There's always a debate when it comes to whether WoW should, or even can, have a new class added in an upcoming expansion. Even when Demon Hunters came out, some argued that it was already too much (granted, as someone who had been hoping for Demon Hunters since Death Knights were introduced, I was very much on board.)
WoW has introduced a new class with every other expansion, meaning every four years given its two-year expansion cycle. The mechanics of how, exactly, they implement classes has gone back and forth - Death Knights were the first and, for eight years, only hero class with its unique starting experience and cosmetic features. Monks came in at level 1, which I actually think contributed to their being a far less popular class, given the level grind one needed to get through in order to play at max level. Demon Hunters were the most accommodated in terms of leveling - they started a mere two levels below the previous level cap, meaning one did not actually have to play through anything that wasn't Legion content to get them up to speed, allowing players to switch mains right at the start of the expansion with only about a two hour speed bump (Death Knights got high enough to go to Outland by the end of their starting experience, meaning they got to skip vanilla but they still needed to go through Burning Crusade before joining others in Wrath.)
So what is the benefit of a new class?
Well, new classes allow for new styles of gameplay. The Rune system is unlike any other class resource (and used to be far more complex.) Monks and Demon Hunters have introduced new forms of mobility.
But I think the primary advantage to new classes is flavor. The mechanics are a challenge for the developers, and while I think that this challenge forces them to come up with clever new ideas that can be fun, I do think the biggest boost to the game one gets with a new class is a new flavor - a new way to feel about the character you're playing.
I think this is why I've been so big a fan of the hero classes. Death Knights and Demon Hunters carry with them a specific story. After all, most classes are just a kind of job - one trains to be a Mage, or a Hunter, or a Paladin. It's not something that inherently changes you at a physiological level (at least not permanently - Druids and Shadow Priests can shift out of their transformations at will.) But the hero classes are individuals who have been changed at a fundamental level, which justifies both that they need a special story to explain what they are and also that they start at a higher power level than other classes - while I'd say that once you get to level 60 and are smacking around the likes of Ragnaros, levels beyond that are a purely mechanical feature of the game, your earlier levels are still very much telling a story of your character going from a novice and amateur to a skilled and experienced exemplar of your class. Because the training and imbued power for hero classes happens prior to your actual playing them, it makes sense that you'd start at a higher level.
But let's talk about the specific classes that have been added, and why.
Death Knights and Demon Hunters both play very important parts in the story of Warcraft. Death Knights, which admittedly are a more common fantasy trope (they exist in D&D and one could even make an argument that the Ringwraiths from Lord of the Rings are kind of DKs) were the class that kind of embodied the might of the Scourge. We didn't have a dark-magic melee class prior to them, but also with a character as iconic as Arthas, we needed a way for players to follow in his footsteps.
Monks, on the other hand, had not played a huge role in the game's lore. That beings said, Monks have also, over time, become a far more common RPG class. While Chen Stormstout was never as central a character to Warcraft as Arthas (or Illidan) was, his existence as a Brewmaster had led a lot of players to speculate and get excited about playing such a thing. The Monk was a pretty obvious option, especially for introducing the Pandaren and the China-themed Pandaria continent.
Demon Hunters were very much like Death Knights in that they had played a big role in the lore and also they had an exemplar in one of Warcraft's most iconic characters: Illidan Stormrage. Unlike Death Knights, however, there's no real precedent for them as a class in other RPGs - the Diablo III Demon Hunter, which is a bit more in the gothic witch-hunter vibe, is probably a more common trope. That being said, the Demon Hunter's kit was well-developed long before Legion came out, and players were very excited to play them.
So now we get to the first question I wanted to talk about:
With an even-numbered expansion almost certain to be announced at Blizzcon this year, should we expect a new class and, if so, what might it be?
Well, precedent would say that we must - every four years since 2007 we've gotten an expansion announcement that includes a new class. But precedent is not always consistent. After all, Mists of Pandaria gave us both a new class and a single new race, but then Warlords gave us neither. Admittedly, the introduction of Demon Hunters in Legion and then the many Allied Races in BFA would seem to have re-established the pattern of race-class-race-class.
But given that Allied Races have been a very different take on new races than what we've historically gotten, could that mean that we'll see a new take on "new classes?"
The thing about classes as compared to races is this:
Mechanically, race has a very low impact on the game. Your Void Elf Rogue is going to play almost identically to your Gnome Rogue. Yes, there are racial abilities that can have some impact, especially if you're a total min-maxer. I know that I'm hesitant to ever, say, start playing my Death Knight as my main instead of my Paladin given the human reputation buff that the Paladin gets. But you can be effective in any class your race can play, and it's about 98% a cosmetic choice (and 100% for most people.)
What this means is that it's much easier for Blizzard to add races than classes.
Allied Races, and the large number we've gotten, solved a problem: with all these alternate cultures and versions of existing races that players have wanted, it made total sense to make them playable. But if you have simply given us, say, Mag'har Orcs and Dark Iron Dwarves, the players would have been fairly justified in seeing it as a let-down given that they're still basically the same (in terms of animations and models) as existing races. But by giving us eight, rather than the usual two, it makes up for that.
Classes, however, are about 98% a choice in mechanics. To be fair, that might be an overestimate. I find playing a Demon Hunter way cooler than playing a Hunter, for example, in large part due to the story and flavor in the class. But mechanics are really the main thing in a class, and that means balancing and constant vigilance on the part of the developers.
Yes, occasionally a racial ability requires re-balancing, but for the most part, races are fire-and-forget in terms fo design. A class needs to be kept in line with all the new mechanics and standards of a new expansion or even major patch.
So it's a much bigger commitment.
Additionally, it's an area where there's not necessarily as much room for flavor. With races, you can pretty easily come up with something different. Take the Vulpera, for example, as a race many players are predicting will at some point become playable. Just pick an animal, make a humanoid version of it, and you've got a new race. Admittedly, previously established playable races that were animalistic were based on long-existing myths - Tauren are Minotaurs and Worgen are Werewolves - but between the Tuskarr, the Tortolloans, the Hozen, the Jinyu, the Grummles, the Arrakoa... it's pretty easy to slap together a reasonable humanoid animal race.
But with classes, you're dealing with more kind of archetypical forms.
I think it's noteworthy that in 5th Edition D&D, they don't actually add new classes (though this statement might date this post - it's possible the Artificer will come out with the hardcover version of Wayfinder's Guide to Eberron, and we did get a playtesting version of the Mystic a while back) but instead adds subclasses. In three published books - Sword Coast Adventurer's Guide, Xanathar's Guide to Everything, and Guildmaster's Guide to Ravnica - Wizards has added class options for its twelve playable classes - the D&D equivalent of Specializations - but not any new classes.
So that opens up an interesting notion: What if Blizzard were to, rather than add new classes, instead add new specs to the existing classes? Rather than add, say, Necromancers, maybe instead give Death Knights a ranged DPS spec?
Unfortunately, I don't think this is a likely option. And that's largely due to the way that class and spec design has changed since WoW began.
In Vanilla up until Mists, talents and spec were entwined notions. Rather than picking a spec at level 10 (and even that has changed - largely due to these changes, you now start with a particular spec) you would get access to your first talent point, and you'd begin assigning these points in one of three trees. The more invested you were in a particular tree, the more of an "X" spec character you were. This actually meant that before level 30 or so, a Paladin, for example, was actually pretty comparably capable at tanking, healing, or DPS regardless of where they'd put their talents.
The big thing is that this meant that specs shared a lot of abilities. Every Mage had Fireball, Frostbolt, and Arcane Missiles. The number of unique abilities a spec had access to was actually pretty low.
However, with the changes in Mists, where spec was not tied to these talent trees, Blizzard was able to cut out a ton of abilities that a given spec wasn't likely to use. Druids still have a broad suite of spells and abilities good for all their specs, but that's because Druids are supposed to be the versatile class. It used to be that every class's spellbook looked like that.
