I think this is the first, maybe second time I’m actually kinda salty about the Dracthyr having the nonsensical mog restrictions they do?
Like, some of those sets look REALLY nice, but I hate feeling forced to use visage - if I want to play a draconic soldier, I want to be draconic damn it all!
Edit: Also, PLEASE, I want an option to turn off ALL the glowy stupid stuff! Those Shaman sets are COOL, but using them with a neon ponytail? Ew. No. Get rid of the stupid…
Melee DPS was the operative word.
Sure, it’s not without precedent (Warrior, DK) but if we’re adding an entirely new spec it’d be nice if it filled a different role to what they can already do. I’d have thought the same if the Evoker 3rd spec had been “another ranged DPS” instead of Support.
You could not get me to say this if I was tortured at a CIA blacksite.
The best parts of Shadowlands were before it existed and then, a distant second place, when it was over.
The Warlock set is probably my personal favourite, Monk at close second.
My friend had to say about Warlock:
*Their face is a portal. They have an evil villain voice that sounds like poisonous honey, and most likely is trying to break into an eldritch library to pilfer its secrets.
The only sort of person to wear that kind of getup is someone who is perfectly aware of their role in the story, and revels in it
The wearer of this set automatically gets their own saturday morning cartoon to star in as the villain
I suggest a poorly animated, naffly voice acted thing from the mid-late 80’s, think Star Wars’ Ewoks/Droids, the original D&D cartoon, Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog. That kind’ve saturday morning fodder.
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I like that the paladin set borrows iconography from the Brotherhood of the Horse from Warcraft 1.
The pauldrons are seemingly based on the horse heads in Karazhan, which I remember reading somewhere were a subtle reference to them.
Source:
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I like how TBC-esque the Warrior armour looks, though I question the crest of chains. Aren’t they a glaring weakness? A swordsman could grab the chains and yank the helmet off, or pull the guy in such a way they can send a blade through their gorget.
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I’m most excited about the new /lean emote. While it’s not as extensive as FFXIV’s whole /cpose system, it’s a step in the right direction.
The world went just crazy enough for RPers to get a treat again.
Come to me!
Gotta say, my first thought were the paladin Charger mounts.
AD just got 100% more edgy.
Sometimes integrating your mistake means not reminding people of it, lest it becomes a stigma instead of a momentary lapse. If devs don’t want to leave it behind, why should we treat it like something else than an abomination it was, or want to interact with it even long after it’s gone?
Finally! Hopefully they keep adding more emotes over time
Still praying for all the ‘standing guard’ type emotes!
WE HAVE TO ALLY WITH XAL’ATATH??? Blizzard jesus holy christ are you tone deaf she just blew up an entire civilisation last month and is trying to destroy the universe.
How is my character ever meant to justify this.
Xalatath was only trying to protect us from [bigger villain].
Which in a vacuum can work, allying with the Scarlet Crusade against Naxxramas for example, except Xalatath has been built up as the definitive [bigger villain].
But narratively her role has been all over the place since she stopped being a knife so I’m not too shocked.
So who do we think is gonna eat Dimensius at the end of the raid? Xal’atath or Alleria?
“You’ll never guess!”
Blizz writing devs, before it, inevitably, turns out to be the Super Obvious Answer… Again.
Spoilers from Reddit. Again, confirmation required.
Karesh was destroyed about 100,000 years ago. This makes them the oldest mortal ivilization that we know about.
Xalatath was a mortal whose world was also destroyed by Dimensius at some point in time before Karesh. Xalatath basically became Dimensius’ Silver Surfer. She is his Harbinger and would aid him in destroying worlds.
Karesh had a priesthood called the Oracles that communed with his worldsoul. They call him “Karesh the Merciless”. They are part of the main quest and the epilogue post-raid. A small part of Karesh still lives. In the Dungeon Journal We learn that the last piece of him is in the Dark Heart, which is fueling Dimensius’ manifestation.
Brokers are not dead Ethereals, their forms are special containment suits to let them live in the Shadowlands. They are still alive and just fled to the SL instead of the Great Dark.
Nexus-King Salhadaar (guy we killed in Netherstorm) made a unspecified pact with Dimensius way back when. He is resurrected, the leader of the Shadowguard and a raid boss.
