I don't think this is planned as a permanent change, just something to switch things up for a dungeon themed around factionalism, and a way to bring back the kind of art used for GM/HWL gear which now seems "inappropriate" to a goblin-run arena that ignores factionalism.

I wouldn't read too much into it.

Blizz already said this gear is only for this instance and not how future sets will be. These type of sets just match the Coliseum.


I don't like cluttering my screen so I don't see red names (or any names for that matter) above peoples heads and rely solely what I see. If goblins were made playable we would likely just see a horde sympathizer faction pop up.

The tournament is certainly an odd bird, from how much we got through(Darn bugs).

Ok so you're announced, your faction cheers you on a race by race basis. Then the other faction's champions come out, 12 fighters in all, with 3 of those fighters being city champions. You kill 9 of those fighters, then you fight the last 3 which are the toughest and knock them off horse back, then you fight all 3 of them on the ground, and they retreat after you defeat them.

Then the next part has you kill 9 Argent NPCs.

I just found it odd how brutal this tournament is, I just figured that the champions/argent NPCs we fought wouldn't be getting killed, it seems rather counter-productive to Tirion's wishes. >.>

Well, they could always add defeat cinematics to the champions before they release it, but I don't see any reason not to have them implemented by now. Unless they'd actually reveal something we're not supposed to know about the whole place, and that's bloody unlikely.

Meh, rez them.

*ten page argument about actual use of resurrection magic in Warcraft ensues*

On another subject, it's my opinion that Tirion has been losing his marbles. This culminates in the tournament dialogue where he isn't at all concerned that Arthas shows up, Forstmourne in hand. Rather than run away, he tells Arthas that if he puts down his sword, he will receive a quick death.

Saurfang the Younger might have a few things to say about this.

I see a couple possibilities here.

1. Tirion, unlike Saurfang, has already faced and defeated Arthas in single combat. Yes, that was on holy ground and now we're on the Lich King's home turf, but you can't overlook their previous encounter.

2. Tirion's bluffing and trying to draw out Arthas where he would be an easier target than inside his citadel.

3. He has, in fact, lost it. I think this would be an unfortunate direction to take him, since there's been really no setup for him to fall. Sadly, the incident with Arthas' heart doesn't bode too well unless there was something going on there that we still don't know about.

Actually, taunting Arthas at this point couldn't really hurt. I mean, worst case scenario, he'd just rush the already planned invasion of Azeroth, and hopefully make some mistakes along the way. Best case scenario, he'd rush head first into a trap and make a target of himself, with the option of completely ignoring the taunts as middle ground. Seeing as he's the threat to all life everywhere, I'm sure we'd be expecting an invasion anyway, so there's really nothing to lose here.

As an added benefit, this could serve to rally the Horde and Alliance together once more.

I see the Horde and Alliance "war" as that of a Cold War. American Blue and Soviet Red if you will. There certainly are battlegrounds and hot spots; tension rising, blittering idiots (on both sides), detente and all that jazz.

A Cold War works. Blizzard wants competition and rivalry, a hot war with the two factions ripping each other apart is not very productive however. A Cold War allows for vicarious battles and spots of conflict, while keeping the general tone between the two powers/faction to be one of relative peace.

A valid arguement in my opinion against Goblins being playable is this:

Goblins are not confrontational creatures. They don't fight, they hire mercenaries, they swindle or manipulate, or they simply take their business elsewhere or use leverage to get what they want.

This makes little sense then for there to be goblin "Heroes"/player characters running around. Gnomes do not have this predisposition.

Err, Goblins are vicious fighters. Just because they're street smart and business savvy doesn't mean they don't fight. The Trade Princes have huge goblin armies out in the South Seas that have to deal with the various pirate groups. Like Gnomes, Goblins are very organized, and very intelligent, underestimating Goblins would be a mistake.

These goblin player characters could see it as a very profitable venture to go about as "mercenaries" rather than "heroes". They don't have to care about saving the daughter of X npc as long as they get the 13g reward and bracers at the end. There's the instances of goblins who do nothing but fight, as a job, in Booty Bay Bruisers, too.

In fact, it would be pretty easy to tie in any kind of ultimate monetary gain motive behind the goblins to have them join the fight. "These naga are hurting business and sinking our ships, so lets go kill them and make money." "The naga owned lands contain a rare resource we want our hands on." "Naga are encroaching on our capital, lets get rid of them while the factions are into it and take a cut."

These are overly simplified and not intended to be interesting motives but Blizzard could easily tie in money to any reason.a

What if the creation of the paid faction change was done in preparations for a race both factions could use. I don't mean a race that can swap factions any time they please, but more along the lines of you choose your faction at the start, but both factions have access to the race.

That makes sense, but we'd have to see a lot of other preparations made simultaneously before that could happen. Again, this is an appealing concept, even if I'm still skeptical about it. BUT this does put things into a bit of context if I understand what you're trying to say.

In a way, Death Knights of the Ebon Blade represent a neutral faction of sorts already, and I foresee that even if they introduce 'neutral' goblins as a playable race, the choice of faction would still be made at the character creation screen, and no in the actual game world.

Although I also like the idea of playable goblins, I have a suspicion that the visual distinction between Horde and Alliance is a pretty fundamental design feature. Although to be fair, many things once deemed fundamental to the game have changed in recent months, so it's hard to really tell what Blizzard is willing and able to change.

Counterpoint: Norwegian death bands, Eric from True Blood.

Give those dudes pointy ears and they look like belfs. Furthermore, I submit to you that the only thing more brutal then an orc with Skull armor and a giant mace is a green eyed blonde bombshell in a tight leather suit with skull armor and a giant mace.

