Is The Last Titan Finally Time for Tinkers?

 WoW has had a pretty big influence on my taste in fantasy. Before I played WoW, I had no particular affinity for dark and gothic fantasy and the use of undead as monsters to fight, but I found myself so enamored with the Scourge and the Plaguelands as a setting (and the playable Undead) that it's now become pretty core to a lot of what I do in fantasy, like how I tend to use a lot of undead monsters in my D&D games (especially when a campaign is starting off).

But in a similar way, I don't know that I was all that into the idea of anachronistically advanced technology in an otherwise classic medieval fantasy world, but boy did WoW instill that in me.

WoW's approach to technology has never been realistic. In the real world, technology has generally gotten more powerful and more efficient over time. While it's debatable how much life has actually gotten better with technological progress (though I think we sometimes forget how miserable life was prior to innovations in agriculture and medicine) it's pretty clear that in a military sense (it is Warcraft after all) that a modern military unit with attack drones, automatic weapons, and guided missiles would fare quite well against a medieval unit of a bunch of peasants with (generously) pikes supported by longbowmen and armored knights.

But in World of Warcraft, we have people like the Draenei, with futuristic crystal technology like something out of a far-future sci-fi story, compared with the Tauren, who have stone-age (and I don't mean this in the pejorative way, but in the sense that much of their stuff is made of stone) tools, but it's all actually balanced out because of, well, the way that game balance works.

There is a conceit here in fantasy that you don't get with sci-fi, which is that the more "primitive" technology might be imbued with powerful magic. In a sense, magic can be a kind of alternative path or, depending on your perspective, just a different avenue of technological development.

The point, though, is that Warcraft as a franchise has never shied away from having modern and futuristic technology.

In Dungeons & Dragons, some were a little put off by the introduction of the Artificer class, fearing that it was injecting a steampunk aesthetic into a game that they preferred stick to the pre-industrial style of fantasy. I think there were some mitigating factors, though. First off, the class was initially introduced for the Eberron setting, which is explicitly meant to feel like 1930s pulp adventure stories, with a city full of skyscrapers, airships, and lightning rail trains, along with a playable species that are basically robots (though I'd argue, especially given the runes they each have on their foreheads, that they are more accurately sentient golems). On top of that, there are subclasses for the Artificer, like the Alchemist, that live very comfortably in a pure medieval world.

But I don't think you would have any trouble with an equivalent class in World of Warcraft, given the wide breadth of technology levels that we already have well-represented in-game. The Engineering profession has, since vanilla, always injected that Steampunk/Gearpunk look and feel into the game.

That profession does kind of inhabit similar spaces to where I'd expect a Tinker class to live, but such overlap is not a dealbreaker - I have a Blood Elf Shadow Priest I created right when Burning Crusade came out, and the introduction of the Void Elves does raise some interesting questions about what that actually means for him as a character (why is he tolerated in Silvermoon while his Ren'dorei cousins aren't? Though to be fair, he does get hostile comments from passers-by in Midnight-era Silvermoon).

I don't think there's quite the precedence we had for Death Knights and Demon Hunters in terms of the Tinker as a new class. Many WoW classes were built on the conceptual bones of Warcraft III heroes, with Arthas serving as the model for both the Paladin and Death Knight (his abilities being much more mirrored than the two classes are in 2026) and Illidan as the Demon Hunter. Chen Stormstout, who appeared in the Founding of Durotar campaign, which focused more on the RPG elements present in the game, gave us the Brewmaster, which would be expanded out into the Monk class (itself a fairly common RPG class archetype, though I think WoW's version is far more mystical/magical than they tend to be).

Lore-wise, there is a role of High Tinker as the elected leader of the Gnomes of Gnomeregan (though boy, how long has Gelbin's incumbency lasted? How long are the terms?) but there's no formal suite of abilities I think we could draw from as the starting point for the class.

The Evoker, however, was pretty much unprecedented in the lore. Warcraft III came out 24 years ago, so I don't think that WoW needs to remain beholden to it (and it certainly hasn't been that way - though I do find it interesting that the new WCIII campaign chapter apparently establishes Forsaken Paladins. If only I could get my old copy to install!) Basically, behind the Deep Breath ability, I don't think anything that the Evoker casts had any direct precedence other than the obvious presence of dragons across WoW's history.

In a similar way, I don't think this would be much of a problem for the Tinker as a class.

So, let's ask a couple questions: First, why now? Second, if we do get them, what kind of class might they be?

As to the "why now," the main thing I have to say is: giant robots. We got a tiny teaser for Last Titan, where a truly staggeringly enormous mech (bigger than Dimensius, possibly?) towers over Dragonblight. There is some speculation that this mech is Ulduar, animating like a transformer, though I don't know how compelling the arguments for that are.

The Last Titan is likely to feature the Titans and their creations quite heavily, and Titan stuff has always been technologically-themed, with the Titanforged creations acting as automatons, the creeping corruption of the Old Gods' Curse of Flesh being the only thing that would lead to fully sentient Humans, Dwarves, Gnomes, and such.

Titan technology is thus probably the most advanced technology that we've ever seen in the WoW universe (other than possibly the First Ones, though I don't know to what extent Blizzard is going to lean so much into the presence of the First Ones as they kind of feel like they're just the Titans, but... um... older, and they made the Titans, right? Feels a bit like lore one-upsmanship at the cost of narrative cohesion, even if I thought the aesthetic of Zereth Mortis was freaking incredible).

And so, it would make sense to have a class that really focuses on technology coming into the spotlight.

But what kind of class would it be?

Well, let's start with the basics at the beginning:

I think that in an ideal world, the Tinker would, like the Monk, be a "regular" class, rather than a Hero class that starts at higher levels. Granted, these days, Death Knights, Demon Hunters, and Evokers start at level 10, just a small boost compared to other characters, but the appeal for each was that you could get one started and immediately jump into the current content.

Frankly, I don't know that the leveling game is all that great right now - one of the problems is that you level up faster than your quests give you appropriate gear, and with level scaling, this winds up making you feel less powerful (it's still better than the pre-level-squish days when you'd level up without getting any sort of talent point or new ability and truly be worse off in every way when you hit a new level).

Notably, when introduced, Death Knights started at level 55 when the level cap had just raised to 80, so you were still expected to level up through Outland before heading to Northrend, where established characters could go at midnight right when the expansion came out (I think I actually hopped in to start my DK at the time. This was also when you had to go to the store at midnight to pick up the game with its discs to install it, which did sort of stagger when people were logging in. I think the first expansion I got purely digitally was Warlords of Draenor, which had an infamously rough launch).

Monks were the only class added to the game that started at level 1, and when you were going around Pandaria in the first few weeks of Mists, it was very funny to just not see anyone playing the new class because, well, they hadn't gotten to a high enough level to start yet! The first time I saw a Monk in one of my dungeon groups, like a week and a half in, I was astonished that they had leveled so quickly (this was also when leveling was a slower process).

Should the Tinker be released, I think it would make sense for it to be a "normal" class, but I think the appeal of getting them into the mix from the get-go might compel Blizzard to have them start off at a higher level, at least during The Last Titan. But that would also meant they probably need a unique starting experience.

That's actually probably fine. While "allied races" get a brief intro, it's not a fully starting zone or anything, and so the last time we truly got a fully-fledged starting zone for a new race was... The Pandaren on the Wandering Isle, 14 years ago. Now, I love the Worgen starting zone (can you guess what class I'd think of making a Tinker? In fairness, the last three times they released a new class, I had hoped to make a Worgen character, only to find out that they were not allowed. Worgen Monks are a thing now, but they weren't available during Mists, so my Monk is a Pandaren like I assume 90% of them are,) but it's not exactly "current" content up to all the modern standards.

Still, more like the Monk than WoW's three hero classes, Tinkers feel like they would be something that's just a learned discipline rather than some intrinsic alteration to one's physiology, which means in my mind that you could easily make them available to every playable race, and we probably don't need special cosmetic customizations and unique voice lines the way that Demon Hunters do (though note that Void Elf demon hunters use standard Void Elf voices).

In other words, I think the class can sit upon the existing races without much issue.

But what would the class actually... play like? What roles might it perform in a group?

I think that the safest bet is to just let it do all three: Tank, Damage, and Heal. I think each of these can easily be justified by the use of technology that is specialized for that role.

Then, the next question is armor type. This is, I guess, less of an issue in today's WoW where so much loot is just personal and you get all your relevant stats on any armor, but it can be a matter of aesthetics.

I think that, no matter what, they've got to have one of the heavier kinds of armor. Mail or Plate could both work. They should be wearing some kind of metallic armor. Between the two, I'd lean in more for Plate, but it does create some (admittedly easily-solved) issues based on where I go with this.

Plate armor, I think, works for the Tinker because of how you could imagine a Tinker building out their armor like a hull. There's precedence with Tanks, as all plate-wearing classes can perform the Tank role, and precedence for healers wearing Plate thanks to Paladins.

Now, I'd like Tinkers to all use Intellect as their primary stat, but for Tanks, it would make more sense to go with Strength given that tank trinkets tend to have Strength and Agility on them. That's fine - these stats are nearly indistinguishable in modern WoW, as you get equal numbers of any piece of gear you're likely to actually use.

Here, though, is where my vision for the class makes itemization slightly awkward:

I think their DPS spec should be ranged, and use ranged weapons.

Back when we had a ranged weapon slot, Warriors and Rogues would wield bows, crossbows, and guns, even if they only used them as "stat sticks." But since the removal of said slot (I want to say in Mists? Monks never had a relic for that slot, did they?) these three weapon categories have been used by only a single class, and after Legion redefined Survival as a strictly melee spec, only two specs actually use these three kinds of weapons. The Demon Hunter-exclusive Warglaive weapon, thus, ironically, with the addition of the Devourer spec, is now used by more specs than these three weapon types that were once used by nine different specs.

I think Tinkers should use ranged weapons.

But that does, admittedly, create some itemization issues. If it's a Plate class, Tinkers would be using Intellect or Strength as their primary stat, and ranged weapons only have agility on them.

Now, one solution is profoundly simple: just add stats. They did this with Warglaives in Midnight, adding Intellect on top of Agility so that any Demon Hunter can use any Warglaive and have it function for their spec. Perhaps we could then add Strength or Intellect to ranged weapons as well.

We've put the cart before the horse a little, though, so let me back up:

Currently, every Tank class has a melee dps spec. It makes sense, as if you're a class that can fight in melee, it seems reasonable that you could focus those skills on survival or on damage output.

But I do think that the Tinker ought to be able to use guns (and by extension, bows and crossbows). In part, this is because the Engineering profession has always been the one that is used to make guns. But I also think that a weapon like that is, you know, a bit of advanced technology.

