Dragonflight Alpha/Beta General Discussion

[AngerFork]

Given the stories we just went through with Shadowlands, each of the covenants we met up with could have valid reasons for fighting alongside the mortal races.

• Kyrians just had their entire way of afterlife changed due to a mortal showing them the importance of keeping one's memories & one's self identity. They still have much to learn about the world, the mortals can teach them quite a bit.
• The Maldraxxi are always up for a good fight, and the mortal races of Azeroth were instrumental in the biggest fight they've had yet. Plus with the Primus having such a strong military mind, he'd see the wisdom in continuing the relationship with the mortal races in case further help is needed.
• Given that Elune tried to give her favored people to Ardenweald as a gift to her sister, the Winter Queen well could choose to repay in kind by sending guardians to help the remaining few of Elune's favored children.
• The Venthyr have now with the new Arbiter lost their greatest asset, a place to send souls beyond redemption. They have also lost their leader & creator, now being run instead by his son. To better learn how to bring repentance to those most lost, they can learn much from fighting at the side of mortals.

[Nymrohd]

Except they didn't but I went over this.

They did not what? Fuck up the gravity of Death?

[rhorle]

Necrolords only deal with threats to the shadowlands, hince why they were doing stuff against the legion.

Right, and the those threats sometimes take them outside of the Shadowlands. So they can easily just be pro-active and send a coalition of covenant forces since they have all been united and fighting together in their recent memories.

[Mutineer]

Kyrian, Venthyr, Night Fae and Gladiators are functionally Angels, Vampires, Fauns and Giants - are all just as core to fantasy RPG tropes as Elves and Orcs. But most importantly they are all cool as fuck.

Fair enough, but aren't there races from Azeroth or Draenor that fill those other tropes? For vampires we have San'layn, for fauns we have satyr, and for giants we have vrykul and ogres. I'll give you angels though, there's nothing quite like them I can think of.

Selfishly, I'm just not very fond of the idea of people from the afterlives coming to fight for the Alliance and Horde, but I'd get over it if they did end up playable.

[rhorle]

[*]The Venthyr have now with the new Arbiter lost their greatest asset, a place to send souls beyond redemption. They have also lost their leader & creator, now being run instead by his son. To better learn how to bring repentance to those most lost, they can learn much from fighting at the side of mortals.[/LIST]

Is this confirmed? Because everything points to the Maw still being used for those who beyond redemption. Just as it was prior to the Jailer being imprisoned there. They didn't loose anyone that needs to know how to bring repentance as the major figures were either replaced or eventually sided with Renethal. It is the whole deal with the sigils they had.

Of course any reason can bring the Venthyr to Azeroth. I'm just commenting on how that specific example doesn't mesh with lore.

[Nymrohd]

My main question is, why would they ally with the factions. I can see Night Fae going Alliance due to Elune/Night Elves. The rest? Ascended could be a few of them following Uther and thus Alliance? Would we have Draka and Kael'thas back as well in a similar way?

- - - Updated - - -

Is this confirmed? Because everything points to the Maw still being used for those who beyond redemption. Just as it was prior to the Jailer being imprisoned there. They didn't loose anyone that needs to know how to bring repentance as the major figures were either replaced or eventually sided with Renethal. It is the whole deal with the sigils they had.

Of course any reason can bring the Venthyr to Azeroth. I'm just commenting on how that specific example doesn't mesh with lore.

Yeah this is how I understood it as well. The Arbiter is not going to send anyone directly to the Maw (but really, it seemed they almost never did anyway, looking at some of the Sinstones in Revendreth). But that doesn't mean that the Venthyr cannot just drop any unrepentant souls into the Maw.

[Nightshade711]

Fair enough, but aren't there races from Azeroth or Draenor that fill those other tropes? For vampires we have San'layn, for fauns we have satyr, and for giants we have vrykul and ogres. I'll give you angels though, there's nothing quite like them I can think of.

Selfishly, I'm just not very fond of the idea of people from the afterlives coming to fight for the Alliance and Horde, but I'd get over it if people from the Shadowlands did end up playable.

The Val’kyr / whatever the Guardian of Ancient Kings are could both fill the angel fantasy.
And they both have actual reason to be doing things on Azeroth, particularly with Dragons/Titan stuff.

[rhorle]

Fair enough, but aren't there races from Azeroth or Draenor that fill those other tropes? For vampires we have San'layn, for fauns we have satyr, and for giants we have vrykul and ogres. I'll give you angels though, there's nothing quite like them I can think of.

Also there are Gron as a few other races escaped to Azeroth when the Mag'har were brought over. I hope we get to explore those other races making a home on Azeroth some day. It really is a clever way of keeping them around with out having to ever visit AU-Dreanor again.

[shoc]

Fair enough, but aren't there races from Azeroth or Draenor that fill those other tropes? For vampires we have San'layn, for fauns we have satyr, and for giants we have vrykul and ogres. I'll give you angels though, there's nothing quite like them I can think of.

Selfishly, I'm just not very fond of the idea of people from the afterlives coming to fight for the Alliance and Horde, but I'd get over it if people from the Shadowlands did end up playable.

San'layn are Elves first, vampires second. The vampire trope deserves more than a half measure.

Satyr in WoW are Demons and don't quite fit the woodland protector trope that is traditionally associated with Fauns. I suppose we could have gotten uncorrupted Satyr but they'd just be mutated Night Elves in the end.

Ogres, Vrykul, Naga, Murlocs, Gnolls, etc despite being perfectly viable playable races, I think take their places in the monsters and creatures category. They are too good and reliable as punching bags for the game.