When Dimensius invaded, a group called the Ravel researched “unorthodox” methods to defeat him. Locus-Walker and Venari were both members of this order.
The Ravel have these special wraps, the Reshi wraps, which hold great power. Xalatath learned about them and decided to betray Dimensius, using the wraps in a plan to kill him and escape. She worked with the Ravel to do this. The Reshi wraps are turned into the new cloak.
Xalatath is the one that turned the Ethereals into beings of energy using the Reshi wraps. The Ravel let her do this and made the choice for their people, then covered it up.
The Ravel destroyed Karesh, not Dimensius, as part of this plan to kill him. Basically sacrifice their world & worldsoul to permanently kill a void lord, thinking they had no other option to stop Dimensius. But the Ravel screwed up and in the end only fragmented Dimensius across the Great Dark. The one we meet in Outland was one such fragment. Salhadaar under the guise of hunting Dimensius was basically gathering these fragments with the ultimate goal of reviving the full Void Lord.
Xalatath works with us in a temporary alliance to defeat Dimensius, who she knows will kill her for her betrayal. Xalatath also seems to suggest she doesn’t want to destroy Azeroth but wants something else. She mentions if Dimensius manifests then Azeroth will be his first stop and he’ll destroy the planet.
Its made very clear though nobody trusts Xalatath and they all expect her to betray them the second that Dimensius is dead (which she definitely will do). They know she will prioritize her survival though, so will fight Dimensius. Throughout the quest line you see her manipulate everyone she can. She turns the Oracles to allies by letting them hear Karesh still lives (Dimensius was stopped before he could complete his meal), she is clearly manipulating you the player, sowing seeds against Venari & Locus-Walker, she breaks the trust between Locus-Walker and Alleria by revealing the Ravel’s actions, and just as we go into the raid she has as cutscene where she gives a big smug smirk like everything went according to plan.
The demon hunter boss is tied to a side quest. DH wants to learn to harness the void like Illidan did with fel, and the void elf he works with wants to learn the Illidari’s methods/secrets. The DH is too arrogant and basically gets overtaken by the void rather than controlling it.
The main quest line is about trying to stop the Shadowguard from reviving Dimensius, gathering the Reshi wraps so Xalatath can alter everyone to withstand his presence and enter the raid.
This entire patch seems like an homage to the bat guano insanity of the Burning Crusade, particularly Netherstorm. As the brokers and the devourers strongly suit that sort of aesthetic and theme, I suspect that’s why they have been brought into the mix, with Blizzard trying to detach them from the Shadowlands expansion.
I think demanding that Blizzard bans themselves from ever using anything from the Shadowlands expansion, no matter how hard they try to divorce what they take from the rest of it, is a silly expectation. It represents two years full of characters and designs and aesthetics, some of which aren’t tied to afterlives or the Jailer at all, and if they want to salvage some of it, I’m willing to see what they come up with.
Blizzard isn’t stupid. They know that we hate the Shadowlands and its story and refuse to refer back to it. Lady Moonberry doesn’t really mention Ardenweald when she goes to the Emerald Dream. Anduin’s trauma is rooted in what the Jailer did to him but the details of it are never mentioned.
So most likely, when the brokers arrive in K’aresh, they won’t be screaming about the First Ones and the fractals and the Zereths and the Shadowlands. They will simply continue to possess a culture and an aesthetic very similar to that of the ethereals, as they always have, which is likely why this new lore was made up and why they were chosen for this patch.
Come now, let’s not pretend this is the first time the Adventurer has made decisions that were… let’s be charitable and call them questionable.
Remember that time we freed Gul’dan to shut off a portal? And we let him just walk away, knowing full well who he was?
I 'member.
Then: The brokers are not Ethereals
Now: The brokers are Ethereals
Something something, canon not meant to constrain writers… pardon me, gotta reflexively dry-heave. Again.
Considering that they’re obviously designed to be Danuser’s cooler, hipper, more modern version of ethereals with the serial numbers filed off, I don’t think that directly connecting them to the race that they were blatantly inspired by is the worst retcon in the world.
It’s a lot more justifiable than Metzen’s old eredar-draenei retcon (and yes, I acknowledge that he apologised for it, it was still a very bad retcon though).