WoW expansion sneak peak -- any details?

[stray]

I'm not sure why the Horde accepts them, though.  Doesn't seem like the Horde really needs them much.

Yeah, this is the part that irritates me. I mean, I actually like some of the lore of Warcraft, but Horde-side Forsaken is one of the bits that's more dictated by "We need a playable 'evil' looking race!" (i.e. marketing decision) than it is by anything that would really make sense in the WC storyline up until this point.

Eh, but who am I to argue with Chris Metzen?

[Miasma]

On a side note,

No race is "evil", save the Burning Legion races.


Miasma, do you play Alliance?  :-D

No, I play undead mostly and as Nevermore says it is pretty clear the undead are supposed to be evil.  At level six you are killing a captive dwarf by infecting him with a new scourge.  There is a group of NPC's in the undercity casually chatting about brutally torturing a captured, blindfolded human woman into submission.  And most of the quests lean towards evil.  I just assumed blood elves were supposed to be even worse.

I thought the horde accepts them because they have no choice, they need allies that badly.

But lore is living and evolving.  They can change it as they see fit, just wrap a little story around it.  There is nothing stoping them from inventing a whole new race either, I really doubt we will get playable pandas.

[stray]

I thought those prisoners were Scarlet Crusade though.

Either way, killing humans and dwarves, or even torturing them, doesn't necessarily make them evil. Just enemies.

Sargeras or Arthas: Those would be the real evil bastards.

Back to Elves:

The Blood Elves are just Elves who long ago rejected Malfurion's leadership and philosophy of Druidism. He changed the entire society of Elves against magic/sorcery (and for good reason). The High Elves/Blood Elves were the part of the population that still embraced Magic, and decided to go their own way -- Across the sea, and into the Eastern Continent.

[Shockeye]

Right there behind the trees is where the Commander rune drops.

That's exactly what I was thinking.

Funny +5.

[Trippy]

If Pandaren is a race and I can play a brewmaster, I'd resub for at least one month.

I would as well.

(Baby) Panda!

[MrHat]

Right there behind the trees is where the Commander rune drops.

That's exactly what I was thinking.

Funny +5.

+10, looks shockingly similiar.

[Liquidator]

Found this linked over on the FoH boards.  Damn good photoshop if it's fake.

[stray]

I think it's real...

If only for the Racial Bonus Description part "May consume demonic corpes to gain attack...."

Not that that little fact couldn't be Photoshopped, but I just kind of think that anyone who is silly enough to Photoshop things would have never really touched upon it in the same way.

As for the ability, that's pretty cool -- So long as there are plenty of demons to go around (and I'm sure there will be more in the expansion). Illidan (and in turn, the High Elves) were like Felbeasts, except against demons.

[Train Wreck]

Back to Elves:

The Blood Elves are just Elves who long ago rejected Malfurion's leadership and philosophy of Druidism. He changed the entire society of Elves against magic/sorcery (and for good reason). The High Elves/Blood Elves were the part of the population that still embraced Magic, and decided to go their own way -- Across the sea, and into the Eastern Continent.

Unless I misunderstood, the Blood Elves are the remnants of the High Elves that were slaughtered by Arthas in WC3, angry and bitter.  I don't know that they could be classified as evil, though, they may have started on that path by embracing demon power, which is also what happened to the Naga.  In any sane world, demon power=evil, but Bliz likes to blur the lines.

The Forsaken are enemies of the Scourge but are lacking of any kind of allies, hence their name -- at least, that was the situation in WC3: FT.  Maybe they will add some backstory to explain the transition from being alienated outcasts to part of the Horde.  Maybe they already have?  My knowledge is limited to the games.

[Ironwood]

Notice how the fake I denounced earlier had a different Panda picture ?  The recent one looks more authentic.

Good God, Not Pandas.

Please God, Not Pandas....

[Merusk]

You are correct, Train Wreck.  Blood Elves came after High Elves, and only after Quel'thalas was overrun and they needed a new source of power to sustain them. There's still High elves out there, unaffiliated with anyone right now.