Also, from Vanilla up through Shadowlands, WoW had not added a single ranged dps spec to the game (even removing one by making Survival a melee spec in Legion). Since then, we have gotten three new ones with Devastation, Augmentation, and Devourer. Weirdly, all three of these have been "short range" ranged specs, so you could argue that we still haven't seen a single "full range" ranged spec added to the game in its 22 years.

Now, it would probably be simpler to just make a ranged Tinker DPS spec function as a spellcaster - you already have Intellect on Plate. But I really feel that making the class more generally weapon-based would be a better choice - a weapon, after all, is a type of tool.

The other alternative is to just make the class a Mail one - Agility could work for ranged weapons, and half of the existing tank classes use Agility anyway. Bizarrely, despite Mail actually giving more armor than Leather, we don't actually have any Mail tanks (though there's an evergreen rumor that Shaman tanks are right around the corner, which has been circulating for about 22 years). Itemization works out fine here, as tanks and dps would use agility trinkets while healers would use intellect.

I think this could work, but I do feel like the aesthetic of Plate makes more sense to me.

Next, another thing:

Let Tinkers use Shields.

It's kind of absurd that only three classes in WoW can use Shields, and one of them can't even tank! The fact that 4/6 tanks don't use shields is kind of crazy. I get why Death Knights went without them (though funnily enough, the D&D Death Knight monster stat block does use a shield) and it wouldn't really make sense for Monks or Demon Hunters. I'm not sure it really makes sense for Shamans, except that back in Vanilla when Paladins and Shamans were faction-exclusive, you had to have someone on the Horde who could make use of all the Intellect Shields.

But I think Shields make a lot of sense for Tinkers, and we even have a fair amount of precedence with various mech suits and such using shields.

Mechanically, I think Tinkers could just use Mana, though this resource has basically ceased to have any real meaning for specs that aren't Healers or Arcane Mages (and I think even for them, managing mana has gotten less central). I think instead I'd prefer some form of unique, original resource like Power.

This could act as a secondary resource like Essence does for Evokers or Runes for Death Knights (well, I'd argue that Runes are the primary resource and Runic Power is secondary, but whatever).

I don't really want to get into the weeds on this, though. Broadly speaking, I think tanks would probably have bursts of electricity and fire (maybe some arcane damage to distinguish it a bit from Shamans) and use force fields as damage absorption shields. Ranged dps would distinguish themselves from Hunters by focusing on charging their shots with various energies and possibly throwing bombs and missiles (I realize there's a bit of an overlap here with Survival Hunters). Healers, I figure, would channel healing energy into allies, maybe shielding them and possibly tossing down helpful pylons (though I get that the latter concept is a bit Shaman-like).

Aesthetically, here's what I'd want to avoid:

The Dracthyr problem.

I think part of why the Dracthyr are (I take it) unpopular is that you don't actually get to see your freaking gear on them when they're in their draconic true form. So much of the fun of a WoW character is building the perfect aesthetic for them, and while the Dracthyr customization options are broad and deep, they still pale in comparison with the sheer breadth of transmog options that any other WoW character can get their hands on.

Truly, I try to fill out the full tier sets for each class each season (ideally grabbing Heroic pieces in each slot and upgrading them to 6/6 to get the Mythic looks) but with Evokers I don't think I've ever actually done so because... well, why bother?

This is, admittedly, something of a problem for Druids, and while I love the spooky Wicker Man vibes of my Kul Tiran Druid (the only BFA Allied race who took over as a class main and had me putting my 2006 vintage Night Elf Druid in mothballs) I'm less motivated to grab all those transmog appearances given that when he's in combat, he always looks the same.

I do want Tinkers to have a signature, unusual look, but I don't want that to get in the way of letting their actual chosen gear appearances showing up.

Now, I don't think that's going to be much of a problem: the problem for Evokers is really more a problem of Dracthyr, and if this is available to every race, then I think we'll be fine.

But, that being said, I think we could do some fun things:

I think the tank spec should be in some kind of mech suit. The key is to make the suit unobtrusive enough that you can still show off your cool transmog. In fairness, maybe the solution is simply to have Tinker tier sets give off something of a mech suit vibe. Spells/abilities that manifest as big mechanical arms or antennae or the like might be enough to give off this feel.

Blizzard has gotten more creative with how class abilities manifest themselves, so maybe we can evoke the idea of being in a mech suit without messing too much with the overall silhouette of our character.

    So, as a big caveat: there's zero direct evidence that we're getting a Tinker class. It'll be probably a ways into 2027 before we get firm details on the actual expansion features of The Last Titan, and much as we never got Necromancers in Shadowlands, there's every possibility that the announcement will come and go with no new class announcement (though I think if not, there's a decent possibility we'll see new specs added, like the aforementioned Shaman tank).

I would very much like to get a Tinker like what I've described, but this is all just rampant speculation for now.

Devouring the Void: Further Thoughts on WoW's Newest Spec

 The Devourer Demon Hunter is honestly a bit weird on a conceptual level.

Demon Hunters had only two specs for the first ten years of their existence, and they both sort of operated in a similar conceptual space: fel fire, demonic transformations, and sucking up soul fragments (whether as a bit of soloing sustainability for Havoc or a central healing mechanic for Vengeance). Interestingly, the two specs originally had different resources, with Havoc using the purple Fury that they now all use and Vengeance having the ultimate edgelord resource, Pain, which was colored more kind of orange. They honestly worked basically the same, and so it made sense that they consolidated it into the resource that also more or less shared the class color.

But we haven't really dealt with demons as a major threat since Legion. Demon Hunters work pretty well as one of the major "cosmic warrior" classes given the kind of space-alien theming of Warcraft demons, and so it sort of makes sense that, as we have an expansion with void-based villains that are if anything even more space-alien-coded that it would be Demon Hunters who develop a new technique to deal with them.

This comes hand-in-hand with adding Void Elves to the list of races that can play Demon Hunters (the only real downside is that they don't have quite as many unique customization options as the Night Elf and Blood Elf ones, and don't get unique voice lines. I did, however, discover that they have evidently added the ability to give at least Void Elf Demon Hunters glowing blue eyes rather than green).

Anyway, I leveled up a Void Elf Demon Hunter to stick pretty religiously to Devourer as a spec, while my original Night Elf one remains committed pretty firmly to Havoc (he dabbles in the other specs, but I also have a Blood Elf who I think is committed to Vengeance. Does this make sense in this day and age of extremely simple spec-switching and where most gear works for all your class's specs? Maybe not. But it helps me kind of organize the way I think about a character, and also lets me try out new looks and feels).

Devourer as a spec has always felt a little weird to me: looking at it without any kind of external guidance, it feels like the point is to cast Collapsing Star as often as you can, which means first building up the Void Fragments you need to activate Metamorphosis, and then racing to generate and gather as many more as you can to get as many casts of Collapsing Star in there as possible.

But it has always been quite difficult to get Metamorphosis to actually last long enough to get the spell off, even just casting it once (we'll address Apex talents in a moment).

The weird thing is that, at least according to Icy Veins, this isn't actually how the spec plays, or at least how it plays most effectively. Instead, what seems to be more ideal is to basically ignore Collapsing Star - instead of trying to extent your Metamorphosis as long as you possibly can, you instead want to get it as frequently as possible to take advantage of Voidsurges from the Void-Scarred hero talent (is the Demon Hunter the only class where one of its Hero Talent trees changes names depending on your spec?)

I am of two minds here.

See, I actually like the version of the spec that I had in my head, and I do think that building around it, which would involve actually picking up the Apex talents, could be fun, but it seems that this Voidsurge-focused build is considered more effective.

And actually, once I released my attachments toward that Collapsing Star-focused version of the spec, I started to enjoy the version I had. It's zippy (I don't think any spec has as much movement built into it, even Havoc) and bursty in a fun way.

The other major change I needed to make was that I think at least early in the expansion, you could take talents that made Soul Immolation a passive proc rather than an activated ability. Perhaps in 12.1 they changed this so that you do really need it to be a button on your bars.

Well... while I was leveling my Voidy DH up, I was not aware of that, and I will tell you, now that I am actually hitting that button, it's smoothing out the rotation a bit and also helping a lot with survival (given that you get healed for 30% of your HP over the course of it).

I still think I probably like Havoc best, but I do find myself enjoying the increased speed and flow of Devourer.

Sargeras in The Last Titan

 Sargeras is the original Big Bad of the Warcraft Franchise.

As the mightiest warrior of the Titans, themselves godlike beings (the closest that WoW gets to a classical Olympian-style pantheon - they're literally called The Pantheon,) the story goes (after a retcon or two) that Sargeras, in the ancient past, was tasked with fighting demons across the cosmos. While any given demon was not much of a match for him, the problem was that they kept returning from death, reborn in the Twisting Nether.

So, Sargeras built Marduum, a prison-planet where, rather than killing the demons, he would bind them there so that they could not escape.

Notably, the Titans actually used demons for some of their purposes. As we learned in the Green Fire quests back in Mists of Pandaria, Doomguards were used to sniff out people performing sacrificial magic - essentially, taking demons that were particularly drawn to mortal sacrifices, the Titans could then track down mortals performing such heinous rites using the very creatures they were attempting to summon and bind to their will.

It was when Sargeras found the world of Telogrus (never officially confirmed, but implied to the point that I think it's more or less undeniable,) it was infected not with demons, but with its own version of the Old Gods, who had wormed their way into the planet's Worldsoul and corrupted it. A group of demons, the Nathrezim, had come there to take part in this corruption, or perhaps study it (or, perhaps they had led Sargeras there knowing the effect it would have on them. Look, the Revendreth-Nathrezim connection was a wild swing for Shadowlands, and I don't know how much Blizzard would prefer to sweep that under the rug, but it's canon until retconned away).

Sargeras determined that the Telogrus World Soul was beyond saving, and so slashed the planet it half, killing its world soul and horrifying the rest of the Pantheon.

(As a side note: if the death of Argus sundered the Arbiter and the Shadowlands, had something similar happened when Telogrus was killed? Or was the fact that Telogrus hadn't yet fully formed as a Titan or other equivalent entity enough to keep it from disrupting things? Presumably the Jailer had already fallen from grace by that point if he was sending the Nathrezim out there into the cosmos, so this wouldn't have been the start of his villainous journey.)

Now an outcast, Sargeras determined that he would need help if he was going to purge this void corruption from the cosmos, and so he destroyed his own demonic prison, unleashing the demons he had trapped and conscripting them into what would become the Burning Legion.

When the rest of the Pantheon confronted him, they told him how they had saved another world soul from void corruption - namely Azeroth. This didn't work out very well, as Sargeras' "destroy the entire universe to save it" plan had gone into full swing. He "killed" (they got better) the rest of the Pantheon and set out searching for Azeroth and looking for new recruits to join the Burning Legion, ultimately discovering the Eredar, a super-advanced civilization living in a seeming utopia, but whose curiosity to learn more about the cosmos would make them easily manipulated. As we know, most of the Eredar willingly joined the Legion, while some fled into exile as the Draenei (or fought in resistance as the Krokul).