But this means that different specs have very little in terms of shared abilities. In other words, specs feel more like individual classes these days - rather than sharing abilities, it's the ease of switching back and forth that makes them feel unified.
In D&D, your class "specialization" (or sub-class) only brings new features every few levels (which is more significant in a game where the level cap is 20.) There are far more similarities between a Monster Slayer Ranger and a Gloomstalker Ranger than there are between a Survival Hunter and a Marksmanship Hunter.
And that's one big reason I think that it would be harder than it sounds to implement a "fourth spec" for each class in WoW. To put it simply, it would require developing 12 new specs (maybe 11 given that Druids already have four) while a new class would be only 3, or even 2, as Demon Hunters proved.
But what of class skins?
Allied Races, with the exception of Kul Tirans and Zandalari, simply use existing models and tweak them a bit. Void Elves are just blue and be-tentacled (sometimes) Blood Elves. Lightforged Draenei are grey Draenei with golden eyes and cooler horns and beards.
So what if we were to do something like an allied race for classes? Take existing classes and change the look and flavor of their abilities, but keep the mechanics?
To be fair, I think this could work. I've always kind of chased the notion of a Battlemage - someone who wears heavy armor and fights in close quarters but also wields arcane magic - in many RPGs (I play an Eldritch Knight in an ongoing D&D campaign, which I think pretty much describes that.) Allowing my Paladin to re-skin his class as some kind of Arcane Knight could give you that without forcing Blizzard to come up with a whole redesign (to be fair, Death Knight might be a better class to re-skin, as Arcane magic tends not to do much healing.)
The downside, which is also an upside for hardworking developers, is that there would be no new mechanics here. You'd need to come up with new animations and new names for abilities, but you could keep everything under the hood working the same way.
I don't think it's problem-free, though.
The biggest issue I imagine is that some classes would be far easier to skin than others. Swap out demons and fel magic for undead and necromancy? You can easily imagine a Warlock as a Necromancer. As I said before, a Paladin or Death Knight could easily be flavored as a Battlemage.
But other classes, especially those less magic-based ones, could pose a serious challenge. Take Rogues, for example. How would you re-skin rogues? Especially given that its specs already kind of cover different flavors of Rogue. Outlaw Rogues are already Pirates (and also kind of 18th Century Highwaymen, though that seems to be a less popular archetype) and Subtlety is already the kind of mystic Ninja spec. So where even could you go with a class that dual-wields, usually daggers, and sneaks around a lot?
Indeed, I actually think a fourth spec for Rogues is more obvious than a class skin - namely a ranged DPS spec that uses bows and such.
And even if classes are feeling crowded, would class skins be closing more doors than it was opening? Take Necromancers, for example. Yes, there's a ton of overlap with both Warlocks and Death Knights in terms of flavor and likely mechanics. But wouldn't it also be cool to have a dark-magic-themed healing class? I'd love to see Necromancers as a hybrid ranged-caster and healer. And if you were just to use it as a skin on Warlocks, you wouldn't be able to do the latter half of that.
I think we'll be due for some big thing class-wise in this year's Blizzcon announcement. But what it actually will be remains a mystery. Ironically, at this point in the post, simply adding a new class actually looks like the simplest option. And I certainly wouldn't complain.
Friday, August 9, 2019
Sunday, August 4, 2019
I Have So Many D&D (And Other TTRPG) Games I Want to Run
My original D&D campaign is now in its fourth year, though scheduling conflicts, among other things, have made it far less of a weekly thing.
I do play in a (more regular) weekly D&D campaign, as well as weekly Adventurer's League games (often run by the friend who runs that campaign.)
I created a group in order to run one-shot games, the idea being that I could set a date and then build the adventure around whoever was able to come, of which I've run two (actually the same adventure with different players) but I do have such grand ambitions.
So, right now: my main campaign is an ongoing epic, with characters gradually uncovering dangers that will, over time, relate more and more to their own backstories.
I have two major D&D campaign concepts that I want to run.
One is set within the same world (my homebrew world of Sarkon) and would be set after the events of the first campaign. In fact, there's a particular move that I want the players to make that will set up the events of that campaign. While the current one is very Cosmic-Horror themed, the next would, ideally, be more of a Lord of the Rings-style epic war campaign in which the... um, spoilers if you're in my D&D group... Angel of Death is released from his 60,000 year imprisonment and raises and army of the dead to kill everyone (he'd probably have reskinned stats for Orcus, changing his creature type from Demon to either Celestial or Undead and alignment from Chaotic Evil to Lawful Evil - maybe futzing with a few under-the-hood things as well.)
The other campaign would be a Ravnica campaign. While I did do a one-shot (which has a second chapter if we ever want to make it a two-shot) for level 18 characters, I'd really like to also run a game starting at low levels (probably 2 or 3) and have the players work their way up. My concept here would borrow a lot from Magic lore, perhaps bending a few rules. Basically, it would start with Squee, the immortal goblin, finding himself on Ravnica and the guilds fighting over control of him. We'd have some guild-based villains to reckon with but then probably have the Phyrexians as the big bads, because I am old-school.
Then, on top of that, I'd like to run a Call of Cthulhu game - right now with the Starter Set I think it's really geared around running the pre-fab adventures, but if we decide we like it I'll probably get the actual books and try to build a game set within my own Massachusetts hometown, because even if it was a super-safe suburb, when you're a little kid you populate the spaces you inhabit with all manner of terrifying monsters. I'd like to share them!
Oh, and back to D&D!
My longterm ambition is to one day do a Chrono Trigger-style time-travel campaign. My homebrew world has a lot of different eras that we could use, and even though that would probably be incredibly freaking difficult to pull off, I fucking want to.
Oh, and also I kind of want to homebrew all the WoW races (and maybe classes...?) for D&D 5e and run a campaign set in Azeroth (though that would probably be more of a one-shot deal.)
The problem, however, is that getting a group of adults in their 20s and 30s to come together regularly to play D&D, especially when most of them work in the performing arts and have wildly irregular schedules, is a pain. in. the. ass. But that's my friends!
If I manage to check each of these off my list at some point, I'll be very happy.
I do play in a (more regular) weekly D&D campaign, as well as weekly Adventurer's League games (often run by the friend who runs that campaign.)
I created a group in order to run one-shot games, the idea being that I could set a date and then build the adventure around whoever was able to come, of which I've run two (actually the same adventure with different players) but I do have such grand ambitions.
So, right now: my main campaign is an ongoing epic, with characters gradually uncovering dangers that will, over time, relate more and more to their own backstories.
I have two major D&D campaign concepts that I want to run.
One is set within the same world (my homebrew world of Sarkon) and would be set after the events of the first campaign. In fact, there's a particular move that I want the players to make that will set up the events of that campaign. While the current one is very Cosmic-Horror themed, the next would, ideally, be more of a Lord of the Rings-style epic war campaign in which the... um, spoilers if you're in my D&D group... Angel of Death is released from his 60,000 year imprisonment and raises and army of the dead to kill everyone (he'd probably have reskinned stats for Orcus, changing his creature type from Demon to either Celestial or Undead and alignment from Chaotic Evil to Lawful Evil - maybe futzing with a few under-the-hood things as well.)
The other campaign would be a Ravnica campaign. While I did do a one-shot (which has a second chapter if we ever want to make it a two-shot) for level 18 characters, I'd really like to also run a game starting at low levels (probably 2 or 3) and have the players work their way up. My concept here would borrow a lot from Magic lore, perhaps bending a few rules. Basically, it would start with Squee, the immortal goblin, finding himself on Ravnica and the guilds fighting over control of him. We'd have some guild-based villains to reckon with but then probably have the Phyrexians as the big bads, because I am old-school.
Then, on top of that, I'd like to run a Call of Cthulhu game - right now with the Starter Set I think it's really geared around running the pre-fab adventures, but if we decide we like it I'll probably get the actual books and try to build a game set within my own Massachusetts hometown, because even if it was a super-safe suburb, when you're a little kid you populate the spaces you inhabit with all manner of terrifying monsters. I'd like to share them!
