A Resolution to Alliance versus Horde

In the real world, cooperation doesn't always lead to good relations between world powers. Consider, for example, the relationship between the United States and its allies in the West to the Soviet Union. It was very clear that Germany had to be stopped, and so, despite huge political and economic differences, you had the West and the East team up to deal with the great and monstrous evil coming out of Central Europe. But shortly thereafter, without the threat of the Axis powers to threaten them, the US and the USSR began to engage in the 45-year struggle of the Cold War. Yes, the Soviet Union eventually collapsed and transformed into the Russian Federation (and several ex-Soviet republics,) and there was perhaps some hope that we might see a true alliance form between these former adversaries, but you don't have to read the news too closely to realize that those old rivalries have not gone away.

That's how I see the Alliance and the Horde.

It's clear, if you play World of Warcraft, that both factions could exist peacefully together on Azeroth if there was sufficient will on the part of all the major players. Your average Joe Orgrimmar and your average Jane Stromwind just want to live their lives, raise a family, and feel safe where they are.

But there are agitators who are not satisfied with the lines as drawn. Some want revenge, and some simply don't trust the other side to maintain the peace. Indeed, this is latter reason is probably the number one cause of all violent conflict in the world - people strike preemptively on the assumption that if they don't, the other side will.

How can we summarize the positions of the two factions? Obviously, each faction is a coalition of different groups of people, some of whom have very different goals than others within their own faction.

The Alliance is often forced to play defense. One could actually make the argument that the first Alliance/Horde conflict was, retroactively, the Horde's genocidal war against the Draenei on Draenor. There's an interesting irony that we'll get to shortly here, which is that the Draenei were the recent visitors to the world. And yet, the Draenei brought with them the structures of what we might call an advanced society. Orcs, at the time, were not urban dwellers with firmly established territories and borders. But the Draenei, who had had countless ages on Argus living in massive metropolises like Mac'aree, very quickly set about putting down roots. Shattrath, Karabor, and arguably Auchindoun were all very clearly permanent establishments that the Draenei intended to inhabit long-term.

Likewise, if we look at Alliance lands, much of it is long-established territory. Stormwind, Ironforge, Gilneas city - all of these places are thousands of years old. Teldrassil and Darnassus are relatively new, but they are an outgrowth of an over-ten-thousand-year history within the forests of northern Kalimdor for the Night Elves. The only really new territory the Alliance has as a home base are Azuremyst and Bloodmyst isles, but while the Draenei are new to these places, the Night Elves have an established history with them.

As such, we can ascribe, perhaps, a certain desire to maintain the status quo for the Alliance. Most of its people have a place in the world, and the threat that they perceive is that of outside invaders coming to take what has always been theirs. Families that had lived in, say, Goldshire for generations were forced to uproot their lives and flee north, only to then have to flee south as the Scourge rampaged through what was thought to have been the safest of the human kingdoms.

So we can imagine that an ideal peace for the Alliance would be to see their homes safeguarded and restored - they wish to be close to their historical roots and ensure that life can go on as it has.

The Horde, on the other hand, has little to defend. There is only one Horde city that has existed in its current form for more than a couple decades. Silvermoon was ravaged by the Scourge and the Blood Elves are perhaps more similar in motivation to the Alliance - trying to restore and safeguard their ancient home (which is perhaps not that odd given that they are a former Alliance race.)

But the rest of the Horde's territory is new. Orgrimmar and Thunder Bluff were only built after the victory in the Third War. And while Mulgore is idyllic, the Orcs have always struggled with the scarcity of resources of Durotar and the Barrens. The Horde has always sought to find a way to provide for its population. In fact, by founding Orgrimmar where they did, they actually picked a part of the world that should not have caused much conflict - the Night Elves only bothered with territory as far south as Ashenvale, and south of there was a mostly untamed wilderness. But the reason that the territory was unclaimed was probably because of the lack of resources, and while in the short term, settling there allowed the Horde to avoid conflict, in the long term, it left them starving for resources like lumber, which has pushed them into conflict up north.

Despite its strength, the Horde is in a constant struggle for survival, and this desperation has encouraged a more aggressive military culture. Not being able to simply exploit the lush forests of Durotar (given that they don't exist,) they push north into Ashenvale. They're a lot better at military invasions than they are at longterm environmental manipulation, and so this naturally pushes them into conflict with the Night Elves.

The Forsaken have it even worse.

First off, there's a major identity crisis amongst the Forsaken - are they simply the inhabitants of the Kingdom of Lordaeron, proud humans who have lived in these lands for millennia? Or are they a totally new thing that needs to do whatever it takes to secure themselves in their territory? The fact that humanity's general reaction to them has been abject horror and loathing, and also that their leader is not a former human but a former High Elf, has pushed their culture more toward this latter identity.

But if the Orcs struggle with resources for building and feeding their people, the Undead struggle with the resource of people.

The Forsaken can't simply make new people the way the other races do, and that means that, if they don't want to die off as the simple attrition of life in a dangerous world assails them, they need dead people to raise. And while I could perhaps imagine a very small number of people voluntarily becoming Forsaken after they die of natural causes, generally the strategy has been to make war and raise your fallen enemies.

But given how this tactic robs people of their free will (even if the newly risen Forsaken aren't magically mind-controlled, there's definitely a kind of cultural brainwashing at work,) it puts the Forsaken in a position where they are forced to choose between extinction and atrocity.

The Horde in general, I think, would see an ideal peace as one in which the Alliance ceded enough territory on Azeroth to ensure the Horde had enough resources to thrive. While the Orcs are the flagship race of the Horde, and you could argue that the Orcs don't deserve much territory on Azeroth considering what they did to their previous world, the fact is that the Horde is actually primarily composed of other Azeroth natives, and the Horde does deserve a place on Azeroth.

The most obvious problem with that is who gets to decide how much is "enough." This is, of course, the kind of thing that diplomats work out in peace treaties. It's clear that the Horde is going to need more to be satisfied, but from an Alliance perspective, one might be concerned that the Horde, given its warrior culture, might never be satisfied. Why appease the Horde by recognizing their claim to Azshara if the Horde is just going to see that as an opportunity to protect its own flank as it marches on Ashenvale?

In terms of fairness, you might only be able to achieve balance if the Alliance cedes territory to the Horde. But the Horde, in turn, would have to be satisfied with that. However, one of the biggest hurdles here is that, while an Orc or Troll Warchief could push the Forsaken question to the side, establishing an initial peace deal before settling the Undead question, the current Warchief is also the leader of the Forsaken, and that means that this thorniest of Alliance/Horde conflicts must be front-and-center in any kind of deal to make peace. Sylvanas might not want war because she can't be sure she'll win it, but she also needs war in order to perpetuate her people. One can see why she's looking for other solutions, like making her deal with Helya. If she could raise her own people from the dead, you'd have a much better solution. Ironically, Genn's sabotage of Sylvanas' admittedly underhanded and perhaps even blasphemous plan might have actually hurt the Alliance long-term. But as an old man with little left to achieve in life beyond revenge, I don't imagine Genn would care all that much (I think his longterm peace plan is to wipe the Forsaken out entirely, anyway.)

Now, one of the ironies of the new Allied Races is that we're getting a bit of a flip of the typical characters for each faction.

Both the Nightborne and the Highmountain Tauren are firmly established in their home territories. The Nightborne have literally inhabited the same city for ten thousand years, and while the Legion ravaged it, Suramar is now canonically free again. The Highmountain, unlike their Kalimdor brethren, have resided on their mountain for a similar ten thousand years, with a firmly, well-established order to their territory.

On the flip side, you have the Lightforged Draenei, who have literally spent 25,000 (or, if you account for time dilation due to being around Argus, 1,000,000) years in a strictly regimented military organization that has primarily inhabited a large ship. The Xenedar was shot down when we arrived on Argus, and so that means that you have an elite military force with no real home to speak of that has been unleashed on Azeroth. The Void Elves, on the other hand, are exiles from Quel'thalas, having flipped twice between factions. The Void Elves aren't even sure who they are anymore, and I suspect that it's going to be a good long while before they're fully integrated into Alliance society.

