San’layn/vampyr Elf ALLIED RACE Coagulated Megathread of Ideas{Re-VAMPed} (Part 1)

Community General Discussion
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In a warcraft facebook group, someone had posted an image showing job listings in the art department for WoW, kinda makes me wonder if they’re just regular old listings or if they could be in direct response to people complaining. Would be nice, but I’m certainly not getting hopes up. It’d be a smart move, but eh…

I’d just had a look myself and there are a number of them, seems to cover most of the bases.

If it was in response, an announcement would have been a good idea, kinda why I figure it’s just regular openings.

Have they explained why she’s so damned tall yet? That’s the only thing I found real odd. I’ve not played the Resident Evil games yet, been meaning to at some point. She does look pretty cool.

After seeing fans post heritage armor per class, it makes getting one set for the whole race a lot more lack luster. The stuff Handclaw drew up and posted was fantastic.

My raiding consists of LFR and something I found real odd was there being next to no gear upgrades for the raid. You can do your covenant stuff and upgrade your armor and have a suit that’s better than the raid. I’m surprised there wasn’t one more step in there. I’ve just been doing it mainly for something to do and to collect the transmog.

I disappointed myself one week by not fully reading the great vault thing…the three armor pieces weren’t anything I needed for transmog nor were they upgrades, so figured I’d take the anima reward as that I could definitely use…only to then read and realize it said Stygia…how useless.

I’d like to see some more new classes as well, with the allied races we got and more that people want, that’d be some welcome diversity. It amazes me how often you see people whining saying no to that as well. Usually whining about balance, which I’ve never really cared about, I don’t PvP, and view it as a detriment to most games I’ve played that aren’t built around it. If they wanted the classes doing more equal damage, it’s not hard to tweak some numbers. It’s mainly in PvP where that becomes harder.
I’d much rather have more options for characters…necromancers, tinkers, bards whatever…bring them all on. It’s another level of customization. I’d love a void spell casting melee class.

It’s like with mechagnomes, they didn’t really interest me, especially since there’s no full robot option…with tinker being a class, who knows, I might have played one.

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And speak do the Devil, Blood Elf males can smirk now :3

https://www.wowhead.com/news=321329/male-blood-elf-face-changes-in-9-0-5-result-in-perpetual-smirk-on-all-faces

Isa silly post but the timing of it amused me.

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Admittedly I kinda like the look :stuck_out_tongue: Like when I first saw it on WoWhead I was skeptical, then I looked at my male blood elf toons and was like “Eh ok, sure, looks fine”. Wider chin and all. Though the same face thing is definitely an issue, cause variety is important.

Edit: Also I can FINALLY transmog my sunglasses so there’s that. It’s just not showing up on the forums now. And my gear is going to forever stink because I don’t do current content.

Aaaaaaah well

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I’ve recently gotten to Renown rank 40 with the Venthyr. It’s possible each of the covenants could have their own unique storylines, given we’re getting more ranks of renown, so I should be good to go when the next patch occurs.

I’ll be helping to keep an eye out on Kael’thas as well as look for anything else of potential San’layn interest. Regardless of what happens, I’ll still keep hope and also support for playable Horde San’layn someday. :bat:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P0EMlkVxtV8

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Makes sense! I won’t be playing and haven’t finished the campaign myself. Just not interested in the game or logging in. Still supporting San’layn and hoping to see them.

I hope this is a response to it, yeah, and they finally look into community suggested customizations. The backlash is greater than I thought. I figured it was just here on the forums and maybe twitter, with most people telling us to shut up and deal with it. When it comes down to it, there’s people leaving. And I didn’t think the amount would be impactful enough, but perhaps it is.

More art, this is of an evil male vampire character from my book, might adapt him for WoW roleplay, we’ll see. I just want to share cool vampire art though.

Credit to: https://twitter.com/gynesisx who is my fav artist :slight_smile:
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/734606233713115137/819683557856903168/Ashcrop.png

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If anything comes from the backlash, I hope that Blizzard understands that we as players love our characters. Some of us spend a lot of time with customization options while making backstories and such for them. A lot of us can also get really passionate about races in general, their cultures, and their lore. It really adds to the game for us to have such an attachment to our characters, which can lead to players more likely to stick with the game.