That's a nifty pic.. but I just can't see Blood Elves as hunters, or rogues for that matter.  I can see warriors, but only because there's no spellstoppers or whatever that WC3 unit was. Not enough magic in either profession to fit the Magic-addict lore.. but hey lore always bends...

[Ironwood]

Spellbreakers.

[stray]

Back to Elves:

The Blood Elves are just Elves who long ago rejected Malfurion's leadership and philosophy of Druidism. He changed the entire society of Elves against magic/sorcery (and for good reason). The High Elves/Blood Elves were the part of the population that still embraced Magic, and decided to go their own way -- Across the sea, and into the Eastern Continent.

Unless I misunderstood, the Blood Elves are the remnants of the High Elves that were slaughtered by Arthas in WC3, angry and bitter.

Yes, they're just called Blood Elves now in honor of their "fallen brothers"...Or something like that. Still basically "High Elves" though.

[edit] Yes, Merusk is correct. Much has to do with "sources" of power etc...

I don't know that they could be classified as evil, though, they may have started on that path by embracing demon power, which is also what happened to the Naga.  In any sane world, demon power=evil, but Bliz likes to blur the lines.

They didn't embrace the path of demonic power so much as the path of sorcery (something that Elves had been doing for thousands of years already). But as far as Druids were concerned, sorcery and magic IS demonic power, if, for the simple fact that it attracts demon power (Funny that the Night Elves are now Allied with the former "students" of the High Elves though --- Human mages, who were also later responsilble for attracting the Legion).

Magic, and the Well of Eternity, are the two things the Night Elves/Druids deem responsible for the Burning Legion. It's the thing that attracted the Legion to their world in the first place. Illidan and some of the Highborne were seperate from the Naga, in that, they didn't outright embrace demonic magic per se (Demonic magic is the stuff you see Warlocks do), but still believed that the power of the Well and sorcery were perfectly acceptable tools to defeat the demons. The rest of the Night Elves disagreed, and eventually both went their seperate ways.

Whew....

That's still not the whole thing...It's all pretty convoluted. And geeky.

[Rasix]

Elves and Pandas. Yep, never playing again.

Never doesn't actually mean never in the context of a MMORPG.  Commandment #45 in the MMORPG bible.

[stray]

Never doesn't actually mean never in the context of a MMORPG.  Commandment #45 in the MMORPG bible.

 

[Miasma]

Found this linked over on the FoH boards.  Damn good photoshop if it's fake.

That looks quite real.  The only thing I find odd is that they have all three melee classes available, seems to go against all this "completely focused on arcane magic" lore I'm hearing.  And if they have access to that picture why not post the panda character creation?

I refuse to believe there will be pandas.  Blizzard likes to play tricks, maybe they're just screwing with us.

[Rasix]

Never doesn't actually mean never in the context of a MMORPG.  Commandment #45 in the MMORPG bible.

 

I just remember all of the times I've put down in writing that I'll never play EQ, DAoC and UO again.  And I've resubbed to each, multiple times (3, 2, and umm.. I think 5-7 resubs respectively).  I'm weeeeeak.

[stray]

Found this linked over on the FoH boards.  Damn good photoshop if it's fake.

That looks quite real.  The only thing I find odd is that they have all three melee classes available, seems to go against all this "completely focused on arcane magic" lore I'm hearing.

Yeah, that's messed up. Maybe it is a fake.

Even so though, Warriors are playable among all races (right?), so that's a given. Horde definitely needs another Priest race as well (they have 2, while Alliance has 3). Warlock/Mage is a given in the sense that we were talking about with lore.

Shamans and Druids are out.

That leaves Hunter and Rogue....

So lets see here:

You can look up the data on Warcraft Realms (probably not entirely accurate, but it's the best available info, I presume) and find that across almost all of the PvE and RP servers that Alliance outnumbers Horde 70 percent to 30.

Absolutely ridiculous.

As for PvP servers, there's a few that show up as 50/50, but many of those are 60/40. Still not good.