Quel'thalas is actually a particularly interesting sticking point regarding a potential peace between the factions. The High Elves are Alliance, but there's apparently been a certain understanding between them and the Blood Elves, allowing access to the Sunwell. But while the Blood Elves graciously accept the High Elves, the Void Elves are considered far too dangerous. Peace between the factions would likely benefit Silvermoon more than any city, but the question of the Ren'dorei would be a pretty big one to resolve. We're not even sure how the High Elves feel about the Void Elves yet.

Major Villains of Battle for Azeroth

I'm currently unable to play the Alpha due to a bug that is affecting Mac users (the client crashes right after the blue bar on the loading screen fills.) It's a shame, as the build that broke the game also allowed access to Stormsong Valley, leaving Vol'dun (the desert zone in northwest Zandalar) the only zone left to open up.

I'm expecting (and honestly kind of hoping) that there's a fair amount of quest redesign coming (currently my biggest critique of BFA is a certain "Christmas Tree effect" where you get quests sending you in a million different directions instead of having a more manageable story to pursue through each zone with very little sense of flow,) but thanks to the all the other people who have been able to access things, I've started to get a better sense of what's going on.

The central theme to the expansion is, of course, the Alliance/Horde conflict, but my sense is that there's still going to be a lot of focus on third-party villains.

The only announced raid instance is Uldir, a Titan facility within the Zandalar zone of Nazmir. Within is a being known as G'huun, who is called a Blood God. It's not entirely clear whether it was a fifth Old God or something cooked up by the Titans that went terribly wrong, but we know that a great deal of the plot on Zandalar (and particularly Nazmir, of course,) is going to revolve around G'huun.

It is an open question as to whether N'zoth will, as well, be present in BFA. Given its nautical associations and both islands' nautical cultures, that wouldn't be too crazy. But while N'zoth's role is unknown, we do know that Queen Azshara will be a big part of it as well.

Azshara seems like she's being built up as a very major villain for the expansion.

SPOILERS TO FOLLOW

What's a Bit of Eye Color? Golden-Eyed Blood Elves

The truth is that in the Warcraft universe, eye color has real significance, and particularly for elves.

Night Elves have a tradition that an elf born with golden eyes has a great destiny ahead of them. Azshara had gold eyes, as did Illidan. Granted, that could be coincidence, like the fact that a ton of US Presidents have been left-handed (assuming there's not some secret society called "Manus Sinister" that's puppeteering all of us, that is! (satire)) after all, Malfurion and Tyrande didn't have gold eyes, and they've both achieved quite a bit. Also, all male Night Elf characters (save Death Knights and Demon Hunters) have golden eyes, and we can't all be special.

For the inhabitants of Quel'thalas, eye color is actually a pretty clear code. The High Elves have had blue eyes, perhaps linked to their use of arcane magic through the Sunwell. When the Sunwell was destroyed and Kael'thas renamed his people the Blood Elves, that didn't change. It was when Kael'thas allied with Illidan, and the Betrayer taught the Sin'dorei to siphon off demonic fel magic to sate their magic addition that you started to see green-eyed Blood Elves.

There's actually a bit of an interesting conundrum in the lore here - it's not clear why the very few remaining High Elves (which, other than this, is primarily a political designation rather than a physiological one) have not become Wretched - some clearly have, but Vereesa and her Silver Covenant seem fine. Did Dalaran hook them up with a fix?

Now, of course, this whole problem with the Sunwell is actually a long-solved problem. At the end of Burning Crusade, Velen uses the remains of M'uru to spark the reignition of the Sunwell into a font of not just arcane, but also holy magic.

We know that the Lightforged (mostly Draenei but also Turalyon) get golden eyes after getting saturated with holy magic. Indeed, we start to see Illidan's arcane tattoos light up with... the Light when X'era tries to forcibly Lightforge him.

Now, I imagine Lightforging a person is way more intense than the kind of gradual exposure the Blood Elves get from the Sunwell, but I wonder if, after so many years, that's starting to have an effect on the population.

In BFA, Blood Elves will get some new face options that change their eyes to gold, rather than green. I'm curious to see how they deal with that in the game's lore, if at all.

Eye color has been such an oddly important distinguishing feature for the elves of Quel'thalas. With the Ren'dorei, aka Void Elves, we've gotten a kind of void-purple/blue look for some of them. I'm willing to take for granted that they're no longer powered by the Sunwell now that they're using the power of the Void, but there are interesting questions all around with this, like whether High Elves like Vereesa might also get golden eyes, if they're just as connected to the Sunwell as the Blood Elves are.

Cities in BFA

In Legion, we got, for the first time since Wrath, a neutral city hub for the continent. However, this was a revamped version of Dalaran, which we had seen in Wrath of the Lich King. Much as Stormwind and particularly Orgrimmar were revamped in Cataclysm, Dalaran was transformed, improving visual textures, adding environmental detail, and of course creating new structures like the big tower in the center of town where the courtyard once was.

One could argue that we also got a city in Suramar, though this was a mostly-hostile space for questing. It was a great achievement - we've never had that sort of urban environment in which to fight and quest before. The closest we had come prior to that was probably Zul'drak, which was certainly built up across the zone, but didn't have the urban density of Suramar.

I have yet to do much questing within the cities themselves, but in Battle for Azeroth, we have two urban locations. It seems that these are also a sort of mix between true safe hubs and genuine questing areas.

In Kul Tiras, the capital city is Boralus, a massive port city that seems on par in terms of size and density with Suramar city. Currently, pre-made characters start in the northeast, but there large spans of the city to be found south and west. Some of these areas currently have hostile mobs - presumably pirates and thugs - and so I suspect that we might get Tiragarde Sound quests that take us in there (all the zones are likely due for some serious redesign regarding quests - it's still early.)

Boralus has some very impressive features - there is a massive gate at the sea-wall that allows ships to come into the port, and it's clear that this is very much a naval city, with massive channels running through it all, cannons aimed at the ocean, and a resilient and sea-washed look to the whole thing. In the west is Proudmoore Keep, which is presumably where Katherine, Jaina's mom, lives. As of yet, you can't actually go inside the big castle, which is something I hope changes (I'm still a little sad we never got to go inside Karabor.) There's a fair amount of Tiragarde Sound outside the city as well, particularly to the south, but I suspect that when everything is implemented, we'll see a lot of content in this urban locale.

Zuldazar is the capital on Zandalar. At its center is the massive pyramid of Dazar'alor, where Rastakhan sits, as well as the Horde embassy. There are several other hill-top districts with their own buildings that seem to be areas for questing - for example, in early Zuldazar quests you go with the Prophet Zul to help deal with some rebellious Gurubashi. I have not explored as extensively, but there's a lot more verticality to Zuldazar and fewer conventional urban expanses here.

Hub cities are fun, but it's also reasonably clear that you don't need a ton of space to do what you need to do in them - the shrines in Mists were perhaps unimpressive, but they did the job. My sense is that in BFA, they want to give you those safe hubs while also making use of the urban environments for content beyond going to the bank and talking with profession trainers.

Survival in BFA

Survival got a huge change in Legion, transforming a spec that, maybe in vanilla, had had some melee capabilities, but which had been a dedicated ranged spec since around Wrath into a true melee spec.

The result was a little jumbled. The Legion Survival spec has several things going on that don't necessarily interact with each other - your biggest source of damage doesn't even cost or generate Focus!

In BFA Survival is getting pared down in a way that I actually think is very effective. So let's break it down:

Interestingly, nearly all your abilities are actually ranged, though your autoattacks and your biggest source of damage, Raptor Strike, are limited to melee. Aspect of the Hawk now makes your Raptor Strike temporarily ranged, meaning that Survival can do nearly all their damage at range for brief bursts of time.