It remains to be seen what will come from the backlash, but I do hope that they’ll reconsider and continuously add in more customization options as time goes on. It should be something that evolves and keeps getting options added to it overtime as opposed to a “one and done” feature of one expansion and then promptly forgotten.

Hoping for the best, as usual. :bat:

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Here’s a negative nancy rant explaining more of my feelings on the state of the game as a roleplayer. It’s what I said to my guild. (Some stuff said is specific to our plotlines so it’ll be jargon but otherwise it’s coherent.)

Sorry for yet again being a negative nancy

I do think it’s appropriate for me to explain why I just… don’t play much in game anymore, though. I wanted to let things settle after Blizzconline. My initial reaction was sheer anger at the fact that they said customization would be an ongoing focus, but then going back on that. They can’t even give roleplayers that much. I play primarily elves, and to me personally, the jewelry given for blood elves is terrible. Again, this is for me and my characters–others that use it, that’s great, but in my case, it’s not something I’m even remotely interested in. I wanted scarring or arcane tattoos. It seems like blood elves in general have been reduced to boring, light-loving nobility. At least, that’s what the outer community seems to paint them as. Again, this is just my personal dislike and point of view. But that really isn’t the primary reason for my drop in activity. The customization would not have been the knife in my desire to play the game. In combination with the story, though, it sealed the deal. At least with hopes that they’d listen to the community and add in our suggestions, I could finally hope to see my favorite races playable and bring more flavor to the game. With BfA, that hope was kept strong by allied races (Which they have pretty much abandoned.) We got no new classes (didn’t really want one) and no new races this expansion. For the race I primarily play, we got [censored but a word that’s strongly negative] (again to me) jewelry. So, I was hoping they’d listen to suggestions at least and give us something nice for our characters that the community suggested. Looks like Blizzconline proved that wrong. Now, onto my issues with the story. I’m sure everyone’s seen someone say this. “It does not feel like Warcraft anymore”. I’m someone who only moves forward in terms of WoW. I am not interested in Classic–never was. So, I look to retail in hopes the story will get better.

Shadowlands, I expected it to be…different. From the moment I saw the concepts, then played through the zones, it didn’t hook me like even BfA did. At least with BfA, I LOVED the zones, and the zone stories. That can’t be said for Shadowlands. Even with the Night Fae, it’s corrupted and made less special because “Oh you horde burned mah tree” even though my characters would never do that or support it. As roleplayers, it’s true we’re tasked with making the best of things, and our own story. But many of my characters are frontliners. I like using the outer story in my plots and current stories. But when there’s such a strong disconnect for me, I can’t, and my like of the game goes down. To me, it’s like “why bother logging in and playing if there’s pretty much no aspect of the game I like right now when I could play on discord”. Shadowlands just… doesn’t feel, story-wise, connected at all. I really don’t care about all this afterlife nonsense, it’s something imo they shouldn’t have explored in the first place. I thought a ‘Shadowlands’ expansion would be like Legion, a return to Northrend or an expansion of it, and fighting off evils from Shadowlands, yes, or in pockets of it, but… not like this. They introduce a bunch of new humanoid races (one of which I utterly hate), and fauna, and for what? It makes no sense for them to want to have any interest in Azeroth, until they inevitably somehow explain how these morphed souls meant for working in the afterlife suddenly are interested in Azeroth affairs and become playable because they are the shiny new thing. Why bother hoping when that’s most likely going to happen, while they ignore past lore that, to me, is far better?

So, in conclusion, there just is too much of a strong disconnect for the story from me. It’s gotten to the point where I find it pretty much ridiculous, it’s not fun to call my characters ‘frontliners’ and fighting for Azeroth when the scourge is rampaging through Northrend. Yes, I know, I can do that myself. I can make plots like that for myself. But I honestly do not want to nor feel like it. I like, in some fashion, for my roleplay to have some connect as to what’s going on somewhere. It doesn’t have to be everywhere. But with how I feel about Shadowlands? It’s absolutely nowhere. I have the Rook plot I’m still going to keep moving forward with. It’s cool, but even that isn’t really relevant or connected to what they’ve tried to do with Shadowlands at all.