Oh, and back to D&D!
My longterm ambition is to one day do a Chrono Trigger-style time-travel campaign. My homebrew world has a lot of different eras that we could use, and even though that would probably be incredibly freaking difficult to pull off, I fucking want to.
Oh, and also I kind of want to homebrew all the WoW races (and maybe classes...?) for D&D 5e and run a campaign set in Azeroth (though that would probably be more of a one-shot deal.)
The problem, however, is that getting a group of adults in their 20s and 30s to come together regularly to play D&D, especially when most of them work in the performing arts and have wildly irregular schedules, is a pain. in. the. ass. But that's my friends!
If I manage to check each of these off my list at some point, I'll be very happy.
Friday, August 2, 2019
Call of Cthulhu
I've chosen a TTRPG to branch out into. And while I'm sure it would be interesting to see heroic fantasy from a Pathfinder perspective (one of my friends says she likes it better than 5E, and she and I are both eager DMs, running ongoing campaigns with one another in them, so maybe I can convince her to run a Pathfinder one-shot or something) I've always been intrigued by Call of Cthulhu.
I think Cosmic Horror was one of those things influencing me long before I knew it for what it was. Twin Peaks, for example, was something I didn't actually watch when it was on the air (I was almost 4 when it premiered) but its effect on 90s pop culture was definitely strong. And Stephen King, whose horror is more grounded than Lovecraft's but still definitely plays with ideas of otherworldly, incomprehensible threats, got his hooks into me my senior year of high school with the Dark Tower series.
My fiction errs on the side of humanist optimism (Star Trek was also a big influence on me) but I definitely go to the well of Cosmic Horror for antagonistic forces.
So running a game based on Lovecraft sounds pretty cool. I have a lot of Cosmic Horror elements in my homebrew D&D setting, but player characters in that game are naturally quite powerful (though I haven't hit them with Star Spawn yet. Thankfully the Paladin just got high enough level to cast Revivify, so I might feel less guilty about taking the gloves off now!)
Here's the other element:
I grew up in New England.
So, the Cosmic Horror genre clearly extends beyond Lovecraft himself, and old Howard Philip has a problematic legacy. While he conceived of some of the most iconic elements of the genre - there's a reason we often call it "Lovecraftian Horror" - the man was also considered racist even for the 1920s.
And indeed, it colors some of the ideas he was working with in his fiction. Most basically, his assumption that the "other" and "alien" was inherently monstrous applied not only to be-tentacled creatures from beyond the stars, but also to, you know, people who didn't look like him. This manifests in a pervasive theme in a lot of his writing that people of other cultures are seen as evil, sometimes implying that they are corrupted with taint from these alien beings.
The notion that the same kind of existential, "pulling the rug from under you" horror from witnessing these cosmic entities at work could also come from a racist merely contemplating, say, having nonwhite ancestry, deflates a lot of the fun to be had by walking up to that scariness in a safe, fictional manner.
So from the beginning, there's a certain question of how we can explore the quite real and potent fears of humanity's tininess in a universe we only barely understand without employing outdated and hateful tropes. I think that we can, but it does take mindfulness.
Bearing that in mind, the fact that Lovecraft was a New Englander means that the areas he was talking about are, actually, very familiar territory to me. I grew up in a suburb of Boston, and so Eastern Mass. is home to me.
Likewise, I was a scared little boy growing up. I didn't have a traumatic childhood or anything - far from it - but I had an active imagination and I grew up in a creaky old Victorian house.
In my childhood, I populated most of the rooms of that house, as well as the surrounding neighborhood, with all manner of monsters. I knew which walls would stretch out with ghastly figures to grab you, why you should never use the bathroom with the shower curtain drawn, and that one tree you had to be sure to look at only an even number of times. (Incidentally, Stephen King's novella "N" really worked for me.)
Given that Lovecraft's Arkham is meant to be the fictional equivalent of Salem (infamous of course for its witch trials, though it was also a major port that briefly rivaled Boston) it occurred to me:
If you're going to run a Call of Cthulhu game, why make up a fictional setting? Why not use the city you know better than any other?
Therefore, I'm intending to run a Call of Cthulhu game set in my own hometown, probably using my own childhood home as a major location for it.
Bonus points: one of my best friends out here in LA is someone I've known since high school, and he actually went to the same elementary school (he's a year older, which is why I didn't know him until later.) I went so far as to actually look up an old 1920s zoning map of our hometown and found that, where his childhood home is, there was undeveloped land with a little stream running through it.
Given that he'll almost certainly be playing in the game, I'm for sure going to have some monstrous thing precisely where his house would later be built.
I am, of course, not yet totally familiar with the rules of the game or how to build adventures as the Keeper of Arcane Lore (the game's equivalent of DM) but I really hope I can pull this off.
I think Cosmic Horror was one of those things influencing me long before I knew it for what it was. Twin Peaks, for example, was something I didn't actually watch when it was on the air (I was almost 4 when it premiered) but its effect on 90s pop culture was definitely strong. And Stephen King, whose horror is more grounded than Lovecraft's but still definitely plays with ideas of otherworldly, incomprehensible threats, got his hooks into me my senior year of high school with the Dark Tower series.
My fiction errs on the side of humanist optimism (Star Trek was also a big influence on me) but I definitely go to the well of Cosmic Horror for antagonistic forces.
So running a game based on Lovecraft sounds pretty cool. I have a lot of Cosmic Horror elements in my homebrew D&D setting, but player characters in that game are naturally quite powerful (though I haven't hit them with Star Spawn yet. Thankfully the Paladin just got high enough level to cast Revivify, so I might feel less guilty about taking the gloves off now!)
Here's the other element:
I grew up in New England.
So, the Cosmic Horror genre clearly extends beyond Lovecraft himself, and old Howard Philip has a problematic legacy. While he conceived of some of the most iconic elements of the genre - there's a reason we often call it "Lovecraftian Horror" - the man was also considered racist even for the 1920s.
And indeed, it colors some of the ideas he was working with in his fiction. Most basically, his assumption that the "other" and "alien" was inherently monstrous applied not only to be-tentacled creatures from beyond the stars, but also to, you know, people who didn't look like him. This manifests in a pervasive theme in a lot of his writing that people of other cultures are seen as evil, sometimes implying that they are corrupted with taint from these alien beings.
The notion that the same kind of existential, "pulling the rug from under you" horror from witnessing these cosmic entities at work could also come from a racist merely contemplating, say, having nonwhite ancestry, deflates a lot of the fun to be had by walking up to that scariness in a safe, fictional manner.
So from the beginning, there's a certain question of how we can explore the quite real and potent fears of humanity's tininess in a universe we only barely understand without employing outdated and hateful tropes. I think that we can, but it does take mindfulness.
Bearing that in mind, the fact that Lovecraft was a New Englander means that the areas he was talking about are, actually, very familiar territory to me. I grew up in a suburb of Boston, and so Eastern Mass. is home to me.
Likewise, I was a scared little boy growing up. I didn't have a traumatic childhood or anything - far from it - but I had an active imagination and I grew up in a creaky old Victorian house.
In my childhood, I populated most of the rooms of that house, as well as the surrounding neighborhood, with all manner of monsters. I knew which walls would stretch out with ghastly figures to grab you, why you should never use the bathroom with the shower curtain drawn, and that one tree you had to be sure to look at only an even number of times. (Incidentally, Stephen King's novella "N" really worked for me.)
Given that Lovecraft's Arkham is meant to be the fictional equivalent of Salem (infamous of course for its witch trials, though it was also a major port that briefly rivaled Boston) it occurred to me:
If you're going to run a Call of Cthulhu game, why make up a fictional setting? Why not use the city you know better than any other?
