The Unofficial Saurok Playable Race Discussion Megathread! 🐊

Bagzak-rexxar · February 10, 2021, 7:01pm

A lot is going to depend on what they do with the story in Shadowlands regarding the Lich King in general. Given how the two Death Knight starting areas have story to them, they would need to explain how future playable races will be able to become Death Knights.

Sure, some races can be put in the Bolvar starting area without much issue, but given it currently takes place before Shadowlands, it would be a bit odd to see some new races who had nothing to do in BfA appear there. Granted, I wouldn’t complain if it meant getting Saurok Death Knights.

Of course, they could change the Bolvar starting area to be more time-neutral. If Bolvar becomes the Lich King again, not much has to change. If another entity becomes the Lich King, then a model swap and new voice lines could be recorded. Add in some models of new playable races, and it shouldn’t be too difficult to do, as opposed to making yet another DK starting area for several new races.

We’ll have to see what happens in Shadowlands’ story. Still, I’m hoping we’ll see future races be able to become Death Knights, and hopefully the Bolvar starting area isn’t necessarily time-locked. As I said, it could easily be edited to make it more time-neutral.

Vaelian-silver-hand · February 10, 2021, 10:56pm

Yep, and I fully expect the helm to be reforged without the Jailer’s influence to keep the Scourge under control.

Bagzak-rexxar · February 10, 2021, 11:26pm

Seeing the helm reforged makes sense, though I have no idea who would wear it afterwards. That would likely be a fitting way to end it while keeping a Lich King of sorts.

Also, as I’ve been posting in several megathreads, WoWhead has posted a schedule of WoW specific events at Blizzconline (all times listed appear to be Pacific Standard Time):

https://www.wowhead.com/news=320868/blizzconline-2021-schedule-now-live

There is going to be a QnA session, though I haven’t seen where they will be taking questions.

If they take questions on the forums, I was thinking of posting a question both for my Saurok and Ogre megathreads. I realize that questions tend to get cherry-picked and general questions about those races might get ignored, but it’s worth a try IMO.

In terms of Saurok, I’m not sure what all I could ask in that regard. Thus, if anyone has any suggestions, I’m open to them. Or if you want to ask your own Ogre/Saurok questions there, that would also be great!

Obviously, things like “Will -insert race here- ever be playable?” will definitely be ignored, so something indirect would work a bit better. Even if I expect the questions to likely get ignored, I’ll be pondering some possibilities for it.

Worth a shot at least, in my opinion.

Grayphus-nemesis · February 10, 2021, 11:40pm

Saurok as a playable race Blizzard would be a very good thing.

Vaelian-silver-hand · February 10, 2021, 11:53pm

I’d figure just give it back to Bolvar if nothing bad happens to him.
Although passing it back to the previous one would be an interesting way to go…free of the Jailer’s influence, Arthas returns to the Frozen Throne.
I’m still wondering if there’s truth to some rumors…people said Ion hinted that there might eventually be a Maw convenant we could align with. Having Arthas end up a member of it would make sense.
It’d be kinda interesting to end the expansion with Arthas, Bolvar, and Uther leading the undead defense of Azeroth.

Bagzak-rexxar · February 11, 2021, 12:30am

This seems like the most likely thing to happen, IMO. Bolvar already has been Lich King for awhile and the Death Knights seem loyal to him. I could see him taking up the mantle again to make sure the Scourge are calmed down again. I can’t really see Bolvar going back to “normal” life easily, for that matter.

It’s also hard for me to see Arthas being redeemed, let alone him becoming a “good” Lich King again, and in my opinion, he shouldn’t be redeemed. I’d be surprised if he wasn’t just drop kicked into the Maw again at some point. I also can’t see the Death Knights wanting to follow him again, given the majority of them are what they are against their will because of him.

All my personal opinion, of course.

I’d be curious who all would be members of this in general. I haven’t done much in the Maw, though I know there are some NPC races in there apparently. I don’t remember all the NPC races mentioned, though I haven’t seen any reports of Saurok there at the moment.

Guessing it would be comprised of various spirits formed into the Maw and maybe some of the Mawsworn and purple Kyrians who changed their minds and side against the Jailer.

Of course, a new covenant means grinding the same stuff the other covenants have, so if it becomes true, it’ll be fun to have to maintain 5 characters to see all their stories and stuff. x- x

Honestly, I really don’t know what to expect in terms of the Shadowlands storyline, but I’ll definitely keep my eye out for anything Ogre and Saurok related.

Vaelian-silver-hand · February 11, 2021, 11:02pm

Yeah, his appearance is a bit limiting to that.

