In the RTS games it was razed twice by the Horde, though I believe they got retconned in the books.
Warcraft II : Tides of Darkness
Orc 13. The Siege of Dalaran
Pretty sure this one didn't happen as this occured post Tomb of Sargeras and just before Lordaeron's fall in the Orc Campaign.
Warcraft II : Beyond the Dark Portal
Orc 11. The Eye of Dalaran
The funny thing is this briefing mentions a rebuilding effort as if the first siege actually happened.
Even if neither of these events happened, I think we can all agree Blizzard has liked to target Dalaran for destruction in the past. I doubt they'd go as far to destroy it in WoW though, at most I'd expect something akin to Battle for the Undercity.
Even if neither of these events happened, I think we can all agree Blizzard has liked to target Dalaran for destruction in the past. I doubt they'd go as far to destroy it in WoW though, at most I'd expect something akin to Battle for the Undercity.
Thinking back to earlier Wrath Beta, Orgrimmar and Darnassus were initally going to be razed by the Scourge in an effort to get players to assault Northrend. This idea was canned. I doubt they'll have Dalaran razed, it would probably require too much development time.
Umm question why do you salvation? Are you thinking a rogue is gona go oh oh he salv'ed himself I better switch targets due to his threat drop?
My question is this:
What would it take to happen in 3.2 or 3.3 to really blow players away with its scope?
More game-based cutscenes. Getting the cutscene for the Wrath Gate (and an epically good one, too) rocked. Getting a "download this video of NPCs talking about Uludar and how they're going to ignore it" for 3.2 was lame.
If they're going to put the effort into a rendered cutscene, have it occur after a prodigious boss kill (Arthas kill deserves a cutscene follow-up). And for heavens' sake, tie it in with the players - at least we could pretend we were part of the Wrath Gate Offensive who fought on the edges and avoided the plague. The Ulduar cutscene was just a major letdown in all fashions.
Finally, up the scale of evil. Uther's tomb is right next to Scourge in Western Plaguelands. A fight against an Undead Uther would be all sorts of wrong - therefore right. How about Tirion vs. Undead Taelan, or better yet, Tirion's wife. Moves us a bit away from "It lives in a cave, therefore it must be evil and we're justified in murder and robbery."
Rock: "We're sub-standard DPS. Nerf Paper, Scissors are fine."
Paper: "OMG, WTF, Scissors!"
Scissors: "Rock is OP and Paper are QQers. We need PvP buffs."
My estimations were low for the Colliseum so seeing Anub'Arak and the lore bits and Arthas in it have already raised it in my opinion lore wise.
But really its just foreplay. I can't avoid that fact and it is boring. Yogg-Saron received some build up throughout the whole leveling process across four or five zones, killing him felt good even if Sara did seem to have been some part of Azjol/Saron that was directly transplanted and didn't make sense. Algalon is cool in lore as well from what he is doing, even if I thought his change of heart was ridiculous for what is essentially some sort of machine. The Coliseum is just foreplay though for Icecrown, I can't get away from that. More of the same shit we've been having from the angsty teenagers Varian Wyrnn and Garosh Hellscream, more of Thrall letting Garosh run rampant with no reprimanding, more of Wyrnn treating Jaina like a little girl instead of one of the most powerful humans alive.
For it to be enjoyable I think either Wyrnn or Hellscream has to kill or injure the other. People are just fed up of their emo whining at the moment.
Originally Posted by Shadowed
The best part is, not only were you late in linking it, that's an April fools topic from 6 months ago.
Thinking back to earlier Wrath Beta, Orgrimmar and Darnassus were initally going to be razed by the Scourge in an effort to get players to assault Northrend. This idea was canned. I doubt they'll have Dalaran razed, it would probably require too much development time.
No, this was players misunderstanding Garrosh's flavor text, which was referring to the "end of expansion" event where undead did attack Org/SW for a couple days, but nothing was really disrupted for players.
I think it is highly unlikely that there will be any new player-races added to WoW (not just for the next expansion, but for the rest of its life-span). There is enough variety for that as is, and adding in more races at this point doesn't really seem like it would bring anything really new or exciting, and this isn't even considering the difficulty of picking what race(s) would get this treatment.
