Before the Storm, Patch 7.3 - Character Races, Build of the Month, Subrace Fan Art

[chaud]

Diablo at BlizzCon 2017

All Pro Decks from DreamHack Denver 2017

World of Warcraft Novel - Before the Storm
Christie Golden is writing another WoW book! Before the Storm will release on May 15, 2018. The book may have been previously titled "Lightning Crashes".

An all-new, official tie-in novel to Blizzard Entertainment’s critically acclaimed World of Warcraft, from New York Times bestselling author Christie Golden

Taking place after the climactic events of Shadows of Argus, World of Warcraft: Before the Storm tells the story of what awaits the heroes of the Horde and the Alliance in the wake of their struggle against the demonic Burning Legion.

Patch 7.3 - Character Races
This weekend there has been lots of excitement in the Expansion Hype Thread about the addition of entries to the ChrRaces database file.

• Patch 7.3 added entries to the file for the Nightborne, Highmountain Tauren, Void Elves, and Lightforged Draenei.
• Many of the races in this file are playable character races, but some are just NPCs, such as the Naga, Vrykul, Tuskarr, and others.
• The last NPC race was added to this database during Wrath of the Lich King.
• All four entries have a character select screen background set.
• None of the new races are used in-game on a creature except Lightforged Draenei.
• All four entries are flagged as being unplayable, set to a Neutral faction, and have reputations linked to existing reputations in the game.
• There are no entries specifying race-class combinations for these new races.
• Data in other linked files are not consistent with being playable races.
• The data left behind is not consistent with something complete that has been intentionally hidden. It is possible that we are seeing a work in progress.
• Patch 7.3 added an additional model related file to allow models to have bones used for customization but share animations with other models.
• In Patch 7.3.2, the Lightforged Draenei and Draenei are the only models in the game to have this new file.
• TL;DR: There is a chance we are seeing the groundwork being laid for playable subraces, but we will probably have to wait until BlizzCon for confirmation of sub-races.
• Maybe Mag'har Orcs, Dark Iron Dwarves, and other sub-races finally got bumped up the priority list!

Build of the Month - October 2017
Each month or so we will post a couple of hardware setups for those of you who are thinking of upgrading their computer!

All of the parts on this page are Amazon affiliate links. When you purchase your parts through them it helps support the site!

This month
New CPUs from Intel have been released but are proving challenging to actually find in stock. If you aren't in a hurry to build, it is worth waiting for next month when stock should improve for these new CPUs. They will require a new motherboard as well. We will update our build list with the 8600K and other Coffee Lake CPUs when stock improves.

The current SSD prices are fairly flat right now, with most SSDs under $0.50 per gigabyte when on sale.

Depending on how much you want to overclock, you may need to spend a bit more for a better CPU cooler like the NH-D15.

Unless you are doing a lot of video rendering or streaming, you do not need the 7700K and would get more performance from spending that money elsewhere.

Make sure to keep your AMD and Nvidia drivers up to date.

Don't forget to visit the Computer Forum for any extra questions!

Peripherals

Puppy

Monitor	ASUS VS228T-P 22-Inch Monitor	$99
Keyboard	Microsoft Wired Keyboard 600	$13
Mouse	Logitech G Pro	$49
Speakers	Creative A250 2.1	$30

Dolphin

Monitor	ASUS VS248H-P 24-Inch Monitor	$130
Keyboard	Logitech G105	$36
Mouse	Razer DeathAdder Elite	$55
Speakers	Logitech Z313	$33

Narwhal

Monitor	Dell U2414H Monitor	$225
Keyboard	Logitech G710+	$97
Mouse	Logitech G502	$54
Speakers	Logitech Z323 2.1	$50

Unicorn

Monitor	Dell U2715H Monitor	$444
Keyboard	Corsair K70	$100
Mouse	Razer Naga Chroma	$60
Speakers	Logitech Z523	$74

Puppy and Dolphin
All of these parts can be mixed and matched to create a build between Puppy and Dolphin.

Puppy

Updated October 15, 2017

$575

Case	Carbide Series 200R	$57
Power Supply	EVGA 600B	$49
CPU	Intel G4500	$71
Heatsink	Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO	$20
Motherboard	MSI Pro Z270	$95
Memory	8GB Corsair Vengeance LPX DDR4	$100
Graphics Card	Gigabyte GTX 1050	$120
Hard Drive	Western Digital Blue 1TB	$50
DVD	Asus 24X SATA DVD+/-RW	$22

Dolphin

Updated October 15, 2017

$942

Case	Carbide Series 200R	$57
Power Supply	EVGA 600B	$49
CPU	Intel 7600K	$230
Heatsink	Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO	$20
Motherboard	ASUS Z270-K	$135
Memory	8GB Corsair Vengeance LPX DDR4	$79
Graphics Card	GTX 1060 3GB	$220
Hard Drive	Western Digital Black 2TB	$120
DVD	Asus 24X SATA DVD+/-RW	$22

Narwhal and Unicorn
All of these parts can be mixed and matched to create a build between Narwhal and Unicorn.

