Battle for Azeroth Alpha/Beta General Discussion

[Slowpoke is a Gamer]

So as I was piecing things together off the various leaks we got today I came to a few conclusions.

* Two separate leaks mention both an Old World Revamp, and Davy Jones. And for the record said two leaks are not the same in both cases. Both North and 4chan mention a revamp, while Ebaums and 4chan mention Davy Jones.
* The subject of races is by no means agreed upon. One says subraces outright, one says at least one "new race" and one just says "nothing new races."
* One leak calls Kul'tiras a continent, one says they only saw 4 zones.
* Garrison/Order Hall seems like it's destined to return with a naval flare.
* The riddles seem as vague as ever.

My questions haven't been answered as cleanly as I'd have hoped. In fact combing through these again has made what seemed a clear picture on races muddy again. As I've said, SOMEONE is lying here, we can't be getting sub-races, "nothing new races," and a new race. Also a LOT of this seems to hinge on if we get a world revamp or not. If we do, my bets are still on a less intensive revamp. Removing Garrosh/Varian/Vol'jin, updating models more or less across the board, putting out the fires in the Barrens and Badlands. Heck, the areas that'll likely get changed the most are Southern Kalimdor (due to Sargeras) and Lordaeron (due to the passage of time).

What I think HAS become clearer is the link between The Wound, where we leave Legion off, and Kul'tiras, where we're going next. Like Garrosh's capture leading into WoD, or Gul'dan escaping leading into Legion, I think The Wound leads us into Kul'tiras. It awakens the Old Gods, it puts a pretty big beacon of power on the map for these guys. And I suspect Davy Jones shows up to claim the Blood of Azeroth for the Old Gods, succeeds, and unleashes all kinds of tentacle hell that eventually forces us to chase him down to Kul'tiras.

Also I suspect Kul'tiras itself has 4 zones. The rest of the missing zones will be other islands. Like Crestfall, Zul'dare, Zandalar, Plunder Isle...

[In Ogres We Trust]

Logging for the night... L8R!

[TomatoBisque]

That is the dumbest reason ever. Tyrande was rude because she was lending her own troops and people to die fighting for the Nightfallen's cause, and the Moon Guard, Val'sharah druids and Valewalker Farodin are all also Night Elves.

That's a shitty excuse, though. The Nightfallen's cause was predicated on fighting the Legion and freeing their people from demonic oppression. They were people that were exiled from the city (or worse) for speaking out against the Nightborne bowing down to the Legion.

If Tyrande can't see why maybe stopping the Legion from getting access to a source of power like the Nightwell might be a worthy use of her troops, then I have to ask what is?

[Matoka]

Oh yea, does anyone know how often "Black Empire" is mentioned in WoW? specifically during Silithus.

Zidormi in the files mentions the Black Empire casually when you speak to her to go back to original Silithus, but I don't remember the old gods being referred to as part of the Black Empire back in Vanilla.

It's very odd to casually drop the term the Black Empire when "Qiraji" or "Minions of the Old Gods" would do just as well, and the Black Empire touches on a far larger entity that reference to could be pretty implicative.

[EbaumsTipster]

The leak I reported on the and the "Davy Jones" leak are one and the same, nobody else has used the term. However a few leaks have mentioned Daelin Proudmoore coming back as a ghost, though my leak is the only one that mentioned that it WASN'T Proudmoore. They did say it was an old character and implied it was a male.

Also to clarify they said there was "nothing new" for races, but in the same post implied that something involving races was coming.

[Slowpoke is a Gamer]

Quick summary: there has recently been some speculation about new subraces based on four new entries in ChrRaces (27, 28, 29, and 30). What follows is a logical and technical analysis of what those entries really mean.

