newer version of it) or perhaps the Cult of the Damned (though why they'd want interplanar capabilities would raise even more questions).

The WoW/D&D Book Seems Very Ambitious: Lineages and "Hero Subclasses"

 I've been looking up interviews with designers on the WoW/D&D crossover book, and this one with James Wyatt gave us a lot more exciting and interesting details.

Hero Subclasses:

The Demon Hunter and Death Knight are being presented in the WoW book as subclasses for the Ranger and Paladin, respectively. Hearing that, I'd been a bit worried about how well that would really get the vibes and flavor of those classes across. While I think that the base classes they're attached to are fairly appropriate (I could imagine Demon Hunters as using the Warlock base class, but you'd need to force them to go Pact of the Blade somehow) subclasses can be somewhat limited in how much they change how someone plays the game.

The approach, however, to how WoW classes are represented in D&D is something that Wyatt touched on, saying that the approach varies from class to class. Mages of all three specializations are basically Evoker Wizards, but he says that they'll list suggested spells to take and even have new feats to support the playstyles associated with those specs.

But when it comes to these Hero Classes, while details are sparse, the idea is that you need to start the character at 3rd level to play one, and that the third-level features the subclasses have will go back and make some changes to 1st and 2nd level features from those base classes. The impression I get is that these subclasses will be more dramatically different than other subclasses - naturally, a Beast Master Ranger fits perfectly with the Beast Mastery Hunter from WoW, but a Demon Hunter is a totally separate class in WoW. If this subclass then makes more extensive changes to how the Ranger actually works, it might help differentiate itself more while still making use of the existing Ranger framework.

Sadly, we don't really have details on how this will work. My first guess is that Ebon Blade Paladins might do Necrotic damage instead of Radiant with their Divine Smite (maybe changing its name - perhaps Rune Strike?) But the potential is there for more extensive changes as well.

Lineages:

So, I'd assumed the path of least resistance for the way they handle playable species. And in fairness, some of the options will be 1:1 with the D&D ones. Wyatt mentioned that D&D Orcs and WoW Orcs are basically the same, so if you want to play an Orc who lives in the suburbs of Orgrimmar, you can just use the option from the Player's Handbook.

However, it appears that they're not going the simplest route on all of these. I'd assumed that the Night Elves would simply be re-skinned Wood Elves, and that the Blood Elves would be re-skinned High Elves. But evidently, they'll be including lineages for all five WoW Elf peoples - the Night Elves, Blood Elves, Void Elves, Nightborne, and the High Elves (curious to see if that one does just use the PHB version). In WoW, you can only play two kinds of Trolls, the Darkspear or Zandalari, but evidently there will be other options, like Forest Trolls (basically the Amani) and then perhaps the Ice Trolls (Drakkari,) Desert Trolls (Farraki) and Jungle Trolls (Gurubashi, though technically the Darkspear are from this lineage as well).

He mentioned specifically that the Draenei will have four lineages: "Exodar" Draenei (kind of the default) and Lightforged Draenei, both of which are playable in game. Then, you can play as a Man'ari Eredar (former demons who have rejoined their Eredar kin after the defeat of the Burning Legion, which is available just as a cosmetic option for standard Draenei in WoW) and finally the Krokul/Broken, who have been part of the Draenei people since they were introduced in Burning Crusade (2007) but have never been playable.

Regarding humans, they expect you to simply use the PHB version of the Human, but they're adding new Origin Feats to reflect different national backgrounds. I assume we'll at least get ones for Stormwind and Kul Tiras (the two playable humans in WoW, unless you count the werewolf-like Worgen and the Undead, both of which are former humans).

While the recent Lupin from Ravenloft: Horrors Within certainly could stand in for the Worgen, apparently the Worgen in this book will be an original species, though Wyatt described them as being based on the framework of the Shifter from Eberron, but narrowed down to exclusively wolf-themed features.

I believe Tauren were also mentioned, with lineage options for Taunka. Presumably, they'll include the Highmountain Tauren and possibly the Yaungol.

    The more I learn about this book, the more impressed I am at the high ambition it seems to reflect. This doesn't seem like a "let's just tweak things barely enough to make it fit in D&D's rules," but seems to be a really radical reimagining how how 5.5's rules work to best emulate the WoW feel.

My big criticism of D&D's direction over the course of much of 5E is that it could stand to be bolder. In other interviews, I've seen them talk about how they might bring ideas designed for this WoW book into the broader 5.5 systems, and that makes me excited that this will be far more than a corporate-synergy-friendly cash-grab, and might actually wind up being one of the most important books in 5.5.