Well, I know there are some people who would go bonkers for particular subraces of currently-existing races. I know people who have an incredibly strong desire to play a Broken Draenei, and Abomination-form Forsaken, and a Mechagnome. You could also have a halforc/halfogre like Rexxar.
Maybe this is something they'll do? They can "spice things up" by adding subraces of existing races. No new faction, no necessity for a new racial ability (though maybe they'd do that).
Heck, it could even fit with a Maelstrom-themed expansion. Let the trolls acquire a new Zandalar subrace with a tweaked character model, and let the night elves acquire a new "redeemed, half-unmutated Naga" subrace with a kind of down-sized bipedal Naga model.
Well, I know there are some people who would go bonkers for particular subraces of currently-existing races. I know people who have an incredibly strong desire to play a Broken Draenei, and Abomination-form Forsaken, and a Mechagnome. You could also have a halforc/halfogre like Rexxar.
Maybe this is something they'll do? They can "spice things up" by adding subraces of existing races. No new faction, no necessity for a new racial ability (though maybe they'd do that).
Heck, it could even fit with a Maelstrom-themed expansion. Let the trolls acquire a new Zandalar subrace with a tweaked character model, and let the night elves acquire a new "redeemed, half-unmutated Naga" subrace with a kind of down-sized bipedal Naga model.
Even though Blizzard's official quotes should always be taken with a grain of salt, they are pretty adamant about not adding things to the game for the sake of adding things to the game. Subraces would fall decidedly into that category and would be clunky, contrived, and confusing. The one thing Blizzard has always avoided was unnecessary complication, and thats exactly what would happen with your suggestion.
The game doesn't need more races, or classes. We have plenty already. What would truly be cool, and actually feasible to implement within a respectable timetable are further character customizations and player character model updates. Shoulder pieces have particle effects but chest, leg and arm pieces do not. How cool would it be to to actually add lighting and particle effects to these segments? How about character tatoos? Or even mythical dance studios? Things of this nature, IMO, are far more important then being different looking troll with a new racial ability.
Would there really be enough incentive in a new race alone to cause a substantially noticeable size of the playerbase (say 7-10%) to reroll?
The whole drive behind creating a Draenei or Blood Elf at the very start was to play a class you previously couldn't before on that faction.
I guess having both new races be able to be Druids might help boost initial rerolls. That might incorporate that Druid balance thing too (maybe Tahu fails to convince the Taurens and leaves to teach Sun-based Druidism to the new race?).
The quote is from notes inside bottles found on beaches throughout Azeroth and has absolutely nothing to do with Northrend.
Wyrixian just likes using quotes from things in game and I highly doubt they have any alternative meaning at all (although I'd imagine he enjoys reading people looking into his signatures).
Thought those notes were a kind of "bread crumbs" to point to the (future) implementation of the island Tel Abim (refering to the bananas) in the game supposedly in an patch/expansion covering just the bits of map without content around the shores of Kalimdor and Eastern Kingdoms. Remember that the Island of Doctor Lapidis and Gilijim's Isle was there in alpha and later removed and could also make a reappearance in such an expansion.
I guess having both new races be able to be Druids might help boost initial rerolls. That might incorporate that Druid balance thing too (maybe Tahu fails to convince the Taurens and leaves to teach Sun-based Druidism to the new race?).
That might actually be a possibility; playing a druid (along with shaman/paladin for at least one of the factions) seems to be pigeonholing us exclusively into playing one race. While druids are already immensely popular (as well as both the night elf and tauren races, to be honest), and the blood elf/draenei population is no longer restricted to rdedicated raiders rerolling to fill in a class gap, it wouldn't hurt the overall scheme of the game if they allowed a more liberal class distribution to keep people rerolling. Still, I wouldn't expect any Forsaken hunters any time soon :P
Oh, and by the way, tauren and gnomes could use(and probably will get) more class choices, provided we don't get any new races or classes.
Originally Posted by XI-
In summary, TBC raiding is easy. 9/10 encounters can be summarized with 1 phrase. Stay out of the fucking fire. If this is too difficult BWL was still there last I checked, so go have at it for some practice.