Therefore, I'm intending to run a Call of Cthulhu game set in my own hometown, probably using my own childhood home as a major location for it.
Bonus points: one of my best friends out here in LA is someone I've known since high school, and he actually went to the same elementary school (he's a year older, which is why I didn't know him until later.) I went so far as to actually look up an old 1920s zoning map of our hometown and found that, where his childhood home is, there was undeveloped land with a little stream running through it.
Given that he'll almost certainly be playing in the game, I'm for sure going to have some monstrous thing precisely where his house would later be built.
I am, of course, not yet totally familiar with the rules of the game or how to build adventures as the Keeper of Arcane Lore (the game's equivalent of DM) but I really hope I can pull this off.
The Fate of Azshara
Spoilers for the end of the Eternal Palace Raid (though I guess the title is almost a spoiler itself... so sorry.)
When we fight our way (well, when heroes do - I must confess I haven't run Eternal Palace at all, and never did most of Battle for Dazar'alor...) up to Azshara and defeat her at the end of the current raid, her end is much more of an ellipsis than a period.
Whether she truly dies or not, upon defeat she collapses while her mission - unlocking N'zoth's prison - is a success. When the Old God's shadowy essence blasts its way out of the deep abyss below, it gathers Azshara and her eyes shoot open in a look of...
What is that? Terror? Shock?
Here's my take:
Azshara has convinced herself since first making the deal with N'zoth that she was getting the better end of the deal. Her ego is the largest in the entire Warcraft cosmos, such that she literally defined her society's hierarchy over who fawned over her the most. Yes, the physiological differences between the Night Elves and Blood Elves are actually the (somewhat indirect) result over whose ancestors sucked up more to Azshara.
Given that N'zoth is far older than Azshara's entire race (and I'm not even just talking about the Naga,) and that over that time he succeeded primarily by manipulating things behind the scenes, Azshara was probably an easy mark for his games. Again, my read on the Azshara Warbringers short is that the sly, scheming voice at the beginning is much closer to N'zoth's actual personality than the bellowing rage-god. (Though I'd have kind of loved it if they'd gone with a third option and had him sound like a totally reasonable and even concerned and caring voice in that moment - but that would undercut the point I'm about to make.) Letting Azshara think she had out-maneuvered him was all part of the pitch.
Given that take on Warbringers, my read on the expression on Azshara's face when N'zoth grabs her, possibly reviving her, is one of abject terror.
Now, what is the source of that terror?
Is it Azshara realizing that all this time she's been the pawn? That her inflated sense of importance is actually a lie? That she's second fiddle to literally anyone else?
Or perhaps, like Arthas as he drifted off into his nothingness of an afterlife, she had truly been dead and now saw that there was no grand rebirth, no glory for her. That she was, in the end, just a mortal?
Or there's a third possibility.
Azshara's actual endgame in her two biggest "betray the planet" schemes were always a little muddy. When she tried to bring Sargeras to Azeroth, she theoretically wanted Sargeras as her husband - the only being great enough to be worthy of her. And to be certain, Azshara was powerful - thought to be comparable to if not exceeding the power of Archimonde or Kil'jaeden (though that was never tested.) But one imagines that, had Sargeras' plans come to fruition, we'd have one of two scenarios. Either Sargeras would have made Azeroth another Fel Titan, in which case he'd probably have dropped any false interest in Azshara, perhaps deigning to let her become a powerful demon, or if Azeroth had been destroyed, he might have just killed Azshara in the process.
Because as powerful as Azshara was, I think the general consensus is that the only single entity more powerful than Sargeras is an Azeroth that makes it to adulthood. (Though get back to me if we ever figure out what the hell Elune is.)
Azshara might have hoped to rule a reborn Black Empire, but one really wonders if that was ever in the cards. Being Queen is still a secondary position when you've got a God right there.
But the point that I'm taking a long time to get to here is that Azshara understands arcane magic intrinsically (in D&D she'd definitely be a Sorcerer,) but the true, cosmic horror of what the Void represents is probably not something she's ever thought to reckon with. N'zoth is a means to an end, the end being the restoration to her proper place as Empress of the World.
And the Void has changed her, mutating her into this five-eyed aquatic monstrosity, but she still sees only her own beauty.
What if death forced her to see the Void for what it really is?
What if she has only just now realized the horrors her ego has bought her?
And for most of us, sure we've got the Curse of Flesh, and we're vulnerable to the Old Gods' corruption. But she has been stewing in it for ten thousand years. There is no hope whatsoever for her. And the ends the Old Gods are striving for?
The Black Empire was only ever a means, not an end. The Old Gods themselves are only a means, not an end. Even the Void Titan that they seek to make of Azeroth is only a means, and not an end.
The end is darkness everywhere - a universe of only Void. No empire. No subjects. No beauty. No power.
No Azshara.
And for ten thousand years, she has been working toward that end.
And perhaps in that moment, she realized it.
So what does she do now?
She is so deeply corrupted that it's not even clear she'll be able to exercise her free will. Sure, she's been given the illusion of agency for all the time that she was doing exactly what N'zoth wanted. But if you look at how batshit the Old Gods (and it's implied, specifically N'zoth) made Neltharion, to the point where his entire dragonflight is bombarded by whispers of the Void (even Ebonhorn, a theoretically cleansed Black Dragon, has to fight off those whispers - maybe it wasn't the best idea to live so close to where Dad went crazy for ten thousand years, Ebyssian?) you have got to imagine that N'zoth's installed a bunch of back doors to Azshara's programming to control everything she does.
So Azshara is screwed. Even if she realizes what she's done. But is it possible that she could do something - anything - to prevent the dark fate that she has contributed to? Might some glimmer of the real Azshara - not benevolent, not altruistic, but defiant - show through?
Or, if she realizes how screwed she is, will she find no reason to care? After all, is she is lost, then the whole world is lost, if she is the whole world.
Blizzard chose not to kill, or at least not permanently kill, Azshara for a reason. It may be a long time before we find out why, but it's a really interesting choice.
When we fight our way (well, when heroes do - I must confess I haven't run Eternal Palace at all, and never did most of Battle for Dazar'alor...) up to Azshara and defeat her at the end of the current raid, her end is much more of an ellipsis than a period.
Whether she truly dies or not, upon defeat she collapses while her mission - unlocking N'zoth's prison - is a success. When the Old God's shadowy essence blasts its way out of the deep abyss below, it gathers Azshara and her eyes shoot open in a look of...
What is that? Terror? Shock?
Here's my take:
Azshara has convinced herself since first making the deal with N'zoth that she was getting the better end of the deal. Her ego is the largest in the entire Warcraft cosmos, such that she literally defined her society's hierarchy over who fawned over her the most. Yes, the physiological differences between the Night Elves and Blood Elves are actually the (somewhat indirect) result over whose ancestors sucked up more to Azshara.
Given that N'zoth is far older than Azshara's entire race (and I'm not even just talking about the Naga,) and that over that time he succeeded primarily by manipulating things behind the scenes, Azshara was probably an easy mark for his games. Again, my read on the Azshara Warbringers short is that the sly, scheming voice at the beginning is much closer to N'zoth's actual personality than the bellowing rage-god. (Though I'd have kind of loved it if they'd gone with a third option and had him sound like a totally reasonable and even concerned and caring voice in that moment - but that would undercut the point I'm about to make.) Letting Azshara think she had out-maneuvered him was all part of the pitch.
Given that take on Warbringers, my read on the expression on Azshara's face when N'zoth grabs her, possibly reviving her, is one of abject terror.
Now, what is the source of that terror?
Is it Azshara realizing that all this time she's been the pawn? That her inflated sense of importance is actually a lie? That she's second fiddle to literally anyone else?
Or perhaps, like Arthas as he drifted off into his nothingness of an afterlife, she had truly been dead and now saw that there was no grand rebirth, no glory for her. That she was, in the end, just a mortal?
Or there's a third possibility.