Sargeras tried numerous times to invade Azeroth - the War of the Ancients was the first major attempt, while the invasion of the Horde was another notable one (though the Horde's defeat and the death of Gul'dan allowed the Orcs to break free of their Legion affiliations). Finally, we had the events of Legion, which ultimately led to the biggest blowback of one of these invasion attempts, as Illidan Stormrage opened a portal to Argus, and the heroes of Azeroth were able to strike a deadly blow to the heart of the Legion and free the Titans from their eons-long imprisonment.

The last we saw of Sargeras, the other Titans magically pulled him away from Azeroth, dragging him into the Seat of the Pantheon where he would be imprisoned and guarded by the other Titans along with Illidan.

Sargeras attempted one last parting blow, driving his sword into the heart of Azeroth, and as we've seen in the 12.2 preview images, got like, 20 feet away from hitting the World Soul itself (given this is a sword nearly the size of a planet, 20 feet is almost nothing).

But, as I noted in the end of Legion, it felt kind of strange that after all this time, and after an expansion called Legion, we didn't get to fight Sargeras himself (to be fair, the first expansion was Burning Crusade, which is practically synonymous with Legion. But we didn't have Demon Hunters yet!)

I'm still not sure we're going to kill Sargeras at the end of The Last Titan. Frankly, my money is on Iridikron acting as the expansion's big bad.

It was, after all, Iridikron's plan to lure the Titans to Azeroth and lay a trap for them.

But... look, we can't discount the fact that the Dark Titan himself is out there, and specifically, if the Titans themselves come to Azeroth... they've got to bring him with them, right?

Sargeras became the master of a universe-wide army of demons, but he's not actually a demon himself (though he looks way different than he did before destroying Marduum. Originally black-haired and rocking a vaguely Ancient Egyptian vibe, he's now fire-haired-and-beared and has big scary wings and such (and I think horns?)

Still, while Aman'thul is the ultimate patriarch of the Pantheon, occupying the Zeus/Odin role within it, I think Sargeras might represent the absolute worst impulses of the Titans, the need to control everything to the extent that he'll destroy that which he can't control. I can totally imagine a world where Aman'thul emerges as the villain of the story, to be sure.

But I do really wonder what role Sargeras will be playing. It's only been 8 or 9 years since the final raid of Legion, and even if it's a little longer in-universe because of the post-Shadowlands time skip, this is an infinitesimal amount of time for beings like the Titans. (Though to be fair, as Algalon said, he's seen entire worlds created in the space of a heartbeat, so maybe they can process a whole lot of information in a very short period of time.)

My guess is that if Sargeras is playing a major role in The Last Titan, it's something Blizzard will play pretty close to the vest.

Honestly, I think they have a marvelous opportunity here: The Jailer jumped into canon as this massive, Sargeras-level threat, but was written so simplistically and also had so little time to develop as a bad guy that he wound up falling flat.

Blizzard has shown that they can do villains, even if they are cartoonish and mustache-twirling, a lot better with Xal'atath, and while he hasn't had a ton of screen time, Iridikron also feels like a smarter, more strategic threat.

I would love to get some high-quality writing to give us a Sargeras that truly feels like the deserving Big Bad of Warcraft. I want to see him be both mighty and a genius. Let him feel august in his regal power, larger than life, but without spouting cliche lines like "pitiful mortal," as we had the Jailer do. (Sargeras wouldn't find mortals pitiful - that would require him to feel pity.)

And... don't kill him off. For a bad guy who I think has been part of the lore for 32 years, it's not like it'd be too early. But the thing is, we haven't actually gotten enough time with him to earn that catharsis. I know that part of the idea of ending the Worldsoul Saga is to move onto something new, but I think it would be great to actually see some classic villains get their due (and not in a half-assed Warlords of Draenor way).

What Does WoW Forever Mean for Retail WoW?

 I haven't really played WoW Classic much - I basically got an Undead Warlock out of Deathknell and onto Bree and then decided I liked how modern WoW plays better. I ran a Death Knight through the starting experience to unlock a cool undead proto-drake mount, but beyond that, I haven't really touched it.

It's something I appreciate as a sort of living archive of the game WoW used to be.

There have been "Classic" recreations of various expansion, with I think even Warlords of Draenor Classic due to launch (though man, who would be eager to live through that again?) But as I understand it, there's also been a version locked at Vanilla-only.

This version (and I could be totally wrong here, as again, I don't play Classic) saw an experiment with the Season of Discovery, which brought in new (I think temporary) gameplay ideas that diverged from the 2004-2007 run of the original WoW.

Forever seems to be building on the popularity of Season of Discovery and making it the whole gist of the game, as a kind of alternate timeline for WoW (which they describe as not really changing the overarching story, but filling in gaps here and there with additional stories and characters).

Now, as I understand it, part of what appeals to Classic players is the relaxed pace - knowing that things are going to be as they are indefinitely means you aren't rushing to get geared up on all your alts to run Naxxramas.

In the early days of WoW, the endgame really wasn't the whole game. There's just a natural shift that occurred as players had been playing longer, where their mains and alts would hit the level cap of an expansion and thus be well-positioned to hit the level cap pretty early in the next one.

Given that, WoW has shifted its focus more and more to level-cap content, with the actual process of leveling up being more of a kind of prologue to the real game.

But for those of you who weren't playing 20 years ago, that wasn't necessarily the expectation back in the day. "Hitting the level cap" in Vanilla was practically being done with a character, and endgame content like raiding was reserved for a narrow few, more akin to Mythic Raiding today (and even that I think might be more accessible than it used to be). The game, then, was focused more on the personal journey as you quested across zones, perhaps occasionally running dungeons together along that journey (and given that the level 40+ questing content prior to Cataclysm was utterly anemic, you kind of had to grind dungeons to get to level 60. Seriously, if I recall, you could come to Tanaris at level 40, get like one quest, and then find that the next quest in the zone required you to be level 45 or something, when you were maybe near 41 after that quest. I ran Zul'Farrak a lot).

I'll confess that my approach to WoW is a bit mechanistic - honestly, my main goal is to try to get the fully Mythic tier appearances on each class (by getting Hero gear from Delves primarily and then upgrading them to 6/6). It's not necessarily the way I really ought to be playing the game, to be frank.

So I can kind of see the appeal of an endless "get there when you get there" version of the game. Indeed, as expansions have been coming out faster recently (War Within was by several months the shortest expansion in WoW's history, and Midnight seems likely to be on a similar 18-month timeframe) there's something of a rush to consume all the content you can (I gotta say, the in-between patch content like Forbidden Reach, Siren Isle, and Ritual Sites are ones that I've really kind of checked out of).

Anyway, the thing that's really odd, though, about WoW Forever is that this new content doesn't exist in the main WoW. So... should it?

I will say, I was glad to find out that the added Paladin-capable races coming in WoW Forever will also be joining us in I believe 12.2 (possibly 12.2.5). I'm honestly kind of eager to take an Undead Paladin through Tirisfal Glades and such, as it's been a while since we've really been able to hang out in WoW's spooky mode (Talebound appeals to me).

But what of, for example, the Skyborne? The backstory on these people is that they're apparently exiles from Dire Maul, who rose up against their prince. Practically speaking, they seem to use the Blood Elf model (a popular one) but have blue skin and golden eyes. While we could probably recreate that look with the Void Elves, it does make me wonder how much of what they come up with for WoW Forever that they might then import into mainline WoW.

It is a strange thing - this sort of parallel, or perhaps branching version of Azeroth. I guess the other big question is what this will do to the playerbase? I suspect that Forever won't siphon off players from "retail" anymore than Classic did, but will the Classic playerbase be divided here?

Wild Speculation on The Last Titan

 As I write this, it's the evening of the opening of 2026's Blizzcon. With announcements for WoW Forever, 12.2: Eclipse, and a few other things, we got just a teaser trailer for The Last Titan, and confirmation that it will release some time next year.

This next expansion is due to close out the Worldsoul Saga, and is set in Northrend, which will presumably be getting a big visual overhaul and update (also, thankfully, we'll almost certainly have the old, 2008 version of Northrend preserved, as Blizzard learned its lesson on removing old game content after Cataclysm).

The teaser gives us one major hint about the tone of the expansion, but news about the final patch of Midnight similarly seems to confirm some ideas I had had going into this expansion and how it would affect the story of the Last Titan.

I'll put the teaser in here, in case you haven't watched it, but I'll also describe the gist of it, as I had done in a previous post:

In the teaser, we see familiar locations in Northrend, with a snowy, overcast sky. Utterly dwarfing both Wyrmrest Temple and Icecrown Citadel, the two largest structures on the continent outside of Ulduar, is what appears to be a colossal (that word being the title of the teaser) Titan Construct that points its massive shoulder-cannons at the viewers as the teaser ends.

This is the Fel Reaver x100, possibly literally.

That's all we have to go on, but here, I'll start putting forth my speculative ideas:

    The Titans Are Going to be A Major Enemy Faction

The Titans have generally been presented in WoW's lore as good guys - the closest thing we have to true gods, or perhaps not "true" but "traditional fantasy gods," akin to the Greek Pantheon. They are, after all, the creators of a good chunk of the playable races, including Humans (which then means Kul Tirans, Worgen, and Undead,) Dwarves (along with Earthen and Dark Irons,) Gnomes (along with Mechagnomes,) and effectively Orcs (and thus Mag'har Orcs) as well, as they evolved from the giant creature Aggramar created to deal with the overgrown life on Draenor.

We've seen Titans and their creations corrupted - obviously Sargeras, but then also figures like Loken. But we've also seen Titanforged beings acting in rather hostile and malevolent ways, like the Mogu on Pandaria. Sure, you could explain the Mogu as being rogue creations.

We got our first real scare by the Titans with Algalon, who came to determine if Azeroth should be "reoriginated" to cleanse the Old God corruption from the surface. The fact that the Titans built in a "kill everything on the planet" button is... a bit worrisome.

But starting in Dragonflight, we began to get a different perspective that was less flattering. The Primal Incarnates opposed the five dragonflights because of their "corruption by" and collaboration with the Titans. And we saw how places like the Ruby Life Pools infused order into the dragon eggs there in a manner that sort of seems like brainwashing. In the final patch, as we tried to prevent Fyrrak from burning Amirdrassil in the Emerald Dream, we found lore that suggested that Aman'thul was very upset to see Life magic infused into Titanic creations, in opposition to Eonar's support of this.

In War Within, the Earthen were forced to cut their connection to their Titanic protocols, as it prevented them from taking the steps necessary to defend Khaz Algar, and a massive Titan construct (smaller than the one in the Last Titan trailer, to be sure, but with similar vibes) to go and attack Dornogal.

