Battle for Azeroth - Allied Races Recap

[Dawon]

OMG so uninspiring "new" races... ah well, better this than 6 new classes that would screw up balance even more!

[therealbowser]

I really want to know what the void elf 'void form' is. Have we already seen it? Is it a total mystery that won't appear until later? I'm still hoping it's not that weird form that Alleria never actually uses from the dungeon cutscene.

+10 skill here +15 kill there, 1% reduced damage taken from xy type of dmg... In 2017-2018, they still consider these things as racials? Meanwhile horde is full of cc abilities which have real impact.

What exactly are you hoping for? Dramatically broken racials that put particular races at a major advantage/disadvantage (or arguably worse force roles/class types)? I agree that 1% reduced damage is boring, but +skill bonuses are one of the most dramatic bonuses that I eagerly look forward to. The difference they make when leveling crafting professions is dramatic, and faster resource gathering is outstanding (tauren, worgen, and soon to be highmountain are probably the only races that can feasibly gather while being attacked, etc).

This isn't a rhetorical question, I really am curious what exactly you're hoping for so I can respond to this appropriately and without assumptions. Typically speaking, every race just gets one real active racial (summoning a bank goblin/anvil doesn't really count), and none of them are outright bad or game changing in general.

Right now, we don't know what the vast majority of these races will get so since you are bashing the Alliance I have to assume you are unhappy with the Lightforged Draenei racial? We don't know how it will be balanced yet, but if it's any consolation, I do agree that it's a boring racial on paper (assuming it doesn't have hilariously broken damage). But it's way, way too early to judge whether the factions' racials are 'balanced' or not, given that 4/6 are not even announced yet.

[Deleted]

I really want to know what the void elf 'void form' is. Have we already seen it? Is it a total mystery that won't appear until later? I'm still hoping it's not that weird form that Alleria never actually uses from the dungeon cutscene.



What exactly are you hoping for? Dramatically broken racials that put particular races at a major advantage/disadvantage (or arguably worse force roles/class types)? I agree that 1% reduced damage is boring, but +skill bonuses are one of the most dramatic bonuses that I eagerly look forward to. The difference they make when leveling crafting professions is dramatic, and faster resource gathering is outstanding (tauren, worgen, and soon to be highmountain are probably the only races that can feasibly gather while being attacked, etc).

This isn't a rhetorical question, I really am curious what exactly you're hoping for so I can respond to this appropriately and without assumptions. Typically speaking, every race just gets one real active racial (summoning a bank goblin/anvil doesn't really count), and none of them are outright bad or game changing in general.

Right now, we don't know what the vast majority of these races will get so since you are bashing the Alliance I have to assume you are unhappy with the Lightforged Draenei racial? We don't know how it will be balanced yet, but if it's any consolation, I do agree that it's a boring racial on paper (assuming it doesn't have hilariously broken damage). But it's way, way too early to judge whether the factions' racials are 'balanced' or not, given that 4/6 are not even announced yet.

Remove the ones I mentioned and you call "boring". They have zero impact. +10 skill at leveling? Leveling items don't have much impact and they last for a small fracture of the lifespan of an expansion - and they quickly lose their value after that, especially with the multiple sources of gear. You have to craft 3 less items to get to max skill, then what? Once you reached it, the best items will need max skill anyway. Max +10 skill level is even more useless.

Instead of these useless racials, empower the existing ones, or I could imagine some kind of mass blind effect by the light at the lightforged draenei for example. Blackhole at voidelves, which swallows the enemy, pulling them towards it for a short amount of time. Having mass silence, mass stun, mass knockdown at horde, I think these things are not too unreasonable.

[Dzartovian]

Maybe this was answered and I misread, but as far as unlocking based on reputation, does this system mean you would need to have a horde character at exalted with highmountain/nightborne to unlock those races or could I have an alliance toon at exalted and just use a boosted horde to unlock them?

I really hope this isn't the case.