Well, we already have tauren druids just so there wouldn't be a second alliance-only class. At one of the early Blizzcons (2005?) they mentioned that the druid class almost didn't make it into the game for lore reasons. Based off WC3, druids should be night elf only, and male only at that. If that was a big issue for Blizzard back then, I doubt they want to stretch the druid lore any more than they already have.
I could see troll druids though. We've killed, what, 20 troll bosses who turned into animals? This game needs moonkins with tusks.
In the RTS games it was razed twice by the Horde, though I believe they got retconned in the books.
Warcraft II : Tides of Darkness
Orc 13. The Siege of Dalaran
Pretty sure this one didn't happen as this occured post Tomb of Sargeras and just before Lordaeron's fall in the Orc Campaign.
Warcraft II : Beyond the Dark Portal
Orc 11. The Eye of Dalaran
The funny thing is this briefing mentions a rebuilding effort as if the first siege actually happened.
Even if neither of these events happened, I think we can all agree Blizzard has liked to target Dalaran for destruction in the past. I doubt they'd go as far to destroy it in WoW though, at most I'd expect something akin to Battle for the Undercity.
Everything in Warcraft 1-2 including the backstory before the wars has been retconned. :P
http://www.megaupload.com/?d=CX81UJZ8
For the lurking Phoenix Wright faithful.
What is the most important thing to you? Won't you grant me the pleasure of taking it away.
I could see that. In the same way that the priest class are all followers of different faiths, and how initially Alliance and Horde paladins were different, trolls' worship of animal spirits and relationship with nature are pretty similar. They wouldn't be druids in the strictest sense, but Blood Knights weren't really paladins in the strictest sense, either.
Everything in Warcraft 1-2 including the backstory before the wars has been retconned. :P
The retcons were usually done to set up the history for the next game in the series. The Second War's continuity was based on the Horde winning the First War, and since the victory conditions in WC1 for the Horde and Stormwind were mutually exclusive, some stuff couldn't happen. The Third War's continuity, in turn, is based on the Alliance winning in WC2/2X, and is also dependent on Warcraft Adventures, insomuch as that was supposed to introduce Thrall.
It's interesting that after two games (and one expansion) of these parallel storylines, Blizzard opted to tell a sequential story in WC3 that depended on players going through all the campaigns in order to get the complete story.
What's also kind of nice is getting the full narratives of the wars played out in novel format, so that a more solid chronology can be formed. (Not the story in WC1 was terribly interesting from a narrative perspective.)
I've always just assumed that after doing Starcraft; they realised they could create a more compelling story with one continuous story going through one race at a time rather than what is basically two different worlds (and then having to ignore x outcome to allow for a new game).
No new race/class free's up alot of time, if this is the way it goes; I'm going to end up having bigger expectations when it comes to environments than I probably should.
The retcons were usually done to set up the history for the next game in the series. The Second War's continuity was based on the Horde winning the First War, and since the victory conditions in WC1 for the Horde and Stormwind were mutually exclusive, some stuff couldn't happen. The Third War's continuity, in turn, is based on the Alliance winning in WC2/2X, and is also dependent on Warcraft Adventures, insomuch as that was supposed to introduce Thrall.
It's interesting that after two games (and one expansion) of these parallel storylines, Blizzard opted to tell a sequential story in WC3 that depended on players going through all the campaigns in order to get the complete story.
What's also kind of nice is getting the full narratives of the wars played out in novel format, so that a more solid chronology can be formed. (Not the story in WC1 was terribly interesting from a narrative perspective.)
Oh I think the Starcraft/Warcraft 3 Format was much much better then the original 2 sides and different outcomes, from a lore/history perspective.
It's a shame Blizzard isn't the type of company that does remakes, I'd certainly pay cash for a Warcraft 1 & 2 + Beyond the Dark Portal remake that fleshes out the entire backstory, and lets me play with those old school heroes again. Doomhammer, Grom, Gul'Dan.
http://www.megaupload.com/?d=CX81UJZ8
For the lurking Phoenix Wright faithful.
What is the most important thing to you? Won't you grant me the pleasure of taking it away.
Oh I think the Starcraft/Warcraft 3 Format was much much better then the original 2 sides and different outcomes, from a lore/history perspective.