You will be maintaining a DoT in Serpent Sting, which now has you pulling out a little hand crossbow, similar to an Outlaw Rogues' pistol, and hits the target with a somewhat short-duration poison effect.

Wildfire Bomb is your baseline AOE ability, working a bit like the current Dragonfire Grenade, hitting the target and exploding to hit everything nearby.

You then generate focus via Kill Command. KC works like it always did, but of course unlike Flanking Strike you don't have to be in melee range. Additionally, the big proc for Survival is that Kill Command has a chance to reset its cooldown on use, allowing you to generate more focus.

And of course, once Serpent Sting is up and Wildfire Bomb is on cooldown, you'll be spending your Focus on Raptor Strike, a rather straightforward melee attack.

Naturally, talents add new abilities, like Murder of Crows, or replace/alter existing abilities. As an example, if you loved Mongoose Bite, it's now a talent that replaces Raptor Strike.

I'm intending to check out Nazmir on a Survival Hunter, and I've done a few intro quests. So far I think it feels much more coherent than the Legion version.

BFA General Questing Impressions

I got into the Warlords beta as soon as they started inviting random players. It's hard for me to remember how incomplete the systems were at the time.

At the moment, Battle for Azeroth's zones are in a state of near completeness, but perhaps because they're so close, you get a kind of uncanny valley effect.

The zone I've done the most of is one that has been open from the start: Drustvar. In many ways, this feels close to complete - there are a lot of new models, a full quest chain that takes you through the story of the zone, and indeed a lot of voice acting and music.

While some things are certain to change (there was one NPC whose voice lines were all incorrectly repeating broadcast lines from another quest chain) I suspect that Drustvar is largely complete, so I'll comment primarily on this zone.

My sense is that there's a bit of the "Christmas Tree" problem they used to have in Vanilla and Burning Crusade: you'd show up at a town and all of a sudden there were a million quests to do, many of which didn't really have much to do with another. Drustvar (and what I've seen of the other zones) has a tendency to send you in two different directions for different quest chains. I'm all for side quests, but what often happens is that you'll complete the objectives for, like, five quests and turning in two sends you on your way while you're forced to backtrack significantly in order to turn in the other three.

Plotwise, I'm very excited to see the Waycrest Manor dungeon, though I suspect that this story might be resolved within the dungeon, rather than a more epic raid setting.

The backstory of the zone is tantalizing, and I wouldn't mind finding out more about it. My understanding is that we're seeing the use of Death magic outside of the Scourge, and I wouldn't mind learning more about that.

There is some really effective quest design here - I particularly like a little side-quest involving a super-creepy child.

I've done a little of Tirisgarde Sound, though once again, I find myself continually sent forward before I've done the quests within a particular area. Perhaps having some stricter prerequisites would help.

Aesthetically, Kul Tiras so far is perhaps a bit heavy on the grey and brown - the autumnal look is good for witches, though having just seen the otherworldly creepiness of the Emerald Nightmare in Val'sharah, it's a bit of a step back. Honestly, this could be touched up with a bit of environmental work, and I suspect that that work is not yet done, given how bare and empty some of the Kul Tiran buildings are. Creature design in Drustvar is top-notch, between a broad assortment of wicker-creatures and a decent variety of masks and hoods for the hag-like witches.

What I've seen of Zandalar is definitely more colorful, which fits with the Trolls. I haven't done as much questing there (a bit in Nazmir,) but some of those same issues arise. Given how well they handled quest flow in Legion, I'm hoping to see them work on that in BFA.

Some Specs That Aren't Changing a Ton

It is, granted, possible that these are awaiting changes, but I've done a bit of testing with Frost and Blood Death Knights and Havoc Demon Hunters and I can say that they feel mostly unchanged.

Starting with Havoc:

One welcome change is that Eye Beam will now deal double damage against a primary target, which should allow one of the most iconic Demon Hunter abilities to be used in single-target encounters. There are some new talents and some that have been shifted around. You can still opt for Fel Blade and then make Demon Bite into the passive Demon Blades talent, which is how I currently run my DH.

Demon Hunters also now place a debuff with their attacks on the target that increases magic damage taken by 5%. This ought to apply to all your Chaos Damage abilities, and is essentially the raid buff you bring.

Now Frost:

Frost is almost entirely unchanged. The one thing that makes it feel a bit different is that, now that most cooldowns are on the GCD, if you're running Obliteration, you'll need to take two solid global cooldowns to get Pillar of Frost and Obliteration running.

Blood:

Similarly, Blood's changes are very subtle - the main thing is that Bone Shield now increases armor proportionately to your strength rather than simply reducing damage taken. Beyond that, though, it's mostly familiar.

If anything, the main oddity in all of this is going from epic Argus/Antorus gear and artifact weapons to a bunch of green gear. I suspect that when we take our characters into the new zones, even without artifacts, they should feel a lot more powerful than the premade characters available on the Alpha.

We also have yet to see how the Heart of Azeroth - essentially the universal "artifact necklace" of the expansion - is going to work. Currently, certain quests reward Azerite, which levels up the necklace, though for now it's just a boost to item level.

It's pretty early alpha though, so we'll have to see how things develop.

Demonology in BFA

After Demon Hunters took Metamorphosis, Demonology needed a big redesign from its Mists/Warlords incarnation. The focus thus shifted to, rather than transforming into a demon, instead summoning large swarms of demons (to be fair, Wild Imps were already a thing as of Mists if I recall correctly, though they were gained in a different way.)

In BFA, that theme is still central, but with some shifts. Probably the biggest thing is that you won't have Demonic Empowerment anymore - with the exception of your big 1.5 minute cooldown, once a demon is out, it's out. No handing out tickets anymore!

But there are other changes, so let's break it down:

Your two big rotational summoning abilities are still Hand of Gul'dan and Call Dreadstalkers, but the former now consumes a maximum of three soul shards, down from four, with the corresponding number of imps summoned.

Shadow Bolt is still your big filler ability, but you also now have Demonbolt. This functions a bit more like the old Soulfire spell. It has a very long cast time, but there is a proc that will make it instant-cast. The spell does a burst of damage and grants you two soul shards.

That proc, called Demonic Core, can occur when your temporary demons expire. Your dreadstalkers will always give you procs, and each Wild Imp has a 10% chance to give you a proc.

What this means is that, if you're lucky, your Imps will give you a positive feedback loop, allowing you to cast more Hands of Gul'dan.

You also get Implosion baseline, and I'll confess I'm not entirely sure how to use it best. This spell has all your Imps charge the target and explode, each dealing damage. However, since this kills them, I don't know if it also prevents them from proccing Demonic Core.

So what is cut?

Well, Doom is now a talent, so it's opt-in. Demonic Empowerment is totally gone, as is Demonwrath. This means that I believe Hand of Gul'dan and Implosion are your only AoE spells. If Imploded imps can proc Demonic Core, I imagine Implosion will be a good use for them in comparison to the single-target firebolts they shoot off when in AoE situations.

The big demon summons - Doomguards and Infernals - are now restricted to a single spec each, with Doomguards going to Affliction and Infernals to Destruction. This means Demonology actually gets its own big summon: Demonic Tyrant. This guy will buff your existing demons to allow them to last longer and also increases new demons' damage while simultaneously shooting shadow damage at your target. The Tyrant looks like one of the souped-up Eredar like Khaza'duum on Argus.

There are also talents that add more demons to summon. Bilescourge Bombers gives you a ground-targeted AoE (a kind of rain of fire, except it's felbats instead.) There's also a talent that causes you to occasionally summon an additional random demon, which is pretty fun as they seem to use just about any demon model - I've seen Shivarrah, Wrathguards, those weird Fel-bird-bug things you sometimes see in the central road in Mac'aree, those two-headed eye demons from Netherstorm, the demonic fel dogs from Tirisfal Glades... I suspect it's a long list, even if they're probably mechanically the same.

My basic sense of the spec is that it's a bit faster-paced, but perhaps any given demon doesn't deal quite as much damage (though I'm also experiencing the loss of the artifact weapon and the lack of awesome gear from Argus, so maybe I'm being unfair.)