To be clear, I don't think that the Titans are likely evil, per se. But I think that they, and perhaps here I'm most specifically referring to Aman'thul, are hardcore Lawful Neutral, in D&D terms. That means that the order they bring to Azeroth is something they're going to prioritize over what we'd think of as the moral obligations to find a way to compromise and preserve life.

Is this a retcon? After all, Sargeras wanted to destroy Azeroth like he did with Telogrus after finding it was infected by the Old Gods, but Aman'thul and the rest of the Pantheon took a different approach.

While I'm confident we'll defeat Xal'atath and prevent her from merging with the World Soul to do what the Old Gods never accomplished, the fact that she gets so close might mean that the Titans decide they've taken too big a risk.

Thus, I see one of two scenarios: either the Titans come to conquer Azeroth and establish full control over it once again, purging "corrupted" life (as in, those affected by the Curse of Flesh, or those who weren't part of their Titanforged creation in the first place, meaning all of us except the Earthen,) or they come to fully destroy the planet.

Here's a factor that we might not have considered:

At the end of Legion, Sargeras was brought to the Seat of the Pantheon, to be held there imprisoned by the other Titans and Illidan. In my mind, he and Illidan have been in an endless duel this entire time while the rest of the Pantheon maintains containment around them, but we don't really know what's been going on there.

Sargeras is very powerful, but might he also be insidiously persuasive? Xal'atath's breaching the Worldcore is precisely the scenario that Sargeras warned the other Titans about, and even if she doesn't wind up succeeding in corrupting it (which is technically still an "if") it might be enough to get some of them, at least, to agree with Sargeras' plan to destroy at least Azeroth in order to prevent it from falling to the Void.

But rather than the demonic army of the Burning Crusade, Sargeras would get access to the full arsenal of the Titans, which is honestly probably stronger, because it's that power that he used to imprison the demons that would first form the Burning Legion in the first place on Marduum.

Whether Sargeras or Aman'thul is at the head of this Titanic assault, I suspect that we will at least be facing Titans and Titan creations as one of the core, major threats in the expansion.

    New Class: Tinker

Ok, while I'm very confident in at least the broad strokes of that previous scenario, this is my pie-in-the-sky idea.

People have been talking about a Tinker class for ages, leaning into WoW's utter rejection of strict medievalism in its fantasy (you wonder why I've been playing this game for 20 years? That's part of it).

While there's not exactly any precedent like we had with Death Knights, Monks, or Demon Hunters, we did get the Evoker kind of out of nowhere, and I think that the very technological nature of the Titans would actually make Tinkers a really good fit for this expansion.

Again, pure speculation, but here's how I see it:

Tinkers could wear plate armor (we now have at least three classes at every armor type,) and would be able to tank, dps, or heal. Tanks would basically use power-armor (I don't know how we'd do this visually outside of tier set design) using forcefields and such to defend themselves. Healers would probably be able to send jets of healing energy or fluid and likewise place forcefields over allies to defend them. For dps, I think we'd actually have them be ranged dps, possibly giving them access to ranged weapons that only Hunters currently use (technically more specs currently use Warglaives than Guns, Bows, or Crossbows).

Given that this is a learned discipline, any race would be able to play one, though obviously if there are any limitations, Gnomes and Goblins are certain to get them (I'd argue Draenei are also shoe-ins).

We haven't had a new class since Dragonflight, just the addition of the Devourer spec for Demon Hunters. But I think you could have a lot of fun with the aesthetic here.

    Icecrown Citadel as Home Base:

This is wild, I know. The thing is, in Wrath, our home city was Dalaran, which of course canonically moved to the Broken Isles and then canonically got blown into a million pieces at the start of The War Within over the Isle of Dorn.

So where, then, will we set our Hearthstones?

Initially, I had thought that perhaps Ulduar would expand into a true city for us to use. But if the Titans are a more hostile faction (at least for part of the expansion,) it seems unlikely that their central command base for all of Azeroth would be a safe place for us to hang out.

Now, maybe the far more reasonable answer here would be Wyrmrest Temple.

But Icecrown Citadel is the most defensible location in Northrend, and while Bolvar is no longer the Lich King, it is a place that might be potentially secured and made safe. Furthermore, while the rift in the sky is closed, the connection it has with the Shadowlands might actually lend us some power that could hold off the Titans.

(My main was Soulbound with Pelagos, and so now any time an NPC tragically dies in a questline, I jokingly think "it's ok, my best friend is God, and he'll make sure you get somewhere good for you.")

    Iridikron is Waiting in the Wings:

While Xal'atath has been the headlining villain throughout War Within and Midnight, it seems that she's made the age-old mistake of becoming the final raid boss of an expansion. This isn't a death sentence (see Kil'jaeden, at least the first time, and Garrosh) but it does not bode well for her long-term survival.

But we know that Iridikron's plan in Dragonflight was the lure the Titans here and essentially spring a trap on them.

What that trap actually is is totally up in the air. We haven't seen him since he peaced out and let Fyrrak distract us at the end of Dragonflight. But part of the plan was securing the Dark Heart for Xal'atath, which she used to Pokemon up the essence of Dimensius to then use to invade Azeroth.

Given this teaser, it sounds like if Iridikron wanted the Titans to come here, he sure as hell got his wish.

Again, though, we really don't know what he plans to do once they do show up. The Primal Incarnates were near-matches for the Dragon Aspects (is the fact that there were five aspects and only four incarnates the only reason the aspects won?) but I don't think that an admittedly powerful dragon is a match on his own for a Titan, not to speak of a whole Pantheon of them.

    Titan Internal Conflict:

It is perhaps a somewhat well-meaning but still sexist trope that the woman in a group tends to be the most reasonable. I think that even if the Titans are hostile to us, it'll be Eonar who differs in opinion. We do know that she was always more welcome to mixing Titanic Order Magic with the magic of Life.

Again, I don't think the Titans are bad, but their focus on order has led them to do some morally questionable things.

Given what we've seen in Harandar, it looks like the original cradle of the World Soul was held there, but the Titans extract it and put it in their own Worldcore.

There are two ways to read this: one is that the Titans are just as bad as the Old Gods, trying to impose their views and shape the World Soul in their own image. But a more charitable way of looking at it is that they simply didn't think Harandar was defended well enough to keep the World Soul safe.

Because I think that the Titans mean to do good by the universe, even if their understanding of what is "good" is skewed toward their focus on order, I suspect that some, likely starting with Eonar, will object to the attack on the mortal races.

Frankly, I'm really hoping that the Titans are major characters in the expansion rather than detached and distant presences, because these names that have been part of the story for so long have not really been attached to much in the way of personality. Someone explain to me how Norgannon, Khaz'goroth, and Golganneth actually differ in personality. Please.

A divided Pantheon, not all united in this campaign, would be a way to expose some of those different perspectives and personalities.

    The Scourge Rampant:

This might contradict my "Icecrown Citadel as our home city" idea, but even if this expansion is going to center far more on Ulduar and the Titan stuff, Northrend is the home continent of the Scourge.

And let's face it, the Scourge is the coolest villain faction in all of Warcraft.

The fact that Bolvar isn't Lich King anymore means that the Scourge doesn't have anyone at the wheel. Now, does this make them more or less of a threat?

In Wrath, Terenas seemed to believe that a Scourge without a Lich King would be an even bigger problem than it was under Arthas. But while Bolvar did a decent job of keeping it in check (give or take a few very morally questionable actions during the Death Knight class campaign in Legion,) the brief outburst of Scourge activity in the run-up to Shadowlands seemed kind of minor compared to the forces of the Jailer within the Maw.

Indeed, one of the disappointments of Shadowlands is that it seemed like the Jailer's Mawsworn forces ought to have felt like a "Super Scourge," but they wound up not really feeling as cool as the one we faced from Warcraft III through Wrath.

Part of what made the Scourge cool, though, was the fact that it was organized - not just a mindless swarm of zombies, but a unified fighting force employing tactics and strategy. (One of the cleverest bits of lore writing is some of the books written by Kel'Thuzad found in Acherus during the Death Knight starting experience, in which he talks about how the Scourge doesn't need to adorn all of its buildings and weapons with skulls and other dark and scary symbols, but by embracing the look that the living expect them to have, they gain a psychological advantage over their adversaries).

I would be shocked in the Undead don't play a big part in The Last Titan, though I'll also say that it's likely they won't be the focus. Perhaps we'll get a 13.1 patch that gives us an Undead raid, but much as Yogg-Saron was dealt with in the "middle raid" of Wrath (we can just pretend Trial of the Crusader didn't happen) I think we'll see the focus flipped in our Northrend revisit.

(I will say, doing Wrath remix before Last Titan comes out is kind of a bold choice. We're going to spend a lot of time in Northrend in 2027).

    We'll Get a Level Squish After Last Titan:

We will be hitting level 100 in Last Titan, and while we did previously go up to level 120 in Battle for Azeroth, I think especially with the Dragonflight-era talent system, there's some danger of things getting out of hand as we pile on more and more levels with more and more talents.

One of the big problems by BFA is that, with the Mists-era talent system, we stared dealing with a lot of empty levels (and with level scaling, that meant that you were effectively getting less powerful as you leveled up).

Given how talents now work (more akin to the Classic-Cataclysm system, but refined) I don't fear empty levels, but I do think it's notable how they've had to throw in more bells and whistles to the talent system, giving us first Hero Talents and then the Apex Talents in Midnight.

So while I think 100 is a nice round number for us to hit in Last Titan, I think what comes after is going to include a level squish.

    Actually, Lots of Changes Post Last Titan

This is way ahead of us, and we won't know any of this stuff for sure until probably 2028, but bears speculation:

The World Soul saga comes to an end with the Last Titan. What does that mean?

Well, I think Azeroth/Aln'hara/the World Soul will emerge from the planet and take on their mature form, which is probably going to be something not quite a Titan, but of an equivalent level of power (or greater).

That will mean a lot of changes for Azeroth.

Does this mean that the planet is no longer the battleground for the various cosmic forces trying to claim the World Soul?

But also, does that mean that the Elements will actually calm down, as the spirit energy that Azeroth has been chugging will now be left to facilitate harmony between them?

While I've always been skeptical about a true "WoW 2," given that I think that came out in 2007 and was called The Burning Crusade, I do think there's a chance we'll see some major overhaul to the game.

While I'd argue it's dangerous to split your playerbase by making a true sequel to an MMORPG, it's clear that they've already experimented a bit with that with WoW Classic and now WoW Forever, and at least in the former case, it doesn't seem to have caused them any major problems.

My fear, personally, is that I'm a Mac user, and Blizzard historically started as a Mac gaming company, but in recent years (er, decade,) their new games have been PC- (or console-) only. I get that it's easier to optimize PCs for gaming, but I'd hate to be put in a position where I have to either not play the next incarnation of WoW or have to get a second computer.