Narwhal

Updated October 15, 2017

$1244

Case	Cooler Master HAF 912	$40
Power Supply	EVGA GQ 650W	$85
CPU	Intel 7600K	$230
Heatsink	Noctua NH-U12S	$58
Motherboard	ASUS Z270-A	$140
Memory	16GB Corsair Vengeance LPX DDR4	$162
Graphics Card	GTX 1060 OR GTX 1070	$260 $440
Hard Drive	Western Digital Black 2TB	$120
SSD	Crucial MX300 275GB OR Samsung Evo 850 250GB	$93 $100
DVD	Asus 24X SATA DVD+/-RW	$22

Unicorn

Updated October 15, 2017

$1501

Case	Corsair Air 540	$127
Power Supply	EVGA GQ 650W	$85
CPU	Intel 7600K	$230
Heatsink	Noctua 6 NH-D15	$90
Motherboard	ASUS Z270-A	$140
Memory	16GB Corsair Vengeance LPX DDR4	$163
Graphics Card	GTX 1070	$419
Hard Drive	Western Digital Black 2TB	$120
SSD	SAMSUNG 850 Pro 256GB	$129
DVD	Asus 24X SATA DVD+/-RW	$22

Subrace Fan Art
Shoc put together some nice subrace mockups on the forum back in 2013. Keep in mind this is just fan art!

[Zeph76]

[Xerra]

Hmm well perhaps this is at least telling us how much more legion we have to go. I'm not complaining since only at prestige 9 that stuff takes forever.

[Restors]

Great, getting the subraces no one asked for. People been wanting Brown or remove hump on orcs, taunka for taurens, high elves, dark iron, broken draeneis. We get voidelf, light draenei, highmountain taurens... this is just sad tbh.

[ReVnX]

Great, getting the subraces no one asked for. People been wanting Brown or remove hump on orcs, taunka for taurens, high elves, dark iron, broken draeneis. We get voidelf, light draenei, highmountain taurens... this is just sad tbh.

Maybe we get both

[Deleted]

What I except? Payable races in game-shop. Or hardly obtainable due account-wide achievements. I really can't see this featured as regular content for everyone. Those races could have their own (high level anly with boost?) starting location, losewise quests, minor unique visuals, own mounts etc, but animations and racials (or not) of main races. To be fair there would be equal number of Ally and Horde subraces, and some neutral for sure, but not all neutral. Many would dislike this, but that's just an prediction. And I would be cool with this.

If we would see those races as really playable, I doubt for letting them be for everyone from really beginning like current ones.

[Bathory]

Great, getting the subraces no one asked for. People been wanting Brown or remove hump on orcs, taunka for taurens, high elves, dark iron, broken draeneis. We get voidelf, light draenei, highmountain taurens... this is just sad tbh.

We don't know what we're getting, or in what capacity yet.

[Deleted]

Great, getting the subraces no one asked for. People been wanting Brown or remove hump on orcs, taunka for taurens, high elves, dark iron, broken draeneis. We get voidelf, light draenei, highmountain taurens... this is just sad tbh.

When they introduce sub races, I'd guess that is an extensible feature. That means they can and most probably will add more sub races in the future, e.g. 9.0, 10.0, ...

[Nelaphim-EX]

What I except? Payable races in game-shop. Or hardly obtainable due account-wide achievements. I really can't see this featured as regular content for everyone. Those races could have their own (high level anly with boost?) starting location, losewise quests, minor unique visuals, own mounts etc, but animations and racials (or not) of main races. To be fair there would be equal number of Ally and Horde subraces, and some neutral for sure, but not all neutral. Many would dislike this, but that's just an prediction. And I would be cool with this.

If we would see those races as really playable, I doubt for letting them be for everyone from really beginning like current ones.

'If' subraces are the selling point of an expansion, we will probably get one free race change with the purchase of the expansion and the rest in the cash shop.

[Alastor7783]

ffs we're not getting any "sub-races" I mean, what would you call Worgen, Blood Elves, Trolls ? aren't they sub-races of Human & Night Elves...

[Bhalial]

ffs we're not getting any "sub-races" I mean, what would you call Worgen, Blood Elves, Trolls ? aren't they sub-races of Human & Night Elves...

Nightelves are a sub-race of trolls. Not the other way around.

[Aeula]

Nobody will play regular Tauren anymore if they release Highmountain ones.

They have a slightly more competent leader that they can be proud of, unlike Baine, and they look cooler.

[Kikazz]

i would play the shit out of an undead gnome or goblin with meat falling off it tbh

[GreenJesus]

LUL.. everyone knows Blizzard always likes to do an "April fools" joke right before Blizzcon right? I wouldn't take this too seriously.

[Tamurello]

these races seem too "legiony" to be the basis of the new expansion

[Utigarde]

LUL.. everyone knows Blizzard always likes to do an "April fools" joke right before Blizzcon right? I wouldn't take this too seriously.

Yeah, like those face goblin and worgen masks from before Cata, or those Draenor robes before WoD.

Wait...

[beanman12345]

Hoping it's gonna be offered like barber is, otherwise gonna buying quite a few tokens to pay for these race changes on most of my toons.

[Deleted]

I was wondering how we could 'change' race in-game since that would would not be possible with proper lore explanation and I get it now - we will get one free race change probably with the box, as someone mentioned above.

That would make sense. Also new starting grounds with high probability to starting as high level toon, since you don't want to level up your Lightforged Draenei in the vanilla content.
Perfect.

What bothers me is what we get with the sub-races besides the looks. Don't get me wrong, I don't give s**** about new look. This may be a nice feature for transmog fans, but for regular players I would count on something like path of the titans with cusomization depending on the subrace. Minor difference, but you choose two ways, just like crucible works in 7.3.

[Deleted]

Hoping it's gonna be offered like barber is, otherwise gonna buying quite a few tokens to pay for these race changes on most of my toons.

If we get sub-races I hope for a barber change too. But man, can you imagine that queues to the chairs?

[DerBoeseWolf]

A Intel Pentium G4500 in a gaming rig? Are you guys sane?
Get an used Xeon E5 (2011 Socket). Or a new i3 (because of hyperthreading). Or a AMD Ryzen 3. They are cheaper and much better!