Zandalari Druids Getting Reptilian Beast/Moonkin Forms

Trolls have been able to play as Druids ever since Cataclysm, and one of the unique features that they got was that their flight form was a bat, rather than a bird - we knew from quests way back in Zangarmarsh that the Darkspear consider bird spirits to be unworthy (not sure how 110 Troll Druids feel about the Lunarwing flight form,) and Trolls have a long-existing relationship with Hireek, the Bat Loa.

Well, the Zandalari are going a couple steps further. All Trolls have some relationship with dinosaurs (see the standard Troll racial mount) but Zandalari appear to have all dinosaur druid forms. Flight form will be a kind of Pterrodax. Moonkin from looks to be a saurian version of the healthy Arrakoa model we saw in Warlords. Bear form will be a big, spiky dinosaur that looks vaguely turtle-like (I believe it has the same skeleton as the standard bear.)

I wonder if, for flavor, we might see some of these forms renamed. Obviously things like Rake or Swipe work fine for a reptile, but calling in "Bear form" or having abilities like "Bristling Fur" might not quite fit.

(Image links seem to be broken, so you can see the forms at WoWhead.)

Lessons Learned from Leveling

With four new allied races (and apparently four, not two, on the way,) those of us who have the condition this blog is named after have a lot of leveling to do.

While I have tons of alts, I haven't done as much mass-leveling since Cataclysm. These days, my main for each class gets top priority, and the subsequent characters are generally left by the wayside unless I get a real itch.

With heritage armor to unlock, I've naturally been doing my due diligence on a number of alts. My Lightforged Paladin is the farthest along, at level 94, questing through Draenor. The Void Elf is nearly done with the BC/Wrath level range, while the Nightborne and Highmountain characters are still in the old world.

I had initially wanted to unlock loremaster achievements by playing these characters, and while I did finish off Kalimdor and Eastern Kingdoms, and I'm just one Amphitheater of Annihilation away from getting Northrend, I've also learned that: Holy crap, Blizzard has come a very long way in quest design.

Outland is currently the oldest untouched continent, though I also did Silithus on the Lightforged character, which might not have been touched. As a baseline, Outland leaves a lot to be desired. There are tons of quests in basically every zone where you're encouraged to kill basically everything you see. Oftentimes you go into an area, complete all the quests there, and then discover that you're supposed to go back for some other quest chain or simply because the chain you're on expects you to return. Having gotten Hellfire Peninsula, Zangarmarsh, and all by the Ring of Blood in Nagrand done, I think the new strategy for loremastering those is figuring out which of my old characters is closest to getting the achievement and coming back on them.

Northrend, as many remember, was a huge step up in quest design. There's far more narrative flow, and it's much less common for you to get ten quests at a time and then come back for ten more. Quests also have more varied objectives and unique mechanics. That being said, it's not quite there yet. There is a bit of jumbled rhythm, where you're encouraged to return to places you thought you were done with, though it's nowhere near as egregious as in Outland. Likewise, there are also far fewer "kill every thing in the zone that looks like this" quests.

Cataclysm is a mix of good and bad. It's incredibly linear, which does prevent you from getting the old "Christmas Tree" syndrome of showing up in a quest hub and getting a million different things to do, but it plays out more like a linear story than an open game world. Granted, the only Cataclysm stuff I did was about half of Vashj'ir (breaking the cinematic nature of it, they actually cut the whole ship journey out there, taking you directly from Stormwind Harbor to the sunken ship where the quests start, which I'm not happy about.)

Pandaria is, I think, a fair step closer to modern quest design. Jade Forest in particular does have a linear quest chain, but there are side-quest chains that feel substantial and worth your time but do totally split off from the main quest. Again, there's a lot of experimentation in quest types, and there's also a great deal more voice acting to help sell the story.

Which brings us to Draenor. This is, of course, somewhat more recent memory, but aside from a fair bit of busywork to introduce the Garrison concept, Shadowmoon Valley remains a gorgeous and fantastic zone, very much in the Jade Forest model, with side-quests that include a very plot-important murder mystery in the north east. Warlords' big sin was a lack of follow-up, which makes questing through it allow you to put on some rose-colored glasses.

Nearly halfway through Draenor, I'll be curious to level through the Broken Isles again - as it's actually been a fairly long time since I did that (I think my Druid was the last I leveled up, and that might have been as long as a year ago.)

Anyway, the good news is that the farther you go, the smoother leveling starts to feel. By the time I got to Pandaria, I was far less concerned with how soon it would take for me to get through a given level and more interested in the story of the zone I was playing through.

