One thing that Blizzard will most likely consider if they plan on adding a new race is whether the race has enough appeal to make a player consider not rolling human/night elf/tauren/blood elf (or whatever the popular races may be) and instead choose <new race>. While I do think that many would choose a goblin because they're humorous, ruthless, everywhere, and overall fairly interesting, the likelihood of people rolling a furbolg, makrura, or anything more beastly than humanoid is low.

In order for people to choose a race there has to be enough humanoid in them for the player to relate to, or enough cool factor to overcome that. Naga and satyrs are definitely choices I see many people making, but things like kobolds and gnolls don't show enough human-ness and lack the certain kind of visible intelligence and cool factor for people to roll those as characters.

Or, in the case of Tauren and Pandaren, the race needs sophistication and culture for them to feel like actual intelligent races. Most of the humanoids we kill 20 of for quests are low on the culture / civilization department.

Or they could have a former civilization and culture they've lost -- like the Darkspear trolls, gnomes, and arakkoa. Or they could be intelligent beings, who become enslaved and undead, and then freed -- like the Forsaken and the worgen of Grizzly Hills. I'm not saying arakkoa and worgen are likely new races, just pointing out that Blizzard is good at thinking outside of the box you're creating.

Those points are true and possible but how many of the races we've been throwing around the past few pages have much potential for a 'formerly we were advanced / acted on our own will / had a lost story that makes up for our current lack of organization'? I'm only arguing that the tribes of the likes of furbolgs and gnolls would not make terribly interesting additions to a faction unless a compelling backstory is created for them and something major changes. If Blizzard chooses to add a race, races of a more major and interesting presence like worgen and arakkoa, would give them a lot more to work with. Both my posts not counting the possibilities of them adding new races or 'advanced and/or lost cousins' of races, which was something that I wasn't intending to speculate myself in the first place.

Edit: to put it in the most concise and clear way possible, my point is that unless they change something drastically or add a huge amount of backstory ala Draenei, most of the simple humanoids we've met in Azeroth are very unlikely to become player races because of their very simple stories and looks (uninspiring for a player to choose them).

Points already refuted. Filling out backstory is almost mandatory for a new race. As for looks - any new race is virtually guaranteed hi res models with nice detail.

I think you're also underestimating how much people enjoy a good animal-(wo)man. Gnolls are hyena-humanoids, Furbolg bear-humanoids, Worgen wolf-humanoids, and Wolvar wolverine-humanoids (although I still affectionately call them puppy-men). Stereotyping, but valid: guys go all "Rawr, we have teeth and claws and are fearsome", girls go "Aww, they're fuzzy and cute."

I don't place any of the above as having higher prospects than other suggestions, I just don't put them further behind, either. Well, I still say Furbolg seem unlikely - we've seen them in Vanilla and in Northrend in nothing more than loincloth and maybe a weapon. Gear modeling seems unlikely/unusual on them - whereas Wolvar and Worgen have had at least some limited equipment modeling already present.

Would the Skardyn be an option for a new race? They've been introduced in "Night of the Dragon" and them being from Grim Batol would have them fit in with what we believe to be the new expansion. It was also said that they would appear in game.

This is exactly the point I was trying to get across, just took someone else to say what I meant for me.

Perhaps I am also underestimating the value of a humanoid with more beast than humanoid. I'm mainly remembering the old world Gnolls and furbolgs, but looking at them again the new furbolgs and wolvar have more potential in looks than I remembered.

One has to keep in mind that the vast majority of the WoW player base have never read any of the novel. That even applies to many lore afficionados. So if the reasonable expectation is that a new playable race is already 'established' in the WoW universe in a meaningful way, that will most likely preclude ones that have never been seen in-game.

If indeed one or two new races get introduced, I hope that they will be relatively well-balanced in their attractiveness to players, including the extent to which their lore is fleshed out. In TBC, Blood Elves were massively more popular than Draenei, to the extent that it wasn't rare for servers established with the release of TBC to have a Blood Elf population equal to or exceeding the entirety of the Alliance. Appearance certainly played a part in that, but I don't think it's too far-fetched to find some blame for the relative unpopularity of Draenei with the 'spacegoat saga'.

