It’d be really silly for Darkfallen in general to not be able to be Death Knights, given their history. All they would need to do is slightly edit the Pandaren/Allied Race DK starting area with a few changes to make it forward compatible with future playable races. Hopefully, Blizzard will keep DK’s as an option for any future playable race, since if we ever get playable Horde Saurok, I’m wanting to make a male Saurok Unholy Death Knight as one of my Saurok characters.
But yes, Horde San’layn have been one of my most wanted playable races, so to see a possibility of actually seeing them playable in some fashion has been making it hard to temper expectations. I’ll always keep a slot for my San’layn character for if we ever are lucky enough to get them as a playable Horde race. Currently planning a male Shadow Priest, though I may consider a female character of some class. It really depends.
And as I said, the longer we go without an announcement of what exactly is in 9.2.5 and if we are getting a new playable race, the more frustrating it gets. Still hoping it’ll be sooner than later. I know I’m repeating myself with this a lot, but it is that frustrating of a wait since if we do get a playable Darkfallen race, there are some aspects of concern for San’layn representation in PC’s and NPC’s.
In the meantime, I’ll continue to look for info to report for both here and the Dark Ranger megathread.
Yeah, I think the only reason to hide an allied race is for the surprise element, but I think for something as important as a playable race, they should announce it well in advance in order to get feedback on it. Hm.
I will always love that the Forsaken of all people came up with the Azeroth tradition of Halloween and the candy giving.
I would be “okay” with Lightforged Undead under very specific and stringent circumstances.
they’re not actually undead undead but a resurrection attempt gone awry, like the Tarnished from Elden Ring (think Highlander).
they’re undead that had light crystals or systems or something forced into them, like what Momma Windchime tried to do to Illidan (I love the cutscene), so they’re not undead created by the light but undead that are “corrupted” by it and in a lot of pain, similar to Priest and Paladin forsaken now, would make for an interesting take.
I’d be okay with them if they were fallen Scarlet Crusaders who hang on desperately to their faith, despite it causing them agonising pain to do so (we know that Forsaken suffer terrible pain when channeling Light).
To be fair I view them as rebels clinging to their faction over their home, so I’m not one of the ones who thinks of them as a boring pure race. Still fun to joke about when I look like this though haha.
Oh yeah I figured, it was an excellent joke, haha! Yeah the whole ‘purity’ thing has always seriously thrown me off. I respect your like for them way more than many others. I’m not a really big fan of Alliance but then again I’m not a big fan of Horde (anymore) either.
Actually I wish in general the factions worked more like rivals than what it’s turned into, with smaller-scale conflict
Then there’s me who’s not even interested in either group, not even blood elves anymore, since they took away what made them interesting to me. (unless they add Phoenix themes which I’d be interested again. Or felblood.)
Especially w Elves like Lanesh existing, and they’re commentary it was High Elf customization added … which is nice background for VEs, but for Blood Elves that feels very specific like since arguably thats a main theme addition some added story confirming that would have been nice but also not entirely needed but still nice.
I feel like Blood Elves will always be the Elves who stayed to defend their Kingdom and uphold their legacy etc though
To be fair, we both have very different opinions of Blood Elves so would naturally see things differently. I liked how they deviated from the norm with fel, and would go through any means necessary to protect their people, including turning to fel. They were ‘darker’ and more aggressive than the typical ‘perfect’ elf.
Sadly, that’s been stripped away and they feel very mary-sue-like now too. Something I personally can’t stand, but know other people want that. Hopefully they add something to satisfy the ‘darker elf’ party via Darkfallen or Felblood AR or customization.
We should be getting a general announcement of 9.2.5’s features and Dragonflight preorders before it actually releases, assuming that rumor of at least one new race is true. The question is just when that would be.
As I said before, for most other races if they were hinted, you would generally know what to expect and there wouldn’t be too much concern for what they would actually be. Something like Sethrak or Tuskarr, for example, would lead to questions of how to helms work on Sethrak or what do female Tuskarr look like. Nothing that would cause extreme worry.
