In-game languages

Community General Discussion
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As in Orcish, common etc.

Since adding more professions would be like pouring acid in to a gushing wound for a solution, I suggest we get to become more proficient with a second (or third) language for our character that isn’t native to the race you play. There is already a few ways to communicate with the opposite faction, including an inscription item that straight up allows cross-faction communication.

Cross communication could be disabled for instanced PvP, but for pretty much any other scenario you can imagine, they should be enabled.

That’s just the suggestion part of it.

For this to be something that isn’t just another box to tick off, it should take commitment - not quite like real life, but at least to a point where you don’t just do it because it’s an easy addition to some completionist complex.

Speech could be conveyed with an accent: In fact, there should always be an accent. I know some people acquire proficiency to a point where they almost eliminate an accent entirely, but this also needs to be fun. Slight mispronunciations should still occur at maxed out proficiency imo.

This is pretty much exclusively an RP thing, but one that I think many would enjoy at least a little. Shouldn’t take too much to implement either.

Arguments against it: Toxicity? Well, like I said, you can already communicate via items and there’s even a third-party website that allows you to convey a fair bit of coherent text to the enemy faction player.
i.e. people will find ways to be toxic regardless. Not a good counter-point towards a nice chunk of RP potential added to the game.

Anyway, it’s just a small idea that I think many have considered before, but devs are still weirdly reluctant about adding it.
It also invites opportunity to revise Pandaren, the infamously stupid “om nom nom” speech.

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Language-learning was originally a planned feature for WoW.

It’s a cool idea for a party-trick, like a title or something, and it has RP potential.

But in order for it to happen Blizzard are going to have to re-focus on sense of world. They’re going to have to start adding languages again and fixing things like the Pandaren “nom-nom” thing (it was funny, but also an open disdain of the language feature)

And I don’t think that’s going to happen. Blizzard have completely tilted WoW away from sense of world and identity and over into competition. That’s why everybody’s losing their minds over covenants - it flies in the face if the type of game WoW has turned into.

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It’s just one of those things that made sense back in the day, when orcs first arrived and fought humans, but nowadays it’s a bit weird that they still can’t understand each other. Specially when we see cross faction communication all the time in cinematics, etc.

At this point, i think it’s more about wanting to have this restriction than it making sense to go away or become less of a thing thanks to professions.

But it made one thing more interesting though. The fact that demon hunters can talk to one another with demonic tongue or blood elves and void elves being able to understand each other as well as pandaren. It’s a nice touch.

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As Alexima also points out, they already have expanded on the language feature.
Void and Blood elves can also communicate in Thalassian can they not? And the inscription item that enables cross-faction communication exists. Several characters interact clearly with one another in story cutscenes.
I already suggested the Pandaren language revision myself, but thanks for the hot take I guess.

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Not really. They’ve added a little bit of content to it but languages still come from race and in a couple of cases from a spell.

The idea of learning languages or getting skills in them like professions, which was originally planned and what I thought you were talking about, has not.

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