I've got a feeling that if goblins did indeed end up a playable race they might be rather popular. My personal bias is an unadulterated love for the little green buggers, to the extent that I might actually start playing again just to roll one, if we get a ton of Undermine lore, even better. Think of the possibilities - "Time is money, friend!" will take on an entirely new meaning when facing a goblin affliction lock. Anyway, introducing new races while maintaining faction balance will be rather difficult. I guess if the Horde got Goblins as their first 'technological' race it might make sense for the Alliance to get some kind of Forsaken analogue. Worgen could fit into that niche, but obviously it won't be everyone's cup of tea.

A neutral race is just too far fetched, it will never happen due to the BG implications and the fact Blizzard want races to be instantly identifiable by sight.

I still like Tuskarr for one: Orinoko Tuskbreaker - NPC - World of Warcraft
Goblins could be a Horde race, or at least one faction of Goblins as I doubt the whole of Undermine would join (unless they do away with neutral city hub as the main focal point for an expansion, which would be good). I can't see them ever joining Alliance though due to their similarity and rivalry with Gnomes. They would be a good Horde counterpoint for a small race.
High elves would be too simliar to Nelves/Belves I think to be considered. There also probably isn't even enough of them.
Taunka are too similar to Tauren to make a whole new race.
I don't buy naga for the model/mount issue unless its some sort of half naga merman race that broke away from Azshara/Old God before the transformation was complete.
I don't buy Satyr/Worgen as they're too evil without a complete background change. After the RAS I doubt the horde would let a faction of demons in.
Vyrkul could be an outside bet, something to do with them searching for redemption after the LK's grip loosened on them and a new faction formed.


I think a lot of races could be used if they used a Dranei/Gurloc approach of more evolved/less devolved race discovered. It really gives them a blank check to say "Heres these Furbolgs, but they shed their body mass as they lived in the climate south seas after the sundering for 10,000 years and now look like hairy bearmen rather than manbears." I'm half expecing the same for some faction of Highborn that escaped the more drastic effects of Azshara's pact with the Old God and now are still elf like (in a grotesque way) but are humanoid with legs. Kind of like the swamp thing.

Actually, I can't see much good about it except increasing the stupid hatred between the factions, which swaps over from the NPCs to the players. If you see an opposite player in a neutral city, you maybe can start to think of him as a player, an actual RL being (granted, many have problems with that even for players of their own faction, some think of other players as the mercenaries of Guild Wars, NPCs to fill your group and get you 'fat loot') instead of just some hostile NPC that you have to attack if you meet him elsewhere, lest he attacks you first because he, on the other hand, thinks you're just some evil enemy unit, too.
Lorewise, I think many members of the neutral factions, even if stemming from the player races (Cenarion Circle, Argent Dawn/Crusade) understand that Horde and Alliance have to overcome their hatred, which is mostly based on conflicts initiated by outside powers (Orcs<>Humans, NElves<>BElves) or even just plain prejudice.
In my opinion, Varian and Garrosh show pretty well how, yes, childish these tiffs can be, and the Broken Front makes clear that some people just seek fights for the sake of fighting, no matter if it hinders the greater goal (here: gaining ground against the Scourge)
Neutral cities/camps have been in the game since Classic's endgame already, I've often said that levelling is like growing up, you do silly things that don't actually do anything good (PvP quests, quests for beings that later turn out to be evil) but in the actual endgame content, you put at least the PvP part aside to join forces against the actual enemies. It's kinda sad the Might of Kalimdor never found a successor.

Neutral cities instead of two faction-aligned cities aren't about saving development time, that may be a nice side effect, but the main goal is to make people accept other player units are actual people, too, in my opinion.

The Neutral cities (Shattrath, Dalaran, and most likely Undermine) are great for the purposes you mentioned, but it's also important to realize that Blizzard's initial design concept with Warcraft was Orcs Vs. Humans. It was a very boldfaced law vs. chaos set-up that was all about factionalism and choosing which flag to fly.

While that was something that was well-represented in the lore of the game and the limited PVP offered through Battlegrounds, that unending Horde vs. Alliance conflict didn't really exist gameplay-wise in 1.0. The Ahn'Qiraj War Effort worked against that concept because we all held hands and put the squash on the bugs.

Burning Crusade brought it back a little with the very obvious Red vs. Blue theme (it's almost like the Draenei were redesigned to be blue-skinned for this express purpose), but then 2.4 told this big story of the opposing Scryer and Aldor factions recognizing how they needed to work together against a common enemy. It was a really overwrought metaphor that still didn't resolve anything on the Horde vs. Alliance front.

