I Wanted to bring up the potential for a better Alliance Staging ground in the Midnight campaign for the Alliance, if Stratholme is officially being revamped and “saved” then it could be a better starting zone going into the GhostLands, and while i admit the orientation of the city is against it, the Earthen building an entrance into the GhostLands. There’s also the significance of the city, especially their Chapels, they were the birthplace for the first generation of Paladins, even when under Scourge control the Holy sites were untainted, that could be an interesting story point in the resilience of the Light.
It actually is, considering how the only two human cities still functioning and thriving are Stormwind and Boralus. And Boralus is so different culturally and aesthetically from the mainland humans that it might as well be considered its own thing.
2.) No. Stratholme goes to Forsaken or Argents. If you want to claw back some northern kingdoms, try rebuilding Gilneas and pretending like Worgen are one of your playable races for a change.
I like the idea. Stratholme is held by the Argent Crusade, so it’s neutral.
But then there’s the Bastion of the Silver Hand, which is purely Alliance.
That would bring balance again.
Even if it weren’t too late, Silvermoon and the Void Elf DH decision tells me that they’re now willing to explicitly violate parity temporarily to best use resources.
In theory, i think this is a good decision.
In practice, they have been iffy at parity even when they were shackled to it as a principle. This could work out better, because they’re not half baking things to split resources. But it could also work out worse because “oops, plans changed”.
(cf Baine, who was clearly being set up to get a build up arc in SL that got shelved and made him so onerous that even i just want him gone now. DF was too little too late.)
I honestly hoped Taliesin’s vision come true and we would get a new beautiful Draenei ship above Silvermoon exclusively for the Alliance. If that wasn’t enough, maybe we’d get a smaller Night Elf camp somewhere between the roots of the World Trees in Harandar.
I expect them to do SOMETHING with Stratholme as it is a mess and the unfinished back side will be visible with Quel’thalas glued onto the mainland finally. I could see them freshening it up with Garrison assets, but nothing too extreme.
…It would be a little sad to make the elf expansion have a human capitol though. So, I am glad they did not go that route.
I am pretty sure it is not being revamped. There will likely be a few, small changes done. I really, REALLY, doubt there will be significant changes to the city at this point. Certainly not remotely enough to turn it into a hub.
While having a restored Stratholme could be cool, I can’t see Blizzard putting in the time/effort.
Now? This is not new. Also not temporarily unless you really stretch the meanig of temporary. Particularly in the case of class/race combos. There has been disparity between the factions for years, most (I think all) of WoW’s history. DHs are getting a lot of attention because it is a new combo being added now.
Which races are those? Probably monsters, furries, beast races that few players enjoy and for all the wrong reasons, and/or whose lore does not support functioning, thriving cities.
The humans are the main race of WoW and their lore does in fact support at least 7 city-states, some of which are being rebuilt as we speak, which is why they will get more cities once Lordaeron gets revamped as those old cities are finally rebuilt.
I forgot how unusually antagonistic and unpleasant you so oftentimes are.
With all the addendums you’re putting in, I’m not sure exactly what you’d consider “functioning, thriving cities”, that people enjoy “for all the wrong reasons”, but I think even you’d acknowledge the gnomes are lacking a city of their own. All the Forsaken had was Undercity and that’s been destroyed. Vulpera have a few carts and tents in a desert.
I’d go own, but considering you named Stormwind and Boralus but not Stromgarde, your definition of a city is too vague to name any more.
A class locked to two races, one on each side, getting a third option for a highly popular race just in time for that class getting a new spec that is lore tied to the end of the current expansion and the themes of the next is a pretty large parity break; 126 to 129 total combos, otoh, is not.
The only reason I care at all that Alliance will technically still have two fewer from the overall number is that it gives me a bargaining position to demand sympathy from randos on the internet that I cannot yet play gnome druid.
Anyway, I’m not claiming that Alliance and Horde have had equal treatment throughout the years, but I’d say up until DFish it felt like the devs were trying to meet “each patch they get equal focus”, even if the execution left a littlesomethingeverything? much to be desired. I don’t see the Cata/MoP team rolling ahead with some of these choices, and in general I much prefer the current dev team and direction.
But I think we’re going there, although it won’t be the main one since Xalatath is focusing on the Sunwell. I believe all the plots related to Light and the Void will be invoked in Midnight, so I believe the Draenei will have a role in the next patch after Launch.
I’m not “antagonistic” and “unpleasant,” I say it how it is because facts don’t care about your feelings.
Humans are more important than joke races like gnomes and goblins or modern races like vulpera or haranir that were invented yesterday. Also, not every race lore supports having a city as in the case of vulpera, whose very low is that they are desert nomads.
And I didn’t name Stromgarde because it’s not a city, period. It’s a lazily made WoD Garrison that exists just for the Warfronts and does not have any of the services of a city. In fact, some weeks it’s literally ruined as, again, it’s a Warfront, not a city.
That is not really applicable. It isn’t total number. You can look back to every single new race/class combo added to a race only accessible to one side and you will see people talking about how the other side needs one to balance. Usually in the form of ‘if X race got a new class, then their counterpart Y class should get one.’ I don’t think this is fundamentally different. Just some timing amplifying it.
The differences are that this was announced with a new spec and at a new expac release. So, everyone is talking about the new stuff and people focus on the ‘oh, this is different’ part. If I Void Elves had been added mid expac with no spec addition there would have been some noise, but not even close to as much as we are seeing.
Which is still a tragedy.
I would argue Cata was the single most imbalanced expac for content between the factions. Granted, much (though not all) was because they ran out of time to finish the Alliance side. And MoP had an entire patch solely dedicated to the Horde. And when asked if they were going to balance it, Blizzard said they felt there was story they wanted to and would not be balancing it.
If anything, I would argue the current team is more concerned with balance than in the past. After all, they specifically stated they were trying to ensure the Horde and Alliance got equal time in the spotlight over the saga. Granted it is not internal to a single expac, but it is certainly more than then the Cata/MoP team who flat out said no to balancing content.
As a result, and based on little comments here and there, I think there is a very good chance that we will see a new DH class option in the not to distant future. I suspect animation process has already been started on a Horde race. They just don’t want to say anything yet because it is to early for a times table and do not want to get stuck with the whole ‘you promised’ rage if it does not get finished when people assume it will.
To you they are. Doesn’t mean that is true for everyone. Or Blizzard.
And it certainly doesn’t mean that is how it should be.
I think they didn’t want to have two separate sets of quest givers. Fewer development costs. If you leave all the quest givers in Silvermoon, and put inns, etc. out in Stratholm, you making players fly back and forth.
Zandalar was split between two flight points. It was a pain in the rear end.
Silly Kagehiro, this would mean Blizzard would have to give a damn about the Worgen as a race and we know that isn’t happening. They don’t want to write nuanced stories involving the worgen curse and what it means for Gilneas, they just want to push it under the rug and hope people just want to play Stormwind Humans with british accents.
And in exchange the Forsaken get to build a spooky castle in Duskwood. Unnervingly close to the human capitol.
They’ll certainly do a better job of managing it than Stormwind. The humans are under our protection and are pressured, but not forced, to be undead upon demise. Their corpses will be stored in a sepulchre where they’re protected from necromancy. But the caveat is they may be raised into free undeath in case of an emergency.