Dumb Thoughts: Avalorn animals?

Wyrmrest Accord
1

I’m having a moment and decided to share the madness.

Avalorn could be Azeroth’s version of Australia and I am cackling maniacally.

Dire Echidnas

Dire Platypus

Quokkas

Salties (or new models of Crocolisks?)

Possums (possibly a slightly re-worked monkey model?)

Sugar Gliders

A literal banana for scale

Tassi Devils (The personality of a hemorrhoid, the jaws of a kaiju and the absence of any flight in their fight or flight response and all the appetite of a busload full of weight watchers at the desert buffet)

Cassowaries (technically we already have plainstriders/hawkstriders/hornstriders, new head model?)

Thorny Devil Basilisks?

Bluetongues, definitely

M A G P I E S

(Adult and chick)

I know Americans think they’re Murder Birbs, but really, they’re very sweet and friendly most of the time, its just breeding season that they get a bit toey. And besides, just wear a hat with googly eyes attached to the sides, top and back and you’re fine. We had Silly Hat competitions for a while and unless you’re an absolute bastard to the local mob, the maggies are great neighbours.

Horseshoe Crabs

Did you know their blood is blue? Just like the Draenei!

Thorny/Spiny Tail Lizards

K O M B A T W O M B A T

Flying Foxes!

Dugongs!

Mud Crabs

Huh, apparently there’s a limit to how many pictures you can link per post.

But what animals do you think should be in Avaloren, the Land that the Titans could not ‘tame’ with the power of Arcane and Order? Wilder, more feral or mutagenic animals? Or more primal and less ‘modern’ than the ones we are familiar with? Or should they even be recognisable? Should Avaloren’s ecosystem be entirely alien and foreign, hold-overs from the Black Empire or even the era before that bleak point in Azeroth’s history?

2

I think this is a really smart idea.

Would make up for Vulpera not having Australian accents.

2 Likes
3

Its just, if Avaloren or whatever the zugg its called, is apparently a landmass that the Titans could not remake the way they wanted it. All Titanic expeditions sent to reshape and ‘order’ the landmass ended in failure, either being destroyed as they travelled across the ocean or openly rebelling against the Titans’ agenda.

SPOILERS, ACHSHUALLY We also get information from some 10.2 stuff that apparently Eonar apparently planted G'Hanir, the Mother-Tree, on Azeroth shortly after the Titans toppled the Black Empire, but Aman'thul threw a massive fit over this as Life was chaotic and tore G'Hanir out, leaving only the Emerald Dream version in place, and some still-living roots deep beneath the earth that Boomer'thul missed as he was tearing Eonar a new one.

What kind of ecosystem are we going to be heading into? On the one hand, a wildly different ecology like what we found on Draenor would be fascinating, since it was only partially Titanified by accident as Titan Keeper Grond and the Sporemounds of Draenor collided and eventually killed each other, covering the planet in a mixture of Arcane-infused rock and metal and Spirit-infused plant material and spores, giving rise to the darwinian nightmare that was Draenor’s ecosystem.

On the other, convergent evolution is a thing and we could see wildly different creatures assuming similar forms and functions to our own. Carnivorous deer, tree-climbing basilisks, herbivorous rodents of tremendous size, stuff like that, to hammer home how utterly alien Avaloren is compared to the tightly-controlled boundaries allowed on Kalimdor and what has developed across the Eastern Kingdoms and the post-Sundering Kalimdor. Amazingly, if what we saw at the end of the Battle for Azeroth expansion holds true, that without the Old Gods to force it to happen, the Black Empire fades away in time, whatever we find on Avaloren could pre-date both the Black Empire and the Titanic Ordering of Azeroth, giving us an amazing example of what Azeroth may have looked like before the Primal Powers started trying to stamp their trademark onto her, or more likely, the nature of the world, and whatever Primal Power had laid claim to Azeroth before the coming of the Old Gods …

4

I would find it personally fulfilling if they released echidnas and it was the only creature WoW ever made that wasn’t covered in spikes.

5

If they do have echidnas discovered somewhere in-universe, there has to be an orc hunter NPC that has collected dozens of them crazy-cat-lady-style and gushes over how adorable and spikey they are.

1 Like
6

Honey we already have flying foxes at home (in the Dragon Isles).

7

I mean, we also have bees at home (in Australia)

8

Okay, but if they made a Niffen variant that looked like Echidnas, that would be the best WoW race of all time.

1 Like
9

That hive looks like something from the Emerald Nightmare.

1 Like
10

Fun fact, none of Australia’s native bees have stingers. At worst you might get a bad nip from the bigger ones, but they are, as a rule, peaceful and shy.

And then jackasses brought asian and south african honey-bees in because the ‘yield was better’ and nearly wiped out most of the native species, and we’ve only just managed to get stable breeding colonies back in several states, because the introduced bees prefer to pollinate other introduced species and not the native plants, leading to shrinking ecosystems and a knock-on effect to agriculture of all kinds. There’s also far too many native plants that rely upon the specialised nature of the australian bees to trigger pollination, and the european bees are too big, and too aggressive, to trigger those reactions, and thus a lot of native species are dwindling because some moron decided let’s just introduce an invasive species without a long-term impact study because money.

Seriously, there’s a world of difference between the taste of aussie bee honey and european honey-bee honey. Its less grainy, has a tangy after-taste and is less overtly sweet than honey-bee honey, and lasts for a lot longer in hotter conditions.

Female Carpenter Bee

Male carpenter Bee

Cuckoo Bee (Parasitically lays larvae in the hives of the Leaf-Cutter bees, and sometimes that larvae will go on from merely eating the Leaf-Cutter larvae to killing and replacing the hive’s queen in time.)

Resin Bee

And the Leaf-Cutter Bee

You can tell if you have these one sin your garden because they will chew circles out of soft plant leaves and petals to form nesting tubes for their larvae and place them in natural or man-made holes for protection and temperature regulation.

Fun fact, most Aussie bees are actually a modified Wasp that went vegan and lost their stings, in direct opposition of the waves hand in the general direction of the country rest of this place.

One of the reasons I adored Stormsong in Battle for Azeroth was for the huge bees there and I’m still salty I have yet to get that dang mount.

2 Likes
11

I don’t want an Avalorn. Blizz needs to do a world revamp and give us new content in places that are established and that we care about.

12

Why not both? We got both new zones and a revamp of old zones in Cataclysm, after all.

2 Likes
13

I mean, I don’t think that’ll be the next expansion, even with 700+ new staff, that’s a horrendously massive undertaking. Probably the expansion after the next one, at the earliest.

That said, I would kill to see an Updated Azeroth, with the older zones brought up to Dragonflight/Battle for Azeroth level of graphics, the old problems resolved and the aftermath of our efforts visible (and creating new problems in the process), and all those NPCs we’ve helped or hindered popping up having also grown and changed in the years since we last saw them.

1 Like
14

Seems inevitable that we’ll go to the other side of Azeroth, whether it’s Avaloren or some other place. I think they’ll do model updates of the current world in chunks – they’ve pretty much said the Cata revamp wasn’t received well by players and it won’t be like that.

I want to see Chromie time expanded. I won’t go deep here, I’ve done that in other threads, but that would be a great move after model updates IMO.

15

Hmmm, hmmmmmm, so what you’re saying is MORE Slyvern.

Yes, yes yes, I agree.