I can particularly remember Metzen & Co. talking about how they needed to bring the "war" back to Warcraft, and that meant bringing back the factionalism. I find the execution distasteful because Wrynn and Garrosh are so immature, but I can understand why it's happening.

Because when you get to brass tacks on it, you can never really have a lasting peace in a world of warcraft. From a design standpoint, that would be self-defeating.

That's why I think a neutral city works against that. If they're trying to encourage a WAR then its counter-productive to have us getting our hair cut in the same barber shop or using the same bank, even if there are small horde/ally districts.

As for Gyrnn and Warosh (get it? they're the same) yer it is annoying. One of them acting out might have been fine but two just looks like a kids argument. One of them, probably Wyrnn, should have been a more subtle, dark plotter style. Engineering situations that embarrass Thrall/Garosh and make the Alliance look like the good guys, that sort of thing.

But the complaints are so widespread now I expect during or after 3.2 the status quo will be changed as it is clear the playerbase isn't happy with the way the conflict is progressing. The most obvious thing would be for Wyrnn to kill Garosh to bait Thrall into aggression. I suppose Garosh could kill Wyrnn but then SW would be back to a boyking and as much as I dislike Wyrnn, he is better than nothing. Killing Garosh, the Horde still have Thrall.

This is very possible. There is just so much we don't know about the Naga that a derived group with legs would be an easy fit. So far we have only seen the standard females and males, one noble female with Lady Vashj and one sporting mutation enhancements, which would be Naj'entus. We are very likely going to be seeing more of the mutated ones if we do have an oceanic based expansion.

What we have not seen are Naga who are not part of their military, such as it is. The rank and file commoners could have an entirely different body plan for all we know. With the Naga being Highborne originally, I would think any members who would be part of a peasant class would not be treated well at all. That could be another way to get them in game as playable. It also would provide a class war theme which would mirror the original War of the Ancients as history repeats itself.

It's not like humanoid snakemen are that odd a concept. There are plenty of examples in mythology and pop culture of such beings, and if Blizzard went this direction, they would not have to be even that elf-like, a proper snake head would work. There are enough examples of head ornamentation, from hoods to scales that are like horns, on normal snakes to provide various styling options too.

The only issue I can see would be complaints that we are getting Naga who are not Naga. If the derived race was made cool enough, that would easily be forgotten I think.

The story has been increasingly about a common, more detrimental enemy than Horde v. Alliance aggression. The beginning of the game may have revolved around simply factional war, but war is never that simple. The lore of the game becomes more interesting once we leave the you-bad-I-hate mentality and move to a slender truce for the purpose of combating an insidious enemy. Granted the "diplomatic" missions, where you bring a letter, et cetera to another location does not provide as much in-game entertainment, but for lore and storytelling, the intricacies of diplomacy provide more opportunities for storyline in-game. The neutral cities provide a space for the tenuous truce to be tested and undermined.

I agree that Wyrnn killing Garrosh would be interesting to see how Thrall would deal with the situation, and provide an undercurrent of tension.

While there is a lot of great discussion going on about there never being a neutral faction, I think that the new art from the Argent Coliseum leads me to some other hypotheses. I'm assuming that some of the art is placeholder for the time being, but it looks to me that a lot (if not all) of the drops from the coliseum are faction specific in both art and name, with stats being equal.

This makes me think that the developers are toying with the idea of having gear artwork that points out the faction of the player rather than just race. If horde players can only wear horde-esque gear, it becomes very apparent very quickly who is who. Why wouldn't this allow for a neutral race to exist that has to choose a side at some point? Or even an option to default from one faction to the other as a player? More than anything, I am just trying to point out that until now, players of certain classes all have the same looking gear, but now the factions will be the determining factor in gear artwork.

Two arguments against:
1) They're already getting backlash. Warriors/DK/Paladins don't want to look the same. Hunters/Shaman, Druids/Rogues, and Warlock/Mage/Priest feel the same. Classes want to feel distinct - a lot of feeling distinct is looking distinct.

2) Art asset time, databse size, and names. Every item needs two names, two art assets, and two entries in a database. Compare modeling a new race (and animations) once, vs doing every single piece of new gear twice.