This would be negated if there was just something to look forward to. I could look past all of that and deal with it if the RP community was thrown something. But… it isn’t. No customization, pretty much just giving to M+ players & raiders once again, I’m so tired of it. Before someone says “Well that’s the main part of the game and most important” ok, that’s not going to get me even remotely interested though, it’s not my gameplay, and I’d like to at least get something community suggested to show they’re listening.

And I know it sounds selfish on my part, but I’ve tried to get over all of that. I really have. It hasn’t worked.

Otherwise, I’ll have more art to share soon, I promise. This thread is becoming an art gallery, I swear :stuck_out_tongue:

I’ll do a throwback to Kael’thas as a San’layn without a mask.

Credit in the first post, the first picture on this post is Kael masked.

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A thought occurred to me recently, and I don’t think I’ve asked this before. If the San’layn were able to become who they were once freed from the Lich King and they learned about Kael’thas’ betrayal, would they still remain loyal to him after the fact?

Imagine you’re a Blood Elf and fiercely loyal to Kael’thas. You follow him into battle, where you sadly get overwhelmed, killed, and turned into a San’layn. You’re a slave to the Lich King for a long time, until suddenly, your free will comes back, you realize your predicament, and learn that the leader you followed turned his back on you and your people. I imagine it could make anyone grumpy.

Would any San’layn have any loyalty to Kael’thas after the fact?

It’s an interesting premise that, assuming Kael’thas seeks redemption, would be a good start for him. Kael’thas being redeemed shouldn’t just be a thing from the Venthyr stating “Ok you helped us, you’re good to go buddy! Wanna become one of us or go figure out where you’re destined for your afterlife?” It feels like redemption for Kael’thas should be a lot more involved than that.

If Kael’thas did come back as a San’layn, as I mentioned before, he’ll have to first redeem himself from the San’layn turning into what they are and their likely ire towards him. Then there is redeeming himself with Silvermoon in general. Stuff like this I feel needs to happen for true redemption, as opposed to some Venthyr, who could have been anyone before they turned into a Venthyr, says he’s redeemed.

I understand that the majority of San’layn were Kael’thas’ followers, which is why I wonder if they would still hold him in high regard in any way after learning what he did. It’s not impossible to work with, since that would play on Kael’thas and his redemption, but it’s something I pondered recently having read that Kael’thas is heading towards some path of redemption.

Just some thoughts I wanted to share and to see what others think. :bat:

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Some would I don’t doubt, but I could see a bunch having sympathy, seeing as he was corrupted and then forcefully resurrected (I believe? I kinda tune out TBC so it’s rather fuzzy).

And yeah I don’t think for one moment Kael is gonna be content to just sit around Revendreth after Kel and the Jailer are taken down.

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I don’t see that happening, either.

Regardless of whether Kael’thas becomes a Venthyr or goes elsewhere in the Shadowlands, he’s going to be reminded of his deeds when he inevitably runs into Blood Elves arriving in whatever area he ended up in the Shadowlands. No doubt the majority of them would likely give him a piece of their mind along with some spit sent his way.

Which is a point I’ve mentioned before: Kael’thas really can’t truly be redeem by the Venthyr, who could have previously been anyone in the living world that has sinned in some fashion. Blood Elves as a whole and the San’layn are the ones that should determine whether he is redeemed or not.

Thus the idea of bringing Kael’thas back as a San’layn somewhere as a form of humility and to redeem himself. Have him work towards gathering up the San’layn again, getting forgiven by them, and then have him work towards redeeming himself with Silvermoon. It’s a long road to walk, but it would make for a good character arc IMO, as well as having interesting storylines between him and Jaina. Not to mention that there are several opinions that Kael’thas was done dirty in Burning Crusade.

Sure, beating up Kel’thuzad and destroying him for good is a great start, but there is more to the idea of redemption than that, which seems like something that couldn’t be accomplished in the Shadowlands to begin with. Kael’thas has a lot more to do in order to be redeemed fully, in my opinion.

Even if Kael’thas staying in the living wouldn’t be a permanent thing, him at least working towards getting the San’layn welcomed back into Silvermoon would be a fun thing to see and would be exciting to lead into playable San’layn.

But hey, even if it isn’t meant to be with Kael’thas, it doesn’t mean there aren’t other ways to introduce playable Horde San’layn. :bat:

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I’m sorry, but I love that San’layn customization video. Imagine if Blizz gave us that many options for characters? Also, I love the San’layn music. It would be great if we could choose the backgound and music for our character selection screens in game. I really hope Blizz steps it up.