As for Arthas, I don’t see much he did that was really wrong that wasn’t a direct influence of the armor/sword.
His biggest mistake was entering Stratholme. It’d have been much smarter to secure it and burn it. His mistake was being hands on.

Kinda like Bolvar, didn’t he keep the scourge in check for a fair amount of time. It wasn’t running rampant all over either. I need to read the book focused on him.
If he was free from the domination and allowed to be himself, it’d be interesting to see what they’d do with him.

He’s already in the Maw, but doesn’t belong there…I’d say maybe Revendreth then on to Maldraxxus. The Death Knights are already working with/following the Lich King, so there’s a distinction there. We now know the Jailer was manipulating Arthas, so free of that manipulation, he could be a strong ally. He’d even make a good right hand to Bolvar were he to wear the crown. Uther could take up leadership of the Val’kyr.

I’m curious to see how it plays out and which way they’re going with Arthas 2.0…the one possibly being made into a death knight against his will

I liked seeing some Vrykul. I wouldn’t be surprised seeing Ve’nari being a part of it. Arthas and perhaps some others we could free. Could even move Bolvar, Darion, and some of the Ebon Blade there if they’re using the maw as a staging ground…sort of forming a resistance and using the tools they find in the area.
I’m also wondering if this is what they’re planning for Sylvanas…I’m still not sure on that part. I’m understanding her view point better but it’s still kinda meh.

We’ve already got armor sets for all the classes lol. Just use the suits we’ve been fighting against, I quite like all their designs too.

An alternative to having it be a 5th covenant with soul binds and such would be make it more of a faction that everyone takes part in. Leave off the soul binds, which saves dev time, but keep the storyline quests and the base of operations when you’re in the Maw or some such. Keep the armor appearances you can unlock.

I’ve got two of the covenant stories done…ready to start my to the third.

As for Ogres and Saurok…there has to be some in the Maw, we’ve just not seen them. Since all souls are being funneled there, it’s extremely unlikely there’s not some in there somewhere.

Bagzak-rexxar · February 12, 2021, 8:20pm

Well, it’s a week until Blizzconline. I’m still trying to think of some Saurok-related questions for the QnA. Again, not expecting any questions I ask to get answered, but it’s worth a shot.

It could go a number of ways. Although I’m not especially fond of Arthas returning in any fashion, I at least understand from a marketing point-of-view why they would do that. Not to mention combined with this:

Would be another reason I’m not especially excited to see what’s next in the Shadowlands storyline. I feel like no matter what they do, it won’t really be satisfactory.

This would be the most likely thing to happen for the reasons you stated. I can imagine people complaining about yet another covenant they’d have to switch to and grind for if they were to add more covenants.

I’ve done Venthyr and about to finish Necrolords, myself. Was thinking of doing Night Fae next, since it does deal with wild gods and loas some.

I think I’ve seen mention on the forums that there are Ogre spirits in there. Of course, we don’t know what clans they’re from and such, but still interesting to note.

I haven’t seen mention of Saurok spirits in the Maw, but it wouldn’t surprise me if some did end up there, given the situation in the Shadowlands. There are likely some there in some fashion, even if it may not be shown in-game.

If it were up to me, I’d rescue them all, of course.

Vaelian-silver-hand · February 13, 2021, 11:09am

In the comment you responded too, that portion I was actually talking about the character they’ve been using to make a lot of references back to Arthas.

But yeah, I’d be surprised if Arthas didn’t return in some fashion since they used him to set up Uther and Devos.

Yeah, I’m not really crazy about some sort of redemption arc for her, but at least her viewpoint is making a bit more sense.

I did Bastion first with this character, just did Necrolords with one of my Death Knights…the next is likely Venthyr with my Blood Elf Death Knight…who’d be made San’layn pretty quick if it was an option. I’ve got a night elf druid that’ll be Night Fae if the druid I’m leveling with my niece doesn’t get there first.

I’ll have to keep an eye out for them when messing around in the Maw.

Bagzak-rexxar · February 13, 2021, 8:11pm

Whoops, sorry about that! My mind has been on the fritz with trying to finish up a college class and with this unusually cold weather. x- x;

I’ve finally finished the Necrolords covenant campaign. As I suspected, I didn’t see much else done with Saurok spirits, but at least this way I’ll have a Necrolords character to explore stuff in future patches. I also have other things I need to work towards to check out, such as making abominations, though that costs a lot of anima to actually do and I’m trying to upgrade other parts of the sanctum first. I’ll try to play with it in the future, though.