Everyone has different tastes, of course, and there are definitely some things that I felt nostalgic for (I tried doing all of Netherstorm on my Void Elf, but as cool as that zone is in concept and general aesthetics, I got frustrated with 2007-era quest design,) but here are my recommendations:

20-58 (or 60 if you feel like sticking with older zones): Basically anywhere you want. And feel free to double back to certain places: even if you're level 45, you can always go back to places like Hillsbrad or Southern Barrens if you haven't done them yet.)

58-80: I've really got to recommend Northrend here. Outland is based on a far grindier model of MMORPG.

80-90: The Cataclysm stuff is not too bad, but Pandaria's probably a bit more in line with what we've come to expect at this point. (You might notice the pattern here is: do the more recent stuff. Which is actually kind of an endorsement of the direction Blizzard has taken things.)

90-98: You're stuck with Draenor in this range, but that's not too bad, as Warlords' greatest strength was its leveling content. I will say I think Alliance has a better starting zone than Horde, but in either case I recommend leveling to 94 and going straight to Talador rather than Gorgrond, as the latter is definitely the least interesting zone. Personally I'd also head to Spires of Arrak as soon as you can (which I think is now level 95, rather than 96 as it used to be,) but that's just because I really like that zone. You could stick in Nagrand until level 100, but I think it's a better idea to head straight to the Broken Isles at 98.

Class Option Speculation for Future Allied Races

So far we have gotten four allied races, with two additional ones confirmed to be coming in the future (I'd imagine in the expansion proper) and one additional option that has been effectively but almost incontrovertibly confirmed (though not officially announced) thanks to datamining.

So a question arises: What classes can these races play?

Obviously, the four live ones we already know, but let's take a look at the upcoming ones:

Dark Iron Dwarves:

The only class we have confirmed here was one that could be considered controversial: Paladins. There are, of course, Dark Iron paladins in the Blackrock Depths dungeon, but the Dark Irons' reputation for being somewhat unsavory did make that perhaps non-obvious.

Given that Moira's introduction of the Dark Irons into the Alliance way back in Cataclysm meant Dwarf player characters could now be Mages and Warlocks, it seems pretty obvious that Dark Irons ought to have those classes as well.

With Paladins, it also seems likely they'd have the option to be Priests. Rogues, Warriors, and Hunters are also relatively universal class options, and I doubt that you'd have any trouble convincing anyone of those as reasonable class options.

One somewhat outside-the-box option that Blizzard says they're considering is Death Knights - Dark Irons were certainly around to be turned into Death Knights, and so it wouldn't be so odd to see this as an option - which I'm pretty happy about given that DKs haven't gotten new playable races since Cataclysm.

Shaman I think is a possibility, but unlikely. While the Dark Irons did have a strong connection to Ragnaros, their use of his power was more in the arcane manner - Fire Mages and Destruction Warlocks. The dwarves with a real shamanistic tradition are the Wildhammers.

Theoretically, Dark Irons would have just as much access to Monk training as their Bronzebeard cousins - the Dark Irons were officially in the Alliance as of Cataclysm, which was before Pandaren went around spreading the tradition.

Druids I think are right out - there's no real Druidic tradition for any Dwarves. Likewise, the only races that can't be Demon Hunters that I could imagine giving them (much as I wish I could have made a Worgen one) would be Orcs, Broken Draenei, or Naga if they ever introduce the latter two as playable - just given the representation among the Illidari.

Zandalari Trolls:

Well, we know that they'll have Druids and Shamans, as we've seen druid forms and shaman totems for them. As usual, I think we can expect Warriors, Hunters, and Rogues as fairly universal classes for them (Rogues seem to be fine for anyone who doesn't have hooves, though if Broken Draenei ever become a thing, they could also be Rogues.)

Priests are, I think, also likely given how Troll culture is very mystical and tied to the gods. Trolls also have a tradition of arcane magic, putting making Mages pretty likely. Warlocks, one might have forgotten, were not actually available to standard Trolls until Cataclysm, but they were brought in I think largely because there wasn't a particularly strong reason not to give them, and I don't think the Zandalari have any specific prohibitions against such things.

The Zandalari were technically around to be attacked by the Scourge, but their presence in Scourge-afflicted areas was minimal, which to me suggests Death Knights are unlikely. When it comes to Monks, I'd actually say that it's also very unlikely given that the Zandalari were ancient enemies of the Pandaren back when they were allied with the Mogu (man, questing in Kun Lai is going to be awkward on my Zandalari character. But I guess Searing Gorge will be for my Dark Iron...)