Dungeon Bosses and the WoW Dungeons Coming in the D&D Book

 Yeah, I mean, you had to expect I'd be writing a lot about this, right?

With the exception of Azjol-Nerub, all the dungeons featured in the World of Warcraft D&D book are from the original release of World of Warcraft.

"Vanilla" WoW featured the two large continents of Kalimdor and the Eastern Kingdoms. Broadly speaking, the continents were mostly home to one of the two player factions, with the Alliance having a larger presence in the EKs and the Horde having more territory in Kalimdor (but with each having a bit of territory on the other - the Undead control the fallen kingdom of Lordaeron, in the northern part of the Eastern Kingdoms, and the Night Elves' home territories are in the north of Kalimdor).

Anyway, the way dungeons work in WoW is that most have somewhere from 3-5 bosses. Boss fights tend to have special mechanics that players need to contend with to successfully defeat them (though admittedly there were some fights in the early days which were "tank and spank" fights that were extremely straightforward). Usually they're pretty linear, though sometimes you can beat some of the bosses in different orders, and occasionally (though I don't think any in recent years) there will be optional bosses. Each boss drops loot from a unique table, so if you know that a particular, say, belt you want drops from a boss, you might run that dungeon until that item drops for you. Between these boss fights are "trash," which are less powerful enemies that can still potentially be challenging, but are there to kind of pace out the dungeon. Other than the normal randomized loot that anything will have, these typically don't drop anything predictably. WoW, of course, can't have all the complex nuance of character interactions that D&D has, so its gameplay is almost entirely combat-focused, and a dungeon is a long string of fights.

In 2010, six years after the original launch, the Cataclysm expansion saw a major revamp of the original two continents, redesigning the questing experience and, in some cases, changing some of the dungeons to reflect the story's development. Some of these dungeons from Vanilla would also get revamps later on that weren't tied to Cataclysm. (One reason for the changes was that, starting in the first expansion, the idea of Heroic Dungeons was introduced, which let you set the difficulty of a dungeon up so that it would be appropriate for max-level characters. While initially this was only for dungeons from the latest expansion and within that expansion's expanded level range, starting in Cataclysm, they made heroic versions of dungeons you'd have visited at low levels, including Deadmines and Shadowfang Keep).

Which is all to say that some of these dungeons have multiple versions of them.

What I'm here to investigate, ultimately, is whether the 30 "dungeon boss" stat blocks are specifically meant for these dungeons, or if these will be more broadly 30 iconic dungeon bosses from across WoW's history.

So, let's total them up:

Azjol-Nerub: 3

The sole dungeon not in the Eastern Kingdoms or Kalimdor, it's instead up in the frozen continent of Northrend, home to the Undead Scourge put also the seat of the Titan Keepers, Ulduar. Underground, the spider-like Nerubians have their realm, which has been conquered by the Undead Scourge, including its Scarab Lord king, Anub'arak, who is its final boss. There's only one version of this dungeon, which has three bosses.

Blackfathom Deeps: 8

Big underground cave system with some Night Elf ruins buried in it. Naga and Satyr came to the caverns to claim the ancient power of the place, which was once a temple to Elune, the moon goddess worshipped by the Night Elves. The hydra Aku'mai, thought to be an ancient pet of the Old Gods, has taken residence here. In Vanilla (and in the currently-available "WoW Classic") the dungeon has 8 bosses, with Aku'mai as the final one. The dungeon got a sort of "light" revamp during Warlords of Draenor, but wasn't tied to that expansion's plot and not given a Heroic version, and it still has 8 bosses.

Deadmines: 6

Now, Deadmines got a pretty major revamp in Cataclysm, moving the timeline forward six years, and it's explicit that the conflict in it was caused by the events of the original version. Interestingly, the normal mode of the dungeon didn't have us confront Vanessa VanCleef, the main antagonist. It was only on Heroic mode (a difference of doing this at, like, level 15 versus level 85) that we had our bout with her. (She's also revealed to have survived in the Legion expansion six years after that, and can even become an ally for Rogue players). Anyway, the map of the dungeon remains the same, and I think there's a new boss in the place of each of the old ones (though I think "Captain" Cookie, the murloc, is in both).

Dire Maul: 16... Technically

Dire Maul's weird. It's actually treated as three separate dungeons now, and many of the bosses in the northern part, which is ogre-themed, are really more like mini-bosses with similar if not the same mechanics. If we cut them out, the total comes out to 12, which is still a lot, though only 4 per wing, which is more typical for a dungeon.