I would also think that a WoW 2 would have something of a reset when it comes to player options. If they were to rebuild from the ground up, would we have to wait several years to get Demon Hunters again?

And what would happen to characters I've been playing for straight-up 20 years now?

Again, I'm not convinced that WoW 2 will ever be a thing, but I do think it's possible that we'll have a pretty major overhaul of the game post-Last Titan. What that looks like, I truly cannot say.

Undead Paladins and the Current State of the Forsaken

 You know, when I first started playing WoW, I kind of rolled my eyes at the Undead, the chosen playable race for the most edgelord players.

But the thing is, the deep, dark truth in my soul, is that I'm a bit of an edgelord myself.

Yeah, I freaking love these guys. The truth is, that while there was some precedent for my affinity for spooky vibes (my favorite holiday as a kid was Halloween,) I truly think that World of Warcraft coaxed forth a lifelong fondness for the grim and macabre, and my amoral little Undead Rogue, who cut his teeth assassinating the leadership of Hillsbrad, has always been one of my most beloved WoW characters, even as my love of the Rogue class fluctuates (actually, I really adore the way Subtlety plays currently, though Goremaw's Bite being part of the recommended talents does mess up my comfortable action bar placements).

I also love Paladins... though I'll confess that while Protection Paladins remain my "comfort class," as my main has been my human Prot Paladin since early 2008, I don't terribly care for the current state of Retribution. And I've genuinely never played as Holy outside of the artifact quests in Legion. If I tank well enough, they won't make me heal!

But if you asked me which race would be the absolute last to get Paladins, I'd have assumed Undead.

Perhaps that was too quick a judgment.

In I believe 12.2, we'll get an expansion to the available classes for Paladins, adding Night Elves, Trolls, and Undead.

For Night Elves, this is honestly a long time coming. Delas Moonfang was one of our class champions in Legion, and the ghost of Nerus Moonfang (I believe her ancestor) was another one. There were, thus, more Night Elf champions than there were Dwarves and I believe Draenei, both races that can and always have been able to play as Paladins. While Night Elves don't worship the Light in the same way that Humans, Dwarves, and to an extent Blood Elves do, we've seen how the Paladin tradition need not all derive from Uther the Lightbringer's example, with Draenei Vindicators, Zandalari Troll Prelates, and Tauren Sunwalkers. It stands to reason that Night Elf Paladins could emerge from a combination of their Sentinel warrior traditions and their Elune-worshipping priestly traditions.

Then, with Trolls, it seems likely that the example of the Zandalari Prelates would simply be something the Darkspear incorporate into their traditions. Interesting that the Darkspear were once this minor, pariah tribe amongst the Gurubashi nation and now are more or less on equal footing with the traditionally most powerful Troll tribe. While there were rough patches (Garrosh,) it sounds like joining up with the Horde has worked out quite well for the Darkspear.

Anyway, when it comes to the Undead, it sort of simultaneously makes a ton of sense and also the least sense for them to be paladins.

After all, the Knights of the Silver Hand were quite prevalent in Lordaeron. I don't know how where Uther actually hailed from, but we've seen how Alonsus Faol, who literally is the one who imbued Uther with his holy power and co-founded the Knights of the Silver Hand, has remained a holy priest firmly dedicated to the Light, even if that light causes him pain as one of the undead.

While Faol is associated more with the Conclave now, as he is a Priest rather than a Paladin, I think he stands as a great example of how the Forsaken might embrace ways that seemed to be lost to them with their descent into undeath.

Culturally, I think that Sylvanas' regime as head of the Forsaken (and in fairness, she more or less founded the Forsaken as a unified people) discouraged association with old identities from when they were living. While Sylvanas seems on the road to reformation, she's also decidedly not the leader of the Forsaken anymore, though at least in-game we haven't seen anyone really take her place (Calia Menethil might play such a role, but I think reestablishing the Menethil dynasty is maybe not the best choice for them, even if she's about 1000% better than her brother was.)

The point is, the Forsaken, who have always leaned pretty hard into their dark and spooky aesthetic (prior to Cataclysm, towns like Bree were just ruined versions of human architecture found in Elwynn Forest, but they had created new types of buildings in Wrath of the Lich King, which they then carried over with the world revamp, dialing the spooky gothic vibes up to 11). And that extended to their behavior, with a fair number of actions that were straight-up evil, with just the lightest justification that it was in the name of self-defense.

Sylvanas amped up this kind of behavior, eventually forcing the Horde to turn on her after she had become Warchief, and outside of the game, she even had an emerging independent Forsaken government, the Desolate Council, killed.

Without Sylvanas, and after the betrayal by Sylvanas in her alliance with the Jailer, the Forsaken have not really been in the spotlight as much, but I suspect that, absent her influence, it might be less taboo for them to embrace some of their old identities as humans. Particularly given the much less hostile relations between the Alliance and Horde, it's not quite as important to the survival of the Forsaken to be so utterly hostile to living humans.

And I think that these factors all combine to allow them to start embracing the role of the Paladin.

Now, at least according to some very old lore, it's unlikely that any Undead Paladins would have been living paladins prior to their initial deaths. Back in early WoW lore, Paladins were immune to the Plague of Undeath, and thus would not have been turned even if slain by the Scourge (they could still be resurrected as Death Knights, of course).

This is the kind of minor lore thing that could very easily be retconned away, but I think it might be interesting, culturally, if we conceptualize Undead Paladins as embracing it as newcomers - a movement to honor the history of Lordaeron, and a test of their convictions to endure the power of the Light in order to protect their people.

Look, as I said, I really only love playing Protection, so I don't know how likely it is I'll have some really prominent Undead Paladin alt (I already have a Lightforged Draenei and Tauren Paladin sitting there as well). But it would be really cool if we get an exploration of the way that Forsaken culture has evolved in recent years.

Patch 12.2: Eclipse and 12.1.7: Talebound, plus Wrath Remix, and a brief Last Titan Teaser

 While we only got a brief (but pretty menacing) teaser for The Last Titan, the main focus for Blizzcon's WoW stuff, apart from, you know, WoW Forever, was Eclipse, the presumably final major patch of Midnight. Boy, doesn't it feel like this expansion just came out?

Eclipse sees Xal'atath make it down into the Worldcore, where Azeroth's World Soul was placed by the Titans (after they removed it from Harandar). It appears that Xal'atath's plan is to merge with the World Soul to become her own kind of Titan-like being.

Here are the major highlights:

First off, we have a new zone called the Mantle Vault, where the Worldcore can be found. Here, there's a subterranean hostile faction called the Deepskar Empire, composed of Troggs, Drogbar, Kobolds, and led, apparently, by hostile Niffen.

Within the Mantle Vault, we'll find the big 8-boss Worldcore Raid, which sees us have our big confrontation with Xal'atath, and where spellcasters can get their hands on Midnight's Edge, a spellcaster dagger that looks quite similar to a certain Black Blade that a certain former-mortal-turned-void-being used to live inside, though Blizzard claims at least that this is a different weapon (it's also apparently not just a rare drop, but will require a whole quest chain that includes finishing the raid. Fingers crossed it's more like the Mists/Warlords Legendary quests so I actually have a chance of getting one).

Additionally, the Gearhold will be a new Lair, the recent variation on World Bosses that... puts them in instances (not entirely sure how this is distinct from a single-boss raid, though I guess the fact that you can just walk in and be assigned a World-tier group for the boss is somewhat convenient). The boss here is an Azerite-infused cave bat called Noctinaxx.

We'll be getting a new dungeon called Thraegar's Stand, which has three bosses and seems to be kind of Earthen/Titan themed.

Also of note: Paladins will now be available to three new races: Night Elves, Trolls, and Undead. While this doesn't quite make them universal like they've done for some other classes, it does mean that we've got a ton of new options. Personally, I'm eager to make an Undead Paladin alt (if for nothing more than to see how amazing their paladin mount will look,) and given that we had Night Elf Paladin class champions in Legion a whole 10 years ago, it's about damn time that we get some cat-mounted champions of Elune's light. As for Trolls, I imagine that they've adapted some of the traditions of the Zandalari Prelates, spreading Paladin techniques across Troll-kind.

Also, perhaps unsurprisingly given how profoundly sinister he's been all expansion, our Delve nemesis will be none other than Astalor Bloodsworn. What that means for Prey is something I don't totally know (it will, evidently, still be part of the game).

Prior to this patch, in 12.1.7, we'll be getting a new game mode: Talebound.

This will apparently be a sort of Gothic Horror-vibes roguelike RPG system. If I understand correctly, this will be a bit like Plunderstorm, as a standalone thing you can play within the WoW Client. But unlike Plunderstorm's PvP battle royale, this seems to be built around single-player and co-op.

The premise is that we're snatched out of our reality to play the role of protagonist in The Storyteller's tales - a figure who prefers horror stories.

The game mode lets you play as one of three original classes, the martial Slayer, the Inquisitor, or the Witch.

Now, I think that WoW does Gothic Horror vibes immaculately, and my favorite parts of the game have tended to be when it leans into horror aesthetics, which I think are beautifully offset by WoW's cartoonish style, keeping it from getting oppressively bleak. It seems that this game mode will use environments like Revendreth, Gilneas, the Plaguelands, Parts of Kul Tiras (I know we saw the Shrine of the Storm, though I have to imagine we'll get a bunch of Drustvar) and such, and let us wear all the kind of Victorian finery that you'd want to in such a space.

This feels, basically, right up my alley, even if I generally don't like Roguelikes.

Additionally, we're getting a third expansion Remix, and having already done two of the game's most beloved and popular expansions, the next one will be bringing us to what for many was the pinnacle of WoW, Wrath of the Lich King. While I've already farmed quite a few of the tier sets for almost twenty years now, I'm sure I'll have fun soaking up every bit of Wrath nostalgia for that.

While the focus here is far more on Midnight's last patch and WoW Forever, we got a tiny little preview for the Last Titan - nothing in terms of gameplay, but we got this:

Shots of the massive, towering structures of Northrend, Wyrmrest Temple and Icecrownd Citadel, against stormy, overcast skies. As the camera lingers on Wyrmrest Temple, towering over Dragonblight, a flash of lightning reveals a silhouette - something that dwarves the temple tower, hundreds of feet, maybe a thousand feet tall. And then, glowing runes activate, and we see what appears to be an utterly colossal Titan construct walking the earth. Twin cannons on its shoulders activate and point down at us, the puny viewer in the frigid landscape, and as they begin to fire, we cut to black.

The Last Titan is due to arrive next year, in 2027.

Yeah, this is a pretty fast clip: Midnight launched only 18 months after The War Within, and it looks likely that The Last Titan will arrive on a similar schedule (I'd assume late in the year, given that Midnight only launched this year).