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Yea would be cool. Sad to see they gave up on customization this expansion. I doubt we would even get any allied races.

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Been in a bit of a screenshot taking mood, so I was inspired to do something San’layn related since it has been awhile.

Used one of the Blood Princes since that is the only pick-pocketable San’layn I am aware of for Glyph of Disguise uses. I took a few quick screenshots since the only inn I could hearth back to was Tranquillien, which is about a couple minutes away from Deatholme.

Here is what I came up with:

A Blood Prince in Deatholme. San’layn taking over Deatholme is an idea myself and others have brought up before to be closer to Silvermoon to help protect it and make sure the Scourge doesn’t surprise attack again.

There are a few Scourge banners in the area that can be replaced with Darkfallen banners instead if the San’layn took over the area.

And finally…

A Blood Prince on a black hawkstrider in Tranquillien. This seemed to be one of the more fitting mounts I could think of off the top of my head.

If I think of any more places to take screenshots, I’ll look into doing it. It was a bit hard to maneuver in Deatholme since, with Glyph of Disguise, you lose your illusion if a mob so much as glances at you with caloric lust.

Will continue to do more screenshots as I get both the time and inspiration to do so! :bat:

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I think it depends on the character, but it’s something to look into for story, for sure. I haven’t put much thought into it for my own characters–even the ones a part of the first generation of San’layn (there with Lana’thel/the blood princes). I really hope his story doesn’t end with “Oh look he’s venthyr” now :roll_eyes:as someone who loves San’layn and likes Blood Elves. Putting aside my dislike for venthyr, it would just not feel right as a fan of elves, either. His story is the only one interesting to me in Shadowlands, so I hope they don’t destroy that one too. And I know I’m not the only blood elf fan/San’layn fan who feels that way.

Gods I hope he returns to Azeroth in some way. The four horsemen did, so why not him? That’s my thought there, really. It’s possible. Though whether or not he’ll forget everything now is a different story. BUT I’m wondering if something was pulled like that nowadays, if the ‘forget me stick’ would not work anymore since the veil is lifted, or something. Wonder if that will be explored if there’s anyone brought back as undead from Shadowlands.

True, the missing blood princes are still chilling somewhere, and we still have no idea the origin of Dreven.

I wish! I also wish I had as much talent as Qualia. Ah well. Being a figurehead is better than nothing, I suppose. But yeah, the music is amazing. That’d be awesome ‘thematic’ music if San’layn ever became an allied race. That’d be another downside with settling with customization, we’d lose chances like that (along with dances/exclusive flirts/jokes/etc)

That’s my thoughts too, it’s going to be a long 2+ years.

If you have someone in your party, you could do the reflecting prism to keep it for 5+ minutes. I love the screenshots, well done. You’re always excellent with those :slight_smile:

I do have some art I’d like to share.

https://images-wixmp-ed30a86b8c4ca887773594c2.wixmp.com/f/3081f6e5-d33f-4b99-b95a-e81aa4350970/de4j9ih-00782408-5027-4f67-b0bb-ab36b2fd59eb.jpg/v1/fill/w_1024,h_1449,q_75,strp/the_blood_council__prince_keleseth_by_noodlepredator_de4j9ih-fullview.jpg?token=eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJzdWIiOiJ1cm46YXBwOiIsImlzcyI6InVybjphcHA6Iiwib2JqIjpbW3siaGVpZ2h0IjoiPD0xNDQ5IiwicGF0aCI6IlwvZlwvMzA4MWY2ZTUtZDMzZi00Yjk5LWI5NWEtZTgxYWE0MzUwOTcwXC9kZTRqOWloLTAwNzgyNDA4LTUwMjctNGY2Ny1iMGJiLWFiMzZiMmZkNTllYi5qcGciLCJ3aWR0aCI6Ijw9MTAyNCJ9XV0sImF1ZCI6WyJ1cm46c2VydmljZTppbWFnZS5vcGVyYXRpb25zIl19.UtWX2WENSl7o2TALmV2v6CfdDKShu4sZQMLPZixwYUo
This art is credit to https://www.deviantart.com/noodlepredator. I was wondering why in the world I never saw this before, then realized it’s a relatively new art piece from September 2020. I absolutely adore this.