Azshara's actual endgame in her two biggest "betray the planet" schemes were always a little muddy. When she tried to bring Sargeras to Azeroth, she theoretically wanted Sargeras as her husband - the only being great enough to be worthy of her. And to be certain, Azshara was powerful - thought to be comparable to if not exceeding the power of Archimonde or Kil'jaeden (though that was never tested.) But one imagines that, had Sargeras' plans come to fruition, we'd have one of two scenarios. Either Sargeras would have made Azeroth another Fel Titan, in which case he'd probably have dropped any false interest in Azshara, perhaps deigning to let her become a powerful demon, or if Azeroth had been destroyed, he might have just killed Azshara in the process.
Because as powerful as Azshara was, I think the general consensus is that the only single entity more powerful than Sargeras is an Azeroth that makes it to adulthood. (Though get back to me if we ever figure out what the hell Elune is.)
Azshara might have hoped to rule a reborn Black Empire, but one really wonders if that was ever in the cards. Being Queen is still a secondary position when you've got a God right there.
But the point that I'm taking a long time to get to here is that Azshara understands arcane magic intrinsically (in D&D she'd definitely be a Sorcerer,) but the true, cosmic horror of what the Void represents is probably not something she's ever thought to reckon with. N'zoth is a means to an end, the end being the restoration to her proper place as Empress of the World.
And the Void has changed her, mutating her into this five-eyed aquatic monstrosity, but she still sees only her own beauty.
What if death forced her to see the Void for what it really is?
What if she has only just now realized the horrors her ego has bought her?
And for most of us, sure we've got the Curse of Flesh, and we're vulnerable to the Old Gods' corruption. But she has been stewing in it for ten thousand years. There is no hope whatsoever for her. And the ends the Old Gods are striving for?
The Black Empire was only ever a means, not an end. The Old Gods themselves are only a means, not an end. Even the Void Titan that they seek to make of Azeroth is only a means, and not an end.
The end is darkness everywhere - a universe of only Void. No empire. No subjects. No beauty. No power.
No Azshara.
And for ten thousand years, she has been working toward that end.
And perhaps in that moment, she realized it.
So what does she do now?
She is so deeply corrupted that it's not even clear she'll be able to exercise her free will. Sure, she's been given the illusion of agency for all the time that she was doing exactly what N'zoth wanted. But if you look at how batshit the Old Gods (and it's implied, specifically N'zoth) made Neltharion, to the point where his entire dragonflight is bombarded by whispers of the Void (even Ebonhorn, a theoretically cleansed Black Dragon, has to fight off those whispers - maybe it wasn't the best idea to live so close to where Dad went crazy for ten thousand years, Ebyssian?) you have got to imagine that N'zoth's installed a bunch of back doors to Azshara's programming to control everything she does.
So Azshara is screwed. Even if she realizes what she's done. But is it possible that she could do something - anything - to prevent the dark fate that she has contributed to? Might some glimmer of the real Azshara - not benevolent, not altruistic, but defiant - show through?
Or, if she realizes how screwed she is, will she find no reason to care? After all, is she is lost, then the whole world is lost, if she is the whole world.
Blizzard chose not to kill, or at least not permanently kill, Azshara for a reason. It may be a long time before we find out why, but it's a really interesting choice.
Thursday, August 1, 2019
Looking Back on Expansion "Leaks"
I've been writing this blog for... holy shit, seven years. As such, especially given its focus on WoW (though as my interests have drifted, so has the blog) I've got posts on here watching the history of WoW unfold.
In particular, I tend to write a lot of speculative pieces about the future of the game. Even when the gameplay grows dull (which I actually think is usually due to feeling unmotivated by the lore - Legion got me really back into things after Warlords had sapped my enthusiasm.) I still have a ton of fun speculating on the direction the game will go story-wise.
So it's interesting to find posts from right before various expansion announcements.
I started writing this blog in 2012, while Cataclysm was still the current expansion, but Mists of Pandaria had already been announced. So we'll start with the pre-expansion buzz around Warlords:
There are a couple of posts I made after Warlords of Draenor was trademarked by Blizzard. "Let's See How Wrong We Get It!" was my attempt to speculate based on the title and other rumors that were floating around. While in retrospect the notion that Anduin would do something as crazy as break Garrosh out of jail is nuts (that's for Saurfang!) the overall idea of going to a past version of Draenor was pretty spot-on, using Kairoz and such.
I think the big thing that I got wrong there was the importance of the time-travel elements to Warlords. I've made no secret of the fact that I think Warlords would have been a far better and more interesting expansion if they had really leaned into the mechanics of time travel and the weirdness of having alternate-universe doppelgängers pop up, but Blizzard seemed wary of trying such tricky narrative elements and chose, instead, a sort of bland story of a world that may as well have just been a different planet in the same universe.
Moving on:
Blizzard was remarkably good at keeping Legion under wraps. The post before Gamescom 2015 was called "One Day Out and Still No Solid Leads on Expansion Six." The only accurate leak I saw was some translated post on a Chinese forum with details about Demon Hunters, Sylvanas becoming Warchief, and something about Azshara (who wound up playing a very minor role in Legion, though given that right now she's the top raid boss in the game, they apparently just chose to save her for later.)
Hilariously, I think one prevailing theory at the time was that we'd go to the Ogre Continent on Draenor, as if we weren't all sick of that world. Thankfully, Blizzard did nothing like that. Naturally, each expansion we'd speculated on the possibility of a "South Seas" expansion, and I remember feeling convinced enough that that would be what was coming that in the Legion announcement trailer, when Khadgar said something along the lines of "we knew they'd be coming back" right at the start, I still thought that it would be the Naga - and hoped that the pre-announcement cinematic with Gul'dan finding Illidan still meant that Demon Hunters were coming. I was just so convinced that they wouldn't pull the Burning Legion trigger that it was a profound shock when they did.
And having played through Legion, which is now my favorite expansion, I look back on that announcement with glee.
Finally, we come to BFA:
The final prediction post for this one was "For the Record: Expansion Predictions." Now, it's notable that at the time, we had not yet seen the end of the Antorus raid. Indeed, this was more like how things were in WoW's earliest expansions. The announcement trailer for Cataclysm even included a brief shot of Icecrown Citadel because that hadn't come out yet. Mists of Pandaria, I believe, was the first expansion to get through all of its content before we had word on where we were going next. However, datamining had shown that Sargeras was going to stab the planet.
We seemed to accurately predict that this would be the "South Seas" or at least the nautical-themed expansion. What I certainly didn't predict was that there would be two major continents. I figured we'd get a single large archipelago where we'd find Kul Tiras and Zandalar as two of a larger number of zones instead of the mini-continents they wound up being.
Obviously, we still don't know where the final patch of the expansion is taking us, and even though Blizzard did say it would be clear who would be the final boss of the expansion after The Eternal Palace, I still see a lot of people doubting that N'zoth will be the final boss. (Though I'm relatively confident.)
Looking at these predictions, it seems like we get things right some of the time, especially when there's a pretty logical direction for things to go.
So what does that mean for future accuracy?
Well, first off, I think I should point out that these are the last-minute predictions, when there's been ample time for leaks and datamining. While I have no doubt that Expansion Eight is being worked on right now, and that there are probably models, dungeon maps, and stories figured out by this point down in Anaheim, there is probably very little reason for that stuff to have left the building, and while employees getting a kick out of leaking stuff certainly does happen (hell, I imagine some companies do it for marketing,) we've got to take this stuff with a grain of salt. Very convincing-looking title screens and screenshots have been "leaked" only to prove utterly wrong. But also, sometimes they're correct.
But if we ignore the idea of secret information getting out, what about our ability to logic out where the story should be going?
On that front, I think there's something to be said for player speculation.
So I think the analysis of themes and motifs in existing expansions is actually a pretty good way to suss out what is coming next.
For that reason, I think we really, really shouldn't discount the theme of Death in BFA.