Reasons For Assuming These are New Subraces:

• Character Screen FileDataIDs are set. 2 are for Horde, 2 are for Alliance, and they're not immediately obvious which would be which, implying some sort of conscious decision at work.
• Default ClassIDs are set.
• Neutral RaceIDs are set, falling back to the original (Tauren, Draenei) in two cases. Why they aren't set for the other two is unknown.
• Blizzard stopped caring about adding NPC race entries a very long time ago (the last one was early Wrath) since the only impact was appearance swapping.
• None of the new ChrRaces are used in-game on a creature except Lightforged Draenei.
• The new ChrRace entries appeared in the first build of Patch 7.3.0, but there are almost zero new Nightborne or Highmountain Tauren in Patch 7.3.0.
• Creating a race entry (Void Elf) for a single creature (Alleria) would be very strange. It's fair to say it would be unprecedented.

Reasons Against Assuming These are New Subraces:

• ChrRace Flag 0x1 is set for all four entries. When set, 0x1 designates unplayable races. It's worth noting that it is possible that they set this flag to prevent the race from showing up in Character Creation and other areas (as a return from 'GetAvailableRaces()').
• ChrRace Faction is set to 2 (Neutral) for all four entries. This is consistent with all other NPC types.
• The first two of the data-based 'Reasons For' can be explained away as a result of copy and paste from existing entries. Blizzard loves to copy and paste from existing material before modifying it. Once I realized this I almost considered removing them, but people would probably point it out excessively if it wasn't there.
• There are no CharBaseInfo entries specifying race-class combinations for ChrRaces 27-30.
• Data in other database files is placeholder and inconsistent with being playable races. As one of many examples, CharHairGeosets has entries for NPC-only ChrRaces, but just a single row for each gender. Playable races have tons of rows in CharHairGeosets with all of the possible combinations. However, ChrRaces 27-30 only have 1 row for each gender, as if they were simply NPC races.
• The data left behind is not consistent with something complete yet hidden. This is tricky to explain but ties into the last couple of points. In short, when Blizzard scrubs data, they do so by reference. They would rely on triggers of foreign keys to update tables where entries are deleted. For example, they would delete something key to the existence of the race, something like... well, the ChrRace entry. Doing so would trigger a cascade of removals across the entire database. The first key removed would be the ChrRace one. Then CreatureDisplayInfoExtra have entries ripped out because of its 'Display RaceID' column. Then CreatureDisplayInfo entries would be ripped out because they were missing a CreatureDisplayInfoExtra entry. As a result of how this works, for a database like BarberShopStyles to have no data for Races 27-30 is extremely odd (and for the other ones to only have 1 style, like NPC races). The only thing that ties BarberShopStyles to something else is ChrRaceID, and we know that ChrRaces wasn't scrubbed if these were intended to be removed. Basically, it's weird that some databases don't have data even though they were only linked through a reference that wasn't scrubbed. This is not a smoking gun that these are only NPC races, but if they are intended playable subraces, then they were in a very early state of development on Blizzard's end.

It is worth noting here that, even if going off ChrRaces is completely wrong, some of this may be accidentally correct. For example, I'm pretty sure the next expansion will feature subraces, and I'm pretty sure Lightforged Draenei will be one of them. There's both logical and technical reasons why this will likely be true.

Also, one last point... I debated putting this in both sections at different points in time but it probably just belongs as a disclaimer: if this is true, it's a huge blunder by Blizzard. When merging in entries from a beta branch to bring over fixes or whatever, they would filter out a lot of the beta-only stuff by hand, most likely. It's forgivable they didn't realize what had happened when they stripped out KulTiras and Zandalari from ManifestInterfaceData, especially when they had also just stripped out the encrypted files from that same database, so the change could have slipped in with one that they did want to happen. However, ChrRace rows contain easily read string data, unlike ManifestInterfaceData which is pure FileDataIDs and file paths. If they didn't check the changes for that and realize that the word 'Void Elf' is something that was a bit out of place (especially when it was only one of four additions to the file), then, well, like I said, it's a huge blunder.

TL;DR: there is compelling evidence for the existence of these four new ChrRaces to be a sign that they will be playable subraces, but when considered in a broader context there is some doubt.

