I imagine there would be a pre-order incentive of some kind. Likely early access to either new playable races, a class, or something else.
It’s possible that it could be new races related to the next expansion in some fashion. I remember when MoP came out, everyone could create a Pandaren character, whether you owned the expansion or not. Not really a pre-order incentive, but moreso an example of something related to the upcoming expansion as opposed to the current one.
That said, I don’t really know what to expect in general. The biggest rumor going around is that it may be dragon related, which the rumors being fairly strong and similar generally to when Shadowlands as a theme was the biggest rumor during BfA.
I do know that Blizzard really needs to hit a home run with this upcoming expansion. They’ve lost a lot of good will from all the backstage scandals, a lot of subscribers went to FF14, and they’ll want to be in a position to keep Microsoft happy when the acquisition officially occurs. So I’m hoping it’ll be decent and that player feedback and requests continue to be looked at and considered.
At the very least, I’m hoping for a more grounded expansion set back on Azeroth. I don’t think I could really handle another expansion set in a cosmic area entirely again very easily.
Seeing new playable races that have been requested for awhile would also help a lot, although it isn’t the only solution to the puzzle, but rather one of several pieces to the solution, in my opinion. I’m hoping it’ll be a feature for the next expansion, but who knows?
All we can really do is temper our expectations and see what happens while hoping for the best. I’ll still continue marching in support of several races to become playable races, regardless of what happens.
So some stuff has been datamined for patch 9.2.5, and from an alleged Blood Elf heritage weapon quest, the following text appears:
Taken from here:
Northrend is specifically mentioned with an assumption that things are worse than they thought. Which makes sense, given Northrend is likely the hardest hit of the continents.
Makes me wonder how the Taunka are holding up, along with other denizens of Northrend. Maybe we’ll see what they’re up to and how things are on Northrend in the near future. They are our fellow Horde members, and we need to make sure they’re ok and help out with anything needed.
Should I see anything of interest, I’ll be sure to report it here.
Taunka be all like “Hey, can we talk to the Warchief.” and go “We’re a Republic now actually, we have a council.” “Oh uh…Can we talk?” “Sure” “So things have gotten crazy in Northrend so uh…can we crash somewhere in the Horde’s Lands? We are already members and everything.” “Sure, we probably got some places, hey Ji, go get Kiro and the 2 of you can figure something out for them.” “Aight” “Thanks!” Took me like 2 minutes, now actually take the premise and make it look and read better and that’s all you need. We have a friggin’ Embassy in Orgrimmar, we just gotta use it.
I’ve often wished that Blizzard would make Orgrimmar and Stormwind more inclusive of the other races in the factions. Both at this point must be massive trade hubs as the capitols of their respective factions.
I’d love to see both cities built out with more districts to accommodate the various races.
Though that all said the other races need to have their homes back… destroying capital cities was one of Blizzards worst moves ever in an RPG.
I’d like all the capital cities fleshed out more and maybe use the cross realm stuff to make them more populated. Give each city all the amenities and let us use which we’d prefer.
Since the Announcement of Dragonflight (DF?) we’ve seen many mentions of the Tuskarr.
Since they lived in the same place as the Taunka and we also see some other races we saw in those same areas, I think there is a chance to see some Taunka along the way… heres hoping!
Gorlocs, Furbolg, Tuskarr- all races found on Northrend are on the Dragon Isles, but sadly not Taunka. While i’d love to see them, I am very excited for the expansion still.
THAT BEING SAID.
Exploring Azeroth: Northrend has been added to Amazon, which is exciting because it should hold some sort of information on Taunka, despite the book being from the point of view of the Bronzebeard clan! Doesn’t truly mean anything to their overall playability but getting an update on them will be nice.
I’m excited to see an Exploring Azeroth book on Northrend. I’ll have to look into it so I can see what all it says about Taunka and San’layn. Makes me hope we’ll see an Exploring Azeroth: Pandaria book next.
Amazon US currently has a release date of October 18, 2022. I’ll be sure to keep an eye on it and get it at some point!
Well contrary to some races, Taunka have more chances to get their own allied race than some other races (wildhammer dwarves/dragonmaw orcs/forest trolls)