Now, as you all know, I commission a lot of art. Here’s some more of my characters from https://twitter.com/gynesisx.

(Half-dragon, not WoW but I wanted to share the art, sue me)

(Shapeshifter, not WoW but I wanted to share the art)

And finally

This fella is a vampire. Very fancy one. As you can see, my characters (these happen to be from my book) tend to have a gothic/punkish theme.

It’d be cool if male blood elves had ear jewelry. Why they can’t boggles my mind.

Not to mention, eyeliner makes everyone look more aesthetically pleasing. I don’t make the rules, I just reinforce them. :woman_shrugging:

Anyway, jokes aside (well, I’m not really joking, but that is my personal opinion with the eyeliner thing), I should have more art to share too. I have bad impulse control. Benefit of this is, I suppose, sharing art. Vampire art is amazing. Also, tophats that do not hide hair please.

Also, for those who like a very eerie tune? Check out this version of “Wonderful World”. For some reason it gives me a ‘vampire’ feel.

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They added a new Princess and Prince in Legion (and another vampire) and BFA, and seeing Bolvar’s recruitments efforts leading up to the Shadowlands, and the Jailer resurrecting the Princes and Lana’thel in the Prepatch and now the Scourge rampaging everywhere, I’d say it’s safe there’s a much larger population of San’layn in existence than we originally thought.

And yessssssss, all that lovely art!

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Wait what prince did they add in Legion? That one I didn’t know about! Blood Princess Thal’ena I do know about though, for sure; sadly people say she’s just a callback and won’t ever get any lore. (‘people’ isn’t blizzard but still.) Meanwhile, the other vampires (Vrykul and pirates) are so exciting. I really hope get to see more of them at some point. It was implied somewhat that Lucard wasn’t truly defeated, so hmmm!

…wonder how people would react if we got human vampyr & San’layn on the Horde, come to think of it…

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Doh, forgot a word, sorry for getting your hopes up.

I mean they added a Princess and Prince in Legion and BFA respectively.

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Oh it’s ok! No worries at all there, I was about to have my mind blown because I figured I knew this stuff like the back of my hand (gods I sound like such a nerd). But yes you’re right, and I’m still dying (hah ) to know where, exactly, Dreven came from. Whether he was turned in Wrath, or if one of the missing blood princes (or someone else?) turned him. Since there’s also Lucard and company to consider.

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I honestly thought the second season was hot garbage. The first season was really nice though.

Sorry, I know, that comment was from a while ago. :nerd_face:

Back on topic, I don’t think San’Layn work as yet another Blood Elf sub-faction. Void Elves over crowded that field. BUT, we do see potential examples in SL with the Venthyr, though they look pretty horrible, to be honest. If we had a more aesthetically pleasing version of the Venthyr, that might work.

A side note… If people want Blizzard to take this idea more seriously, I think one of the better ways is to petition the people who write the books, to include them as more important lore characters or factions. If they’re going to be writing about SL, they do fit and it isn’t a stretch to include a faction like this in just about any story they might write.

Oh, EDIT! If they were going to be Forsaken, lore wise it wouldn’t be hard to explain how they might end up as Vampires. Sylvanas is out of the picture, and even the dead can fear death. Blood Magic (or what ever it would be) might be a good way to fix their broken bodies, stave off death, or simply grow in power or numbers. :man_shrugging:

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That’s a reach for them so eff em, also, Blizz has been doing a looooooooot of callbacks with Sanlayn for it to just be a callback for me personally.

The Quill in BFA, Shadow Priests have a friggin talent called San’layn, Blood Death Knights are said to harness the power of the San’layn in their write up somewhere, a couple of the legendaries in Legion were about them I think as well? Do we have any San’layn legendaries in SL? Kael’thas’ design, he doesn’t look like his original form, he doesn’t look like a mangled corpse, fel corrupted or otherwise, he doesn’t look like a Venthyr, he looks exactly like a San’layn.

Blizzard isn’t forgetting about them any time soon. It’s just what they have planned that’s got my curiosity piqued.

Ye! We’re getting time dragon pirates in the next mega dungeon, so c’mon, bring back the vampire pirates Blizz!

I’d love it.

Hehe sowwy ^w^

A badass nerd we all adore :3

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