Interesting analysis, which only further muddies the water on races.

Either way it seems we can expect chaos on the race front at Blizzcon.

- - - Updated - - -

The leak I reported on the and the "Davy Jones" leak are one and the same, nobody else has used the term. However a few leaks have mentioned Daelin Proudmoore coming back as a ghost, though my leak is the only one that mentioned that it WASN'T Proudmoore. They did say it was an old character and implied it was a male.

Also to clarify they said there was "nothing new" for races, but in the same post implied that something involving races was coming.

Unless I'm mistaken they're not the same. Unless the person who came into your chat was the same one providing information on 4chan.

[EbaumsTipster]

Unless I'm mistaken they're not the same. Unless the person who came into your chat was the same one providing information on 4chan.

My chat WAS 4chan. They are the ones who said big Azeroth leveling revamp, Jaina/Sylvanas focus, Davy Jones villain, etc. The reason I brought it to MMOC was the Alverold connection

[Simca]

Simca, you can add onto your list that a number of purple and gold weapons have been datamined also sharing the name "Void Elf", including a sword, shield and offhand.

That doesn't necessarily mean anything, unfortunately. Blizzard very frequently adds new weapons and armor based off important characters as items. For example, Xavius' glaives had a '_Xavius' suffix in them as item files. Those could simply be new player weapons styled after Alleria's gear.

Here's a complete list of everything with 'Void Elf' in it, though, in the database files:

"1712308","Interface\ICONS\","INV_Shield_1h_VoidElf_D_01.blp"
"1712309","Interface\ICONS\","INV_Offhand_1h_VoidElf_D_01.blp"
"1712310","Interface\ICONS\","INV_Sword_1h_VoidElf_D_01.blp"
"89537","VO_73_ALLERIA_WINDRUNNER_VOIDELF_ATTACK"
"89538","VO_73_ALLERIA_WINDRUNNER_VOIDELF_ATTACKCRIT"
"89539","VO_73_ALLERIA_WINDRUNNER_VOIDELF_BATTLESHOUT"
"89540","VO_73_ALLERIA_WINDRUNNER_VOIDELF_DEATH"
"89541","VO_73_ALLERIA_WINDRUNNER_VOIDELF_WOUND"
"89542","VO_73_ALLERIA_WINDRUNNER_VOIDELF_WOUNDCRIT"
"253233","Alleria Void Elf Cast Transform","","","","236977","0"
"253234","Alleria Void Elf Cast Transform","","","","236978","0"

Also that Blizzard chose to give Lightforged draenei numerous new hair styles and horns for what amount to single patch NPCs.

Yeah, that's one of many, many reasons that I think that Lightforged Draenei will be a subrace next expansion even if the other three listed are only in there as NPC races. Marla believes the same and has talked about it in the past IIRC.

[Slowpoke is a Gamer]

My chat WAS 4chan. They are the ones who said big Azeroth leveling revamp, Jaina/Sylvanas focus, Davy Jones villain, etc.

Well that changes things a great deal, then.

Honestly it puts us more or less back where we started, nothing seems mounting toward a conclusion. You could very well have been lied to, and North could have just parroted a fake from a 4chan clone.

- - - Updated - - -

That doesn't necessarily mean anything, unfortunately. Blizzard very frequently adds new weapons and armor based off important characters as items. For example, Xavius' glaives had a '_Xavius' suffix in them as item files. Those could simply be new player weapons styled after Alleria's gear.

