It is confirmed that there is “stuff planned” for Shadowlands post 9.2, and now 9.2.5 has been explicitly named. So what’s going to happen in it?
The theory is that now that the Jailer has caused big problems for Azeroth, the covenant races (Kyrian, Sylvar, Gladiator, Venthyr) decide to stop sitting on their collective butts and start smelling the roses, metaphorically speaking. They are all already coded as allied races, and some of them (Sylvar) already have extensive facial animations that rival those seen in the vulpera before they were made playable. Alternatively, these guys will be the new “races” for the next expansion, and will require pre-purchasing it.
So if this theory comes to pass, would you play any of these guys?
God I hope not. I can’t imagine how annoying it would be to unlock them. As for playing one? I mean…maybe a Maldraxxi or Kyrian? The others can #$*% right off.
No. The implication would be, that death is meaningless from that point on. If inhabitants of the shadowlands can just walk out of there any time they want and be an adventurer on Azeroth, death would only be a slight inconvenience.
You say that now, but I wouldn’t put it past Blizzard to bring back someone like Nathanos just by having him walk out of the Shadowlands and back into Azeroth.
Almost definitely not happening. If they had plans for these races to become playable, it would’ve made far more sense to add them in 9.2 or earlier instead of the tail end of the expansion.
Out of the viable Covenant races, sylvar and maybe venthyr are more or less the only ones who look remotely player-ready. Kyrian and gladiators would probably need whole new models because I don’t think the former even has more than one hairstyle per gender, and the latter I don’t think we’ve ever seen what’s under their helms. What classes would they even have other than warrior?
I think this won’t happen for 2 pretty big reasons:
-All of the covenants are not tied to factions purposefully.
-9.2.5 is focusing on cross faction play support
Death already is meaningless for the most part in WoW. It’s canon the heroes of Azeroth can’t actually die because Azeroth doesn’t want us to. And this extends to lore characters as well, Azuregos was killed in vanilla then hit up a spirit healer for example.
I don’t think we’ll get any new content in 9.2.5. Just resets / updates to existing content.
It’ll be as simple as season resets for M+ and PVP, and system updates e.g. cross faction play.
No new gear.
No new story.
No real class changes.
No new races.
It would make no sense though. What reason would they have to fight for Azeroth? And plus, Blizzard would add 4 new Death-realm based races and let maybe one be Death Knights, so no thanks
Speaking of which, my biggest disappointment is we got a whole zone of FAERIES and yet no Dullahan… could you imagine farming a giant Headless Horseman for a carriage mount made of bones?
A winged Kyrian? Maybe. Without those, they’re just blue humans really.
A Sylvar? If they have a racial to turn into a Vorkai as a kind of travel form, like Worgen have Running Wild, sure. Or if they have Druids with a Vorkai as a travel form, I might make a Sylvar Druid and play around in that all the time. No way to be a Vorkai? Not quite so keen on them. It’d come down to racials and customizations.
Venthyr? No.
Maldraxxi? If I could legitimately play a skeleton mage I might.