It's a shame Blizzard isn't the type of company that does remakes, I'd certainly pay cash for a Warcraft 1 & 2 + Beyond the Dark Portal remake that fleshes out the entire backstory, and lets me play with those old school heroes again. Doomhammer, Grom, Gul'Dan.
Well, therein lies the issue. I think the reason there hasn't been a novelization of the First War is because so little happened in a narrative sense that there's just not a lot of story to tell. You could talk about Doomhammer's rise to power, but it's kinda like the Titanic because we know exactly the lengths he'll go to to stop Blackhand, and the big challenge would be to present that evolution of his character and make it be a) interesting and b) jive with the characterization of Doomhammer in "Lord of the Clans."
And of course, leaving the narrative space of the First War open is beneficial for them because they can return to loose ends that haven't been completed yet and find ways to surprise us with them. Exactly how everything played out with Garona in Stormwind was never made clear in WC1, and so it's interesting to see them work with her in the comic series.
Since Blizzard doesn't seem to be interested in the remake business, I'd think the only way we'd get a remake of 1+2+2x would be a fan creation. Which would be tight as hell, I agree.
I'm toying with the idea of trying to match together all the retcons and pre-retcons and make it all work. The final idea came to something along the lines of "lol infinites", with the first clue of the Infinites actually being competent at what they do being the discovery of a First War veteran in the Caverns of Time whose recollection of events differs from what is considered the truth of the matter.
"We gave him a map of Stormwind's lands at the time as proof. He asked for a quill and ink and drew his own. It was all different. And yet..."
I'm going back a page here to the discussion of new races - apologies for the interruption.
I actually find the prospect of neutral choose-your-own-faction races (Goblins being the prime candidate) far more likely than another addition to the Alliance or Horde. This doesn't mean that they are at all likely - just that they are more likely. Some reasons that come to mind:
1. The existing races are integrated with their factions in a way that a new race never would be. Consider the Argent Tournament, where the champions, tabards, and reward mounts are already in place in such a way that hardly leaves room for more additions. A new Alliance or Horde race would be excluded from the same system of rewards and reputation gain as well as the lore. Sure, they could add new-race-specific rep dailies and account for their absence from the Tournament by setting their opening quests further back chronologically than the events in WotLK, but there's no question that they would be odd ones out. Tournament mounts, tournament pets, and so on would have to be obtainable by other means. And if you roll that race and level up, who becomes your home faction for the first set of Valiant dailies? And so on.
2. TBC introduced 1-20 / 60-70 content while funnelling people through the same 20-60 old-world quests (minus revamps like Dustwallow Marsh). WotLK hardly addressed this, giving DKs a starting zone where your level was inconsequential as a shortcut to 60. Introducing a neutral race where the player doesn't integrate with a faction until, say, level 15, also incentivizes the refurbishment or further development of 20-60 levelling content. (Why 15 or so? So players can run the likes of Deadmines and RFC at the appropriate level, and also because above level 20, players on PVP servers should no longer be protected from world PVP.)
While Blizzard is doing enough to accelerate the 20-60 experience (rather than flesh it out) that this may well be unlkely, I do think it isn't to be ruled out immediately. And as someone else said above, problems with identifying enemy players are redressed because their names appear in red. Apart from gnomes and tauren, who really pays immediate notice to the race of other players as it is?
3. Playing as a goblin mercenary, or a mercenary of any race, eliminates the problem of integrating the race as a whole into the Alliance or Horde. Well, mostly; there would still need to be a workaround for things like your first set of tournament quests. I could see reputation with a neutral race working as it did with the Ebon Blade, where participants in the new content (DKs) got a head start, but everybody gets a chance to earn rep with them in the new content at the end of the levelling game.
4. Of course, this doesn't address other mechanical issues like guild membership while you're neutral. The starting zone content, prior to affiliation, may well have to be condensed into 2-3 hours, as was the case with DKs.
I personally think the game is too saturated for new playable races or classes as it is. Races have very little impact on the game: racials aren't very distinct nowadays, so their appeal is entirely in a) cosmetics, b) lore, and c) new starting-zone content. I just don't think a new race is a selling point in quite the way a new class would be. Even in TBC, the Draenei and Blood Elves had the benefit of introducing "new" classes in the form of Alliance shamans and Horde paladins. It was a neat trick of Blizzard's to do it in a way that made the game easier, not harder, to balance. From this point on, barring a major change they introduce to the game mechanics, new races won't have the lasting appeal in practice that people think they will.