Onyxia's Lair: 1

This one was a bit of a surprise, because Onyxia's Lair is basically one big cavern with a fight against a powerful black dragon. There are a couple of trash pulls to get to her, but the main appeal to this back in Vanilla (and later when they brought it back for WoW's 5th anniversary during Wrath of the Lich King and boosted her to a level 80 challenge) was that you could go in, do a single raid boss, and be done.

Scarlet Monastery: 6 or 7

In Vanilla, Scarlet Monastery was actually four very short dungeons with one or two bosses each, the Scarlet Library, Scarlet Armory, Scarlet Graveyard, or Scarlet Cathedral. In Mists of Pandaria, which came out in 2012, they did a total revamp, basically rebuilding the place from the ground up as two more conventional 3-boss dungeons. The Graveyard and Cathedral were combined into what is now called Scarlet Monastery, and the Armory and Library were combined into what is now called Scarlet Halls. The reason the boss count here isn't the same is that the original Scarlet Graveyard began with a torture chamber and a boss there that was the lead torturer (whose name escapes me,) who didn't make it into the 2012 revamp. Interestingly, the "canon" of our previous fight through the Monastery was preserved, with bosses playing similar roles to the original ones but as different individuals, with the exceptions of the undead skeletal mage Tlanos the Soulrender (a former Scarlet inquisitor who succumbed to the Plague of Undeath) and High Inquisitor Whitemane, whose resurrective powers evidently allowed her to come back after being defeated the first time (fun fact, she earned her "redemption" by becoming one of the Ebon Blade's Four Horsemen, among its most fearsome Death Knights).

Shadowfang Keep: 5 or 10

Similar to Deadmines, Shadowfang Keep kept the same map, but underwent a pretty profound revamp to what was actually found in the dungeon. In Vanilla, it was mostly Worgen (basically werewolves) and Archmage Arugal, who went mad after he summoned the worgen to Azeroth to fight the undead Scourge and didn't realize the whole "infectious wolf-men" problem would be a thing. In Cataclysm, it's almost entirely different, with the treasonous Lords Ashbury, Walden, and Godfrey of Gilneas holing up there after betraying both Gilneas and the Forsaken. The dungeon currently has five bosses, but had twice as many in Vanilla (though some of those were really minor fights). The "new" (16-year-old) version of it ends with a fight against Lord Godfrey (an NPC who specifically shows up to mock Worgen players after they're infected in a cutscene, so we're really set up to despise him).

    Totaling it:

Obviously, the numbers here aren't consistent. But if we assume the simpler, smaller versions of each dungeon, it comes out to 41.

Given that we're only getting 30 "dungeon boss" stat blocks, I'm inclined to come to two conclusions:

One is inescapable: that some of these boss fights will not require bespoke stat blocks, and might be presented simply using either some of the 50 regular monster stat blocks or even existing D&D ones.

The second is not guaranteed, but would be my preference: that we get plenty of dungeon boss stat blocks outside of these dungeons. After all, only one of these dungeons is from an expansion (even if some got revamped with the release of an expansion). And these don't cover all the dungeons from Vanilla, either. Memorable bosses like Ook-Ook from Stormstout Brewery or Mueh'zala from De Other Side (who's also pretty important lore-wise) would be really cool to have.

Indeed, I'm sort of surprised that the dungeon list is so weighted toward Vanilla. Maybe they figure those are the most recognizable to WoW players how might have lapsed for some of the expansions, or maybe the books will primarily focus on the Eastern Kingdoms and Kalimdor (which is honestly pretty reasonable given how utterly massive Azeroth is as a setting, fleshed out enormously over 22 years and ten expansions). There is, of course, the Icecrown Citadel adventure being sold separately, which is meant for levels 16-20 (which, as epic as the Lich King is as a foe, I had thought he was a perfect "tier 3 endboss.") But I think Wrath content is nearly as universal as Vanilla stuff, given that the expansion came out so long ago and was, for many people, WoW's peak (personally I think it was Legion, though there's an argument that the Dragonflight/War Within period was even better. For me it's a matter of taste rather than my attempt to be objective).

Looking at the "Updated Subclass" UA with Warcraft Context

 In October of last year, we got an Unearthed Arcana that had a notably bland title: "Updated Subclasses." Nothing thematic tying them together.

These were all riffs on subclasses that had already appeared in 5E. The Spiritual Guardian, Warrior of Intoxication, and Storm Herald had all appeared (maybe with slightly different names) in Xanathar's Guide to Everything, and the Oathbreaker had been a subclass in the 2014 DMG meant for villainous NPCs (though I strongly advise DMs to use normal stat blocks rather than full character builds for NPCs.)