Art development time is probably the crux of the argument with regards to all the cool features we want. I refuse to believe the Colosseum raid started with dev's sitting around a table thinking "What would be really cool?" but rather dev's sitting around the table thinking "what can we pull off in six months for as little resources as possible" (Answer: A raid with one room, no trash, and reused boss models.)

This makes much sense if you take PVP realms into account. As interesting as making the choice through in-game would be, people in PVP realms would be unable to have the choice of Faction either-or due to the PVP server mechanics. Unless they change the faction restriction this issue kills the possibility of choose sides in-game.

Blizzard can always change this however, since set in stone rules like no pve to pvp transfers have vanished and faction changes are incoming.

I only assume that b/c Blizzard has made them neutral in WoW. Personally, they are Horde to me. They built our zeppelins, they were our answer to gnomes. I much rather would see them as Horde than neutral but based on how Blizzard has used them in this game thus far, they are the best bet for a neutral type race.

Some people were mentioning these Goblin Trade Princes, so they're like different 'clans' of goblins all working for the Steamwheedle Cartel?
So I imagine that one such 'Prince' and his underlings is working for the horde for some reason, debt or something and building their zeps, catapaults, teaching the orcs etc.
And other 'princes' work purely for the Cartel and themselves...

They are the obvious counterpoint to gnomes (shudder) and Blizzard has already shown their love of balancing race choice amongst factions claiming Dranei were so Alliance got a bruiser race like Tauren, and Blood Elves so Horde got a camp and pretty race that they could all laugh at, like Night Elves/Humans. Whilst gnomes disgust me from both lore stand point and in game, Goblins for Horde are their obvious answer. Small race, good with mechanical/engineering stuff, and less magical prowess but more fight. I could imagine Warrior/Rogue/ Hunter as classes and possibly Shaman though I guess that is a stretch, and I guess DK’s as well.

The other thing to consider though is if there are new races, it is a strong possibility Blizzard wants them to at least add one new race to either Druid or the old opposite faction class. I can’t really see Goblin Druids or Goblin Paladins, so maybe not those.

For a new race imagine something like this:
After the sundering and Azshara’s pact with the Old God(s), her Highbourne followed her loyally. They began to rebuild Azshara’s palace and the surrounding area into Nazjantar. After a few hundred years as the transformations slowly changed them towards Naga, a group of them realised the error in their ways as they gazed upon their grotesque reflections, gills, fins and webbed hands and forsook Azshara and the Old God(s). Escaping during the night (or whatever passes for that on the ocean floor) they escaped South towards the Undermine and set up a new home hidden in a reef, rediscovering their druidic roots and serving to tend the ocean floor’s plant and animal life from the spreading corruption.

Befriending a nearby troll tribe, the Zandalar, they aided each other in times of need over the next few thousand years, and slowly took on the tribes Shamanistic ways to better serve nature and keep the balance of the elements deep within the ocean.
OR
After an Alliance transport was destroyed before the second war, they managed to save a handful of the survivors and take them to dry land. They spent the rest of their days living with them and among them was a prominent Paladin of the time, who taught them the way of the light. After already having thrown off the shackles of an Old God they took to the light easily and became efficient Paladins with their own unique form of worship.

They managed to mask their presence over thousands of years by staying away from Azshara and the other Naga, focusing on stealth and deception, their entire city was hidden in a deep ravine with a seemingly impenetrable layer of reef and marine life grown by the Druids. The recent events of Azshara had forced their small civilisation up to the surface which alerted the Naga to their existence. In addition the Druids of their clan were dismayed at the catastrophic damage Azshara had caused the marine life of the ocean and the Emerald Dream and vowed to destroy Azshara or die trying.

Now whether that goes against what Metzen said about any new races being more recognised as existing in the world I don’t know, in a way they are a cross between Night Elf and Naga, the halfway point of the transformation. But they would be heavily linked in with the story line, just like Dranei/Blood Elf were with TBC story line and DKs with WotLK. They’d obviously fit in better with the alliance being ex-night elves and all. Adding another shaman/Druid race would be good for choice as well.

I guess we’ll find out in 4 weeks time at Blizzcon, but given what they’ve said before about each expansion having to have a flashy new thing like a new race or new class, I’m curious to see which it will be. A new profession isn’t going to cut it, as someone said before the two previous new professions were only able to fit in the first place by creating clumsy niches for them, though sockets were a better implementation than Glyphs. I know people joked about Woodworking/Lumberjacking as new crafting/gathering profs but a sea expansion seems to go against that as you don’t get many trees on the ocean floor, even if it is freshly raised up.

This could be a stretch, but has anyone else noticed the 'stained glass' images on the way to Vezax? Some of them look like Mer-folk to me. Perhaps this is a tie in to the next expansion, and possibly new races. (Not necessarily new player races) It looks like there is a 'traditional' mermaid/merman, as well as a human torso with an octopus lower section.

As much as I hate to sound like a naysayer, I'm just not sure we will ever see any new races capable of being druids. I say this specifically after the recent revamping of the druid forms, and due to the amount of work that seemed to have gone into them.

As it stands, each druid now has the 6 basic forms (travel, swimming, cat, bear, moonkin, tree), and of those 3 change depending on race (cat, bear, moonkin), and of those both cat and bear have different color palettes based on fur/hair color. I'm just not sure Blizzard would want to go in and add all the extra, requisite work to add another two races' worth of druid forms.

All that said, I personally would love to see another option, as the Tauren/NElf monopoly has gotten a bit stale. And I would definitely think that any new races would try to expand the cross-faction availability of the paladin/shaman outside of just the BC races.

You missed Flight Form/Epic Flight Form, which also varies between the factions.