I'm going back a page here to the discussion of new races - apologies for the interruption.
I actually find the prospect of neutral choose-your-own-faction races (Goblins being the prime candidate) far more likely than another addition to the Alliance or Horde. This doesn't mean that they are at all likely - just that they are more likely. Some reasons that come to mind:
1. The existing races are integrated with their factions in a way that a new race never would be. Consider the Argent Tournament, where the champions, tabards, and reward mounts are already in place in such a way that hardly leaves room for more additions. A new Alliance or Horde race would be excluded from the same system of rewards and reputation gain as well as the lore. Sure, they could add new-race-specific rep dailies and account for their absence from the Tournament by setting their opening quests further back chronologically than the events in WotLK, but there's no question that they would be odd ones out. Tournament mounts, tournament pets, and so on would have to be obtainable by other means. And if you roll that race and level up, who becomes your home faction for the first set of Valiant dailies? And so on.
2. TBC introduced 1-20 / 60-70 content while funnelling people through the same 20-60 old-world quests (minus revamps like Dustwallow Marsh). WotLK hardly addressed this, giving DKs a starting zone where your level was inconsequential as a shortcut to 60. Introducing a neutral race where the player doesn't integrate with a faction until, say, level 15, also incentivizes the refurbishment or further development of 20-60 levelling content. (Why 15 or so? So players can run the likes of Deadmines and RFC at the appropriate level, and also because above level 20, players on PVP servers should no longer be protected from world PVP.)
While Blizzard is doing enough to accelerate the 20-60 experience (rather than flesh it out) that this may well be unlkely, I do think it isn't to be ruled out immediately. And as someone else said above, problems with identifying enemy players are redressed because their names appear in red. Apart from gnomes and tauren, who really pays immediate notice to the race of other players as it is?
3. Playing as a goblin mercenary, or a mercenary of any race, eliminates the problem of integrating the race as a whole into the Alliance or Horde. Well, mostly; there would still need to be a workaround for things like your first set of tournament quests. I could see reputation with a neutral race working as it did with the Ebon Blade, where participants in the new content (DKs) got a head start, but everybody gets a chance to earn rep with them in the new content at the end of the levelling game.
4. Of course, this doesn't address other mechanical issues like guild membership while you're neutral. The starting zone content, prior to affiliation, may well have to be condensed into 2-3 hours, as was the case with DKs.
I personally think the game is too saturated for new playable races or classes as it is. Races have very little impact on the game: racials aren't very distinct nowadays, so their appeal is entirely in a) cosmetics, b) lore, and c) new starting-zone content. I just don't think a new race is a selling point in quite the way a new class would be. Even in TBC, the Draenei and Blood Elves had the benefit of introducing "new" classes in the form of Alliance shamans and Horde paladins. It was a neat trick of Blizzard's to do it in a way that made the game easier, not harder, to balance. From this point on, barring a major change they introduce to the game mechanics, new races won't have the lasting appeal in practice that people think they will.
There really is no need for more room or working in a new race into the Tournament for example since that content will be 'old' once the next expansion hits. There is no need to update it for a new race if there is one since if anything there will be something in the new area.
The leveling is so accelerated that there is really no reason at all to be concerned about going from 20 to 80 and if anything they can make the new races 'hero races' and have them start at a higher level such as 65.
I doubt we will ever see a neutral or mercenary race since Blizzard has been pretty clear that they like keeping the factions separated pretty visually (since armor in this game is pretty lackluster) and there would be just be a whole lot of other issues that come into play if the race was fully neutral and never chose a side.
New races are a pretty good selling point to a expansion and there are many people like me who would just play the new race for the simple fact that it is in the end still something new. New classes are nice but I doubt we will see one in the next expansion just due to the reasons with the balancing game that Kalgan brought up. In the end the main selling point is the new landmass itself more than a new race or class which are more 'extra' stuff than the main attraction for a expansion.