The possibility of a Darkfallen race, however, has a lot to them that raises a lot more questions and worry about how it would be handled. These include but are not limited to:
-San’layn representation with PC customization and NPC storyline presence.
-How the above would affect Dark Ranger representation.
-Night Elf Darkfallen and how they’d be handled (especially if Darkfallen are on both Horde and Alliance)
-If Night Elf Darkfallen are a thing, would we get Night Elf San’layn on the Alliance or if not, would that affect Horde Darkfallen having San’layn in any form?
And of course there is the general concern that for some reason, we’d get Light themed Undead of some kind as a full race slot instead, which would be quite the damp squib of a reveal. As asinine as the idea is, I can’t rule it out at present. If we are getting a new undead race of some kind, then Darkfallen make the most sense, in my own personal opinion.
Not helping things is that we don’t know when we’ll even get a reveal of 9.2.5’s features. I’m sure a lot of work needs to be done if we are getting a new race of some sort to be presentable for such a feature, but with the current patch having been done for awhile now, who knows when we’ll get info?
If said rumored new race, again under the assumption we actually are getting at least one, is involved with an early access as a preorder incentive (specified to not be Dracthyr by that rumor, though I’m sure we’d also get early access to them as well), it could be waiting until there is a rough date of some sort to open preorders. I think the general word is that they allegedly need to have a date of some sort to be able to legally take preorders for Dragonflight.
Whatever the case, as I said, I can wait for the patch itself. It’s just the announcement of what we are getting and seeing what we aren’t getting that I particularly want at the moment. The wait gets more frustrating the longer we go when it comes to the possibility of a playable Darkfallen race.
Whenever we do get an announcement and assuming we actually get a playable Darkfallen race, I’ll be doing what I can to help gather up info so we can get a FAQ of some sort going up. As I said, there will be a lot of questions to answer and there is likely going to be questions after a potential reveal, which would have to be answered when we get video of their creation and gameplay as well as when they’d actually be released on live servers.
And of course, much as I want to get excited, nothing is guaranteed. We may not get a new race of any sort or if we do, it could very well not be Darkfallen, though I still hope in such a case that it would be a requested race as opposed to something asinine and from out of nowhere like Light themed Undead. As I said, I try to keep expectations tempered, but it keeps getting harder to do so as we keep finding datamined info.
Sorry for complaining and repeating myself so much. It’s just frustration and worry about the possibility of one my most wanted playable races actually becoming playable and how they would be handled if it does happen. We’ll see what happens when it happens, I guess. As I said, I hope we get that announcement of 9.2.5’s features sooner than later.
Until then, I’ll continue to keep an eye out for anything of interest to report here and the Dark Ranger megathread.
No need to apologize - reading this post is sort of cathartic lol. I’ve been having the same thoughts and conversations internally about all of this. Appreciate the work you put in.
One thing I’m interested in seeing how Blizz handles is the number of customizations available to a new allied race. I feel like Shadowlands tried to up the average number of customizations for races, even doing a handful of allied races. I wonder if Darkfallen (or whichever race) would have the bare minimum like Velf/Nightborne/etc had on release, or if it’d be as numerous as Nightborne/LFD have now. I’m worried with their messaging of ‘all hands on deck’ for Dracthyr customization that it would be the former.
Sorry for the blurry image but it drives me nuts that on WoWhead if you go to the dressing room and turn on ‘NPC options’ it gives you both deep crimson eyes AND these ones.
(on my laptop so couldn’t zoom in properly, bummer)
Like this is the exact type of eyes I’ve been taking about jet-black…
Reminds me of when void elves were first introduced and you could see velf npcs in game w/ black hair, and even on mmo-champions model viewer. I think it was a glitch, because the tentacle was black too, but I used its existence to submit feedback for black hair.
From 7.3.5 to 9.1.5 to finally get black hair, but I had quit before 9.1 and couldn’t be bothered to come back just for the new options.
(unless they add Phoenix themes which I’d be interested again. Or felblood.)
jet-black…