The grain-of-salt-advised discovery of a new Queen Azshara model on the PTR has a lot of people suspecting that we will, probably after Draenor, finally be heading off to deal with the Queen of Azeroth in a definitive, final manner.
Azshara was the queen of the Night Elves before she made a deal with Sargeras to bring the Burning Legion to Azeroth and start a little kerfuffle known as the War of the Ancients. After Illidan, Tyrande, and Malfurion destroyed the Well of Eternity, the vast majority of the old super-continent known as Kalimdor was flooded, leaving only the four continents we're familiar with as the relatively small remnants above the surface of the ocean (and of course, the western one shares the same name, which is not at all confusing.)
As the waters poured in and the Burning Legion's connection to Azeroth was severed, Azshara was contacted by another immensely powerful dark force - the Old Gods. The Old Gods transformed Azshara and those among the Highborne who were most closely devoted to her into the amphibious snake-like people known as the Naga. While Azshara's vast domain sank beneath the waves, she and her loyal followers lived on, and today there's a vast empire beneath the waves. The Naga have remained hidden from the rest of Azeroth, but make no mistake - the Naga Empire is a serious power on Azeroth. In all likelihood, they have greater territory than the Alliance and Horde combined, and possibly even a great population as well.
And unlike the Alliance or Horde, they are perfectly unified, politically. The Horde recently got out of a civil war, and the Alliance only just started recognizing Varian Wrynn as the official High King. But the Naga are devoted to Azshara, and they have been longer than they were even Naga at all.
Yet given their prominence, and hell, the fact that they're a non-player race that actually has female models, we've all kind of wondered how playable Naga would work, and if it could be a possibility.
So let's talk about how they would work mechanically, and how you'd fit them into the existing game. Part One will cover the mechanical nature of adding Naga to the game, whereas Part Two will cover how one could justify doing so in the lore. Also this is a long article, so here's a cut.
Right off the bat, the first thing that raises its ugly head is the fact that Naga don't have legs. This causes two big problems. The first is that all characters wear pants and boots. While one could imagine creating a racial that boosts the character's stats to compensate for the two missing piece of gear, I can't imagine that that's how they would solve the problem. Instead, I could imagine these pieces of armor simply covering different lengths of the tail - with boots sort of capping them off. Admittedly, that would be pretty tough to pull off. It's already a little crazy that every boot model has to work as both an actual shoe and also a kind of leg-warmer for the barefoot races (Tauren, Troll, Draenei, Worgen - and kind of Pandaren and Undead.) This would take things to another level.
The other thing is Mounts. Every race mounts up by straddling their steed (with the rare exceptions like the Red Flying Cloud or Flying Carpets.) Without legs, it's pretty hard to straddle anything, though perhaps they could kind of sit side-saddle.
The other alternative is to come up with a lore reason for why playable Naga have mutated to have legs. This might be just as ugly as the aforementioned solutions, but we're going to need some new lore to justify non-evil Naga, so we'll talk about this in part two, which will cover the lore.
The other model issue is that, with older models, female Naga have four arms. Now, it wouldn't be that hard to just have Naga ladies happen to find a duplicate pair of gloves to wear (and perhaps have them hold each weapon with two hands.) Alternatively, this feature could get retconned away.
The next issue is faction:
Personally, I can see the Naga more as a Horde race than an Alliance one. I could see them getting along with the Blood Elves because of their shared heritage and the Undead because of their shared viciousness. But perhaps that's not such a problem. After all, the Pandaren (and apologies to any Horde Pandaren here) made a lot more sense as an Alliance race than a Horde one. So if Horde gets Pandaren, perhaps Alliance can get Naga.
It's a bit of a moot point though - if we get a Naga-themed expansion with Naga as a playable race, it seems inevitable that both factions would have to share the new race. That is unless we get two new races. If Alliance get Kvaldir, Horde can have Naga to themselves.
So while the Naga are almost obvious as a new race, there are some major roadblocks to adding them to the game. But let's get to the fun stuff! Let's talk classes and racial abilities.
Classes:
Warriors seem obvious - every race can be a Warrior, even Blood Elves now (to the new players, pre-Cataclysm, Blood Elves who wanted to wear plate had to roll Paladins.) And Naga have their Myrmidons and such, so this is all just pretty obvious.
Death Knights - unlike Pandaren, there were totally a lot of Naga active when Arthas was doing his thing, and indeed there could be plenty of Lady Vashj's Naga who accompanied Illidan to Northrend, so it seems totally plausible for Naga to join the Knights of the Ebon Blade - it needs less of a retcon than Worgen Death Knights.
Paladins - eh... probably not. Any kind of Holy worship the Naga would have would be more Night Elf-style Elune worship.
Hunters - I don't see why not. We encounter plenty of Naga Hunters with crab pets out in the world.
Shaman - There isn't really any Shamanistic tradition that one sees among Naga, so this is probably right out.
Druids - This one's kind of an interesting question. On the face of it I'd say absolutely not - the Naga were members of the Highborne, and like the Blood Elves, never got into the whole Cenarius-nature-worship stuff. On the other hand, if the good Naga are trying to return to their pre-Azshara roots, you could maybe just barely justify this. The main thing is that we might get Shark-Bears, which would be amazing.
Rogue - They're snake-people. I think that makes this an obvious yes.
Monk - I don't think the Naga had much interaction with the Pandaren, so unless you have a wandering Monk trainer going to visit the newly-redeemed Naga, I don't really see this happening. Oh yeah, and with no feet it'd be hard to do a Blackout Kick (though it would also make the Rogue's "Kick" ability tough to pull off as well...)
Mage - Azshara's the most powerful mage on Azeroth. So yes.
Warlock - The Naga may be more aligned with the Old Gods these days, but I can't imagine they'd turn down demonic power just because it's "evil."
Priest - We've seen plenty of Naga priests, and whether they're Elune worshippers or actually Azshara worshippers, well, I don't have any problem with this.
So what about racials?
Fast Swimming: Undead can already stay underwater indefinitely. It seems like Naga ought to be able to do that too, but in addition, they should be able to swim faster. At the moment, swimming reduces your speed to 2/3 of normal running speed for existing races. For Naga I'd just take away that handicap, or even make them move faster in water than on land.
Cast Net: As a quick and dirty activated ability, I think throwing a kind of modified fishing net on the target, snaring it, would be flavorful and not particularly game-breaking.
Angling: Doesn't it seem like they should get a boost to Fishing skill? Or, perhaps more attractively, they should have a great chance to gain a skill point when catching fish.
Many-Armed Strikes: Increases Multistrike Chance by 1%.
And finally: Mounts:
Given that Pandaren got Dragon Turtles (which were a Naga unit in The Frozen Throne,) I'd reach out and find some kind of crustacean for Naga mounts. Perhaps a Crab or Lobster would make the most sense. Imagine a Naga warrior charging toward you on top of an armored Crab! That'd be cool, right?
Anyway, there are a lot of possibilities here. Next time I'll talk about how one could justify playable Naga in the lore.
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