Again, I really need to figure out Implosion, but I think that once I'm used to it, this will turn out to be a big improvement to the spec (really, does anyone like Demonic Empowerment?)

Drustvar First Impressions

One of the first zones to open up for Alliance characters in the BFA alpha, Drustvar is something I've been wanting for a very long time - a high level version of the spooky woods. We've gotten zones of a similar sort before - think Duskwood, Tirisfal Glades (and actually quite a bit of the Forsaken-themed zones.) But this is one that will benefit from modern quest design and looks to be quite the large zone (this seems true of all the BFA zones, as there are only three per continent.)

I don't know if this is indicative of the general design philosophy of the expansion, but my sense is that Drustvar is very much about having small, branching quest chains off the main path.

Tonally, I love the zone, though I'm sort of regretting that I went with the very-changed Demonology Warlock to first experience it, as I have to sort of split my attention between the quests and learning all the changes to the spec's rhythm and priorities (Implosion is baseline now, and I really haven't figured out how to use it yet.) I'd love to be able to copy over my actual characters.

Anyway, Drustvar really dials up the spooky fairy tale vibe to 11. The main villains seem to be a coven of witches who have drawn in many of the area's residents. The introduction to the zone is really cool - you find a town entirely frozen by some kind of curse, and all the animals have become hostile. This seems to be all about gradually uncovering the mystery of the witches - who they are, why they are doing what they are doing, and where they're getting their power. It's not quite the Castlevania-gothic look of Black Rook Hold, but instead goes for the fairy-tale creepiness factor. As an example, there's a side quest where you find a village that has been entirely massacred except for a creepily cheerful child, and you have to play along with her plans to have a tea party while you find the corpses of various villagers.

I'm only about a third through the zone, and I'm contemplating doing it on a Death Knight instead.

Battle for Azeroth Alpha

I've just received an invite to the Alpha for Battle for Azeroth! More details to follow.

It seems clear that the line between alpha and beta is blurring significantly, as I doubt that this humble blog is enough to really make me a gaming news source.

The plan, I think, is that I will take at least one Alliance and one Horde character through the new zones, though I will probably also roll additional characters to ensure that I get a good look at mechanics.

I don't know if I'll do copied-over characters or just 110 premades, in which case I think I'll probably use the allied races to give them a time to shine.

Pretty excited, as I was in the Mists and Warlords betas, but never got into the Legion one.

Paladin Rams and... Single-Headed Core Hounds!?

There were originally only two races who could be Paladins: Humans and Dwarves. In the early days of WoW, getting a mount was a pretty huge gold investment. Paladins and Warlocks were at a huge advantage: first off, their class mounts wouldn't take up inventory space, and second off, there was a far smaller gold cost to getting your mounts.

When Blood Elves were introduced, giving the Horde their first Paladins, they decided to give them something to distinguish their class features a bit. At the time, all Shamans used the model that Tauren currently use for totems, but Draenei got their distinctive crystal/stone totems. Similarly, Blood Elves got a recolor of the Warhorse and Charger, swapping out the gold/blue colors for bronze/red. At the time, though, Draenei, Dwarves, and Humans all used the standard, vanilla Warhorse/Charger.

When Cataclysm gave Tauren Paladins, they got a new pair of Paladin Kodo mounts, and at the same time, Draenei got their Paladin Elekk mounts. These were new models. But while Humans could rather naturally hold onto their Horse models (that being the standard human mount anyway,) Dwarves had to share.

There is some logic to this: Paladins of different races belong to different orders, with Blood Elves being Blood Knights, Draenei being Vindicators, and Tauren being Sunwalkers. Humans and Dwarves are both Knights of the Silver Hand, so you could imagine the standard charger is a Silver Hand mount.

But that's kind of broken down, especially given that all those orders unified into a new iteration of the Silver Hand in Legion. Now, with Dark Iron Dwarves being added, we're getting a special Paladin Ram mount - or rather, we're getting two.

It looks like standard Dwarves will get a gold/blue-barded ram while Dark Irons will get a black/red one.

What's interesting here is that Lightforged Draenei use the standard Exarch's Elekk and Grand Exarch's Elekk models, shared by the standard Draenei. But I suppose that as long as they were coming up with a new model for Dwarf Paladins, it wasn't that difficult to recolor them for Dark Irons.

But wait, there's more!

With the exception of the Highmountain Tauren, the allied races have had variants of their "base race" mounts - Void Elves get a Hawkstrider, Nightborne get a cat, Lightforged Draenei get an Elekk. Zandalari get a raptor, and Mag'har Orcs get a wolf. It appears, however, that Dark Irons Dwarves will instead get a Core Hound. However, unlike every other core hound we've seen, these look like they will be one-headed, which simultaneously looks weird for anyone who's played WoW in the last 14 years and maybe less weird for someone who wouldn't automatically assume that some kind of elemental beast ought to have two heads.

In terms of mounts, this leaves only Kul Tiran humans' racial mount unknown. There's of course a good chance it will just be a kind of horse, though there's a part of me that hopes it's some kind of weird sea creature. Granted, I'm probably going to make a KT Druid, in which case I'm more curious about its travel form (if it's anything like the bear form I'm pretty stoked.)

Professions Revamp in BFA

The short version:

Professions in Battle for Azeroth are going to be reworked in the following way: You'll have a separate skill level for each expansion's content, going up to 100. The great part of this is that if you've been neglecting your professions while leveling up (or just found it hard to keep up without farming or buying materials on the auction house,) you'll get a soft reset each time you go to a new continent. The perhaps less good part is that you won't be getting skill levels that are useful for old content by doing new content.

In Legion, with few exceptions for "prestige" items like mounts and such, skill level was sort of irrelevant - you had a quest chain to learn most recipes, and you could easily take, say, your Demon Hunter, and get them skilled up from 1 entirely in Broken Isles content.

Being able to effectively mine, gather herbs, or skin at a low skill level, as well as having recipes that skilled you up quickly and effectively, made professions much less of a pain in Legion. On the flip side, because none of it was skill-based, it did mean that you would need to perform quest tasks to fill out your recipe list, and some recipes were hidden behind infuriatingly rare drop rates (I still haven't gotten by Broken Isles teleporter recipe.)

I'm curious to see how BFA handles skill levels in its future content. Presumably we'll see a Wrath-era recipe that previously required a skill of 400 will now require 25, as Wrath's profession range was originally 375-450 (or maybe 350-450, as I think they started having a catch-up overlap in Wrath.)

What this means is that you might not be able to get all your BFA recipes without crafting anything, but the fact that we're effectively all starting at Kul Tiras/Zandalar skill 1 means that new alts and old mains are going to be on even footing going in.

Catching up on professions has been a huge issue with the game since they started releasing expansions. They've done some interesting experiments to try to fix this issue - personally, teleporter notwithstanding, I've liked the way it's been handled in Legion. But this is a pretty radical redesign. It makes me think of the way that Cataclsym saw a serious rework of talent points before Mists just threw out the old system and implemented the new one.

I suspect that in the long run, professions are going to feel more or less the same, but this should make it less of a pain for your Mag'har Rogue to work on her alchemy skill while leveling up through Pandaria.

Is Battle for Azeroth The Azshara Expansion?

In WoW's earlier expansions, the focus tended to revolve around a particular figure as its main antagonist. Burning Crusade focused largely on Illidan, having us face off against his allies before plunging into the Black Temple. Legion did give us a different perspective on all of this, of course, and Illidan's ultimate role is heroic, albeit very far on the anti-hero side of the scale. Wrath was all about Arthas, and Cataclysm built toward the confrontation with Deathwing.