As I mentioned before, I’m working on a Night Fae character next, since there was some mentions of wild gods and loas being involved there. I don’t expect anything Saurok-specific there, but moreso I wanted to see what all is there for wild gods in general. I speculated several posts ago that this was a way for Kroshik, a possible offspring to Kros who the Skumblade worship, to reincarnate constantly. Granted, Nesingwary apparently tamed him, so Kroshik wouldn’t be around in Ardenweald. Still, it’s worth a look to see if there is anything related to Kros or wild gods in general.

Gotta leave no stone unturned when it comes to Saurok research!

Bagzak-rexxar · February 14, 2021, 9:05pm

So far, I thought of a couple of potential Saurok-related questions for QnA’s:

“Since we’ve seen Saurok migrate off Pandaria and even becoming friendly and working with different races, are they naturally evolving, becoming more civilized, and becoming smarter than before as the Saurok race as a whole matures through giving birth to new generations of Saurok?”

“Since it has been awhile since we left Pandaria and we’ve seen Saurok willing to work with other races, have the Pandaren on Pandaria managed to make peace with any of the Saurok tribes there that Lorewalker Cho has been wanting to do?”

They’re a bit of a mouthful and pretty involved as far as questions go, and the first question could be worded better, but that is what I have so far.

And as I stated before, I’d be surprised if any questions I ask for a QnA actually gets answered. However, as I keep saying, it’s worth a try. You never know if it’ll get an answer or possibly lead to some idea inspiration for the future.

Vaelian-silver-hand · February 14, 2021, 10:48pm

I’d been gathering up the materials while playing but didn’t know it also costs a bunch of anima…makes sense, but yeah, I’ve been saving to try to upgrade some sanctum stuff.

It’d have been neat to see the Saurok featured a bit more. I just saw one and some of the other beastial races over in the construct area when helping Emeni.

Bagzak-rexxar · February 14, 2021, 11:41pm

Indeed, that spirit actually got me interested in exploring Maldraxxus and making a Necrolords character. So far, that’s the only Saurok-related thing in Shadowlands I’ve seen, so far.

If anyone wants to know more about that spirit, check out my post on it here:

https://us.forums.blizzard.com/en/wow/t/the-unofficial-saurok-playable-race-discussion-megathread/189709/655

I very much agree! Especially as a Horde-friendly tribe. They have a lot of potential and seem to be growing as a race. Not to mention that WoW could use some playable reptiles and lizardmen are generally awesome.

It’s cool that they’ve been getting some love to some extent for a couple expansions. Hopefully, we’ll see more love given to them in the near future. Maybe we’ll see some Saurok heroes someday help save the world (of Warcraft!). Both NPC’s and hopefully PC’s on the Horde side!

Bagzak-rexxar · February 15, 2021, 7:15pm

Well, we now have a way of submitting questions for the QnA panel at Blizzconline:

If you submit a text question, you have 250 characters max to type for it.

I went ahead and sent in an Ogre question. I’m unsure of the policy of adding in multiple questions, so rather than risk my question becoming null, I’m going to stick to that one. If anyone has any Saurok-related questions, though, please feel free to ask!

Of course, I’d be surprised if my question got answered, let alone if any Saurok questions got asked, but you never know. Worth a shot, IMO.

I’ll go ahead and post the two Saurok questions I thought of earlier in case anyone wants to ask them (remember to remove the quotation marks if you copy-paste them):

“Since we’ve seen Saurok migrate off Pandaria and even becoming friendly and working with different races, are they naturally evolving, becoming more civilized, and becoming smarter than before as the Saurok race as a whole matures through giving birth to new generations of Saurok?”

“Since it has been awhile since we left Pandaria and we’ve seen Saurok willing to work with other races, have the Pandaren on Pandaria managed to make peace with any of the Saurok tribes there that Lorewalker Cho has been wanting to do?”

Though feel free to ask your own Saurok-related question also if you want to.

Fezzy-draenor · February 15, 2021, 7:51pm

Hmm… Perhaps I’ll ask one.

Grayphus-nemesis · February 16, 2021, 1:12am

Extending my support to this fair and beautiful suggestion of Sauroks as a playable race, to the knowledge of Blizzard.

Bagzak-rexxar · February 16, 2021, 6:57pm

So as it turns out, they are indeed taking questions from the forums for the upcoming QnA. I went ahead and asked the following question in the following post:

“Since we’ve seen Saurok migrate off Pandaria and even becoming friendly and working with different races, are they naturally evolving, becoming more civilized, and becoming smarter than before as the Saurok race as a whole matures through giving birth to new generations of Saurok?”

https://us.forums.blizzard.com/en/wow/t/ask-your-questions-for-the-wow-qa-here/865537/65

I opted to go with that question as, between it and the other, it might have a better chance to get answered to explain Saurok becoming more civilized and more intelligent.