I had thought at the time that this was likely to presage an upcoming "of Everything"-style book that would just give us a bunch of new subclasses for 5.5. However, now that we know about D&D's crossover book with World of Warcraft, it's all coming into focus.

One of the really interesting things that seems implied by the subclasses being presented is that D&D will interpret WoW's Shaman class as Barbarians. Now, the Shaman in WoW is primarily a spellcaster, tied to primordial elements and the spirit world. In a lot of ways, they're similar to Druids as a "nature"-based class, but while Druids are focused more on living things (though also a bit of a celestial sun-and-moon-and-stars theme) Shamans are focused on the raw elements, throwing lava and lightning around.

Of the three "specs" for Shamans, two stand at range, casting spells. Elemental Shamans send out bolts of lightning and hurl lava, while Restoration Shamans use the power of water primarily to send waves of healing energy. (In WoW, healing works very differently - if you're the healer, you're probably spending most of your time casting healing spells, and only if your party is in great shape do you every turn your attention to damaging enemies - though some healing specs will incorporate damaging enemies as part of their healing strategy.) The third spec, Enhancement, is the one where you get into melee, dual-wielding and charging (or enhancing) your weapons with elemental power and also casting spells in melee.

I think that both the Spiritual Guardian and Storm Herald subclasses are thematically tied to the Shaman as a class, but it's interesting because a class that in WoW is very much focused on casting spells is, in D&D, going to be the class that truly can't (with the exception of Spiritual Guardian's outside-of-combat ritual spells).

At Gamecon, I believe they announced that the Storm Herald was getting a top-to-bottom redesign, which is probably for the best as the old subclass and its UA version were both cool conceptually but mechanically kind of sucked. 

The Warrior of Intoxication is clearly tied to WoW's Brewmaster Monk. In WoW, this is the tanking spec for Monks, thematically using Drunken Boxing techniques to stagger the damage they take, and then cleanse that "staggered" damage with purifying brews (essentially, the way it works is that you only take part of the damage of each hit you land, while the rest is spread out over time. On its own this makes you easier to heal, but you can also effectively get your "damage debt" forgiven by using a particular ability). It's not pure martial arts, though: Brewmaster Monks toss barrels of brew around, splashing enemies and then using Breath of Fire to ignite the alcohol and do damage over time against them.

Now, in this context, the Oathbreaker Paladin is surely what they were using to secretly test out the Oath of the Ebon Blade, which is how the book will represent Death Knights. In WoW, Death Knights are a full class with three different specs (the lore behind them is that your character was a hero of Azeroth who was then slain by the Scourge and selected to be raised as a Death Knight. However, while you fight for the Scourge in the starting experience, an attack on Light's Hope Chapel, a bastion of the heroic Argent Dawn faction, makes you realize that A: you were set up by the Lich King as fodder to draw out the Paladin Tirion Fordring, and B: that you have regained your free will and are not bound to serve the Scourge, allowing you to reform and become a heroic adventurer. (Note that if you place a race that was added post-Cataclysm, you don't get such a dramatic introduction and are just a heroic Death Knight from the start, serving the far more benevolent Lich King, Bolvar Fordragon).

Anyway, what is likely the playtest for the Oath of the Ebon Blade allows you to summon undead minions (likely 1 initially, and then 2 if you can get your Charisma modifier up to +4 or 5). This, I think, is meant to give you something equivalent to the WoW Death Knight's Raise Dead. For two of its specs, the tank-focused Blood spec and damage-focused Frost, the ghoul you raise with this spell acts as a temporary pet. For Unholy, the other damage spec, this is a permanent pet that fights alongside you, and some of your abilities can enhance its attacks.

I will say that I don't know how relevant this will be at higher levels given that the stat blocks don't scale.

It's interesting here that this UA actually included the Cavalier as well. I don't think the Cavalier was ever a terribly popular subclass, and it's not super obvious what it would be equivalent to for WoW. Possibly the Protection Warrior, which is the tank spec for Warriors (basically the WoW version of the Fighter, though I'd argue the flavor of the Fury Warrior is more like a Barbarian). Perhaps this subclass didn't score well enough to make it into the book.

Now, I will say that they only described the Spiritual Guardian, Swashbuckler, and Mystic Brews subclasses as updates to existing subclasses (Mystic Brews being the clearly better name for the Intoxication Monk). While the Path of the Elements is likely to have some similar flavor to the Storm Herald, as mentioned above, it's expected to be a total mechanical overhaul. But they also don't describe the Oath of the Ebon Blade as being an update, so perhaps it's less similar to this Oathbreaker than I thought.