Welcome back Sil. At least we know they’re still thinking about vampires due to the datamined broadcast text! Fingers crossed.
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I’m back in the act too, Oh Beautiful, Almighty, Blood Queen Fallynn! ((I recently changed servers, and had to rename this toon, but it’s still the Jaheira of old!!!))
Here’s an idea for sparking something different. Anyone here that writes or roleplays, what do you pull inspiration from for your vampires? Do you follow traditional lore, or do you go off base with something else? What do you think Blizzard should take their ideas from if they want to expand San’layn lore?
At the moment, I’m writing the sequel to my novel which primarily features vampires. I’ve fleshed them out quite a bit at this point, and getting inspiration from other stories is fun. I write my scenes rather violently, like in this segment from Castlevania on Netflix:
As we saw, Blizzard wasn’t shy with the gory details on killing the gnome:
I was pleasantly surprised to see such gore, it’s a bit more than I’m used to when it comes to WoW. They’ve been exploring darker themes lately, which is lovely. While I’m glad to see San’layn as regal, I also love the idea of them being absolute monsters to their enemies at least.
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That’s not being monsters…
That’s just the fanbase when it comes to Gnomes in general. XD
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I mean, fair enough 
Though it was a bit more of a grisly death than usual. Someone should make a compilation of gnome destruction (sorry gnome friends!)
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Castlevania is a Bloodly Series.
That’s a Original Best Anime I have ever seen.
Grisly or not, you don’t just dunk a Gnome like that and expect to be taken seriously. ^-^
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Yeah sure, if we got Demon Hunters more edgy elves aren’t going to hurt anyone.
Undead elves in general would be cool really, and make for a good option to counter any future elf allied races for the alliance.
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8.2.5 notes look to be out. No allied races in sight–though I assumed that would be the case. I wonder if we’ll get any for 8.3? Chances are we won’t get details on 8.3 until Blizzcon unfortunately.
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At this point I’m really hoping we even get an 8.3, to be honest.
But even if there are no allied races for this expansion it’s still almost guaranteed that they’ll be carrying this system forward for future ones. I’ve probably already said this (and I’m quickly losing track of the things I have said) but there are easily enough races in the canon to warrant a “round 2” for allied races. That’s why it’s important to cultivate this interest in San’layn now, even if they were never planned to begin with, because it has a chance to affect future plans down the line.
It’d be great if races like the forest trolls, ogres, and taunka, all races that are already canonically part of the Horde, were made playable in this potential second round, and San’layn could be the second blood elf derivative in that hypothetical scenario. The fact that we’re getting a lot of hints of the rise of death being prominent in future storylines continues to fill me with hope for San’layn, at least.
I guess the biggest unknown here is whether or not the developers would want a hard cap on the total number of races they put into the game. Not everyone’s going to be an altoholic, which means a lot of the work they put into some of these races (read; Kul Tirans) is going to go unappreciated, so there’s probably a huge discussion internally about whether or not the effort is even worth it. The fact that some races require less work than others (read; Lightforged Draenei) is also probably a major factor in determining whether or not that race gets to be playable.
Ideally, I hope they adopt the mentality of “more allied races, the better.” It’s not like they turn the two factions into massive zoos without any kind of aesthetic cohesion; allied races are typically just different expressions of the races we already know and love, and in a game that is as starved for character customization as WoW is that’s a pretty good system to have.
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True that, good insight as usual! It seems like Allied Races are a topic that’s popping up again, much to my surprise. I wasn’t expecting people to be talking about this stuff much. We’ve been at this for over a year now, in fact I started this whole thing on April 13, 2018 so I think we’re going to hit the year-and-a-half mark soon. My, how time flies, eh?
Funnily enough I started it even before San’layn were datamined to show up in BfA. Roughly one month before it. I had no idea they would make an appearance at all, it was just a longshot really. Imagine my surprise when we did see them pop up. It gave me hope that I hold somewhat to this day (otherwise I wouldn’t be here).
With October fast approaching, and with it the spooks, I wonder if we’d get hints for our fanged friends. I’d be back to the game in a heartbeat, and man it’s a good thing I have tons of gold stashed up because I’d be making a TON of race changes.
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It would be great if they added them for Halloween, like in that patch. Fall is my favorite season.
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Do you think they’d ever just hotfix or add in a whole Allied Race or something? Or that there’s some hidden behind encryption? I figured 8.2.5 notes were already out and that’s all we’re getting, no trace of AR’s whatsoever. But there’s an idea, a sudden surprise, poof! of the races.
The problem there is: Quests and rep grinds would go untested, as would animations and anything else. I don’t think they’d pop 'em in without an announcement and testing, but stranger things have happened before. Have they ever done such a thing? Where poof some pretty jawdropping content is added and no one had any idea it was coming?
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I’m still of the opinion that, at best, we’ll see new allied races announced at Blizzcon. Likely, a pair or two would be as a pre-order incentive for the next expansion, much like how the first two pairs of allied races were when pre-ordering BfA.
I do think that the main focus was on the new Worgen/Goblin models, which despite being based on existing models and animations, likely would have taken a lot of time designing and testing.
Not to mention that an announcement at Blizzcon doesn’t necessarily mean the new allied races would be out immediately. It could still be a bit before they release them, so they would have time to work on, test, and animate them.
I’m hoping we see news of new playable races, whatever they would be, at Blizzcon. Speaking of, 45 days to go at the time of this post. Getting closer! 
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Just look to overwatch. And there holiday skins. I think it would be a great way to introduce some races. For example winter - tuskarr, ice trolls, ice dwarves
Halloween- sanlayn, banshee,
spring- botani, dryad,
summer- saberon
I mean if they wanted to. Allied races are a fun thing at least I think they are.
San’layn are the one race that can just creepally showup out of nowhere.
“How long have you been there?!”
“Shhhh… Sleep…”
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The new allied races are going to cost you another expansion fee.
Why would they give away more allied races to people who bought BFA when they could charge them 60$ with the new expansion instead?
Sad but true. Remember the four allied races of Legion came through a purchase of BFA…
I’ve been reminded of the glory that is Cabin in the Woods. As such, I nominate the “dragon bat” to be our San’layn’s monster form, if we’re to get one. Or mount.
So, you mean the pre-release races that were released early but were technically BfA content, and cost… the same content cost as the rest of the content?
There wasn’t anything hiding that it was a prerelease bundle, not Legion content. The Legion content requirements were a bit on the odd side, but it’s not like we could grind BfA reps to get prerelease content unlocked for a race series that required rep requirements. But that’s a whole different argument about the rep requirements for ARs.
I think we can kiss any hope of the San’layn joining the Horde goodbye, as it now seems like they were fodder to be killed off since they sided with Sylv. What a big shame. I was hoping there would be some sort of more in depth different ending than MoP. Oh well. I think I might go ahead and try out ESO, hopefully the story is better there. I can’t say I’m disappointed, as I sort of expected this.
The forsaken leader will likely be Calia, and with it, Lightforged undead. I guess people can have fun with their mary-sue race. We had a good run guys, and thank you for supporting us this far. I don’t think our ideas cut it for their direction of the game. But at least I can say that I tried.
With that, I’m likely leaving the forums and the game for good. Unless something novel comes about at Blizzcon, I think it’s safe to say I won’t be returning. I gave it a chance, I really did. But as someone who used to love lore of the game, it just isn’t for me anymore.
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