The point: Blizzard recognizes it and is going to kill a few birds with one stone by introducing the Blood Elves.

Not only are they doing it for content or lore's sake, they're doing it to balance the populations. If that means Blood Elves have a bunch of class options, then so be it.

That plan wouldn't work without (Elf) Rogues and Hunters though. Sad but true.

On a sidenote: Another problem is how few people play Priests, Warlocks and Mages. This will help solve that problem too (at least a little).

[SurfD]

A brief history of the Elves, from what i can gather from various lore sources:

Once, everything was a single continent.  The primary powers were two Troll empires, and the Aqir (precursors to the Silithid and Nerubians).  One tribe of Trolls discovers the Well of Eternety, a vast well of sorcerous/magical power, and are subsequently altered by its power into Elves (note, it can be assumed that ALL elves sufer from an addiction to magical energies, due to the nature of how they were created).

The new race of elves, while exploring their surroundings and studying the new magic of the Well befriend Cenarius.

A schism occurs within the ranks of the elves: 
Under Cenarius and Malfurion, some elves embrace nature and druidism as their focus (this group will come to be known as Night Elves)
Another group, mostly the elvish Aristocracy/Nobility, under the leadership of Queen Ashzara, dig deeper and deeper into the power of the Well, turning more and more to magic and sorcery as their focus. (Known as the Highborn)

The immense power of the well eventually attracts the attention of Sargeras, Lord of the Legion, who manipulates Ashzara (who while not evil, is not entirely stable either, and has been digging into sorcerous territroy she probably shouldnt) into attempting to bring him and the Legion onto Azeroth.  The first great demon war rages, The Well of Eternety explodes forming the Maelstrom, the great single continent devides into the 3 we have today.

The surviving Night Elves remain Night Elves.
Ashzara and those Highborne closest to her/the well are dragged to the botom of the sea and eventually mutate into the current Naga race.
The remaining landbound Highborne eventually settle in Quel'thelas, using the Sunwell as a source of magic to sate their addiction and provide their imortality, as the new race of High-Elves.

Warcraft 3 happens Quel'thelas is destroyed, a large portion of the High-Elves are mistreated by a racial xenophobe named Garathos, and in an effort to save the people he commands from an ever growing Magic Addiction Withdrawl reaction, an Elven Prince makes a pact with illadin to use demon magic to feed their addiction.  Thus are born the Blood-Elves.

Many HighElves still remain in other parts of the Eastern Kingdoms however, and are unafiliated with the Blood-Elves.

[f13kai]

Found this linked over on the FoH boards.  Damn good photoshop if it's fake.

Yes.  Damn good.  And also fake.   I spend a considerable amount of time de-bunking internet photo fakes and hoaxes.  The jpeg compression degredation that tends to be slightly exagerated around touched up areas appears around the "new" text.   Unfortunately, it also appears around the "old" text of the Warlock section, etc.   But, again, this is a very good touchup.  But being a game graphic and not based on a RL photo, it is easier for the touch up to hide in the art.   But, I digress.....

I believe this is fake for one reason, and one reason only.   The background.  We already know from blizzard statements, even if they were just from Jeff Green's pulled blog, that the new race will have....wait for it......a new starting area.  If that is the case, why is this Blood Elf standing on the same battlefield background as the Orc/Troll starting area?  Because it is more genaric than the Taruen /Forsaken ones, so they chose that for thier trickery. 

I have been know to be wrong.   And it still could be Blood Elves.  In spite of all the lore-dites bitching about how poorly they "fit" into the universe (whatever) this would be a cool horde addition.  And if it IS a fake, the perpatrator is to be complimented on his Blood Elf rendering.   The quality of the gold hair transformation alone, is worth note.

Just my 2¢ worth.

Kai

Oh, and on third thought, since it is an advanced preview and not final product, the background could have absolutely NO bearing on their actually ingame starting area.  Which means I just babbled for 2 mins for no reason.  :)  Clear as mud?