I don't have a single max level alliance toon, I don't want to be locked out of some races because I decided to main a character this expansion and have not exalted reputations/cleared content on multiple characters.

This leads me to believe that the races will also be microtransactions or the quests can be done on both sides. If they aren't, that seems like a horrible way to start a "faction" based expansion or requiring players to purchases a boost and the grind old content between now and the launch of BFA. Unless of course, that is why the expansion comes with a free 110 boost.

[therealbowser]

Remove the ones I mentioned and you call "boring". They have zero impact. +10 skill at leveling? Leveling items don't have much impact and they last for a small fracture of the lifespan of an expansion - and they quickly lose their value after that, especially with the multiple sources of gear. You have to craft 3 less items to get to max skill, then what? Once you reached it, the best items will need max skill anyway. Max +10 skill level is even more useless.

Instead of these useless racials, empower the existing ones, or I could imagine some kind of mass blind effect by the light at the lightforged draenei for example. Blackhole at voidelves, which swallows the enemy, pulling them towards it for a short amount of time. Having mass silence, mass stun, mass knockdown at horde, I think these things are not too unreasonable.

The argument that "You only need to do it once" is pretty irrelevant. Getting to maximum skill (since leveling is now a joke up to current expansion content) can be nightmarish in some circumstances; in Legion some professions have to level up on greens for the last few skill points or blow hundreds of gold per skill point. And sometimes, even then it's a yellow skill up -- which can fail. What you do before current expansion level doesn't matter much, and to be fair for a lot of professions, the endgame recipes don't matter much. But we don't know for a fact it will stay that way. And gathering bonuses will *never* be bad, even with enchantments, since you can use your racial + a different enchantment.

I'd probably agree with your lightforged draenei racial. Alliance certainly could use more aggressive racials. When it comes to active racials, I'll agree that a flat damage racial will virtually always be a disappointment -- there is too thin a line between 'broken' and 'useless'.

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I really hope this isn't the case.

I don't have a single max level alliance toon, I don't want to be locked out of some races because I decided to main a character this expansion and have not exalted reputations/cleared content on multiple characters.

This leads me to believe that the races will also be microtransactions or the quests can be done on both sides. If they aren't, that seems like a horrible way to start a "faction" based expansion or requiring players to purchases a boost and the grind old content between now and the launch of BFA. Unless of course, that is why the expansion comes with a free 110 boost.

I agree, but let's be frank here. It's pretty obvious that Blizzard will allow access to Highmountain/Nightborne/Lightforged/Void Elves during the pre-launch patch if you preorder. Most likely all content to unlock them will be in Legion, since these races are directly tied to Legion content.

[rogoth]

I really hope this isn't the case.

I don't have a single max level alliance toon, I don't want to be locked out of some races because I decided to main a character this expansion and have not exalted reputations/cleared content on multiple characters.

This leads me to believe that the races will also be microtransactions or the quests can be done on both sides. If they aren't, that seems like a horrible way to start a "faction" based expansion or requiring players to purchases a boost and the grind old content between now and the launch of BFA. Unless of course, that is why the expansion comes with a free 110 boost.

and what exactly is stopping you from doing all the rep token missions in your order hall to get the BoA tokens and mailing them all to your horde/alliance alts that need the rep?, absolutely nothing.

[therealbowser]

I want to add, too, another thing I'm concerned about that has yet to be addressed is the heritage armor.

Yeah, it looks great and I'm fine with how it's unlocked, but it is basically preset to look like a specific level of armor. So will a dark iron warlock be forced to wear a plate heritage armor? I mean, as a joke that's kind of funny but let's be serious here. Or a hunter or warrior nightborne wearing a cloth kilt/skirt -- if it even had the option of leggings, it would look fantastic on anything other than possibly warriors. The only two heritage armors that would really suit a wide variety of classes would be the Highmountain and Zandalar armor (and void elves minus warriors), and even those are stretches in some cases.