Blizzard mentioned when they announced WotLK that the next expansion was going to have many more visual upgrades. So with the Maelstrom I'd imagine one of the big things with the expansion will be something such as upgrading all the vanilla races to be on par with the draenei/blood elves.
I'm going back a page here to the discussion of new races - apologies for the interruption.
I actually find the prospect of neutral choose-your-own-faction races (Goblins being the prime candidate) far more likely than another addition to the Alliance or Horde. This doesn't mean that they are at all likely - just that they are more likely. Some reasons that come to mind:
1. The existing races are integrated with their factions in a way that a new race never would be. Consider the Argent Tournament, where the champions, tabards, and reward mounts are already in place in such a way that hardly leaves room for more additions. A new Alliance or Horde race would be excluded from the same system of rewards and reputation gain as well as the lore. Sure, they could add new-race-specific rep dailies and account for their absence from the Tournament by setting their opening quests further back chronologically than the events in WotLK, but there's no question that they would be odd ones out. Tournament mounts, tournament pets, and so on would have to be obtainable by other means. And if you roll that race and level up, who becomes your home faction for the first set of Valiant dailies? And so on.
2. TBC introduced 1-20 / 60-70 content while funnelling people through the same 20-60 old-world quests (minus revamps like Dustwallow Marsh). WotLK hardly addressed this, giving DKs a starting zone where your level was inconsequential as a shortcut to 60. Introducing a neutral race where the player doesn't integrate with a faction until, say, level 15, also incentivizes the refurbishment or further development of 20-60 levelling content. (Why 15 or so? So players can run the likes of Deadmines and RFC at the appropriate level, and also because above level 20, players on PVP servers should no longer be protected from world PVP.)
While Blizzard is doing enough to accelerate the 20-60 experience (rather than flesh it out) that this may well be unlkely, I do think it isn't to be ruled out immediately. And as someone else said above, problems with identifying enemy players are redressed because their names appear in red. Apart from gnomes and tauren, who really pays immediate notice to the race of other players as it is?
3. Playing as a goblin mercenary, or a mercenary of any race, eliminates the problem of integrating the race as a whole into the Alliance or Horde. Well, mostly; there would still need to be a workaround for things like your first set of tournament quests. I could see reputation with a neutral race working as it did with the Ebon Blade, where participants in the new content (DKs) got a head start, but everybody gets a chance to earn rep with them in the new content at the end of the levelling game.
4. Of course, this doesn't address other mechanical issues like guild membership while you're neutral. The starting zone content, prior to affiliation, may well have to be condensed into 2-3 hours, as was the case with DKs.
I personally think the game is too saturated for new playable races or classes as it is. Races have very little impact on the game: racials aren't very distinct nowadays, so their appeal is entirely in a) cosmetics, b) lore, and c) new starting-zone content. I just don't think a new race is a selling point in quite the way a new class would be. Even in TBC, the Draenei and Blood Elves had the benefit of introducing "new" classes in the form of Alliance shamans and Horde paladins. It was a neat trick of Blizzard's to do it in a way that made the game easier, not harder, to balance. From this point on, barring a major change they introduce to the game mechanics, new races won't have the lasting appeal in practice that people think they will.
One could argue that Blizzard added Blood Elves and Draenei to their respective factions not just to serve the needs of the narrative in Burning Crusade, but more pointedly, to address a deficiency in the faction's make-up.
While much of the Horde's appeal has been with the strength of their storytelling, the Horde lacked an aesthetically-pleasing race to appeal to newer players.
By contrast, the Alliance lacked a race that visually represented a physical powerhouse like the Tauren. (male humans and NEs are linebackers and all, but still not beefy enough, if you'll pardon the pun.)
The Paladin/Shaman deficiency was also something they could fix by adding the new races, as well.
Both sides needed a connection to Outland, which these races provided.
So when thinking about what races make sense for each side, it might be worthwhile to wonder what each side lacks that a particular race's addition could fulfill.
At the same time, we have to consider that Blizzard will likely create that need with the expansion: Horde/Alliance didn't need to have a race connected to Outland before the portal opened up. It could be that both factions need a race that has a strong connection to the Emerald Dream or controls an area deeply connected with the Dream -- this supports Furbolgs as a race if they're considered to be in control of Hyjal at present.