And of course, there's really no practical way they'd do Demon Hunters.

Paladins would be kind of an interesting choice. I can't recall if any of the Zandalari enemies have been Paladins, but we also don't really know what kind of temple-guard traditions they have. I'd put it at a lower than 50% chance, but not 0.

Mag'har Orcs:

For the most part, I'd say we're going to see the traditional Orc class options (pre Cataclysm,) meaning Warrior, Hunter, Shaman, Rogue... but possibly not Warlock. These guys are Iron Horde orcs, and specifically the ones who did not drink Gul'dan kool-aid. It's likely Grommash will be their leader, and so I think Fel magic is likely to be considered far too taboo.

But we could see some alternative options. For example, the Shadowmoon clan has a fairly strong Priestly tradition, so we could see Mag'har Priests. Mages are, I think, less likely - one could perhaps argue that the Blackrock clan employs mages, and of course, similar to Troll Warlocks, they might have given Orcs mages just because, well, why not?

Death Knights seem totally unreasonable, given that their timeline wasn't even connected to ours until after the Battle of Light's Hope and their Ner'zhul went down a different evil-magic path (Void instead of Necromancy.)

Demon Hunters, as usual, are out.

Druids are also probably out as there's no real Druidic tradition among Orcs (though I wouldn't mind getting a better sense of their connection to spirits like Lo'gosh, who either is Goldrinn or is an equivalent wolf spirit the Orcs conflate with Goldrinn.)

Theoretically anyone could be trained as a Monk, and the fact that basically all the live allied races can do it suggests that the Pandaren are definitely still spreading the tradition, so maybe that's going to go into the Warrior/Hunter/Rogue category of universality.

Mag'har Orc /silly and /flirt Emotes Datamined: Allied Race Confirmed

Well, given that they were one of the most common suggestions for "sub-races" when the idea first started floating around, and Blizzard mentioned them specifically as a possibility, it should not come as a big surprise that the fourth Horde allied race will be the Mag'har.

Now, let's get specific:

It appears that these are going to be from Draenor B, not Outland. The Mag'har on Outland were a very small population - the vast majority of Draenor A Orcs are already represented by the main Orc race in-game. Given that the demonic influence of the Legion was around for a far briefer period of time on Draenor B, it makes sense that many more of these Orcs would have the natural brown skin.

Given that Draneor B is in far better condition than Outland, and that while we steamrolled the Iron Horde, it was a pretty pure military defeat as opposed to an utter destruction of their civilization, it's likely that the former members of the Iron Horde are a larger population - possibly larger than the Horde's current Orc population. This would make them a really huge asset for the Horde, though one of the freaky consequences of bringing them on is that you might actually have multiple versions of existing people serving in the same Horde. We never saw a young Varok Saurfang in Warlords, but when the Horde recruits them, they might find a young badass pair of Blackrock brothers, Varok and Broxigar.

Despite only announcing six allied races with the expansion, they gave us four new character slots. I assumed that they had assumed most players had their Alliance and Horde characters on different servers, which would leave room for one new character of each of these races - plus one.

But with Mag'har as the next Horde allied race, that fourth slot is going to be pretty good to have around. The question, then, is what the Alliance gets next (Kul Tirasian human would be a pretty good counterpart to Mag'har Orc, seeing as how Orcs and Humans are kind of the ultimate mirror match.)

Where Would Wrath 2 Take Place?

One could argue that, together, Warlords of Draenor and Legion served as something of a sequel to The Burning Crusade. Warlords gave us a vision of Outland before it was Outland (it's really weird doing Terrokar Forest having now seen Talador) and Legion brought back Illidan Stormrage and the sci-fi space armada version of the Burning Legion that we had seen in BC.

There's a fair amount of evidence that, while Battle For Azeroth is likely to involve a great deal of Old God content (unless it's Azshara - though she seems to have been announced as an earlier boss - I think N'zoth is a strong candidate for final boss of the expansion,) there are several hints that the Shadowlands will play a big role in what comes next.

And that actually makes sense. While we've had back-to-back expansions focused on certain major evils of the Warcraft universe before (Cataclysm and Mists had lots of Old God stuff, Warlords and Legion were obvious both big on Legion stuff,) it also seems like a good idea to diversify the threats we face. While the Old Gods were not dealt with in any permanent way in either Cataclysm or Mists (though I maintain that we did manage to finally rid Azeroth of the last bit of Y'shaarj - but that leaves one untouched and two only beaten but not broken,) Legion really seemed to wrap up the Burning Legion's story in a definitive way.