Here's a complete list of everything with 'Void Elf' in it, though, in the database files:

"1712308","Interface\ICONS\","INV_Shield_1h_VoidElf_D_01.blp"
"1712309","Interface\ICONS\","INV_Offhand_1h_VoidElf_D_01.blp"
"1712310","Interface\ICONS\","INV_Sword_1h_VoidElf_D_01.blp"
"89537","VO_73_ALLERIA_WINDRUNNER_VOIDELF_ATTACK"
"89538","VO_73_ALLERIA_WINDRUNNER_VOIDELF_ATTACKCRIT"
"89539","VO_73_ALLERIA_WINDRUNNER_VOIDELF_BATTLESHOUT"
"89540","VO_73_ALLERIA_WINDRUNNER_VOIDELF_DEATH"
"89541","VO_73_ALLERIA_WINDRUNNER_VOIDELF_WOUND"
"89542","VO_73_ALLERIA_WINDRUNNER_VOIDELF_WOUNDCRIT"
"253233","Alleria Void Elf Cast Transform","","","","236977","0"
"253234","Alleria Void Elf Cast Transform","","","","236978","0"

Yeah, that's one of many, many reasons that I think that Lightforged Draenei will be a subrace next expansion even if the other three listed are only in there as NPC races. Marla believes the same and has talked about it in the past IIRC.

At the VERY least I can basically guarantee that Lightforged hairstyles will be given to Draenei.

[EbaumsTipster]

Well that changes things a great deal, then.

Honestly it puts us more or less back where we started, nothing seems mounting toward a conclusion. You could very well have been lied to, and North could have just parroted a fake from a 4chan clone.

- - - Updated - - -



At the VERY least I can basically guarantee that Lightforged hairstyles will be given to Draenei.

Except Blizzard were keenly and oddly specific about them being DIFFERENT from the Draenei we know and love.

[Hitei]

That's a shitty excuse, though. The Nightfallen's cause was predicated on fighting the Legion and freeing their people from demonic oppression. They were people that were exiled from the city (or worse) for speaking out against the Nightborne bowing down to the Legion.

If Tyrande can't see why maybe stopping the Legion from getting access to a source of power like the Nightwell might be a worthy use of her troops, then I have to ask what is?

Clearly she does see why it's worthwhile or the troops wouldn't be there, guy. That doesn't mean she should be happy about her people dying because the Nightfallen are mostly incompetent fools who have never taken up a sword or fought for anything. I would be annoyed and pissy with the Nightfallen too if my people were getting cut down because the Nightfallen were so spoiled and sheltered for ten thousand years that they have no idea how to properly fight.

[zlygork]

These are not being called new races because they SHARE models and skeletons with old WOW races. Hence they are being called subraces.

We don't know that, that is pure assumption. In the very trailer of BC, blood elves still shared the night elven model.

Edit: I agree on the Lightforged sharing model, I certainly don't expect that to change.

[Slowpoke is a Gamer]

Except Blizzard were keenly and oddly specific about them being DIFFERENT from the Draenei we know and love.

Your point? I can wear my hair however I want. That's not DNA-specific.

TBH I can see Draenei getting Lightforged hairstyles long before I can see the Lightforged joining the Draenei, for that exact reason.

- - - Updated - - -

What if the next expansion really is "Cataclysm 2.0", why not introduce it's reveal as a throwback to original Cataclysm reveal?

With Metzen roaming on the stage obviously, and there would be so many similarities. Instead of the Maelstrom we have the Wound of thr World, instead of Deathwing the Old Gods have risen. Kalimdor and Eastern Kingdoms have been transformed (again!) New "Continent": Kul Tiras and South Seas Islands (endgame zones). Refugees from another dimension, the Ethereal have joined forces with the Horde and the Alliance. New race/class combos. World Quests (and level scaling) on Azeroth! Path of the Titans alternative character progress system!

Too much to take.. Would be amazing to say at least if this were true

People need to stop saying Path of the Titans.

It was scrapped and Wrath and any hope of it died when they named the Antorus legendaries "Path of the Titans"

[EbaumsTipster]

We don't know that, that is pure assumption. In the very trailer of BC, blood elves still shared the night elven model.