I... I know that the ambition back in the day was or WoW to have annual expansions, but I don't know that I think this is really a good idea. If the level cap rises and our progress in gearing and other means (I've actually been taking professions seriously in Midnight) is wiped away that much faster, it might cut into some of the extrinsic motivations to play.

I'm super jazzed to see what an updated Northrend looks like, don't get me wrong. But I think the traditional two-year cadence for WoW expansions worked fine, and if you're worried about content droughts, just give us X.3 patches! They did it in Wrath and Legion, and everyone loved those expansions!

Anyway, lots of stuff to digest. I haven't even touched on the new campaign being added to Warcraft III Reforged (hey, do you like the Forsaken? I've got good news for you.)

World of Warcraft Forever

 Well, here we go: World of Warcraft Forever is essentially the new Classic Plus that has been rumored for some time.

While Classic exists to preserve and revisit the experience of World of Warcraft's past, Forever will essentially create a branching experience, with new content added to the game, but in a different manner than the 22-year-running "retail" core version of the game.

Like Classic, the focus here is on the original two continents - Kalimdor and the Eastern Kingdoms, in the post-WCIII time period, but as a sort of branching timeline. Again, while Classic seeks to preserve as best as possible the gameplay experience from 2004, Forever will be adding new content, including new zones, expanding old zones, and adding new dungeons and raids.

We'll also be seeing some new race/class combinations, the most notable of which is the Undead Paladin. The cinematic trailer, which focuses on our familiar dwarf hunter with his brown bear companion from the original WoW cinematic, sees him travel across the world following a Wisp, who brings him to Dalaran as its magical shield retracts (yes, we'll be able to go to Dalaran in its original location) and eventually has him wind up at Nordrassil in a new version of the Mount Hyjal zone, and he faces off against a Forsaken Paladin (in a clever nod to the original cinematic, the ground around the paladin's foot alights, but unlike the Warlock in that original trailer using Hellfire, this is Consecration).

Players will be able to choose between the original character models and the post-Warlords updated models, and it seems that the entire world has gotten a bit of a graphical overhaul (not a total rebuild, but things look a little better).

There will also be a new playable race, the Skyborne, who seem to be an offshoot of the elves living on a giant floating island. Skyborne are available to both factions, but depending on which faction you choose, different classes will be available, with Horde Skyborne able to be Shamans through a connection to the Earthen Ring and Alliance Skyborne able to be Mages through the Kirin Tor.

Forever will have a locked level cap of 60, with any updates evidently building upon content at that level. They claim the game will be focused more on leveling, with a lot of alt-friendly features to encourage you to stop and smell the roses while leveling up.

The talent system is more akin to the old Classic style, but some small incremental talents have been consolidated to make room for more impactful ones.

I will say, as someone who started playing during Vanilla, I was never really that eager to get into WoW Classic. As nostalgic as I might be for those early days of WoW, I also really appreciate the development of quality-of-life conveniences (and I also don't have rose-colored glasses about the behavior of players back in those days).

Now, this might appeal to me a little more given that there's all this new stuff to try out (I do actually really like the idea of an Undead Paladin, even if it seems insane to me that we still haven't gotten Night Elf Paladins after Legion gave us two Night Elf class champions).

Still, WoW takes a lot of gaming energy, especially if you like to have a lot of alts (see the name of the blog). So I'm likely to just try it out a little bit. I believe the subscription, like WoW Classic, is covered by your WoW subscription, though it sounds like there might be a one-time purchase fee.

It launches in November, so, pretty damn soon. (Man, the latter part of this year is piling up with new games to play).

What's Iridikron Up To?

 The other day I ran through the hard-mode of Dawn of the Infinite, the mega-dungeon from Dragonflight, to see how the infinite-themed color schemes for the various customizable drake mounts looked (sadly, not really that great. I think I'll stick with my Infinite Timereaver, or maybe the Chrono Corsair if I'm feeling silly).

Anyway, Iridikron plays a clever trick - while we defeat him there, doing so allows Nozdormu to become Murozond, and so Chromie is forced to rewind time and basically have us do the dungeon again with different bosses (I mean, really, it's just the second half of the dungeon). While we do stop Murozond (and kind of resolve the Bronze/Infinite conflict to the point that the various Remix experiences can now happen in canon and we have friendly Infinite dragons) doing so then lets Iridikron escape with the Dark Heart, which of course plays a major role in War Within and Midnight.

Iridikron obviously made a deal with Xal'atath - we even see her within the void portal through which he escapes distant-past Dragonblight. But what's his endgame?

Well, we might not actually need to wonder, because he basically tells us: the world is going to be thrown into such chaos that he thinks the Titans are going to have to come and intervene, and he's going to be waiting for them.

The Primal Incarnates are powerful - I think we can confidently put them on the same "power tier" as the dragon aspects (though I maintain that Alexstrasza's fight with Razageth would have left the latter dead if the Red Aspect weren't so omnibenevolent that she couldn't follow through with breaking Razageth's neck). But compared to the Titans?

I mean, look, power levels in fantasy are kind of a silly idea that is born, I honestly think, from video game logic. I don't think that Isildur was supernaturally stronger than any other human - he just got a lucky strike against Sauron to cut his fingers off. And the Titans are clearly not omnipotent - their spirits were being held captive by some admittedly powerful demons in Antorus.

But especially with two of his siblings dead and one having turned against him (though notably not to the Titans) you really have to wonder what Iridikron has up his sleeve.

So far, it's felt as if Xal'atath is the primary villain of the Worldsoul Saga, and has certainly been the headliner throughout War Within and Midnight. On K'aresh, sure, she briefly allied with us thanks to shared goals, but our reason for stopping Dimensius (saving what's left of K'aresh) and hers (pokemoning up Dimensius' essence to have an absurd amount of void energy) obviously meant a betrayal was coming - one that we were just slightly too slow to anticipate (RIP Locus Walker).

But if Iridikron's primary beef is with the Titans, doesn't it seem like he's going to play a major role in the expansion called The Last Titan?

See, I have a suspicion that Xal'atath might not survive Midnight. I think we might be heading to her as final boss territory. Sure, maybe it's not a permanent death - maybe we cram her back into that knife.

Xal'atath has been a refreshingly effective villain, one who actually seems to be making some smart moves instead of being just implied to have done so (Jailer, ahem). It's not my favorite trope to establish the threat of one villain by having them off another (I'm still a little salty about something from the last Dark Tower novel,) but Iridikron has been dutifully cooking in the "established villain" oven for the better part of two expansions now, studiously absent.

I don't think we're going to see Irdikron betraying Xal'atath, but I think it's more likely that he's calculated that she will fail for one reason or another, and that will open up an opportunity for him to kick into gear.

Indeed, I suspect that Xal'atath's entire assault on the World Soul is part of Iridikron's game - letting her get to the point where the Titans are forced to intervene. Is he being a little cocky to assume her plans will fail? Perhaps.

I think that if and when we see Iridirkon again, I'd really like to see him put his "avoid being a raid boss at all costs" strategy into practice. Maybe he tries to persuade us to his side, and maybe he keeps setting up others to threaten us (like Fyrrak) and cover his exit.

Again, I think that Iridikron strikes me as one of the smartest villains we've seen in WoW simply because he seems to actually respect the player characters' power. There's no "pathetic mortal" talk here. Xal'atath, mind you, is another one of the better villains we've ever had, but as her plan gets closer to fruition (it doesn't seem like anything we've actually done this expansion has set back her plans) she becomes more vulnerable.

The nature of the game, of course, is that we're going to fight and defeat the bad guys in the end. But I really like the way that, narratively at least, these ones seem to be making us earn it.

Indeed, I think one of the most satisfying things about Arthas as a bad guy back in Wrath of the Lich King is that everything up to the last 10% of his boss fight is actually his plan working as intended. It takes a literal miracle to break Tirion Fordring out of the ice to destroy Frostmourne, and as the king of the Scourge, Arthas was capable of absorbing countless losses if it meant turning the greatest heroes of Azeroth into his mind-controlled minions (note that if you didn't do this boss fight back in the day, you might not realize that at 10% he automatically killed everyone in the raid group. He then starts raising us as Scourge until Tirion intervenes, and then the last 10% was basically a victory lap in which the raid gets resurrected by the ghost of Terenas Menethil, now freed from Frostmourne, and gets to just beat on Arthas as he's held by the spirits that have escaped. It was a hugely cathartic moment, though my guild didn't actually down him during Wrath, only getting him after being like level 83 in Cataclysm).

Single-Playing WoW and the State of Online Multiplayer

 So, I have a confession.

And it feels weird that it's a confession and not just a statement of fact, because I'm actually not doing anything wrong.

I basically play WoW solo these days. On occasion, my best friend, who has been playing just about as long as I have, will have me grab a character (usually one of my tanks) to run a Mythic Plus dungeon. But for me, my focus these days has really been on doing things on my own. Solo play. Delves are truly my endgame.

And I think I was always inclined to play this way. Back when hitting level 30 was kind of a big deal, I really didn't even try to find groups for dungeons until I was level 30, or even level 40. I remember eventually figuring out how to look for groups in trade chat (this was before the Group Finder was implemented). And yeah, by the time the Group Finder was implemented in I believe 3.3, I got into a habit of running a bunch of dungeons on all of my characters each week. I've also got to say that the experience of running dungeons back then was wild. When my Troll Mage hit level 80 and geared up just high enough to qualify for a heroic dungeon, I came in understanding that, yes, I'd be sort of getting carried, but by that point in the expansion, these dungeons weren't really a challenge for established max-level characters, with most clears taking under ten minutes. But the players in that group, whether because they resented me for being just barely at the gearing minimum or because they were just assholes, decided to spend the dungeon getting me killed, the Hunter misdirecting enemies to my squishy Mage, and eventually just kicking me as they raced through the dungeon while I was running back as a ghost. Yes, it's been like 16 years since that happened, and yes, I'm still mad.

Now, I think perhaps because the WoW playerbase has gotten older, my experience with them in more recent years has been less toxic, the people less angry and aggressive, more mellow and cooperative. But it's still frustrating sometimes. Just a couple weeks ago, I was brought in for a Mythic Plus Windrunner Spire run. It didn't go wonderfully - we certainly didn't beat the timer. And one of the players claimed they didn't have enough gold to repair their gear, so my friend gave him what he claimed he needed, before that player pretty swiftly "disconnected" and didn't log back in. We were forced to finish the dungeon with four of us, and it was pretty clear the guy had been scamming my friend. A bizarre thing to scam a fellow player for, given that a thousand gold at this stage of WoW's lifespan is a pathetically small amount - I think I got 18k off of a weekly quest on one of my characters the other day.

But it left a sour taste in my mouth.