I really think that, at the very least, they should offer one alternative heritage armor set per race so that no particular race feels screwed out of classy looking armor for their chosen class. A cloth-style robe set for lightforged draenei and dark iron dwarves, a shaman-kilt style set for highmountain tauren, a nightborne armor style with leggings -- ideally with a mail armor appearance, a heavier armor style for void elves, and lastly a zandalari scholar style robe or kilt set would look great for them, too. But hey, this is just off the top of my head, I am sure others can come up with even better ideas.

And yes, I am aware heritage armor is optional, but it's a big deal to me. I think it looks pretty badass, and for most of the armor types, there is a severe shortage of good looking armor for the races (Zandalari and dark iron especially). And most of these races, sadly, have the disadvantage of not having very much armor that would specifically look good with their theme.

[therealbowser]

and what exactly is stopping you from doing all the rep token missions in your order hall to get the BoA tokens and mailing them all to your horde/alliance alts that need the rep?, absolutely nothing.

TBH this is a good idea. I am going to start saving tokens just in case Blizzard doesn't find a better solution to this potential problem.

[Deleted]

The argument that "You only need to do it once" is pretty irrelevant. Getting to maximum skill (since leveling is now a joke up to current expansion content) can be nightmarish in some circumstances; in Legion some professions have to level up on greens for the last few skill points or blow hundreds of gold per skill point. And sometimes, even then it's a yellow skill up -- which can fail. What you do before current expansion level doesn't matter much, and to be fair for a lot of professions, the endgame recipes don't matter much. But we don't know for a fact it will stay that way. And gathering bonuses will *never* be bad, even with enchantments, since you can use your racial + a different enchantment.

I'd probably agree with your lightforged draenei racial. Alliance certainly could use more aggressive racials. When it comes to active racials, I'll agree that a flat damage racial will virtually always be a disappointment -- there is too thin a line between 'broken' and 'useless'.

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I agree, but let's be frank here. It's pretty obvious that Blizzard will allow access to Highmountain/Nightborne/Lightforged/Void Elves during the pre-launch patch if you preorder. Most likely all content to unlock them will be in Legion, since these races are directly tied to Legion content.

Well, personally I have never bought those expensive "expansion starter" crafting items when they cost tens of thousands of gold, I was fine with dungeon gear, and in Legion with the WQ items. Being at the cutting edge for that +5 ilvl is the goal only for a small amount of players that go for realm first in the very first raid tier, so the time matters only for them. I can wait a few more weeks for lower prices or lucky drops, doesn't matter much. Or you are one of those who makes profit at the start of the expansion from these professions?

The excruciating profession leveling experience is a Legion phenomenon so far, remember how easy was it in WoD. You can't know what brings BfA.

[skycaptain]

Not sure if this has been said but Lightforged Draenei's passive Demonbane gives bonus XP on Demon kills, not beasts. They admitted it was a visual bug.

[Deleted]

The All-things-must-be-equal mentality has been holding back this game for far too long. Glad to see the don't give an ass if the amount of droods is equal among factions, but simply look at how much sense it makes if a race can be a drood. Opens up the door to more diversity and flavour.

What's next, you going to complain that Horde has 2 tauren races and 2 troll races? (As I wrote that it hit me that we will have 2 elfs each side, 2 troll, 2 tauren, 2 dwarfs, 2 draenei... at this rate the next expansion will be Noah's Ark)

[Ramz]

Meanwhile, Horde get Nightborne just because Tyrande was a bitch to Thalyssra. Thanks Tyrande.

If their fee fees are so easy to offend then perhaps it's better for them to be gone. Like seriously what is wrong with elves in this regard?
I have yet to see how Tyrande is a bitch to them, for just wanting for them to participate in fight for their own city, and reminding them that they didn't fight with other elves when Legion attacked.

Boo hoo. If anything it portrayed Nightborn as spineless weakings.