Now, in theory, Warlords and Legion were two Demon/Burning Legion expansions in a row. So I don't think we can rule out an Old God expansion even if N'zoth is the final boss of BFA. That being said, I think that we're probably going to rotate a bit around the big chart of the Warcraft cosmos seen in every volume of Chronicle and focus more on Death and Necromancy than Void and Shadow.
Let's make a list of the elements that point toward this in BFA:
The Drust and their Death Magic.
Bwonsamdi, a Loa of Death, ascending to the top of the Zandalari Pantheon.
Sylvanas, who is undead, growing more powerful and more antagonistic even to the Horde.
The Lich King's daughter showing up.
The continuing mystery of Vol'jin's return as a Loa after death.
Helya's apparent resurgence (this is admittedly a deep cut, given that it's a story reward off Island Expeditions.)
The rebirth of Calia as a "Holy Undead."
Even that one quest in Drustvar where you fend off a Death Knight trying to raise a Red Dragon from the dead (which has special dialogue if you're a Death Knight, given that you did exactly that last expansion.)
Just as Legion was filled with references to the Old Gods and, wouldn't you know it, we've got a very Old God-themed expansion, it seems very likely that the Death theme here is pointing us to the kinds of things we're dealing with next.
Now, the whole "Azeroth dies and we have to journey into the Shadowlands to save the World Soul and bring her back" is just my spin on these themes - the ideas that I think would motivate an epic WoW expansion. But regardless of the specifics, it seems very likely that WoW's next expansion will put a Death theme front and center.
As always, I'll be very curious to see how right or wrong I am. We're still a couple months out from Blizzcon, so maybe in November I'll be eating crow and we'll be getting ready for our journey to K'aresh to fight the Void Lords. I'll make a post closer to the actual announcement to add to the series listed above.
In particular, I tend to write a lot of speculative pieces about the future of the game. Even when the gameplay grows dull (which I actually think is usually due to feeling unmotivated by the lore - Legion got me really back into things after Warlords had sapped my enthusiasm.) I still have a ton of fun speculating on the direction the game will go story-wise.
So it's interesting to find posts from right before various expansion announcements.
I started writing this blog in 2012, while Cataclysm was still the current expansion, but Mists of Pandaria had already been announced. So we'll start with the pre-expansion buzz around Warlords:
There are a couple of posts I made after Warlords of Draenor was trademarked by Blizzard. "Let's See How Wrong We Get It!" was my attempt to speculate based on the title and other rumors that were floating around. While in retrospect the notion that Anduin would do something as crazy as break Garrosh out of jail is nuts (that's for Saurfang!) the overall idea of going to a past version of Draenor was pretty spot-on, using Kairoz and such.
I think the big thing that I got wrong there was the importance of the time-travel elements to Warlords. I've made no secret of the fact that I think Warlords would have been a far better and more interesting expansion if they had really leaned into the mechanics of time travel and the weirdness of having alternate-universe doppelgängers pop up, but Blizzard seemed wary of trying such tricky narrative elements and chose, instead, a sort of bland story of a world that may as well have just been a different planet in the same universe.
Moving on:
Blizzard was remarkably good at keeping Legion under wraps. The post before Gamescom 2015 was called "One Day Out and Still No Solid Leads on Expansion Six." The only accurate leak I saw was some translated post on a Chinese forum with details about Demon Hunters, Sylvanas becoming Warchief, and something about Azshara (who wound up playing a very minor role in Legion, though given that right now she's the top raid boss in the game, they apparently just chose to save her for later.)
Hilariously, I think one prevailing theory at the time was that we'd go to the Ogre Continent on Draenor, as if we weren't all sick of that world. Thankfully, Blizzard did nothing like that. Naturally, each expansion we'd speculated on the possibility of a "South Seas" expansion, and I remember feeling convinced enough that that would be what was coming that in the Legion announcement trailer, when Khadgar said something along the lines of "we knew they'd be coming back" right at the start, I still thought that it would be the Naga - and hoped that the pre-announcement cinematic with Gul'dan finding Illidan still meant that Demon Hunters were coming. I was just so convinced that they wouldn't pull the Burning Legion trigger that it was a profound shock when they did.
And having played through Legion, which is now my favorite expansion, I look back on that announcement with glee.
Finally, we come to BFA:
The final prediction post for this one was "For the Record: Expansion Predictions." Now, it's notable that at the time, we had not yet seen the end of the Antorus raid. Indeed, this was more like how things were in WoW's earliest expansions. The announcement trailer for Cataclysm even included a brief shot of Icecrown Citadel because that hadn't come out yet. Mists of Pandaria, I believe, was the first expansion to get through all of its content before we had word on where we were going next. However, datamining had shown that Sargeras was going to stab the planet.
We seemed to accurately predict that this would be the "South Seas" or at least the nautical-themed expansion. What I certainly didn't predict was that there would be two major continents. I figured we'd get a single large archipelago where we'd find Kul Tiras and Zandalar as two of a larger number of zones instead of the mini-continents they wound up being.
Obviously, we still don't know where the final patch of the expansion is taking us, and even though Blizzard did say it would be clear who would be the final boss of the expansion after The Eternal Palace, I still see a lot of people doubting that N'zoth will be the final boss. (Though I'm relatively confident.)
Looking at these predictions, it seems like we get things right some of the time, especially when there's a pretty logical direction for things to go.
So what does that mean for future accuracy?
Well, first off, I think I should point out that these are the last-minute predictions, when there's been ample time for leaks and datamining. While I have no doubt that Expansion Eight is being worked on right now, and that there are probably models, dungeon maps, and stories figured out by this point down in Anaheim, there is probably very little reason for that stuff to have left the building, and while employees getting a kick out of leaking stuff certainly does happen (hell, I imagine some companies do it for marketing,) we've got to take this stuff with a grain of salt. Very convincing-looking title screens and screenshots have been "leaked" only to prove utterly wrong. But also, sometimes they're correct.
But if we ignore the idea of secret information getting out, what about our ability to logic out where the story should be going?
On that front, I think there's something to be said for player speculation.
So I think the analysis of themes and motifs in existing expansions is actually a pretty good way to suss out what is coming next.
For that reason, I think we really, really shouldn't discount the theme of Death in BFA.
Now, in theory, Warlords and Legion were two Demon/Burning Legion expansions in a row. So I don't think we can rule out an Old God expansion even if N'zoth is the final boss of BFA. That being said, I think that we're probably going to rotate a bit around the big chart of the Warcraft cosmos seen in every volume of Chronicle and focus more on Death and Necromancy than Void and Shadow.
Let's make a list of the elements that point toward this in BFA:
The Drust and their Death Magic.
Bwonsamdi, a Loa of Death, ascending to the top of the Zandalari Pantheon.
Sylvanas, who is undead, growing more powerful and more antagonistic even to the Horde.
The Lich King's daughter showing up.
The continuing mystery of Vol'jin's return as a Loa after death.
Helya's apparent resurgence (this is admittedly a deep cut, given that it's a story reward off Island Expeditions.)
The rebirth of Calia as a "Holy Undead."
Even that one quest in Drustvar where you fend off a Death Knight trying to raise a Red Dragon from the dead (which has special dialogue if you're a Death Knight, given that you did exactly that last expansion.)
Just as Legion was filled with references to the Old Gods and, wouldn't you know it, we've got a very Old God-themed expansion, it seems very likely that the Death theme here is pointing us to the kinds of things we're dealing with next.
Now, the whole "Azeroth dies and we have to journey into the Shadowlands to save the World Soul and bring her back" is just my spin on these themes - the ideas that I think would motivate an epic WoW expansion. But regardless of the specifics, it seems very likely that WoW's next expansion will put a Death theme front and center.
As always, I'll be very curious to see how right or wrong I am. We're still a couple months out from Blizzcon, so maybe in November I'll be eating crow and we'll be getting ready for our journey to K'aresh to fight the Void Lords. I'll make a post closer to the actual announcement to add to the series listed above.
