Blizzcon Thoughts

I don't do crowds, so the virtual ticket is pretty much the best option for Blizzcon for me.  Some of the main themes of the next expansion - Kul Tiras, Zandalar, Queen Azshara - were all things I was expecting to see.  Which is weird - I never guess right about what's coming next.

I wasn't really expecting the sub-race options, but I pretty much know what alts I'll roll to probably leave unleveled for all the new ones:

• Zandalari druid (replacing an existing level 8 troll druid)
• Lightforged priest (to take the place of the level 1 draenei priest)
• Dark Iron warrior (if it's an option)
• Nightborne mage (or race change the night elf I've been debating making Horde)
• Highmountain hunter (or race change my existing tauren druid or blood elf monk)
• Void elf rogue (because I only have one rogue out of 30+ alts of various levels)

I'm curious how many other sub-races/allied races we'll acquire in the long run.  There are some obvious possibilities already:

• Mag'har or Draenor orcs
• Taunka
• High Elves
• Forest trolls
• Wildhammer dwarves
• Broken draenei
• Ogres or half-ogres
• Those adorable fox people in the new zones
• Hozen
• Jinyu
• Yaungol
• Leper gnomes

There are also less likely possibilities:

• Naga
• Mantid
• Withered elves
• Harpies
• Mogu
• Centaurs
• Tuskarr
• Tol'vir
• Arakkoa (either model)
• Those stone dwarf dudes
• Mechagnomes

I don't know just how much work it takes to convert an NPC race to a PC one - I'd imagine there are emotes and animations to design and map, adjustments to make for armor, and in some cases updates graphically to bring the models up to current game standards.  You may have noticed with some polymorphs and costumes that some models lack things like swimming animations.  They do at least have existing territories and lore.  Hopefully these first six go well and they can expand on it going forward.

So far as the increased focus on the faction divide... eh.  I'd like to play more with my mom, but she plays a lot of humans.  I play a lot of tauren and forsaken.  I'm hoping the changes in PVP/PVE server stuff means that eventually you'll be able to communicate and group with people of the other faction outside the faction capitals if you're not flagged for PVP, but that's not this expansion.  Years ago I had a literal dream about being in a cross server queue for running a dungeon, basically standing around in a room with various other characters waiting for them to call five of us to go in next.  Maybe next time?

About the only interest I have in Classic servers is to go see Auberdine again.  I... can't really quest in Darkshore anymore, which seems kind of silly, but I spent so much time there.  It took me something like 28 days /played to level my first night elf.  I hearthed to Auberdine for probably 8 months.  It also took me till level 48 to get my first mount, so other than Auberdine tourism, they don't hold a lot of appeal for me.

I'm looking forward to the zone scaling, though - I've stranded more than a few toons at the Outland/Northrend boundary, maybe because Outland is more removed in memory.  At this point I wouldn't mind mostly skipping Cataclysm for Pandaria, as well.  I haven't enjoyed zone quest set-ups where you basically have to unlock the zone to wander around and find quests.  Let me wander in and do random crap, especially on alts.  I do pretty much everything on my main, but after that I just kind of want to get the toon through to get to leveling up trade skills.