If the philosophical realm of Death, along with the physical (or quasi-physical) realm of the Shadowlands, are Warcraft's third major source of evil, they're the piece we've explored the least. It's not even canon (yet) that the Scourge and the Lich King are anything other than a creation of demons - that it's just a demonic tool that broke off and became independent.

But frankly, given how iconic the Scourge are, and how well they fit as an independent threat, it would make sense to put them in a separate category, allowing us to take them just as seriously as the Old Gods and the Legion.

But we have a couple issues to consider:

One is that Wrath dealt with the Scourge in a similar way that Legion dealt with the... uh... Legion. Its leader was not eliminated - Arthas may be dead, but there is still a Lich King on the Frozen Throne, much as Sargeras is not dead, but imprisoned. But with Northrend conquered, the Scourge seems pretty contained.

There's also the question of repetition. Would a Scourge-focused expansion not just be Wrath all over again? We've already had the grueling war of attrition against a foe that replenishes its troops with each one of yours it kills and fought our way to the top of its sovereign's dread citadel. Do we really want to fight the Lich King again, even if it's a different Lich King?

Well, here's a couple notes:

First off, the undead is a bit like a cancer: You can eliminate the largest concentration of it, but if it has spread (and the Scourge sure as hell has spread - there's even Scourge in the Barrens, controlling the Quillboar,) you could always see it build up somewhere else.

Second: it's possible that a Death/Shadowlands/Necromancy-themed expansion would see the Scourge take on a very, very different form. For instance, we know that Drustvar in Kul Tiras is an area where the humans killed off the indigenous Drust, who then slid into the Shadowlands in order to haunt Drustvar from just outside conventional reality.

We also know that some powerful entity from the Shadowlands taught Odyn and Helya how to create the Val'kyr. I've always suspected that it might be this entity that Kil'jaeden made the Lich King from, which would suggest that the Lich King's designation as Death God is not actually that far off the mark.

Might we then see a far more diverse group of powers from the Shadowlands, united under a new sovereign? Could the Lich King turn his attention away from the Living and toward the Dead as a source of new recruits?

If that were the case, we might see a very different version of the Scourge - far more mystical and less militaristic.

And maybe to do that, Bolvar would abandon the Frozen Throne. Or perhaps, some other entity - maybe the powerful entity from the Shadowlands - would shatter the Frozen Throne and reclaim the title of Death God.

What do the Draenei Do Now?

One of the standard male Draenei jokes, in-game since their debut in 2007, is "We have it all figured out: Step One: We Land the Exodar. Step Three: We defeat Legion and go home. There is just one thing missing..."

Well, by the end of Legion, we've actually accomplished step three (step two apparently was "ally with the races of Azeroth and wait for a psychotic demon-elf to open up a gateway to Argus") but the end of this long quest is not nearly the happy ending that the Draenei may have hoped for.

Argus, of course, is no longer easily accessible, as the portal Illidan tore open was shut once Sargeras was bound to the Seat of the Pantheon. But as soon as that portal opened, it became pretty obvious that going home was not a long-term solution for the Draenei. While Antorus was breached and the Legion's forces have been scattered, the planet the Draenei hoped to return to was so brutally devastated for the 25,000 years of Legion rule that there's practically no hope that it will ever be returned to life. Granted, Outland is still somewhat habitable despite arguably being more torn apart than Argus, but Argus is so saturated with fel energy that it seems very dubious that the Draenei would want to stay.

Thus, the Draenei must now truly accept Azeroth as their new home, with the perpetual threat of the Horde and the Old Gods and all the other dangers that it is host to.

The Draenei are also now dealing with an influx of new population: The Lightforged Draenei. We haven't seen a whole lot about the difference between these groups, but they could be quite profound.

The Draenei (Exodar Draenei, we could call them, though that might exclude people like the Aldor or Sha'tar who stayed behind in Outland,) have followed the Prophet Velen for all this time - many were born in exile, though some certainly would remember leaving Argus. Still, Velen has been their trusted leader all this time.

And Velen has largely been worthy of that position. While his failure to foresee the betrayal of the Orcs is a serious cause to lose faith in him, in practically every other circumstance he has shown poise and wisdom. When Illidan destroyed X'era and Turalyon tried to kill Illidan for doing so, Velen calmed everyone and ensured that the task at hand - defeating the Legion - was what people focused on. He has even shown a greater sense of nuance in his attitudes toward the Light and Fate. He believes in the Light, certainly, but what's really important to him is doing the right thing. To borrow alignment systems from D&D, he's Lawful Good, but more Good than Lawful.