8.2.5 PTR Brings New Wrathion, Valeera, and Calia Models, Not To Mention Goblins and Worgen
X.X.5 Patches have started to take on greater significance in WoW, sort of taking the place of Mists's odd-numbered patches in giving us new story content. 8.1.5 saw the arrest of Baine and the return (or infiltration) of Derek Proudmoore.
With datamining flooding the usual sites, these are some intriguing hints at what the future could hold.
Wrathion's return is particularly exciting, given that we haven't actually seen him in person since Mists. Wrathion's last public act was to free Garrosh Hellscream from the Temple of the White Tiger aided by Kairoz, some "True Horde" loyalists who would go on to help form the Iron Horde, and a number of Infinite Dragons. He then lost favor with the Iron Horde and was a prisoner in Admiral Taylor's garrison, where he tried but failed to warn the Admiral of the treachery in their midst (which, but the way, we've never fully unraveled. We still don't know who Ephial's master was.)
Given that his stated reason for trying to push the Alliance and Horde into an all-or-nothing war was the hope that, should one side simply conquer the other and absorb its people into its ranks, that Azeroth might stand united for the impending threat of the Burning Legion, it's ironic his actions indirectly gave the Legion a new Gul'dan to kickstart a full invasion. On the other hand, divided or not, Azeroth managed to pull off a victory - though the massive sword in Silithus makes the victory a little less complete.
But one could easily ask where the hell he's been. Well, perhaps we'll get an answer, or at least find out where he is now.
Calia's probably the one I'm most excited about, given the implications for future stories relating to the undead. As what people have been terming a "Lightbound Undead," Calia is not decayed and rotten like the Forsaken, but she's also clearly not strictly human anymore.
I suspect that Calia will be key to deprograming whatever sleeper agent commands Derek has been seeded with, but her future role in the world of the Alliance, Horde, and Forsaken remains to be seen. Personally I really hope for an undead allied race for the Alliance that serves her as the True Queen of Lordaeron, but I'll have to wait and see what happens with her.
Valeera is a bit more surprising. Her primary role has been as a kind of neutral figure, pointedly not choosing sides in the Alliance/Horde conflict, even as she has maintained friendships with important members of both - particularly the late King Varian. The hope for this expansion is to see a meaningful peace forged between the factions, and she's in a pretty good position to help that happen.
Naturally, any patch is going to be a source of excitement. As far as I know we don't have models for the Goblin and Worgen heritage armor, but I'm both very curious about that and also wondering how motivated I feel to get my Goblin from level 100 to 120 in order to unlock the armor.
With datamining flooding the usual sites, these are some intriguing hints at what the future could hold.
Wrathion's return is particularly exciting, given that we haven't actually seen him in person since Mists. Wrathion's last public act was to free Garrosh Hellscream from the Temple of the White Tiger aided by Kairoz, some "True Horde" loyalists who would go on to help form the Iron Horde, and a number of Infinite Dragons. He then lost favor with the Iron Horde and was a prisoner in Admiral Taylor's garrison, where he tried but failed to warn the Admiral of the treachery in their midst (which, but the way, we've never fully unraveled. We still don't know who Ephial's master was.)
Given that his stated reason for trying to push the Alliance and Horde into an all-or-nothing war was the hope that, should one side simply conquer the other and absorb its people into its ranks, that Azeroth might stand united for the impending threat of the Burning Legion, it's ironic his actions indirectly gave the Legion a new Gul'dan to kickstart a full invasion. On the other hand, divided or not, Azeroth managed to pull off a victory - though the massive sword in Silithus makes the victory a little less complete.
But one could easily ask where the hell he's been. Well, perhaps we'll get an answer, or at least find out where he is now.
Calia's probably the one I'm most excited about, given the implications for future stories relating to the undead. As what people have been terming a "Lightbound Undead," Calia is not decayed and rotten like the Forsaken, but she's also clearly not strictly human anymore.
I suspect that Calia will be key to deprograming whatever sleeper agent commands Derek has been seeded with, but her future role in the world of the Alliance, Horde, and Forsaken remains to be seen. Personally I really hope for an undead allied race for the Alliance that serves her as the True Queen of Lordaeron, but I'll have to wait and see what happens with her.
Valeera is a bit more surprising. Her primary role has been as a kind of neutral figure, pointedly not choosing sides in the Alliance/Horde conflict, even as she has maintained friendships with important members of both - particularly the late King Varian. The hope for this expansion is to see a meaningful peace forged between the factions, and she's in a pretty good position to help that happen.
Naturally, any patch is going to be a source of excitement. As far as I know we don't have models for the Goblin and Worgen heritage armor, but I'm both very curious about that and also wondering how motivated I feel to get my Goblin from level 100 to 120 in order to unlock the armor.
What Would Class Skins Look Like?
New classes tend to be very exciting for WoW. Your preferences will certainly vary, but of the three classes added after vanilla WoW, two of them are among my favorite to play (it's the two hero classes, Death Knights and Demon Hunters.)
However, while I was very happy we got Demon Hunters, I also recognize that there's a problem with just adding class after class, beyond the obvious need to come up with new gameplay mechanics.
And that's one of theme.
Demon Hunters had precedent in the lore, but in the earlier iterations of the existing classes, some elements of the Warcraft III hero were redistributed to other classes. Most notably, Metamorphosis became the absolute core to the Demonology Warlock spec. In Mists and Warlords, Demo Locks were all about building up Demonic Fury and then transforming, getting a burst of power that they then spent before going back into the building phase. Indeed, Mists saw Warlocks get a radical redesign to the old Soul Shard system, giving each spec its own cool secondary resource, which was then walked back to making Soul Shards a more relevant resource regardless of spec (they were originally a special inventory item you'd make special bags to hold.)
So when Demon Hunters came along, and given how Metamorphosis was one of Illidan's most iconic abilities, it made perfect sense for them to take that from Warlocks, forcing Demonology to be totally redesigned and even reconceptualized. While I really enjoyed the Mists/Warlords version of the spec, I thought the Legion incarnation to be a good idea executed not so well (Demonic Empowerment was a dumb spell,) and at this point I'm mostly happy with how the spec plays (give or take a baseline Implosion.)
But the whole reason this was an issue is that Demon Hunters, like Warlocks, use demonic, Fel magic. And in order to make a clear distinction, Blizzard had to take away the idea that Warlocks were truly embodying the Fel in their own bodies via Metamorphosis, and instead make them purely magical practitioners while Demon Hunters were the ones who had effectively become demons.
To be fair, there's precedent for having two takes on the same basic concept. Priests and Paladins both have a holy, divine style of magic, but Paladins use it in conjunction with martial prowess while Priests are purely magic practitioners. In recent expansions, they've even shifted Priests to be less specifically about Holy magic, and more about the spectrum of lightness and dark - primarily by giving Discipline access to both.
In a vacuum, I think a Necromancer class would be a really cool one for WoW. You could imagine it as a ranged caster, even potentially with a healing spec (theming your healing around Necromancy's ability to revive the dead.)
But it does run into the following problem:
When you think of Necromancers, you generally think of them as summoning undead minions - sure, there's harmful spells that sap the life from your enemies, but the really iconic look for "necromancy" is a spellcaster with a bunch of skeletons or zombies fighting for them.
Creating such a playstyle for a ranged caster - the magic ranged DPS with a swarm of undead minions - sure sounds a lot like the way Demonology works, doesn't it?
And naturally, Death Knights also use necromancy as their primary magical power - from Blood's ability to sap life from enemies and Unholy's undead minions (done differently than Demonology, of course.) Frost, to be fair, is the least obviously necromantic, but given Warcraft's long association between necromancy and cold places (Northrend,) it makes sense.
So are we just not ever going to get Necromancers as a class?
The answer could very well be yes. The fact of the matter is that the two most obvious aspects of the class - a caster that summons lots of minions and a class themed around necromancy - are both already represented.