[Mutineer]

The Val’kyr / whatever the Guardian of Ancient Kings are could both fill the angel fantasy.
And they both have actual reason to be doing things on Azeroth, particularly with Dragons/Titan stuff.

Oh that's a great point, I don't know how I totally forgot about them, but for sure!

Also there are Gron as a few other races escaped to Azeroth when the Mag'har were brought over. I hope we get to explore those other races making a home on Azeroth some day. It really is a clever way of keeping them around with out having to ever visit AU-Dreanor again.

Yeah, there's a lot of potential there that's currently unexplored. This is the sort of stuff I'd love to see.

[Kiivar86]

There's also lore implications, if they bring back the covenants races to the world of the living then Death will mean nothing to the world anymore as people can just come back... it's complicated.. I personally believe after we leave the Shadowlands canonically those portals close behind us leaving no passage to the world of the dead, whether this happens we don't know.

I mean, we already have seen that happen.

Dreadlords originated there and are now all over the damn place. We saw Aggra on a non-Shadowlands world in her cinematic. They can come to other worlds.

Covenant allied races make no sense lore wise going forward.

Why would a Kyrian/Venthyr/Maldraxxi ever decide “Ok time to take a break from our sacred/essential duties to The Shadowlands to go explore a random dragon island on some planet that poses no threat to the shadowlands.”

Or why would said covenant races chose to integrate with the alliance or horde like the Pandaren/Dracthyr.

As I recall there's a kyrian who talks about visiting other places, and says something along the lines of "maybe I'll visit your world too someday!"

(Mind I'm not one who thinks they will end up a player race, but I don't think it is entirely impossible either)

[AngerFork]

Is this confirmed? Because everything points to the Maw still being used for those who beyond redemption. Just as it was prior to the Jailer being imprisoned there. They didn't loose anyone that needs to know how to bring repentance as the major figures were either replaced or eventually sided with Renethal. It is the whole deal with the sigils they had.

Of course any reason can bring the Venthyr to Azeroth. I'm just commenting on how that specific example doesn't mesh with lore.

I think this one is more implied than confirmed. We know that Pelagos doesn't believe that anything that can happen in a mortal lifetime deserves going to the Maw, he says as much. That's up to and including things like the mass genocide that Sylvanas caused. We also see Sylvanas sent down to find every last soul in the Maw & send them up to Pelagos, even the ones that were sent there by the previous Arbiter and/or the denizens of Revendreth. If even a single soul is sent down before Sylvanas' task is done, she has to send it back up to Pelagos to be judged again. In addition, we know that every soul will have a voice in where they are sent, Pelagos tells us this as well. With that in mind, it's difficult if not impossible to see many if any situations where a soul like Garrosh would go to the Maw rather than going somewhere like Maldraxxus to fight instead.

[shoc]

The Val’kyr / whatever the Guardian of Ancient Kings are could both fill the angel fantasy.
And they both have actual reason to be doing things on Azeroth, particularly with Dragons/Titan stuff.

IMO Kyrian are the round about way of enabling playable Spirit Healers. Val'kyr are Kyrian derivatives, better to have the OGs.

[Nightshade711]

IMO Kyrian are the round about way of enabling playable Spirit Healers. Val'kyr are Kyrian derivatives, better to have the OGs.

Val’kyr are the true OGs.
Kyrian didn’t exist before SL.
Kyrian even couldn’t be original and had to take the “Kyr” and even use the Val’kyr skeleton and animations.

Besides Val’kyr have better reason to be doing stuff on Azeroth specifically dealing with the Titans/dragons… given that they are denizens of Azeroth and work for a Titan keeper.

[Alanar]

IMO Kyrian are the round about way of enabling playable Spirit Healers. Val'kyr are Kyrian derivatives, better to have the OGs.

Val'kyr are the real OG ones. Kyrians weren't even invented back then >.>

Besides Val'kyr are so much cooler.

[Ersula]

I was going to say "Wouldn't they want to start the pre-order before the patch hits? So the patch going live doesn't detract from the attention of the pre-order?" but then I realized, putting up the Pre-order as soon as the servers are down for maintenance would be a stroke of brilliance. Like "Look what you get as soon as the servers come up!"

Val'kyr are the OG ones if you think about it. Kyrians weren't even invented back then >.>

More or less. Val'kyr literally means Kyrian of Valor, associated with Odyn's Halls of Valor. Valor-Kyrian. Kyrian is just them taking the "kyr" part & adding the suffix that makes it a group of people.

[AngerFork]

I was going to say "Wouldn't they want to start the pre-order before the patch hits? So the patch going live doesn't detract from the attention of the pre-order?" but then I realized, putting up the Pre-order as soon as the servers are down for maintenance would be a stroke of brilliance. Like "Look what you get as soon as the servers come up!"

If there is any sort of hidden pre-order bonus like that (again, big if), that's how I'm guessing it goes down. The servers go down for maintenance, the patch is pushed up unencrypted during maintenance with the pre-orders coming out during that time, then the patch is released with all of the content open for anyone that has pre-ordered.

Would especially make sense to do it that way with the encrypted splash screens.

[wowrefugee]

More or less. Val'kyr literally means Kyrian of Valor,

when was this mentioned?

Edit: If this is made up, I gotta say, it is somewhat charming how often you do that.

[boyzma]

when was this mentioned?

wowpedia.fandom.com/wiki/Val'kyr

Not quite what he said...

[Khaza-R]

Did I miss anything on why Shadowlands are being discussed again? Or is it just normal speculation.