Faction-based gear was an interesting idea and a test. I believe it's failed before it's gone live and don't expect to see it continued (though they will carry through in 3.2, they're not wasting the art that's done).

I can actually understand the need to somehow increase inter faction tensions, even though I've always been of the opinion that the current way to achieve this is childish at best, and plain mouth breathing retarded at worst. And yet, even if they decide to escalate the tensions to all out war of extermination, you have to keep in mind that there are other factions out there, not just the two playable ones.

Logically, it would make sense that these factions request the aid of the seasoned veterans of both factions for their cause, somehow forcing the two to coexist. And while these factions (Argent Crusade, Steamwheedle, Ebon Blade, Kirin Tor, you name it) are mostly too weak to last too long should either faction attack them, they could still cause massive short term damage to whoever attacked them. So, neither the Alliance, nor the Horde are too keen on wiping out these lesser factions that somehow hinder their war efforts by diverting able bodied soldiers to whatever other cause, because they'd find themselves vulnerable to a surprise attack from their sworn enemies, and because they still get the benefit of not having to pay wages or worry about training their heroes.

Neutral towns will probably still be around, if only to differentiate the wilderness of your own realm from battlegrounds, where members of the opposing faction are just random names you might never see again.

Which leads to a huge problem of art development time. Blizzard already re-uses models like crazy (all non-tier gear is tier gear recolored etc.). It's pretty clear they don't have the desire to put that much budget and time into gear models.


P.S. Blood elf...brutal? Having a hard time telling the males from the females in a race does not imply 'Brutal'.

Having a state of war does not necessarily mean that an Alliance player will never see a Horde player as anything other than a HK or vice-versa. In my server (granted, RP-PVE, so your experience might very well be different), before cross-realm BGs were introduced, the people that knew each other the best were the PvP'ers, since they were always fighting each other. And that led to a lot of interaction in forums, making alts in the other faction to chat, etc. Of course this was ruined when cross-realm BGs came around, but Wintergrasp has managed to rekindle this, to a degree.

As for whether WoW will evolve to an all-out war between Horde and Alliance, there's one big problem with that - namely, that Blizzard cannot let a faction achieve any sort of meaningful victory without alienating the other faction. So the only possible outcomes to such a war would be either a stalemate, which is not very satisfying for anyone, or, surprise surprise, the appearance of a common foe that forces the warring sides to ally against the new threat.

That being said, since WoW is clearly taking on an episodic nature, there's nothing stopping Blizzard from actually going in the direction of a war in the next expansion only to introduce that new foe in the one after that (Sargeras or Deathwing being the obvious candidates here).

I play on an RP-PVE as well (yeah, well, I was probably drunk when I rolled on it four years ago :P) and that's sort of thing I'm talking about. Sure, you're talking strictly about PVP interactions here, but it's quite nice to go out in town and see what the rivals from the Horde managed to kill and loot during the last raid. There's also the simple courtesy of just not acting like a tool towards the opposing faction, at times. Even on RP PVE realms, and with flying mounts, flagged people can occasionally meet :P If you've ever afked for hours after raid times in the same place, next to the same enemy for hours after raid times, you're a lot less likely to teabag his corpse until one of you logs out. Sure, one of you's paying a visit to the spirit healer, but it's usually a lot more civil, and somehow more immersive and more rewarding than 20 random people fighting each other in a pit.

Pandaren pops to my mind as another possible cross-faction race that could go either way. They have no real bias to one side or the other as long as they can fight honorably and drink their booze, they'd get along fine with both Orcs and Dwarves. They'd probably represent a lot "prettier" and more attractive option for a neutral race then goblins.

There are several ways that it would be possible for a neutral race to occur while still preserving faction identity. There could be different hair/skin colorings for alliance vs. horde versions. Of course the red enemy nameplates vs. green ally nameplates means you rarely need to distinguish them in detail on the field of battle.

The faction could be simply a band of mercenaries, or have some civil strife that splits the race in two (similar to the blood elf vs. high elf split).

Furbolg wouldn't be so far off of a candidate either. They're really closely tied with the Nightelves, and they're almost always involved when there is corruption. They wouldn't be so far off from a typical humanoid form and could probably wear most armor without too much adjustment. They'd probably be slightly better tied into the Emerald Dream though.