Maybe both factions need access to an undersea race... which brings us back to Makrura, Murlocs, Tuskarr and Naga as possibilities.
The bottomline is that we're not really going to have a viable explanation for the race until Blizzard tells us what the expansion is going to be. Which in this case will probably come right before they tell us who the new races are going to be.
Despite how much interesting it might be for Goblins to become playable (they'd need new art assets, at the very least a new skeleton, since they're just using the male dwarf skeleton right now) I really don't believe it's going to be through a neutral-then-choose-your-faction mechanic. With how much they're heating up the conflict between Alliance and Horde, a neutral race just poses too many opportunities for double agents, especially if it's the Goblins, who are pretty much renowned for selling their loyalties to the highest bidder.
New races based on existing information are starting to sound unlikely to me, and Chilton stated they don't want to introduce races that aren't at least seeded in the world somehow.
Well, that is the same argument that was used against hero classes for so long: that it would be too much work to create all those old Tier sets for the new class. Now we know that they simply will not bother with making new classes or races fit perfectly with old content.
And we saw that, with the Draenei and Blood Elves, it *can* take just a few extra quest NPCs in random zones to 'integrate' the new races. Although from Chilton's interview, it certainly seems that is something they may not be be satisfied with for any potential new races.
What this probably means is, that even if the races that will be added are new, they will get more of a Death Knight-like lore-heavy introduction through questing, and a proper introduction to them for old players in early zones of the new content.
Imagine a phased starting zone that is level 1-20 for New Race players to level up in, but also serves (in a different phase) as a level 82 zone, where we convince the New Race to help us out.
Since Blizzard doesn't seem to be interested in the remake business, I'd think the only way we'd get a remake of 1+2+2x would be a fan creation. Which would be tight as hell, I agree.
A WC1 remake with Doomhammer as the hero would have a different story than the original. In the WC1 orc campaign, the Shadow Council offs Blackhand midway through the campaign to make room for your rise to power. In the official storyline, Doomhammer kills Blackhand after Stormwind falls. Missions 6 and 8 don't make sense unless you're working for the Shadow Council, and mission 7 doesn't make sense unless you're staging a coup. You'd probably want a 13th mission where Doomhammer attacks Blackrock Spire and kills Blackhand, and you'd need to establish Blackhand and Gul'dan as antagonists through cutscenes or something.
It'd be a cool story though, and Doomhammer's part of it would be easy to tell. Most of the missions are just "there's some humans over there, go kill them." They're blank slates for advancing the story. You could easily turn mission 6 (sack Sunnyglade and capture their mage tower to train warlocks) into sacking Sunnyglade and destroying the tower before an AI-controlled Shadow Council force gets there. Or turn mission 4 (kill Blackhand's daughter because she's fucking an ogre, basically) into a warning from Blackhand - "I had my own daughter killed because she stepped out of line, I'll do the same to you."
The human campaign would be much harder because of Karazhan. I don't read WC novels but the retcon of human mission 9 looks way too overwrought and convoluted for a single campaign map, not to mention the amount of modelling work to do Karazhan right. And the human campaign doesn't have much going on besides Karazhan. You'd probably be following Lothar, and a lot of his story happens after WC1.
Chilton mentioned that the a new playable race would need to be seeded in the current world. To me that doesn't necessarily say that they are in the world now. They could easily get around this a bit by having an event a couple of months before the next xpac. Maybe a ship gets caught in a storm and crashes on the shores of southern Dragonblight. The owners of the ship were transporting prisoners but now that it's crashed they've set up two camps with some short questlines that introduce the races to us and we learn that they're from the South Seas. I'm just saying that if Blizz wants to introduce new races they could easily through us a curveball like that without it being a well established playable race currently in game.
If the next expansion is indeed Maelstrom and includes Undermine, then goblins as the neutral race that can join either faction gets even more feasible in a gameplay point of view. It would be classic blizzard, as it requires the least work in terms of balance in racials, and only one or two starting areas need to be designed before each one moves into vanilla WoW to level up. The lore, of course, would have to be reworked, but its not like we've not seen that happen before.
07/08/09, 9:08 AM