Currently pulling up the Void Elf model gives you a Blood Elf. LFDs, HMTs and Nightborne all share animations and models with existing races

[Matoka]

That doesn't necessarily mean anything, unfortunately. Blizzard very frequently adds new weapons and armor based off important characters as items. For example, Xavius' glaives had a '_Xavius' suffix in them as item files. Those could simply be new player weapons styled after Alleria's gear.

Here's a complete list of everything with 'Void Elf' in it, though, in the database files:

"1712308","Interface\ICONS\","INV_Shield_1h_VoidElf_D_01.blp"
"1712309","Interface\ICONS\","INV_Offhand_1h_VoidElf_D_01.blp"
"1712310","Interface\ICONS\","INV_Sword_1h_VoidElf_D_01.blp"
"89537","VO_73_ALLERIA_WINDRUNNER_VOIDELF_ATTACK"
"89538","VO_73_ALLERIA_WINDRUNNER_VOIDELF_ATTACKCRIT"
"89539","VO_73_ALLERIA_WINDRUNNER_VOIDELF_BATTLESHOUT"
"89540","VO_73_ALLERIA_WINDRUNNER_VOIDELF_DEATH"
"89541","VO_73_ALLERIA_WINDRUNNER_VOIDELF_WOUND"
"89542","VO_73_ALLERIA_WINDRUNNER_VOIDELF_WOUNDCRIT"
"253233","Alleria Void Elf Cast Transform","","","","236977","0"
"253234","Alleria Void Elf Cast Transform","","","","236978","0"

Yeah, that's one of many, many reasons that I think that Lightforged Draenei will be a subrace next expansion even if the other three listed are only in there as NPC races. Marla believes the same and has talked about it in the past IIRC.

Oh, if it's not too much trouble could you scan files for mentions of "Black Empire", I swear i'm not crazy for not remembering it mentioned much before Legion at all.
if it's too much hassle dw about it.

[Slowpoke is a Gamer]

Currently pulling up the Void Elf model gives you a Blood Elf. LFDs, HMTs and Nightborne all share animations and models with existing races

And placeholders are a thing.

Blizz leaving in player models for next expansion would be the derp up of the century. We're talking worse than the masks in Cata.

[EbaumsTipster]

And placeholders are a thing.

Blizz leaving in player models for next expansion would be the derp up of the century. We're talking worse than the masks in Cata.

I understand the idea for Void Elves, but why in the world would LFDs, HMTs and Nightborne drastically change models?

[Slowpoke is a Gamer]

I understand the idea for Void Elves, but why in the world would LFDs, HMTs and Nightborne drastically change models?

Lightforged Draenei and Mooseren don't need to. Hence my continued assertations that we won't get them as subraces but instead get Moose Horns on Tauren, and Golden Eyes on Draenei. To go with new hairstyles (and probably tattoos for certain races).

The one thing that's an anomaly here to me is the Nightborne and Void Elves, for crossing faction lines. Hence my belief those two might be new races.

[EbaumsTipster]

Lightforged Draenei and Mooseren don't need to. Hence my continued assertations that we won't get them as subraces but instead get Moose Horns on Tauren, and Golden Eyes on Draenei. To go with new hairstyles (and probably tattoos for certain races).

Unless the entirety of Azeroth gets timeskipped, which takes a ridiculous amount of time and energy, there's no way that Blizzard would allow for a moosehorned Tauren to walk out of Mulgore at level one. They're pretty specific about this. This is the reason a panda isn't on Kezan or in Gilneas to to teach Monks.

New special races that start at 110 are much more logical imo than just slapping moose horns into the character creator.

[Slowpoke is a Gamer]

Unless the entirety of Azeroth gets timeskipped, which takes a ridiculous amount of time and energy, there's no way that Blizzard would allow for a moosehorned Tauren to walk out of Mulgore at level one. They're pretty specific about this. This is the reason a panda isn't on Kezan or in Gilneas to to teach Monks.

New special races that start at 110 are much more logical imo than just slapping moose horns into the character creator.

In which case, I don't think we get sub-races at all and we're back to where we started today.