But devs said that it's gonna be due to quest that unlocks them that tells the reason why they join Horde. Honestly I would rather for them to not to, it will be supper odd to have Zandalari and Nightborne in same faction.

[supertigerlamp]

I feel like Void Elves could come from any walk of life and thus be any class prior to becoming a Void Elf. If they are a somewhat recent development, and essentially a choice existing Blood Elf 'characters' are making to embrace this Void nonsense why can they NOT be Death Knights or anything else for that matter?

[ZootSuitRioteer]

Are we going to gloss over the fact that Rugged Tenacity and that Bull Rush is going to make Highmountain Tauren great tanks?

[Cavox]

Can someone explain to me how these reskins are considered a major expansion feature?

[Faustas]

lets say I play horde and unlock my factions sub races and if I want to reroll ally then I need to level random ally race/class combo - grind rep so I could unlock ally side sub races?

[Rylalai]

The Ebon Blade can't raise Death Knights. Only the Lich King can. In the Death Knight class quest, Bolvar raised his new horsemen through the artifact of your Death Knight.

If you paid attention to the WotLK lore, specifically the Grizzly Hills stuff, you would know why the Worgen make perfect sense as a Death Knight race.

Adoxe is right. The only allied race that are even possible to be Death Knights are the Dark Iron. All the others have valid lore reasons, just like the Pandaren, for why they can't be Death Knights.

It's funny how you just ignore the part of his post where he points out that Blizzard already completely ignore lore by bringing in new allied races.. Neither Nightborn nor Lightforged Draenei nor Void Elves were there during Cata/TBC/WotLK/Pandaria/WoD.. Blizzard already doesn't give a shit about lore. It's interesting to see how they deny new DK races because of "lore" if they show that they don't care about IT for the rest of the allied races..

[EbonBehelit]

The Ebon Blade can't raise Death Knights. Only the Lich King can. In the Death Knight class quest, Bolvar raised his new horsemen through the artifact of your Death Knight.

Actually, afaik any powerful Necromancer/Lich can create Death Knights. The Ebon Blade continually replenish their ranks despite not having the Lich King to aid them - the ability to create Order Hall Troops is ample proof of this. Hell, the original Four Horsemen were created by Kel'Thuzad.

If you paid attention to the WotLK lore, specifically the Grizzly Hills stuff, you would know why the Worgen make perfect sense as a Death Knight race.

It turns out I'm wrong about Worgen DKs not making any sense: An NPC in the DK intro questline explicitly states that you were a slave of Arugal in Shadowfang Keep before escaping with him. He also affirms that the player is Gilnean, so there ya go.

Adoxe is right. The only allied race that are even possible to be Death Knights are the Dark Iron. All the others have valid lore reasons, just like the Pandaren, for why they can't be Death Knights.

The Lich King getting his hands on a dead Pandaren isn't a huge stretch, since some of their kind do leave the Wandering Isle to travel the world (like Chen). I honestly think the main reason you can't roll a Panda DK is because it'd look completely ridiculous.

[MasterHamster]

Are we going to gloss over the fact that Rugged Tenacity and that Bull Rush is going to make Highmountain Tauren great tanks?

In the end, Blizzard is going to make sure the bonuses are so insignificant no tank feels pressured into leveling one.

[EbonBehelit]

It's funny how you just ignore the part of his post where he points out that Blizzard already completely ignore lore by bringing in new allied races.. Neither Nightborn nor Lightforged Draenei nor Void Elves were there during Cata/TBC/WotLK/Pandaria/WoD.. Blizzard already doesn't give a shit about lore. It's interesting to see how they deny new DK races because of "lore" if they show that they don't care about IT for the rest of the allied races..

Even back in Wrath it made no sense that new Death Knights had to participate in TBC questing content (which predates their creation chronologically) before hitting Northrend.

Cataclysm made it even worse, since literally every single new character has to jump back in time to do levels 58-78 now.

I'm sure there's more than a few things a young aspiring Void Elf could get himself involved in quest-wise that makes zero sense.