Every expansion has a final boss, of course, but the more recent expansions have tended to be less about individuals than movements - Garrosh was the ultimate warmongering conqueror in an expansion about how imperialism could disturb the balance in existing societies. Archimonde was indicative of the ultimate fate of the Horde should it continue its aggressive ways (I'll grant this one was less obvious - I think Gul'dan would have made a better final boss for Warlords,) and Argus the Unmaker was an expression of Sargeras' plans for the universe - all the power of the Titans, but dedicated to destruction and death (though in this one as well I'd argue he was kind of a stand-in so that Blizzard can still keep a full-fledged Sargeras fight in their back pocket.)

Around the time of Wrath, prior to the announcement of Cataclysm, a few names were bandied around as possible villains for future expansions. Deathwing was, actually, one of the top characters on that list, so when the expansion was announced people weren't terribly surprised. But another figure in that tier was always Azshara.

In BFA, we know that we will fight, and presumably kill, Azshara, as she has been announced as a raid boss in the expansion. The question, however, is at what point we'll be doing so.

Take Xavius for example: Blizzard always warned players that they didn't think an Emerald Nightmare expansion would work, given how it's just a reflection of the physical world. But I think many figured they would eventually change their minds. Xavius was an established character and with the fleshing-out that characters always get when they're focused on, he might have carried an expansion. Instead, he got a rather memorable turn as the first final raid boss in Legion.

The question that I have is whether Azshara is going to go the way of Xavius or Cho'gall - established characters killed off early in an expansion - or if she will remain a major threat throughout.

Some spoilers from the Alpha to follow:

Witches of Azeroth

I grew up in Massachusetts. While I lived in a suburb of Boston, relatively far (for someone from a state as geographically small as Massachusetts) from Salem, New England is an area with a kind of quintessential Halloween climate, and even though my town didn't really push witches as a tourism thing (kind of in poor taste when you think about the fact that the actual trials were basically a bunch of totally innocent people being hanged or crushed to death by angry mobs,) the swampy woods that are leafless for much of the year, generally starting around October, really fit with the spooky vibe. It didn't hurt that my mom would organize the neighborhood Halloween party at the community center up the street.

I'm saying I've always been into Halloween and kind of spooky aesthetics, is what I'm saying, which if you've read this blog you probably gathered from my preference for Worgen (despite not really playing my poor wolf-man that much) and Death Knights, and obsession over the Scourge.

Hearthstone's new expansion (which I just impulse pre-purchased) is the Witchwood, which is set in Gilneas - a place with a sort of extreme version of that New England spooky climate (Boston actually gets gorgeous in late spring and summer.) It looks to have a classic haunted woods aesthetic.

Likewise, in Battle for Azeroth, we'll be getting the zone of Drustvar, where a group of evil witches apparently employ death magic to assault the locals, and use creepy wicker-man constructs as minions. We've also discovered that Kul Tiran humans are going to be a playable allied race, with similar wicker-style beast forms (I can feel my Night Elf gradually slipping downward in terms of priority as "main druid.")

Witchcraft has had representation in Warcraft lore, but there's actually very little consistency behind it. This is actually a common theme in fantasy RPGs - one rarely finds Witch as a playable class, despite it being one of the first fantasy archetypes that people tend to learn about (if you want to talk about a fantasy property basically every American has known since at least 1939 - if not from the novels the Wizard of Oz was based on - you've got the Wicked Witch of the West as one of the most iconic film villains of all time.)

I wonder why this is, though I have some theories. For one thing, Witch often comes with a gendered connotation. Witches are typically seen as female. I don't want to get too deep in this, but there is a tendency in our patriarchal culture to find it more culturally acceptable for women to use a "male" designation than vice versa. "Warlock" is often used as a masculine version of Witch, and few seem to bat an eye at a female character being a Warlock, which some might find a male character as a Witch to be embarrassing. There's a ton to unpack there, and I'm not getting into it in this post, and while I'd also point out that historically, Witch didn't have such a gendered connotation (plenty of men in Salem were executed as witches,) I could imagine that this hesitance to use the term for a playable class as being a relic of a time when RPGs and gaming in general were a less welcoming and open place for all people (including, you know, roughly half of all people.)

But beside this issue, I also think that Witches have struggled with a too-broad, or perhaps multifaceted definition.

In the time of the Salem trials, a Witch was almost exactly what we see with Warlocks in WoW. The source of a Witch's power was entirely infernal in nature. The people in Salem of course had a dichotomy-structured worldview. There was holiness, which didn't involve any sort of magic wielded by individuals; instead, a virtuous person would trust in God to do what was right and hope for salvation after death (I realize that talking about this in the past tense is kind of odd, given that tons of people believe more or less what I just described.) The flipside of this, of course, means that magic can only be derived through pacts with the enemy of God, namely, the Devil.

However, in contemporary terms, people who refer to themselves as Witches are generally more aligned with neo-paganism, typically with a focus on connecting with nature and a divinity more in tune with natural fertility (and, I think largely as a response to the aforementioned misogyny surrounding the witch myth, generally associated with femininity.) These witches, in WoW class terms are almost certainly more closely aligned with Druids. We even see this term used in-game to refer to a kind of half-practice of Druidism - Gilnean Harvest-Witches employ druidic magic, though it's only after their transformation into Worgen that these figures were able to become full-fledged Druids.

Another candidate for Witches in Warcraft are Mages. This largely follows the Harry Potter use of the term, where Witch is simply a female term for Wizard (see "Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.") This suggests the more intellectual style of magical practice, but without the fiendish associations and wickedness associated with Warlocks. Mages, which could potentially be broken down into Wizards and Witches, are simply intellectuals - kind of the fantasy equivalent of physicists.

Finally, we have Shamans. In Troll culture, which is largely inspired by a mishmash of Mesoamerican and Afro-Caribbean culture, Shamans are often referred to as Witch-Doctors. Indeed, a lot of these real-world cultures helped to inspire the modern image of Witches as well. Warcraft Shamans always kind of straddle these two identities - one is very focused on the alchemical elements as their primary theme, but the other identity is perhaps more akin to real-world shamanism - namely the belief in invisible spirits that surround us all the time. Beyond Trolls, we don't often see Warcraft Shamans referred to as Witches, though I'd point out that the tier ten set is called "Frost Witch."

While never referred to as witches, the Arrokoa outcasts have a rather witch-like aesthetic in the Spires of Arak. These people employ Shadow Magic, many of them effectively Shadow Priests. One could argue that player characters who go Shadow could potentially qualify as Witches, though I'd argue this is stretching it a bit.

So that's five player classes that might fit the term.

In BFA, we'll be interacting with witches in Drustvar. Unlike these classes, however, these figures seem more like a type of creature than merely people who chose a certain type of magic. In this way, they're more akin to D&D's Hags, who play that classic fairy tale role of the evil witch (in D&D, most Hags are classified as Fey, the same creature type as sprites and pixies, which helps them fit that fairy tale feeling. WoW doesn't really have a corresponding type.)

Long, long ago, before I started this blog and would instead record ideas about WoW in a single Word document, before Wrath of the Lich King had even been announced, one of the first ideas I had for a new playable class was the Witch. At the time, a lot of classes were defined around a magic type or often a combination of two or three types - Mages were Fire, Frost, and Arcane. Warlocks were Fire and Shadow. Priests were Holy and Shadow, etc. My concept for Witches was that they'd combine Nature and Shadow (oddly, that's actually represented by Rogues now,) taking a sort of darker version of Druid magic.

I'm not entirely sure that such a class would really fit into the game as it stands now - as we've seen, Witches are kind of spread out over many classes.

Still, I think that, as both heroes and villains, this character archetype has a lot of potential in-game.

Druid Form Images Essentially Confirm Kul Tiran Human Druids, also Kul Tiran Humans

If you thought dinosaurs were exciting (and yes, they are,) check this out:

(Care of MMO-Champion.)

This simple image tells us a couple things: Given the overall shape and familiar moon-like sigil on the shoulder, this would be a Druidic bear form. The gnarled wooden appearance heavily evokes the Kul Tiras zone of Drustvar.