…of course, I’d be surprised if my questions did get answered, but I gotta try! You never know if it could inspire something in the future, also.

Bagzak-rexxar · February 18, 2021, 9:47pm

So as most people know, stuff was allegedly leaked from Blizzconline. I’ll hold off commenting on it in general since it hasn’t officially happened yet, though I will say that it seems that no new races are coming in the next major patch announced at Blizzconline. Didn’t see anything of interest in terms of Saurok either, but that was to be expected.

I have been going through the Night Fae campaign on yet another character and got to the part where it talks about loa and Ardenweald. This quest talks about that:

“Dark forces be at work, -class-. Ardenweald be where loa go ta be reborn after dey die on Azeroth. But some of da loa who be sleepin’ in Ardenweald have gone missin’! Gotta be someone powerful behind it, takin’ dem from right under da Winter Queen… Ol’ Bwonsamdi can’t be havin’ loa vanishin’ from Ardenweald. Dat could be me someday! No, no… we gonna put a stop to dis! Go back ta Ardenweald and search for da missin’ loa.”

https://www.wowhead.com/quest=59811/taking-inventory

As I speculated before, this might be how Kroshik kept reincarnating and being sacrificed (or is it snackrificed?) by the Skumblade, assuming they may have been a wild god of sorts, seeing as they’re apparently offspring of Kros who is a wild god/loa.

I haven’t seen anything regarding Kros there, and Kroshik as I mentioned may have been canonically tamed by Nesingwary, but it is still worth a look around to potentially learn of other wild gods. I’ve mentioned before that a playable Saurok faction could have their own wild god of some sort, one likely more friendly and less RAWR like Kros is, so Ardenweald is a place to potentially learn about them in general.

I haven’t finished the Night Fae campaign so far, but I’ll keep an eye out for anything else of interest. I am also planning to make a Kyrian character to go through their covenant campaign as well, though I don’t anything Saurok related will be there. As I said before, best to leave no stone unturned when it comes to Saurok research.

Also whenever the next major patch hits, I’ll be sure to keep my eye out for anything Saurok related there. I have a Necrolords character in case something else pops up with them, such as other Saurok spirits. Tomorrow is Blizzconline, so maybe we’ll get some elaboration on things in the leaks floating around on the internet.

More Saurok research to continue in the future!

Bagzak-rexxar · February 19, 2021, 9:47pm

So I managed to snag the Seraphon (Lizardmen) Battle Tome for Age of Sigmar for a semi-decent price! This is the book that gives things like lore and rules for that tabletop game. I showed a video that shows off what all is in the book in this particular post:

https://us.forums.blizzard.com/en/wow/t/the-unofficial-saurok-playable-race-discussion-megathread/189709/578

So obviously, I got it because I do eventually want to get into making a Lizardmen army at some point, but I also wanted to read it to see if it could generate any ideas for playable Saurok. It’ll take me a bit to go through it, but I’m sure it’ll inspire some neat ideas!

If you need something to listen to for awhile, I also did find a playlist that has several videos based on Seraphon lore, some of which I likely linked before, here:

Seraphon lore playlist on Youtube!

Always helps to look at other lizardmen races in different media to gain some Saurok idea inspiration!

Bagzak-rexxar · February 20, 2021, 9:38pm

So not much in the way of Saurok stuff at Blizzconline, which I honestly wasn’t expecting anything to begin with. Also no Saurok questions answered at the QnA, but I wasn’t expecting any of my questions to get answered. Honestly, I feel like the one I asked regarding Saurok was a bit much, but hey, I had to try.

With the next patch, I’ll of course be keeping an eye on the Necrolords to see if any other Saurok spirits appear elsewhere. I’ll also have my Necrolords character set up by then to see if there are any Necrolords specific quests, cut scenes, and the like. Not really expecting much in the grand scheme of things, but I have to try.

In the meantime, I still plan to continue marching in support of playable Horde Saurok and playable Horde Ogres of course. I’m still in the process of exploring different avenues of showing said support as well.

We still have a lot of time with Shadowlands also, though I do wonder if there will be just one more major patch after this upcoming one or not. To be honest, I’m hoping we’ll be back on Azeroth after Shadowlands. I miss the place already.

I will say that I kinda like the Necrolords armor that was shown off at Blizzconline here:

If I’m able to make a Saurok Warlock or Necromancer (if it becomes a class or a skin for Warlocks), it would look pretty good on them.

As usual, I’ll continue to dream of seeing Ogre and Saurok players running around Orgrimmar as members of the Horde. The march of support continues onward!

More Saurok research to continue in the future!