The capital cities need a rebuild anyway. Blow 'em both.
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If TWW ends up having a larger Alliance (-coded) focus, because the expansion is part of a ‘trilogy’ I can only suppose Midnight will have a larger Horde (-coded) focus in return to balance things out.
…right?
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The issue is that it’s not that TWW has a larger Alliance-coded focus. It’s that they’re the only focus.
And from what we know of Midnight is that while the Blood Elves will doubtless be centre stage, the preview mentioned it’s going to be about “uniting the elf tribes” which means, of course, a hefty Alliance focus too. There’s zero chance Alleria doesn’t remain a main character for it, and you know the NElves are gonna be hanging out a bunch. And Vereesa. Between HElf, NElf, and VElf, the Alliance’s elf tribes outnumber the Horde’s BElf and SHelf.
Thrall showing up for the cinematic and then immediately dipping so we can hang out with Anduin+Alleria, Dwarf versions 1.0, 2.0, and 3.0 and Deux Lux Humans doesn’t inspire confidence.
And though it might not change much, alpha’s when that feedback should probably get issued. Earlier the better, etc.
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IDK - I find Night Elves to be the odd one out of the bunch there. I’m not sure if I can even recall any high elf focus at all in WoW before, notably Blizzard has said in the past that if you wanted to play a high elf, the Horde’s waiting for you… which they ended up backtracking on and gave Void Elves the skin. Other than that, you only have Void Elves to serve as the ‘B-plot’ for the expansion, and Vereesa.
That’s not what Elenthas said however.
The point isn’t “who gets more spotlight”, or “how much spotlight do high elves got over the time?” (I’d say they did get some not-irrelevant focus over the years, but whatever, it’s not the point).
What the Horde is complaining about is that they are not getting any representation.
Like, not a single bit aside from Thrall maybe showing up, but most likely not having an arc of his own and being just an insert to advertise: hey, look, it is good old Thrall! He’s back and has become a licensed therapist for Anduin! Speaking of which, let’s forget Thrall now. It is Anduin’s time!
(because really, Thrall in that cinematic could have been replaced with anybody good and it would have worked regardless)
Since DF had a major Alliance focus, I imagine it’s fair to say the Horde fans want a piece of the cake aswell. Give them an arc, no?
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Yup. Alliance heroes are helping Alliance-coded races with their local problems, and Thrall is there, too.
Yup. You know they’re going to shoehorn night elves in somehow.
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The problem with the Horde and TWW is that there’s hardly a place where they might fit. We’ve stone dwarves, humans, half nelf-half trolls, nerub, and… that’s it? They might pump on the “freedom” thing when they try and stop the Titan programs being imprinted in the new earthen, but I’m not sure how much sense it’d make, or the trolls can remember the aqir wars… Otherwise it doesn’t feel too much like their territory.
The point isn’t that “High Elves are getting focus for the first time, and that’s bad” (also not exactly true - they got attention in both Wrath and MoP), the point is you can’t call Midnight a ‘Horde expansion’ and TWW and ‘Alliance expansion’ when the Horde one is “Blood Elves sharing their spotlight with all the Alliance elves” and TWW is “All Alliance, All the Time”.
But also even if it was true that Midnight=HORDE ONLY and TWW=ALLIANCE ONLY, telling half your playerbase “you’re getting no attention at all for the next two years” is just…crappy narrative/game design. Like really bad. I was already on the fence about returning for TWW, but I don’t really see much point. If they want to send a message to sit out the expac and wait for Midnight then, I guess, message received.
Blizzard wrote the story. They invented the zones. They literally created TWW. They could and should have carved (heh) out a place for Horde characters.
Like, do your job? You’re writers?
Why is it Arathi underneath the earth? Because they said so. It could’ve been Tauren or trolls. There was nothing stopping them from doing so. No one was asking for Earthen to take centre stage.
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With 10.2.7 kinda-sorta returning to Pandaria (if only via a FOMO event), maybe if we complain to Blizzard enough, they’ll add an option to permanently unvoid the Vale?
…Nah.
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If only we had a representative in the community council that would’ve put that to attention…
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Indeed - you’d think they had learned from WoD. I’m not saying the Alliance focus in TWW is good (though I’d be hesitant to say it has an Alliance-ONLY focus). I’m just saying if this ends up being the case, I wouldn’t be surprised if Midnight ended up having a Horde-ONLY focus, minor other faction characters tagging along notwhitstanding in either expansion.
This has been my problem with TWW as well. Underground expansion could’ve been the perfect time to add in new Tauren, Troll, Gnomish, Goblin, and Dwarven (not Earthen!) characters that can stay relevant to the story further on. Gnomes and Dwarves mostly go hand-in-hand, but it’d still have a minor Alliance focus so Midnight in return would have a minor Horde focus with Blood Elves and Nightborne to Alliance’s Void Elves (+ few High Elves).