We can thus, with a fair degree of confidence, that this means A: Kul Tirans have a druidic tradition, which does make sense given their connection to Gilneas. While Gilnean Harvest Witches were only scratching the surface of the practice until the whole Worgen curse came along and the Night Elves started training them, it's not impossible to imagine that the humans of Kul Tiras also developed these techniques (with Zandalari and potentially standard Trolls, we're seeing Druidic traditions not immediately descendant from Malfurion's teachings.)

Of course, if Kul Tiran Human Druids are going to be a thing, that means that this more or less confirms Kul Tirans as a playable race, and likely the Alliance's fourth allied race. Especially given the existence of Mag'har Orcs, it makes sense that the Alliance would get a variant on their flagship race as well, not to mention that they also mirror the Zandalari Trolls as the dominant race on their respective continents.

Personally, I've always wanted to see a darker side of Druidism in WoW, and while Worgen certainly come a little closer to that, this goes a big step farther by making these druid forms reminiscent less of animals but of the creepy wicker-man creatures found in Drustvar.

These days when you hear pagan or druid, unless you're in a very religiously conservative community, you probably think more of hippies and new age types, but there is of course a long tradition of seeing such things as terrifying - the province of witchcraft (again, if you meet someone who calls themselves a witch these days, you might roll your eyes but you're probably not afraid that they'll actually curse you.)

But that old-fashioned view of paganism has been a great source for horror fiction, and it's something I'm pretty excited to see in Drustvar. With their creepy looks (and we haven't seen the other forms yet,) it'd be cool to find that Druids in Kul Tiras are a sort of shunned and feared part of society, much like Warlocks are for most races or Mages are for Night Elves.

And yet, the bigger takeaway in all of this is that this pretty much confirms Kul Tiran Humans as a playable race. Again, it makes a ton of sense from a lore perspective, but I wonder, then what their class options might be:

Warrior: It's harder, I think, to justify a race not having Warriors than the other way. The only time we ever had a race that couldn't was Blood Elves during BC and Wrath, but they got them during Cataclysm, so here we are. And the burly Kul Tirans are very unlikely not to have any sort of classic martial tradition.

Paladin: This is up for debate. Gilneas apparently doesn't have a Paladin tradition (that seems to have been more of a Stormwind/Lordaeron thing among humans.) Still, Kul Tiras was less isolationist than Gilneas, so it's not that hard to imagine they'd embraced it.

Death Knight: I'd argue this ought to work - Kul Tiras didn't have a huge presence in Lordaeron from the Third War through Wrath, but if we can accept that some Argual-associated Worgen could be turned, I don't think it's a stretch for some Kul Tiran members of the Alliance to be turned as well (Jaina was certainly fighting the Scourge, though to be fair she was there more in her capacity as a Dalaran Mage than Kul Tiran royalty.)

Hunter: Much like Warrior, this one's harder to justify excluding than including. And especially given that Kul Tirans are supposed to be big monster hunters, this is an obvious fit.

Shaman: The only human-like people with a real Shamanistic tradition are the Vrykul, and as burly as Kul Tirans are, they're not Vrykul. I wouldn't say no if it was offered, but I doubt this one.

Rogue: Slightly less than Warriors and Hunters, but again it's pretty hard to imagine a race that can't have stealthy assassins, and certainly with all the pirates sailing out of Kul Tiras, they've got to at least have Outlaw Rogues.

Demon Hunter: I can really only imagine them ever adding Naga, Broken Draenei, or possibly Fel Orcs as Demon Hunter races beyond the ones that already exist. Which is a shame, because I could have totally rocked a Worgen Demon Hunter.

Druid: This is kind of confirmed and of course the impetus of the post. I'm really hoping for a creepier take on Druids in a game that has historically treated them as one of the most unambiguously good-guy classes.

Monk: If they're allowing Nightborne Monks, then this isn't really about cultural traditions as much as their willingness to deal with Pandaren, so I wouldn't rule it out.

Mage: Jaina's a pretty huge precedent here, and there is some mention of a local tradition of mages on Kul Tiras that Jaina was initially sent to Dalaran in order to represent.

Warlock: Where there are Mages, it's not hard to imagine Warlocks coming as well. Kul Tiras doesn't seem to have a particularly strong holy/righteous vibe to it, so I see no reason to rule them out.

Priest: Priest is another broadly applicable class, and given the very Lovecraftian sea-priests we seem to be getting in Stormsong Valley (I'd love to see a place called Innswitch or Dunsmouth) there's clearly also some Shadow Priest stuff going on there.

Allied Races versus New Races

One thing that's gotten a lot of coverage in the Battle for Azeroth alpha is the fact that the Vulpera, a race of fox-people who seem to primarily live in the desert of Voldun on Zandalar, apparently have about as much customization options as a playable race, with different fur colors, facial features, and such. It's gotten people to speculate that they could become an Allied race, though Blizzard for now insists that it's just part of a new method for dealing with NPC races like Naga or Vrykul to allow for broad variation.

One thing I think distinguishes them as well is that they'd technically not be an Allied race.

Much like Hero Class, Allied Race is kind of a funny thing, suggesting something broad but meaning something specific (Hero Class, for example, is ironic given that its two examples are Death Knights and Demon Hunters, making it closer to Villain Class.) Allied Races have come in a larger group than typical playable races because they're ultimately not as novel: none of the Allied Races are entirely new. When the Draenei were introduced in Burning Crusade, there was nothing even remotely like them already available. But the Lightforged don't require all that much more establishment of background or visual design than their BC precedents.

I think we can safely define Allied Race as a variation on an existing race. Clearly, they can do radical things like have them swap factions (Void Elves being the Alliance Blood Elf variant and Nightborne being the Horde Night Elf variant,) but fundamentally they're not going all the way back to the basics and building, for example, a new 3D skeleton.

The question, then, is what we might expect of entirely new races.

For example, especially after Warlords of Draenor, I've often thought that adding Arrakoa as a playable race would be really cool. I've had similar thoughts about the Vrykul, Naga, Ogres, and Broken Draenei. Only the latter of these would really make sense as an Allied Race (in BC, their models were actually based off the Tauren, though the Argus variants, which have an entirely different origin story, seem more similar to standard Draenei in posture and body structure.)

Allied Races come with some interesting new features: they start at level 20, meaning they're never in that slow, mount-less period (though the heirloom motorcycle has given anyone with a high-level alt a relatively easy way to get their new characters around.) They also have the heritage armor, which encourages you to level up at least one of each race the old fashioned way.

I suspect that the only "new character incentives" we'll get in BFA will be Allied Races - it looks as if we're getting four per faction - but in future expansions, if we see entirely new races, is it possible we'd see similar features?

The starting at level 20 feature is probably going to be just Allied Races - it's mostly there to paper over the fact that they don't really have their own starting zones, which tend to tell stories that are specific to the given race (though I'd argue that everything from Tirisfal through Hillsbrad, or even through Eastern Plaguelands is pretty Forsaken-heavy story.) An entirely new race would presumably at least get a Cataclysm/Mists-style starting zone taking them to level 12-15.

I could see Heritage Armor being a thing for standard new races as well, though I wonder what the statistics will be after a few months regarding how many people leveled all the way for this cosmetic reward.

Allied Races seem like a relatively quick and easy way to pump out new playable races, and also allows for variations that would not really be big enough to justify entirely new races. I think we're unlikely to see new races in the expansion that follows BFA, though it's also possible that Allied Races will make such an addition something that does not require a whole expansion to justify.

Suramar and the Max-Level Zone

One of the biggest successes in Legion, an expansion I think I'm just going to come out and say has been WoW's best (not that it's flawless, of course, but what is?) is the level-scaling feature. It turned out so obviously well that they went back and applied the feature to the entire leveling experience, and while there are some kinks they'll need to keep working out of that system, having now leveled up one Allied Race character and another one coming soon (he's 103 now I think) I can say that it makes the experience of questing and leveling a lot more enjoyable.