But what if the class wasn't actually a new class? What if it was just a change in flavor?
In Blizzard's pure multiplayer games, Heroes of the Storm and Overwatch, the "heroes" that players embody come with a large number of cosmetic skins. Sometimes these change the look and feel of a character. For example, Torbjorn in Overwatch is a diminutive Swedish engineer who drops a powerful turret as his primary feature. However, there's a skin that dresses him up like Magni Bronzebeard, changing his look from sci-fi blacksmith to dwarven king. This changes nothing about how he works as an Overwatch character, but you get a different feel from him.
Could a similar thing be done with World of Warcraft classes?
Allied races went farther than simply changing the cosmetic look of existing races - they have unique racial abilities and sometimes different class options. But racials are only rarely the defining characteristic of a character's power, so one could see Allied races as essentially new "skins" for existing races.
Perhaps we could see Necromancers introduced, not as a new class, but as a variant on Warlocks. Imagine, for instance, that a Demonology Warlock is instead a Corpseraiser Necromancer, replacing imps with skeletons, felhounds with geists, and maybe the felguard with an abomination minon. Mechanically, it'd be identical to Demonology (except perhaps the creature type of the minions you summon, making it easier for priests to CC them but harder for warlocks) but you'd get this new flavor.
And then, yes, you'd get some thematic overlap with Death Knights, but their mechanics would be totally distinct.
Then, the question becomes how easily you can find similar class skins for other classes.
I could see Paladins getting something akin to D&D's Eldritch Knight - all the defensive and offensive abilities but themed as arcane magic rather than holy devotion.
But when you come to, say, Hunters, I can't say I have a ton of ideas. Ranger is basically just another term for what a Hunter is.
So it's an idea with some merits, but it's not obvious it could be applied universally.
So far, we've gotten a new class with every other expansion. But these patterns don't always hold - take Mists and Warlords, for example, where we got Pandaren right after we got Worgen and Goblins, but then got no new race in Warlords. And of course, BFA hasn't given us any brand-new races (though Kul Tirans and to a lesser extent Zandalari Trolls aren't the sort of palette swap the other allied races are, model-wise) but we have gotten a full eight allied races - the same number of races WoW started with.
So I really do wonder to what extent we can simply assume that this Blizzcon we'll be hearing about a new class. I often hear skeptics say we shouldn't expect them, but I heard similar ideas in 2015 before Legion was announced, so while I do think that there's less room now for new classes, it's also such a popular and buzz-generating feature that I wouldn't dismiss the possibility.
However, while I was very happy we got Demon Hunters, I also recognize that there's a problem with just adding class after class, beyond the obvious need to come up with new gameplay mechanics.
And that's one of theme.
Demon Hunters had precedent in the lore, but in the earlier iterations of the existing classes, some elements of the Warcraft III hero were redistributed to other classes. Most notably, Metamorphosis became the absolute core to the Demonology Warlock spec. In Mists and Warlords, Demo Locks were all about building up Demonic Fury and then transforming, getting a burst of power that they then spent before going back into the building phase. Indeed, Mists saw Warlocks get a radical redesign to the old Soul Shard system, giving each spec its own cool secondary resource, which was then walked back to making Soul Shards a more relevant resource regardless of spec (they were originally a special inventory item you'd make special bags to hold.)
So when Demon Hunters came along, and given how Metamorphosis was one of Illidan's most iconic abilities, it made perfect sense for them to take that from Warlocks, forcing Demonology to be totally redesigned and even reconceptualized. While I really enjoyed the Mists/Warlords version of the spec, I thought the Legion incarnation to be a good idea executed not so well (Demonic Empowerment was a dumb spell,) and at this point I'm mostly happy with how the spec plays (give or take a baseline Implosion.)
But the whole reason this was an issue is that Demon Hunters, like Warlocks, use demonic, Fel magic. And in order to make a clear distinction, Blizzard had to take away the idea that Warlocks were truly embodying the Fel in their own bodies via Metamorphosis, and instead make them purely magical practitioners while Demon Hunters were the ones who had effectively become demons.
To be fair, there's precedent for having two takes on the same basic concept. Priests and Paladins both have a holy, divine style of magic, but Paladins use it in conjunction with martial prowess while Priests are purely magic practitioners. In recent expansions, they've even shifted Priests to be less specifically about Holy magic, and more about the spectrum of lightness and dark - primarily by giving Discipline access to both.
In a vacuum, I think a Necromancer class would be a really cool one for WoW. You could imagine it as a ranged caster, even potentially with a healing spec (theming your healing around Necromancy's ability to revive the dead.)
But it does run into the following problem:
When you think of Necromancers, you generally think of them as summoning undead minions - sure, there's harmful spells that sap the life from your enemies, but the really iconic look for "necromancy" is a spellcaster with a bunch of skeletons or zombies fighting for them.
Creating such a playstyle for a ranged caster - the magic ranged DPS with a swarm of undead minions - sure sounds a lot like the way Demonology works, doesn't it?
And naturally, Death Knights also use necromancy as their primary magical power - from Blood's ability to sap life from enemies and Unholy's undead minions (done differently than Demonology, of course.) Frost, to be fair, is the least obviously necromantic, but given Warcraft's long association between necromancy and cold places (Northrend,) it makes sense.
So are we just not ever going to get Necromancers as a class?
The answer could very well be yes. The fact of the matter is that the two most obvious aspects of the class - a caster that summons lots of minions and a class themed around necromancy - are both already represented.
But what if the class wasn't actually a new class? What if it was just a change in flavor?
In Blizzard's pure multiplayer games, Heroes of the Storm and Overwatch, the "heroes" that players embody come with a large number of cosmetic skins. Sometimes these change the look and feel of a character. For example, Torbjorn in Overwatch is a diminutive Swedish engineer who drops a powerful turret as his primary feature. However, there's a skin that dresses him up like Magni Bronzebeard, changing his look from sci-fi blacksmith to dwarven king. This changes nothing about how he works as an Overwatch character, but you get a different feel from him.
Could a similar thing be done with World of Warcraft classes?
Allied races went farther than simply changing the cosmetic look of existing races - they have unique racial abilities and sometimes different class options. But racials are only rarely the defining characteristic of a character's power, so one could see Allied races as essentially new "skins" for existing races.
Perhaps we could see Necromancers introduced, not as a new class, but as a variant on Warlocks. Imagine, for instance, that a Demonology Warlock is instead a Corpseraiser Necromancer, replacing imps with skeletons, felhounds with geists, and maybe the felguard with an abomination minon. Mechanically, it'd be identical to Demonology (except perhaps the creature type of the minions you summon, making it easier for priests to CC them but harder for warlocks) but you'd get this new flavor.
And then, yes, you'd get some thematic overlap with Death Knights, but their mechanics would be totally distinct.
Then, the question becomes how easily you can find similar class skins for other classes.
I could see Paladins getting something akin to D&D's Eldritch Knight - all the defensive and offensive abilities but themed as arcane magic rather than holy devotion.
But when you come to, say, Hunters, I can't say I have a ton of ideas. Ranger is basically just another term for what a Hunter is.
So it's an idea with some merits, but it's not obvious it could be applied universally.
So far, we've gotten a new class with every other expansion. But these patterns don't always hold - take Mists and Warlords, for example, where we got Pandaren right after we got Worgen and Goblins, but then got no new race in Warlords. And of course, BFA hasn't given us any brand-new races (though Kul Tirans and to a lesser extent Zandalari Trolls aren't the sort of palette swap the other allied races are, model-wise) but we have gotten a full eight allied races - the same number of races WoW started with.
So I really do wonder to what extent we can simply assume that this Blizzcon we'll be hearing about a new class. I often hear skeptics say we shouldn't expect them, but I heard similar ideas in 2015 before Legion was announced, so while I do think that there's less room now for new classes, it's also such a popular and buzz-generating feature that I wouldn't dismiss the possibility.
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