Saturday, September 22, 2018

What Stories for Heritage Armor?

In 8.1, Dwarves and Blood Elves will be getting their own heritage armor. We've gotten a bit of information about how these are attained - you need to be exalted with your home city (not very hard to do thanks to the Cataclysm-era tabards) and hit max level on a character of that race, then you get a quest chain.

We don't have a ton of details, but it appears that Dwarves will be revisiting Ulduar, presumably to investigate their Earthen ancestors and their connection to the Titans. Blood Elves appear to largely be looking into the history of the Sunwell and its corruption at the hands of Arthas to raise Kel'thuzad as a Lich, an effort that involved a devastating invasion that left 90% of Quel'thalas dead and moved Kael'thas to rename his people the Blood Elves.

One presumes that we'll be seeing heritage armor for all the non-Allied races as well, presumably unlocked in a similar way. So what stories are worth telling?

I don't think I'm going to go through every single one, but I will point out a few that I think could use elaboration:

Gnomes have been in-game since vanilla, but they are one of the least-explored groups. We know that Mechagnomes in what would become the Eastern Kingdoms were responsible for putting the Earthen into stasis - allowing some of their Titanforged cousins to resist or at least delay the Curse of Flesh while they succumbed to it. While all the drama of the War of Three Hammers was going on, Gnomeregan seems to have been an island of stability within Dun Morogh. I think it's long past due to get some story to the gnomes that takes them seriously (not that it can't have a lot of humor to it.)

I'd also really like to see the Forsaken reckoning with their identity - we've seen a shift from innocent people trying to fend off enemies on all sides to a kind of sadistic cruelty and warmongering cult of personality around Sylvanas. I've always felt that the defining factor for the Forsaken ought to be free will - it's what defines them apart from the Scourge, and it's even reflected in one of their racial abilities. Examining what it means to be Forsaken and what your ultimate goal as a free-willed undead should be could be really interesting.

For many expansions, it always felt like they were ignoring the Draenei. But after Warlords and Legion, I really can't make that complaint anymore. Still, given that their entire culture was built around the defeat of the Burning Legion and returning to Argus, there's an enormous question mark over what exactly they should be working toward now.

The Tauren, I think, also need to think about their place in the Horde. Under Thrall and Vol'jin, the Horde largely lined up with the values of the Tauren people. But even if they've grown to dislike the Alliance thanks to the years of animosity since joining the Horde, there's a lot of immoral behavior recently that really seems to clash with Tauren values. I've often thought that people who want the Horde to just commit to being the "bad guy" faction are ignoring the fact that it's really hard to imagine the Tauren fitting into such a group (not to mention that the nuance of the Horde is one of WoW's best features, when it's written well.)

I could go on, but I think this is an interesting opportunity to delve into racial identity in a similar, if more limited, way to Legion's focus on class.

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