One of the big benefits of the system is that at level 110, all of the Broken Isles are effectively max-level zones. The developers were not forced to sequester little sub-zones that leveling characters would be forced to avoid and max-level characters would swiftly get bored of (like Warlords' daily quest areas,) instead everything is available.

But Suramar, the Broken Isles' southern central zone, was different. Unlike the others, it did not scale to level: you merely went there only after hitting 110.

That's not unprecedented, of course. Max-level zones have existed since the Isle of Quel'danas. But typically they're added later in the expansion. The only real precedent for Suramar was in Mists of Pandaria: the Vale of Eternal Blossoms (Tanaan Jungle could have counted if we had had access to it beyond the short intro quests in 6.0. It was technically there, but you couldn't go in.)

Here's the big difference, and indeed the difference between all other max-level zones and Suramar. In the past, max-level zones have all been about repeatable content. The Broken Shore, released in 7.2, is a great example (though again, it's a bit odd in that you could technically go there prior to the patch, both in the expansion-starting scenario and even just once you were in the isles, though there was not really any content beyond a ton of boss-level enemies in that latter form.) While there were story quests in a lot of max-level zones, such as the Vale of Eternal Blossoms, Suramar made those quests the primary focus.

Essentially, the richness you get from the story in a leveling zone is something you typically don't get in a max-level zone. I'm going to harp on the Broken Shore again by pointing out that its "story" quests were really only there to introduce concepts for the zone - there was almost nothing that actually furthered the plot of delving into the Tomb of Sargeras beyond, you know, actually doing it.

Suramar, on the other hand, had a complex narrative - one that was doubled in 7.1. You literally built a rebellion starting with just one other person, eventually taking back the city. And while Suramar City was clearly the main focus of the zone, there was also a ton of stuff outside the city that felt just as full and fleshed out as any quest chain in a leveling zone.

RPGs are, at their basic level, story-based games, and WoW often gets caught up in the MMO side of things to the extent that story takes a back seat. But as someone who's always excited to find more story, it was a joy to have an interesting plot to quest through even after I'd started putting together by badass raid gear.

What I wonder about is if Suramar will provide the model going forward. The Broken Shore was far more like earlier models, and while Argus had more of a plot, it was still more of a prerequisite to unlock your world quests (I was disappointed that Antoran Wastes, the most "final part" part of Argus had almost no proper quests.)

In Battle for Azeroth, we'll effectively be getting three max-level zones at the start in the form of the other faction's continent. I'm very excited about the fact that leveling a Horde character will be an entirely different experience from leveling an Alliance one. But I also wonder how much plot we'll get invading the other side's territory. I could imagine that we'll just get a short series of quests to establish a foothold and then we'll have a bunch of world quests, but I hope that we'll get a chance to really explore the plot and characters of the setting from this different perspective.

Kul Tirans and Druidism

With the (technically not officially confirmed, but definitely confirmed through datamining) addition of Mag'har Orcs as the Horde's fourth allied race, there's a fair amount of speculation around the notion that the Alliance could get Kul Tiran humans.

First off, this would balance the ratio of Orcs and Humans (though you could argue that Worgen and Undead are also kind of human as well,) which is kind of a theme in Warcraft. It would also make the Horde's courting of the Zandalari by going to Zandalar kind of balanced with the Alliance truly integrating (re-integrating, really) Kul Tiras. The only reason why you might not think of this is if you were to assume that the general playable race of "Human" covers all of humanity. But the Allied Races of course are all about respecting the different history and aesthetics of different branches of races, and someone from Kul Tiras is going to have a very different history than someone from Stormwind (one thing that doesn't come up often is how most humans from Stormwind probably spent a long time in exile after the First War.)

On top of that, Blizzard has gone out of its way to give Kul Tirans a slightly different physiology - it doesn't look universal - some NPCs look like your standard humans - but there are plenty of extra-burly characters (also some extra-scrawny) that have been showcased in Kul Tiras.

So I think the probability of Kul Tirans being the fourth Alliance allied race is pretty high.

On top of that, however, is a rumor that they might get Druids.

Druids are one of those classes in WoW that are much more limited. Unlike Warriors or Mages, Druidism has historically been considered part of a specific tradition, only practiced in a few cultures. In Vanilla, only one race per faction could be Druids. I suspect this was in part because they didn't want to have to make a ton of animal forms for every race, but as their ambitions and certainly resources have grown, they have brought forth a lot of new Druids.

And while the Highmountain druids mostly just used the Tauren druid forms, adding moose antlers and changing the travel forms, we can see that with the Zandalari they're going in a radically different direction, even making the "Bear," "Cat," and "Moonkin" forms into entirely different animals (everyone's a dinosaur!)

So how might Kul Tirans be connected to Druidism?

Well, Kul Tiras was founded originally by Gilneans who sailed south to the island from their old country (fitting, as Gilneas is probably the second-most naval-oriented human nation.) Gilneas, perhaps owing to the druidic forest in the south that corresponded to the one in the Emerald Dream where the original Night Elf Worgen were imprisoned, had a tradition of Harvest Witches, who would bless the crops and draw forth a healthy harvest. Their magic didn't really go much beyond that, but these Harvest Witches who fell to the Worgen curse found that their connection with nature combined with the training of the Night Elves allowed them to become full-fledged Druids.

Is it possible that they might have developed Druidism on their own?

There's a question to be asked about the racial restriction on Druidism: is it purely cultural, or is it physiological?

Because there's actually one big distinction that all the Druid races, except the Worgen, share: They're not Titanforged.

Trolls were the original humanoid race on Azeroth (probably - it could have been Furbolgs or one of the nonplayable races.) As far as we know, the Trolls were not created - they simply evolved as organic life, perhaps from elementals like the Proto-drakes or simply from some earlier creatures. Night Elves came to be after a group of Trolls settled around the Well of Eternity. Similarly, the Tauren were Yaungol - another presumably naturally-evolved race - who were likewise transformed by the Well (though less dramatically, I'd say.) The Highmountain are of course just a group of Tauren whose ancestor, Huln, was blessed by Cenarius.

And Worgen are afflicted with a curse that effectively forces them into a druidic shapeshift form - a curse that wasn't ever intended as a curse, just a druidic practice that got out of control.

So the question is: barring some kind of forced Druidic connection like the Worgen, are artificial creations like humans incapable of connecting with nature enough to be Druids?

This question might have been simpler to answer before we know that Azeroth was a nascent Titan. At this point, it's clear that every playable race has a Titanic connection - there are the Titanforged descendants like Humans and Dwarves, the kinda-sorta Titanforged Orcs, and all the others evolved on planets with a Titan Soul in the center. So perhaps the distinction between Titanforged and naturally-evolved races is not so profound. We know of two examples of races with radically different histories producing offspring - Orc and Draenei have produced at least two hybrids: Garona and Lantressor. Likewise, there's a long history of half-elves with ancestry from both human lands and Quel'thalas (Alodi and Arator being examples.) If these people are so widely distinct (being from different planets even) and yet are still able to reproduce, one has to imagine that the physiological differences are really only surface-level, and thus probably not enough to bar the use of any particular magic.

So it's probably more cultural, and that to me says that there's nothing preventing a culture from developing a tradition on its own.

Troll Druids, and especially Zandalari Troll Druids, seem to have developed their Druidic tradition independent of the Cenarion Circle, based more around their connection to the Loa. Is it possible then that the humans of Kul Tiras discovered their own form of Druidic magic, perhaps extrapolating from the nature magic of their Harvest Witches - a tradition they likely carried with them from Gilneas?

Time will tell.

Unpacking the Vast Complexities of the D&D Multiverse

While I suppose at this point I've been DMing for nearly two years, I still think of myself, as someone who got into the game in his 30s, as a neophyte to Dungeons and Dragons.

I'm also a fantasy writer, and so naturally, when I got into D&D, I took the opportunity to create a new world for my players to inhabit.