One thing strikes me is that the Draenei and Blood Elves had a very vested interest in the whole of the Burning Crusade expansion. Draenei because of their homeworld, and Blood Elves because of the Kael storyline. When it comes to the Emerald Dream and the Maelstrom however, the only race that really has stake in them is the Night Elves. Goblins have a minor stake in maelstrom due to their involvement in the south seas, and perhaps purified/redeemed naga?



Unrelated to the above --

Given the Northrend storyline about the Kvaldir, is it possible that we haven't seen the last of the Vrykul yet? Will there be pockets of Vrykul out there on the great sea?

You're making some very good points, but I think that the classic Horde-Alliance hatred as a motor of the story of the Warcraft Universe is, well, not dying out, but slowly fading away. Sure, the first two RTS games were about Orcs against Humans/Elves/Dwarves, but the second already hinted at larger things, though most of what we know today wasn't invented until WC3, which explained the Orcish invasion. But story-wise, except the occasional battles with single groups, there was no actual war between the (new) Horde and the Alliance: the Humans were fighting a fallback war against the Scourge, the Orcs you fought with Arthas were still loyal to the old Horde and the Legion, while Thrall's Orcs were trying to find a new home. Though they had to steal ships and for that killed some humans, they never planned to do this, and the conflicts with the Night Elves arose from non-communication with the inhabitants of this "new" continent. Most of this, including of course the death of Cenarius, can even be blamed on Grom alone. But in the end, Night Elves, Orcs and the Theramore Humans stood together against the Legion, if only to basically split again after that.
Of course the mistrust among the races runs understandably deep, the Orcs' ravaging through Draenei and Human cities under the control of the Legion, then the attacks on Orc settlements under Proudmoore, Sr., what the now-Forsaken did as minions of the Lich King and thus the Legion, the remaining Human ranks of Lordaeron letting the High/Blood Elves down after the Scourge's attack on Silvermoon, and the Orc/Night Elf conflicts in Kalimdor (again a good part of Legion influence involved)
But every intelligent leader can see that, besides the ever-present evil of the Legion, most of those acts were done under the command of at least arrogant individuals. It will take a long time to get over these events, but at least a real truce (on the paper) should be possible and wanted.

Besides, I don't see a Warcraft 4 coming anytime soon, not just because it'd compete with Blizzard's own Starcraft 2, but also because at the moment, a real war between the player factions would have no winners, except for the Scourge and the Legion. Maybe something related to other worlds, both factions invading/coming to the rescue, with the current uneasy truce but also several outbursts of direct conflict as in WC3, while mainly fighting the Legion, but not until the current major threats on Azeroth itself are dealt with, say the Lich King, Azshara and possibly Neltharion, and those are way too good content candidates for the MMO.

Unless Horde = red/brown and Alliance = blue/white, you can't expect players to identify other players of that neutral race on the fly. If a future tier would have different models for each class, and the neutral race had 6 classes, those'd be 12 different shoulders already, for each tier of course, plus at least one model per class for the PvP set (if they keep the current 'evolution' of this gear) which you'd have to associate, plus, not all future dungeons will be based on a tournament, so they won't drop faction-specific nonset gear, but even if, that would increase the possible number of different looks even more.
"Ok, there's a goblin riding on a neutral mount, what does he wear? Which class/faction was that shoulder from again?"
Maybe a bit contradicting to what I wrote above, the Horde-Alliance conflict will stay for a long time, though it may cool down even more, this conflict slash battlegrounds as its ingame representation will always be a major part of the game, and you can't build a neutral faction around this.
Neutral characters, 'friendly' to both classic factions would sure be interesting as mediators and for players not interested in PvP, but I just can't see it coming for WoW.

A serious question though: How many of you actually look at the character and surmise faction from the class? I notice the giant red or yellow letters above their head before I get close enough to distinguish a race/faction. If it's blue, it's not a threat to me, Horde or Alliance (I'm PvE on my main server).

I'm pretty keen on the mercenary Goblin idea myself. A phased starting area (could still be in the existing Azeroth somewhere this way) for 15-20 levels and at the end of the line, choosing your faction. You wouldn't be allowed to join a guild until you were done with the area (to avoid complications later). Mounts wouldn't be an issue since you can't get one in those levels anyway. Goblins are long overdue, as they should've been the Gnome's counterpart, and South Seas is a perfect time to add them in finally.