I think the implementation of Delves is a recognition of the fact that sometimes, playing with others isn't so fun. WoW's an MMO, built on the very premise that it's cool to be in a game where there are tons of other players also playing. But especially given the game's longevity, some of us older players have lost patience over time for dealing with other players' crap.

Yes, this post is partially about The Duskbloods. I saw a Blue Sky post by Jacob Geller, famed video game video essayist, saying "Sometimes I feel the potential of multiplayer is more exciting as a game design concept than it is to actually play." And I feel that. I think there's often talk about how being with other players can lead you down unexpected and interesting roads - you can't predict what is going to happen because other players will surprise you.

It is, thus, kind of funny that a really refined multiplayer game, like WoW, works really hard to funnel that experience into something predictable. If you're running a dungeon, everything works best if the players are acting in clearly prescribed ways. If I'm your tank, you want me pulling groups carefully, positioning them so that you're not fighting with me to max your DPS. The best players to play with are the ones whose actions you can predict, and so as a player, I aspire to be very predictable to my fellow players. That's how we win. That's how we overcome our challenges.

Back during Wrath, when my guild (which is basically a ghost town these days, probably in part due to my lack of enthusiasm to organize raids, a role I fell into as our guild's most consistently playing tank after our original guildleader quit WoW) was running Naxxramas (well past the point when it was "the current raid," but back then they didn't have this idea of seasonal catch-ups, so it was still reasonable to try to progress through to earn gear that would get us into Ulduar,) we were fighting Heigan the Unclean, with his infamous "safety dance." The funny thing is that I think that mechanic is actually not terribly hard with a modern computer, but back then, there was enough lag that you really needed to anticipate the slime waves well in advance. We were, I think, doing it on 25-player mode, and about 75% of the way into the fight, all but me (protection paladin,) and a shadow priest and a holy paladin were dead. The three of us performed that safety dance for 35 full minutes, clinching victory.

It was unexpected. It was a legendary moment. It might have been a bit boring for the rest of the group (though they were cheering us on in TeamSpeak). But the design of the game these days wouldn't allow that. If that many DPS were down, there would be an enrage timer that would end the fight.

Multiplayer games promise endless predictability, but multiplayer game design requires that the possibilities become narrow enough that the game retains coherence.

Game companies have been pushing online multiplayer a lot in the past decade or so. We've even seen marketing efforts to promote it as a superior way of gaming (I can't remember if it was EA or Ubisoft or one of these big game companies people generally dislike, but there was a tweet or something that was like "He's a ten, but only plays single-player games," which, frankly, I think was part of a corporate psy-op.

I actually don't really understand how the money of it all works: WoW obviously is incentivized to keep people playing because it's a subscription-based service. But I know a lot of these games are still ones you just buy once, so I don't totally understand why this business model would be so much more lucrative.

Anyway, the fact that WoW is accommodating this style of play I think speaks to a broader desire for a calm and private gaming experience. You could argue that this is WoW trying to be everything to everyone (remember how they implemented basically Pokemon back in Mists of Pandaria, which they've only just stopped adding onto?) but I will say, after almost twenty years in this game, I have sentimental attachments to it and my characters. I imagine one day my WoW characters will, inevitably, be packed away in Stormwind or Orgrimmar or their houses to gather dust forever, but it's nice to be able to keep playing the game I started halfway through college, experiencing its story and its thrills, even as my appetite for playing with friends is satisfied far more effectively by my D&D games.

What Can the WoW D&D Book Cover?

 One of the biggest questions I've had regarding the WoW book for D&D is what a single sourcebook can possibly cover amongst the elements of a 22-year-old MMORPG, one with eleven expansions, each of which brought with it zones with their own questlines, dungeons, and patches that act as kind of mini-expansions.

While the folks from Blizzard and WotC have pitched this book as allowing you to create adventures in any era of WoW, up to the present day (last week, patch 12.1, the second major phase of the Midnight expansion, just launched) I truly don't think that you could possibly cover every plot thread and worldbuilidng element that has shown up in the game in a single book. But beyond that, I'm also inclined to believe that you couldn't really cover every single expansion without giving short shrift to all of them.

So, what are the essentials?

This is a subjective question, but I'll give my opinion. Essentially, what are the expansions that had a giant impact on the overall world, and what elements within them do I think would be essential to fleshing out the world.

Vanilla (aka "World of Warcraft"):

Not an expansion, but the original game. This is an obvious one, and necessary to lay the groundwork. Blizzard was new at making an MMO, but WoW became popular in large part due to the focus on storytelling through questing (where a lot of older MMOs were explicitly grindy). Anyway, we establish the home territories of the Alliance and Horde and the conflicts they find themselves in. If there is anything guaranteed to be covered in this book, it's the overall continents of Kalimdor and the Eastern Kingdoms. And we'll have elements about the lingering impact of the Third War, from the Scourge to the Burning Legion's devastation of northern Kalimdor, then probably something about the Black Dragonflight and the devotees of Ragnaros, the Firelord.

The Burning Crusade:

WoW's first expansion feels, at least in retrospect, like it was continuing to just flesh out the world. The world of Outland, formerly called Draenor, is a big part of Warcraft lore because it is here that the Orcs come, and where the Horde was originally founded. But BC also established the lands of Quel'thalas (which is also the centerpiece of Midnight) as well as giving us the Draenei (well, an updated version of them that involved an accidental retcon, but boy I'm glad they did because I love the Draenei). Again, I suspect that a lot of the elements of this expansion will be there in the book.

Wrath of the Lich King:

Among the most popular expansions, Wrath both featured Warcraft's most iconic villain, Arthas Menethil (not the original Lich King, but the most notable one) and also did a lot to establish the lore of the Titans, god-like beings who brought order to Azeroth and also created a number of beings who would be the ancestors of a lot of the playable races (or in the case of the Earthen, who would come out far later, just directly created them). Once again, Northrend was established as part of the world back in Warcraft III, so this felt a bit like Burning Crusade just giving us something we were going to need anyway.

Cataclysm:

For the first time, we find ourselves with an expansion that is more, I think, about the specific events taking place in it than expanding the world. To be fair, we do get a bit of established lore territories, like Mount Hyjal, Gilneas, and a brief glimpse at Kezan. Cataclysm saw a massive revamp of the old Vanilla zones to update their quests and in some cases landscape to reflect both time moving on and the devastation wrought by Deathwing, but I actually think very little of what happens in the expansion is truly essential to giving us a world to play in, so this might be touched on only lightly. The main things, here, though, were the establishment of the Goblins and Worgen as members of the Horde and Alliance, respectively, the last of the non-neutral, non-"allied" races in WoW. (Allied races are basically variant races built on existing models, though... it's a little more complicated, like the Fox-like Vulpera aren't actually related to Goblins even if they use the same 3D skeleton, and the Kul Tiran Humans and Zandalari Trolls have, I think, unique skeletons. That's not relevant to the D&D book, though. What is is that the Worgen and specifically the Bilgewater Cartel Goblins become established as core populations within the two major factions).

Mists of Pandaria:

For the first time, this expansion gave us an entirely new continent that had no precedent in the RTS games, with the Pandaren even being treated as a non-canonical joke by some. However, despite the outcries that this was adding a childish element to the game, Pandaria was actually a richly conceptualized region that has left this among the most popular expansions in WoW's history. Historically, this was an expansion that saw the conflict between Alliance and Horde flare up more than we had seen before, here giving us a showcase of what happens when two Great Powers use a foreign land to fight their battles. If nothing else, given the popularity of the expansion, I expect to see the monsters and territories of Pandaria covered at least a bit.

Warlords of Draenor:

Infamously conceptually bizarre, Warlords of Draenor had the disgraced former Warchief of the Horde, Garrosh Hellscream, teaming with a rogue bronze dragon to travel to an alternate timeline version of the orcish homeworld of Draenor to form an alternate-history Horde with all the leaders from his father's generation who could use modern technology rather than demonic magic to invade Azeroth. If there's one expansion I can imagine them just kind of skipping over, it would be this one, an expansion that literally had less content than other expansions, and is commonly held (certainly I think so) as the worst WoW expansion. While it had some plot elements that led to Legion, which is my favorite expansion, we could more or less breeze past this.

Legion:

All about the Burning Legion's largest, seemingly final invasion of Azeroth, this gave us the Broken Isles (a region that was actually established as early as Warcraft II, I believe) which largely centers around the ancient Night Elf city of Suramar (the elves there forced to subsist on pure arcane magic for ten thousand years and are now known as the Nightborne). Interestingly, one of the things we might get here is some really iconic magic items, as one of the parts of the expansion was that each spec (basically subclass) got its own unique Artifact Weapon, which you'd use the entire expansion and just upgrade over the course of the expansion instead of replacing it. This also gave us the world of Argus, the home world of the Draenei (back when they were called the Eredar) and also effectively the home base of the Burning Legion. The expansion sees us deal a massive blow against the Burning Legion, and while it hasn't been explicit, it seems that the Burning Legion is more or less defeated and scattered to the winds. Again, I think that the expansion's popularity is a big part of why we might see a lot of elements from it in the book, but it's also a very big "event" in the history of the franchise.

Battle for Azeroth:

While not a very popular expansion, BFA does have some important elements to include in the D&D book. Lore-wise, it saw the culmination and ending of the Alliance/Horde conflict that flared up again starting in Legion. It adds the island nations of Kul Tiras and Zandalar, both pretty important in the grand scheme of things (Zandalar in particular is basically the oldest humanoid civilization on Azeroth, the original empire of the Trolls). We also had the Naga center-stage with the reveal of the underwater realm of Nazjatar, and got to see the nightmare demiplane city of Ny'alotha (which had been teased for years as essentially the WoW equivalent of R'lyeh).

Shadowlands:

This one's a real big question: among the least popular WoW expansions (though I personally didn't dislike it as much as many did - it suffered a lot from Covid hitting right before its release). Shadowlands takes us to another plane of reality, and therein lies the question: how much time do they want to spend fleshing out these afterlife realms that, sort of by their nature, don't really play into what's going on in the world of the living all that much? The expansion's villain, the Jailer, was meant to be the ultimate chessmaster who had been manipulating everything for eons, but he was far too flat and generic of a bad guy to really feel like he made an impact. So, to be honest, if there's one expansion I expect them to gloss over, it's... well, it's Warlords of Draenor. But if there's two, the other will be Shadowlands.

Dragonflight:

In terms of longterm impact on the game's story, it's still a little early to guess how big a deal Dragonflight will be. Praised as a "back to basics" approach for the game after the problems with Shadowlands, Dragonflight, I'd say, didn't give us anything profoundly new (though it did establish some new, complicated villains with the Primal Incarnates, expanding out the kinds of dragons we might encounter in Azeroth) and might get featured more prominently again because it was just a popular expansion.