And despite being profoundly ancient (he was already a respected sage 25,000 years ago, doing one third of the ruling duties of the entire planet,) he's able to keep up with the other members of the Alliance and aid them.

What's interesting about the Lightforged is twofold. First off, they have not been following Velen all this time.

It's actually not clear when the split occurred. But my interpretation is that the Lightforged never got on the Genedar with Velen in the first place - that their salvation from the Man'ari was purely through X'era and they have been on the Xenedar all that time (we can also probably assume that lore-wise, the Xenedar is a lot bigger than it is in-game.)

The Lightforged have lived all this time as soldiers. While the Exodar Draenei (maybe "Genedar Draenei would be a better term?) were basically one giant group of refugees traveling across the cosmos, the Lightforged seem to be far more regimented. You don't see any Lightforged children around - presumably they've been just fighting all this time, not living normal lives.

They're also not beholden to Velen. It strikes me that it would make more sense for them to generally fall far more on the Lawful side of the Lawful Good alignment, especially given the way that X'era tried to force Illidan into her service against his will.

The other big thing to note is age:

Turalyon, from our perspective, has only been away for maybe 25-30 years - however old Arator is, basically. But for him, it's been a thousand. That suggests that, on average, the time experienced by the Army of the Light is as much as 40 times longer than what we experience.

Now, consider that the Draenei left Argus 25,000 years ago.

For the sake of argument, we'll assume that the Genedar Draenei have been experiencing time at the same rate as Azeroth - they certainly couldn't be experiencing it at 40 times because we know that Kil'jaeden and Archimonde were active during the War of the Ancients, so it had to be at least 10,000 years since Sargeras' corruption of the Eredar.

So if we assume that it's been 25,000 years from the Azeroth perspective since the Draenei left Argus, and that the time distortion effect for someone fighting in the kinds of places the Army of the Light is fighting, that means that Lightforged Draenei have been fighting for...

One. Million. Years.

That's kind of insane. That means that your Lightforged character you might have just rolled is probably older than Velen many times over. We don't know how long ago the Ordering of Azeroth was, but there's a good chance your Lightforged character is older than Odyn. You might be older than Yogg-Saron, a literal Old God.

That's not to say you were around before them - it's just that you've experienced that much time.

Which also means that the Legion had control of Argus for a million years, and that Archimonde, Kil'jaeden, and their ilk were all super freaking old.

So yeah, a million years of demonic infestation - I think Argus is a lost cause.

So Draenei culture is going to be going through some weird changes after Legion. The single motivating quest has been accomplished or failed, depending on your perspective. The Exodar, once a temporary shelter, is going to be the last major Alliance foothold on or around Kalimdor.

HP and Monsters in D&D

Fifth Edition is the first version of D&D I've played, and I jumped into the deep end by DM'ing from the start.

While I don't think I've managed to weave the compelling narrative that you get with Critical Role or Acquisitions Incorporated: The C-Team (which I need to forgive myself for not quite getting as, even after a couple years I'm still basically new at this,) I think I've made the game pretty fun for the most part.

The only problem?

The party utterly slaughters my monsters.

I don't know exactly what it is, but I suspect it's that monsters don't really have enough health. I've also often had them fight one thing at a time, which seems to seriously handicap my ability to threaten them. When your paladin crits and tacks both a Thundering Smite and the standard Divine Smite on top of that, your monster is often going to just explode.

So I'm toying with ways to make combat more interesting.

One way is to really plan out encounters and ensure that there's environmental hazards.

Another is to just suck it up and use a lot more monsters against them. For example, they just fought an Orc Eye of Gruumsh (different name to fit the lore of my world) and an Orog, who, according to the DMG should have presented a reasonable threat to them, but they wound up obliterating the Eye and the Orog got a total of two hits in before he was killed.

I don't want to TPK the party based solely on my ability to tune encounters, but it's pretty clear that these things are not living long enough to be a real threat.

So my new "resolution" is as follows:

Always give monsters max HP (if they're like 8d10+24 then I'll give them 104 HP.)

Always make sure there are at least as many monsters as party members (using lower-level minions to draw the melee guys' attacks away and make the Wizard's AoE abilities more attractive.)

Strand them in difficult terrain circumstances, like collapsing bridges or rooms with lava jets and such.

We'll see if things get a bit more interesting.