But one of the oddities of D&D is that, while they encourage the creation of new worlds (such as Matthew Mercer's Exandria setting for the Critical Role games,) the Multiverse seems to be fairly consistent. The Dungeon Master's Guide outlines the inner planes - such as the Feywild and Shadowfell, which are sort of "just outside reality," and then the Elemental Planes - followed by the Outer Planes, which seem much more directly tied to the alignment system.

Whereas some established, commercial IPs are complex but not so complex that I couldn't match their complexities (I'd argue my Sarkon setting is roughly as complex as the Warcraft setting, though that's one that keeps getting fleshed out with each WoW expansion, meaning I'll have to keep working to keep pace with it,) the D&D Multiverse is utterly immense.

Essentially, it seems that each setting, with exceptions for plane-hopping "settings" like Planescape or Spelljammer, is really just one of the worlds within the Prime Material Plane. What this means is that there's actually a lot of crossover between them.

Typically, humans have different gods to worship in each of the material plane worlds, but the other races tend to have the same ones. And entities from the other planes, like the Raven Queen of the Shadowfell or Asmodeus with his infernal hierarchy from the Nine Hells, play roles in each of these worlds.

This presents a bit of a conundrum for me and my setting. I'm torn between wanting to connect it with the greater D&D multiverse (which, for example, might make it more welcoming for veteran players) and creating my own thing. (I'm reminded of an Arrested Development line where GOB, the only slightly successful stage magician, buys a katana that apparently has a complex mythology and he interrupts the guy telling him saying "Yeah, I make up my own patter. Just ring it up with the dong tea.")

The thing is, I think that tons of writers have been adding to D&D lore since before I was born, so there's a ton of stuff that's rather firmly established on which I only have a partial grasp.

Currently, my thinking is that the multiverse of my own setting is actually outside of the main multiverse, in a kind of pocket of reality across the Far Plane. It's a setting with a very important and strong cosmic horror element, but I figure it's connected enough that faint whispers of existing D&D stuff could get in.

But one of the odd consequences of making my own stuff up is that sometimes I think I've come up with a clever take on an existing element only to discover that someone else has already had that idea.

Take, for example, my version of the Drow (Dark Elves.)

In my setting, no humanoid race is inherently evil - Half-Orcs, for example, are actually just Orcs but given that name because Orcs are so associated with barbarism and thus the other races feel that referring to them by the actual name of their race would be an insult.

Anyway, the Drow are an ostracized minority within the general culture, most forced to live in isolated villages in the more dreary and dangerous parts of the Empire. However, a large faction of them were evangelized by strange bird-like emissaries of an entity called the Dire King, who rules the Shadowlands - Sarkon's equivalent of the Shadowfell. This faction, who call themselves the Dire Elves, are far more vicious and cruel, like the Lolth-worshipping Drow of the main setting.

However, clever as I thought I was being, I then learned about the Shadar-Kai - a group of, yes, Drow, who, rather than worshipping Lolth, have become worshippers of the Raven Queen, who, you know, rules the Shadowfell.

Not only that, but my bird-like creatures, inspired mainly by the Taheen from Stephen King's Dark Tower series (which, if I had to name one top influence on me, that's the one) as well as the "Winged Servants" of the "Distant Prince" from the Welcome to Night Vale podcast, actually bear a resemblance to the "Nagpa," a somewhat obscure, but apparently about to appear in Mordenkainen's Tome of Foes, bird-headed group of Shadowfell creatures (themselves partially inspired by the Skekses from The Dark Crystal.)

There's a granularity to D&D's established stuff that is really intimidating.

Take, for example, the fact that there are both Demons and Devils. In my setting, I've taken inspiration from Warcraft (or at least my interpretation of Warcraft lore) and have three major, mostly independent major evils - the Lovecraftian Great Others, the ominous and corrupting Primal Shadow, and the undead legions of Gorendan, the God of Death (the latter being complicated by the fact that Gorendan himself might not be strictly evil anymore, even if his legions still are.)

So the Great Others have a pretty good spread of Aberration--type monsters to associate with (I've even got a history for Ilithids/Mind Flayers that suggests they were once benevolent before the influence of the Great Others corrupted them.) Gorendan and his lieutenant Absolon are a great source for all kinds of Undead monsters, but also work pretty well to introduce Devils - Absolon is essentially an Undead Angel, and in my setting, there are tons of fiendish creatures who serve a similar role that the Angels do to the benevolent gods, only they serve Gorendan.

The Primal Shadow is somewhat more vague, but the Dire King serves as a kind of tangible manifestation of its power. All the nasty Shadowfell stuff could come through this branch, but again, it's complicated. In the standard D&D stuff, the Shadowfell is actually home to much of the undead/necromantic magic. My Shadowlands are really more equivalent to the Dark World from A Link to the Past.

The thing is, I think that if you look at D&D's official, established canon, there's way more than just that. I mentioned Devils and Demons, but those are only the denizens of the Nine Hells of Baator (the Lawful Evil plane) and the Abyss (the Chaotic Evil plane.) But that's only two of seven evil-aligned planes, not to mention the Shadowfell or any of the other places where there's nasty evil stuff, like the City of Brass in the Fire Plane or the bad parts of the Feywild.

My problem here is that there's a certain hubris I possess that says "ok, you've (and by you I mean countless different writers all working at different times) had 40 years to establish this enormously complex canon. I must match it!" I'm not generally a competitive person - I don't even enjoy player-versus-player video games much. But I guess I found a worthy opponent and a challenge I find compelling.

May Dor, Sarass, Byzerak, Yad and all His saints have mercy on this foolish soul.

1/4: Heritage Armor of the Lightforged Achieved!

Man, the Broken Isles quests fly by.

The only hiccup in leveling through the Broken Isles is that, due to the fact that you can start at level 98 (and basically give a big middle finger to Alt-Nagrand,) if you really only focus on the main quests - getting the loremaster achievements in each zone but not sticking around for side-quests like the Nesingwary quests in Highmountain - you'll need a bit extra to get you to 110. However, Legion invasions provide a pretty big bump to XP - you get temporary authorization for world quests when there's an invasion in the zone.

Anyway, leveling up an additional Paladin was perhaps less novel than other classes might be. As a Protection main, I have plenty of opportunities to go Ret while doing world quests and the like, so the rhythm of Retribution, especially before getting Legendaries and the like, was not unfamiliar.

I suspect that my next Allied Race character expected to hit the cap (he's currently 79, nearly done with his time in Northrend,) the Void Elf Rogue, might be fairly different, as I've really stuck mostly to Subtlety for my main Rogue, and with this guy I'm thinking I'll focus on Assassination (Outlaw's tempting, but I already have a Worgen Rogue who's full pirate.)

The Allied Races actually feel a lot like seasonal characters for Diablo III - you're not necessarily going to make them your new main (though I imagine many will,) but it's a fun little challenge that reminds you what it's like to be low-level.

It's an excellent showcase for the new level scaling, and I think they've struck a decent balance of how quickly you get your abilities. Most specs feel pretty complete in the 40s or 50s (Rogues could probably get their AoE tools a bit earlier,) and while the rate of getting new abilities drops off in the higher levels (I think you get a full spellbook at 80 on every class, leaving only talents and eventually artifact abilities at higher levels to look forward to.)

In terms of the specific Lightforged Armor - I mostly like it, though I hate that the helmet (more of a collar really) cuts off the magnificent beard my character has (given that that beard is like 40% why I created that character, I've got his helmet turned off.) I also feel like it's a little too red in places - I get that the Lightforged Draenei don't have the blue/purple aesthetic of standard Draenei, but I'd rather have Gold, White, and Grey as their colors.

I do hope we get some NPCs to flesh out the relationships between the established races and the allied ones a bit more. I'd love them to emphasize the difference between the Lightforged Draenei and original flavor ones - my sense is that Lightforged are very martial and stubborn, more Lawful than Good, while the standard Draenei have a more nuanced view of the Light (much as Velen has demonstrated) and an overall warmer (and somehow also chiller) vibe, being a long-established rag-tag group of refugees instead of a cohesive military unit.