I just feel like the Arathi especially are so awkwardly out of place in this expansion.
Never forget how they unSha’d the Vale only to immediately void it right after!
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I mean, if it helped getting Horde into focus…
But on serious note, Orgrimmar and Stormwind are the two safe areas that might be impossible to remove unless whole game is reworked. What I´d however like is damage to Orgrimmar in the final batch of patches of one expansion that gets fixed at the beginning of next, removing the Garrosh era buildings and returning the city to a state where it looks like an orc city rather than orc fortress.
I´d put Barrens as the “loss” area, with the enemy forces threatening Mulgore and Durotar. Perhaps Thunder Bluff could be the destroyed capital city that later gets either rebuilt or new city is built on the western cliffs of Mulgore.
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A distinction without a meaningful difference as even burrow houses are effetively bunkers. I get what you mean, though and we’ve had upgraded basic structure models since WoD’s garrison.
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With cross-faction being included and updated more and more in the game, is there a chance that race restrictions will be lifted? I’d like to be a Vulpera Paladin.
Michael Bybee :
Yeah, I hear you. I think a Vulpera Paladin would be really cool. You say race restrictions, we say a bunch of extra animation and artwork that we have to do to make that work for a Vulpera Paladin. Unfortunately, especially Paladins and classes that have a lot of extra abilities, it does require work from the team to be able to make that work. Every time we talk about it we feel super passionately about making that. But at this time, we are actually not ready to announce any additional Paladins or other class extensions beyond what you’ve currently seen.
Any plans to let Evokers have different visage forms? I want to be a panda.
Michael Bybee :
Unfortunately, the answer is no, we are not currently planning to extend the visage forms for Evokers.
Are there any plans to allow for more visual customization of classes with glyphs or even quests?
Michael Bybee :
I don’t know of any specific glyphs that we’re adding with the War Within right out of the gate. One of the things I think is really noticeable with Dragonflight, and will continue in the War Within, is a commitment from our team to continue to make more ways for players to express themselves with their characters; more customizations, more options, more different ways that you can visually show this is who I am or who I want be today.So not specific about glyphs, but it is definitely a part of how the team thinks about things. We talk about ways that we can add more customizations all the time. Sometimes they may show up as glyphs or they may show up as other things.
Sean McCann :
Are we bringing back other solo adventure and quests around certain classes? Not necessarily, but we are excited that again, with Delves being a kind of foundation for what we’re doing, it does open the possibility for us to look at what are other cool things that we can do. Like, Bybee mentioned, engine improvements; this is an improvement to the engine where we now have a pretty easy way to do this stuff. And so in the future, when we are looking at, hey, what do you want to do? It’s like why not a Delve, why don’t we do a spin on a Delve? Why don’t we do this? So there’s a lot of cool things that we can do once this goes live and we have a good foundation for the system.
Are there any plans to expand on spell effect reskins like the former Covenant Abilities options that were added recently?
Michael Bybee :
The reason that we revamped the Covenant abilities is because now that Shadowlands is over, the theme of those Covenant abilities doesn’t make a lot of sense in a War Within world. We wanted to make some of those abilities stick with Classes, and they became a core part of the kit. We just wanted to make sure that they felt thematically appropriate and not like a holdover from an expansion that a lot of players now playing this game didn’t get to experience, and so it wouldn’t make sense to them.If there’s a specific reskin that you’re looking for, I’d be curious to know about it. Maybe we can take a look at it.
So the answer to spell customisation is the same as always “we’re looking at it.”.
Shame to hear we won’t be getting Night Elven Paladins or Shamans anytime soon, but I am patient! Kinda already expected them to not extend the visageform, as its an half-assed solution to a non-existent problem(seeing as Dracthyr visageform shouldn’t even exist). Alas maybe it the future I can be a Night Elf Dracthyr! 
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Would anyone really notice if someone would nuke that muddy hellhole to the Maw?
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Always felt like Orgrimmar was more of an afterthought built out of existing assets rather than it being its own unique thing. It needs TLC and making into a true canyon city. Honestly, dont know why they didn’t eventually go for some orcish petra that was built up over the years, slowly phasing away the individual buildings but eh.
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They feel like a nod towards 19th century hollow earth fiction, what with their steampunk technology and the landscape of the zone. Hallowfall and the Arathi are for the fantasy of being Victorian explorers journeying to the centre of the planet, with a little extra Light and Void nonsense to keep them somewhat tied to WoW’s narrative.
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I knew I got a specific vibe from it all, and now you put it into words!
And still I’d rather had Dark Trolls
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Honestly, I get the feeling that this entire expansion started off as one of the designers or directors going:
man an entire expansion based off of jules verne’s journey to the centre of the earth would be sick
And then a bunch of other people had to step in and rein in the original guy’s ideas and try to find ways to attach the expansion concept to the actual Warcraft setting, until all that was left of that original concept was Hallowfall and the Arathi.
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