The War Within:

The first expansion of the "Worldsoul Saga" trilogy, of which we are now on chapter two with Midnight, this did actually establish some interesting new lore: for one thing, making the Titans seem a lot less benevolent than we had previously been led to see them as (there had been hints). Mainly, we had an expansion largely taking place underground. Now, as I posted about recently, I'm fascinated by the existence of the Hallowfall Arathi, a culture of half-human/half-elf people who do not fit into the lore of the world in a way that makes sense unless they're from an alternate timeline, but that's more of a question that has been posed than one that has been addressed. We also got the world of K'aresh in this, but given that Ethereals are still not a playable race (and won't be a playable species in this book,) I honestly think they might gloss over that. Mainly, though, the idea that there's a route down to the Worldsoul of Azeroth built by the Titans feels like it could be important to establish.

Midnight:

We're still in the middle of this expansion, with the latest patch probably the last major one before the book comes out. I think we might get a bit about Quel'thalas and Zul'Aman, and the underground realm of Harandar, home of the Haranir and also the original location of Azeroth's Worldsoul before the Titans moved her is a fairly big deal. The expansion has fleshed out a bit of the elements of the Void as a cosmic force (which is related to, but evidently separate from Azeroth's Old Gods and their creations).

    But let's get real:

Frankly, I don't think even what I've tried to boil down here is going to be covered.

We don't know in quite how much detail the various dungeons presented in the book will be, but if they're even quickies like Dragon Delves, that's going to be a huge chunk of the book. All but one of them are from Vanilla WoW, meaning they're in the Eastern Kingdoms or Kalimdor. This is but one book, and I frankly think it might mean that the book will really only cover the Eastern Kingdoms, Kalimdor, and maybe Northrend (given that Azjol-Nerub is there).

If you covered those three continents and Outland, you'd have covered the main locations that were known to exist by the time WoW first came out (yes, the Broken Isles were established, but the region wasn't known to be as extensive as it wound up being in Legion).

There is plenty in those regions to make a sizable D&D campaign in, and DMs who are familiar with World of Warcraft will easily be able to flesh the rest of the setting out. What we need for the book, I think, is monsters, magic items, and player options that help thing feel like Azeroth.

If I were to run a campaign set in Azeroth, I could just pop WoW open and check the map to get a ton of specific names for locations, and probably could recall what sort of plots were going on there if I want to use them as a basis for an adventure.

Baseless Speculation on the Demon Hunter Ranger

 The Death Knight and Demon Hunter were World of Warcraft's first two "hero classes," which is a somewhat ironic name.

In fact, in WoW's entire 22-year history, the game has only added four full classes to the original 9-class roster: the Death Knight in 2008's Wrath of the Lich King, the Monk in 2012's Mists of Pandaria, the Demon Hunter in 2016's Legion, and the Evoker in 2022's Dragonflight. In fact, of these four, only the Monk was not a "Hero Class." Hero classes required you to have a character of a certain level (usually the previous expansion's level cap, though Death Knights only started at level 55 when Wrath raised the cap to 80). The logic here was that it would be weird to have a low-level Death Knight going around in low-level areas doing relatively low-stakes quests, and so they wanted to start them off with a fair degree of power.

The game has changed significantly since 2008, of course, including the introduction of level-scaling, so you can, in fact, now level up a low-level Death Knight in regions like Westfall (traditionally the second zone human characters go to when they move on from their starting zone in Elwynn Forest).

While Evokers were basically unprecedented in the lore prior to this, the Death Knight and Demon Hunter were both the classes of iconic characters from Warcraft III, specifically Arthas Menethil and Illidan Stormrage, respectively. WCIII had a sort of vague RPG system within its real-time-strategy campaigns, where you'd have kind of hero unit that would be leading your units in all the base-building and such, and would be a formidable force. These hero units were the major characters of the story.

While the Death Knight has plenty of precedence in lots of fantasy RPGs (and I'd argue also in fantasy media in general, with figures like the Ringwraiths from Lord of the Rings and Darth Vader both occupying that archetype,) the Demon Hunter is a bit weirder.

To be clear, there certainly are Demon Hunters, or monster hunters in general in fantasy media. Indeed, one of the classes in Diablo III is also called a Demon Hunter, but I think that it adheres much closer to the way that such a character class is usually portrayed: in Diablo III, the class is more like Diablo II's Rogue (and I guess also Diablo IV's,) with a flavor of having lots of cool gadgets and traps to fight demons, but basically being your black-clad, acrobatic, kind of Solomon Kane-like figure.

WoW's Demon Hunters have an entirely different aesthetic, strongly informed both by WoW's Night Elf culture and also the aesthetic of its demons.

In WoW, a Demon Hunter is not just someone who hunts demons. Indeed, there's actually a Hunter class, which is much closer to D&D's Ranger, typically fighting with ranged weapons and/or an animal companion, with a lot of "nature survival"-themed abilities along with their weapon attacks.

The premise of the Demon Hunter is that it's a highly specialized path that fundamentally changes you on a physiological level. Demon Hunters don't just use fel magic - they literally absorb a demonic soul into their own, becoming half-demons themselves. Demon Hunter characters typically have horns, and might have scaly skin or cracks where the bright-green Fel energy shines through.

 Part of the ritual to become a Demon Hunter involves gouging out one's own eyes. The fel energy inside replaces them, allowing Demon Hunters to see, and even see through disguises and invisibility. Thus, as a cosmetic option, Demon Hunter characters can select a number of blindfolds, or they can just let the bright glow of their fel-filled eye sockets shine unencumbered.

While the current expansion, Midnight, introduced a third specialization (WoW's version of a subclass) that both allows them to act as a ranged spellcaster and channel Void, instead of Fel magic (which is color-coded in blues and purples, as opposed to Fel's neon green and occasionally deep red,) for the most part, Demon Hunters fight in melee, dual-wielding weapons - most iconically, Warglaives, which are massive, double-bladed weapons. They are absolutely fantasy BS kinds of weapons, because A: they would weigh a ton each, and B, it would be hard not to slice your own thighs while swinging two of them around at your foes. But in a video game, they look really cool.

Anyway, the motive of Demon Hunters is to use the power of demons to fight demons - in WoW, basically all demons are part of a massive interstellar army called the Burning Legion that seeks to conquer and destroy the universe - the conflict that started the series was caused by the Burning Legion manipulating the orcs into acting as a proxy army to invade Azeroth, which they had failed to conquer 10,000 years earlier thanks in part to people like Illidan Stormrage, who basically invented Demon Hunters and was the first one.

I do think there's some logic to building Demon Hunters on the bones of the Ranger, conceptually: while very different in aesthetic from your typical Ranger (again, WoW's Hunter class is the clear equivalent,) the Demon Hunter does have a focus on taking down monsters (even if in WoW, they've obviously got to be fine at fighting any type of foe. We haven't really had demons as a major threat since Legion, which ran from 2016-2018). Ironically, this might have made them a better fit for the 5.0 Ranger, with its Favored Enemy mechanic (naturally picking "Fiend" as your first favored enemy type).

As we talked about with the Death Knight being represented by the Oath of the Ebon Blade subclass for Paladins, I suspect that Demon Hunter Rangers will also see some significant changes to the level 1 and 2 class features, as hinted at in that James Wyatt interview.

Oddly, I almost think you'd need more distinct features than the Death Knight - DKs in WoW do have some cosmetic differences, such as glowing blue eyes (at least starting with Wrath of the Lich King, the power of necromancy is often represented with a bright, icy blue, though this was more specifically the color associated with the Scourge and the Lich King, as there are several colors of death magic when we went to the realm of the dead in 2020's Shadowlands expansion) and a few partially-rotten skin textures you can pick, but it's not nearly as dramatic as the Demon Hunter customizations (which was maybe just because of 8 years of development).

There are various aesthetic things I'd really suggest should be part of the Demon Hunter subclass, and represented mechanically:

First, the missing eyes. It might be too powerful to give them a baseline 30-foot blindsight, but perhaps they can activate blindsight in a reasonable range a certain number of times per day. This could upgrade to Truesight at higher levels.

Next, their tattoos: the Demon Hunter aesthetic is classically one with a lot of skimpy clothing: Illidan would typically go shirtless. In WoW, your armor is a huge part of your character progression, but when designing Demon Hunter-specific sets, they've often made them more revealing. Demon Hunters have magical tattoos that help protect them, and thus, I think giving the subclass Unarmored Defense would make a lot of sense - Dex+Wis would work fine, just like it does for a Monk.

Then, we've got their wings. In WoW, Demon Hunters can double-jump and also pop out wings to glide down and prevent falling damage. Maybe this is a Slow Fall-like feature, or maybe we set this one aside.

Then, we have Warglaives. In WoW, this weapon type is available only to Demon Hunters (and thus is always statted-out to be ideal for them, with the addition of the spellcasting Devourer spec adding Intellect to all Warglaives in addition to the usual Agility). There's not really an obvious equivalent to them in D&D. I might be tempted to make them d8 Light weapons, though perhaps for balance they need to be d6s. The other issue is that, thanks to Weapon Mastery, we'll want to either have two types of Warglaives (one with Nick and one with something like Vex or Sap,) or Demon Hunters will, weirdly, find themselves probably not dual-wielding them, which feels wrong. (Fun fact, in the expansion that Demon Hunters were made playable in, every spec got a single weapon or set of weapons for the entire expansion that simply got upgraded over the course of it, so Demon Hunters naturally only used Warglaives the whole time. It was only later that they started to use the axes, swords, and fist weapons that they were also capable of using the whole time). (Also, ironically, when we fought Illidan in 2007's Burning Crusade expansion, he had a small chance to drop his legendary Warglaives of Azzinoth, but because that weapon type didn't exist yet and the class that could use them wouldn't be there for 9 more years, those actually just count as one-handed swords. Illidan kind of got handed the villain ball in BC, but Legion did a lot to rehabilitate him as the rash but ultimately well-intentioned anti-hero he was always supposed to be).

Now, how much of this is going to be stuff we get at level 3? No clue. I actually have far less of a sense of what Demon Hunter features will be subclass features and what will be spells we can pick up. Even more than the Oath spells for the Ebon Blade Paladin, I feel like Demon Hunters have to get more than the typical "one per spell level" subclass spells that Rangers typically get. We know Demon Spikes will be one of them (a defensive ability used by Vengeance Demon Hunters, the tank spec for the class).

Still, I think that mobility has to be a major theme - Demon Hunters have a ton of mobility features in WoW, and a big part of their overall vibe is being "speed demons," so to speak (one of the major rotational AoE abilities for Havoc, their melee damage spec, called Blade Dance, has them rushing faster than you can see in a kind of X pattern, slashing all foes in the surrounding area.)

I will say, I'm far less enamored of the Ranger class in D&D than the Paladin one, so I'm a little more concerned over whether the Demon Hunter will be appealing to play in an Azeroth-set game. But we shall see.