EDIT:  Also what is the deal with his weapon.  There isn't one in his hands.  All starting races have the default noob weapon even before creation. This guy does not have one.   FAKE.  :)

[stray]

No one bitched about them fitting in the lore. We were just talking about their lore....Period. Or are you talking about another website?

[f13kai]

No one bitched about them fitting in the lore. We were just talking about their lore....Period. Or are you talking about another website?

Oh no no!   I was not in anyway refering to this forum.   But if you do any other forum reading on this subject, there are a lot of dissenting opinions about how poorly the Blood Elves would "fit" on the horde side. 

Thanks for clearing that up.

Kai

[f13kai]

Ok, and then I found this:

http://www.fraggerock.com/

Unfortunately,  crappy .jpegs make is very hard at times to find the touch up.  And these ones are bad.  But, the lossy compression looks normal around areas of high contrast.  These are very convincing.

Kai

[Shockeye]

The blood elf text has a misspelling in it. They have an "it's" where it should be "its".

[Ironwood]

ZOMG.

[Phred]

The blood elf text has a misspelling in it. They have an "it's" where it should be "its".

I don't know if you can claim fakery over one of the more common grammatical errors out there. If Everquest taught us nothing else it taught us that most programmers can't spell.

[Trippy]

The blood elf text has a misspelling in it. They have an "it's" where it should be "its".

I don't know if you can claim fakery over one of the more common grammatical errors out there. If Everquest taught us nothing else it taught us that most programmers can't spell.

Ah yes, the good old days when you knew if you saw an "a orc" you needed to run like heck.

[Alkiera]

I was consistantly amused by 'a fire beatle'.

Alkiera

[Ironwood]

JWilson.

[Miasma]

Now that I think about it his robe looks kind of elaborate for character creation.  Melee usually just get some rags and casters get a crappy plain robe.

I think the hardest part of a photoshop like this would be getting WoW's look right, but that elf fits in perfectly.  Of course they could just mess around with a night elf to get there.  The panda icon doesn't look like it was drawn in the same style as the others, it seems out of place, but then again it is a panda so how would it fit in?

I guess we'll find out in a couple weeks.

[Nevermore]

There are two reasons I'm skeptical that these are the two new races.  Strike one is the eyes on those 'Blood Elves'.  If I remember correctly, all the actual Blood Elves in game have red eyes.  The elves in those pics look like High Elves with those golden eyes.

The other reason can be pretty easily discounted given the source, but I'll throw it out there anyway.  Back when I worked for Borders, I got a chance to flip through the Warcraft RPG monster book.  There was a large section devoted to Pandarens that delved into the culture of the race and whatnot.  They're very much like asian versions of Tauren as described in that manual, with access to a class called Geomancers with are almost identical to Shaman.  It's highly unlikely the Alliance would get Pandarens unless Blizzard completely ignores this bit of background (not hard to do since it's unlikely the RPG is considered 'canon' even though it had to be Blizzard approved) or they give the Alliance a Shaman class and the Horde a Paladin class (but I just can't see Blood Elves being Paladins).

[MrHat]

Spellbreakers!

[kaid]

Frankly I am not really convinced that the pandaren will be added as an alliance member but I am pretty sure that bloodelves will be a horde player.

Regardless if those screenshots are real or fake horde need a pretty race. On most servers alliance outnumbers horde by a freaking TON and this makes pvp and battlegrounds really annoying. On my server if about 15 particular horde people choose to boycott AV it simply wont spawn and there is nothing you can do about it.

Give them a pretty race to suck off all the evil elf wannabes and you would probably see the sides balance up pretty quickly.


If horde get a pretty race I expect alliance to get some very large and probably furry race as a balance. The alliance side is mostly shorter races and I can see them getting a big burly race to offset that.

kaid

[Viin]

What if they were neutral? Or the start of another faction? Ooooo.

[kaid]

I doubt at this time that they will do a neutral race. They seem VERY VERY VERY against letting people talk to people on the other side. Having a neutral team unless they bent all sanity to the wind would give you a race that speaks both horde and alliance languages. Hell even look at forsaken for christs sake they WERE human and they still cannot talk to alliance people.


Kaid