How many Allied Races would be too many for me?

So I was thinking about how my Nightborne Mage just needs to exist, and then I started thinking about how all of the Minor Mages — and my Dwarf Paladin & Shaman — more or less just exist for the sake of existing.

So then I thought, well, if I were to roll one alt of every Allied Race and be content to let them idle at level 20 just so that I could have “one of everything”, how many Allied Races characters would it take for me to reach the account limit of 50 characters total?

And then I thought, well, if I’m going to do that, and have, like, both an Exodar Draenei and a Lightforged Draenei, a Darkspear Troll and a Zandalari Troll, a Bronzebeard Dwarf and a Dark Iron Dwarf, a Stormwind Human and a Kul Tiras Human, a Green Orc and a Brown Orc, et cetera — then I really ought to have both a Huojin Pandaren and a Tushui Pandaren.

So then I went and rerolled the Tushui Pandaren Mage that I’d created back at the beginning of Mists, then later pruned in a fit of alt fatigue. She’s not quite finished with the Wandering Isle yet, but I’ll get her at least to level 20 eventually…

So what does that make the character count?
There’s the one-of-each-class set of characters, currently numbering 12.
Then there’s the Minor Mages who, with the recent additions of the Nightborne and the Tushui Pandaren, currently number 13.
Then there’s my extra Tauren characters, who currently number 5.
Then there’s my extra Dwarf characters, who currently number 2.
That makes 32 characters total.
I’ll be converting one of those current extra Tauren into a Highmountain and rolling two completely new Highmountain Tauren characters, bringing the total to 34.
I’ll be rolling two Void Elves — I’ve realized that as well as a Mage, I’m also going to need a Void Elf Rogue (Subtlety, of course) because Alliance Rogue T9 — which brings the total to 36.
That leaves 14 spots for additional Allied Races characters.
The already announced Lightforged Draenei, Zandalari Troll, Dark Iron Dwarf, Mag’har Orc, and Kul Tiran Human would take up 5 of those spots, leaving 9 spots open for future Allied Races such as Taunka, Yaungol, Tuskarr, Vrykul, Ogre, Vulpera…

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in which the Nightborne have been saved from themselves

This week being my Spring Break, I finally managed to sit down and power through the rest of Suramar.

It was indeed some very well done storytelling, and I enjoyed it — though it helped quite a bit that I’m at ilevel 900 from the slow ratchet of WQ rewards and already have flying. Although I still think she’s a conceited snob, I grew to like Arcanist Valtrois a bit more when I got to see her in her element, as it were, working with the ley lines — and the quest where she butts heads with Stellagosa in Zharkhenar cracked me up. I still like Occuleth the best, though.

I am not entirely “done” with Suramar, however, as I still haven’t gotten the Leywoven Flying Carpet. Kaelinda has Paragoned for the Nightfallen at least twelve times by now, and it’s getting rather discouraging to keep getting nothing but gold and Wakening Essences and other random junk when I open the caches. sigh…

I’d been making myself wait to purchase Battle for Azeroth at least until I’d completed Suramar and would be able to do both of the Horde-side Allied Race recruitment scenarios. I’d read that the Highmountain scenario is the longest and most involved, and that the Nightborne scenario has a scene that dovetails with the Void Elf scenario.

I spent the extra $20 to get the Collector’s Edition because fancy raptor for my Hunter who loves raptors —

— and fancy horse for my Human Mage who loves horses.

Although I could recruit the Highmountain Tauren and roll up the Highmountain Tauren alts I want to create now, I’m going to try to save that until after I’ve gotten all the classes leveled to 110 and experienced their Order Hall campaigns (through getting the last champion from the Broken Shore).

Because I only needed my Nightborne Mage to exist, however, there wasn’t any problem with sending Kaelinda off right away to help Lady Liadrin convince Thalyssra to join the Horde.

She was rather surprised and shocked by how harshly the Regent Lord treated Alleria Windrunner, though she herself was sufficiently well-mannered not to show it.

Kaelinda now has a “prettykitty” mount macro that includes the Mystic Runesaber, Arcanists’s Manasaber, Nightborne Manasaber, Luminous Starseeker, and Winged Guardian.

Thanks to a comment on Wowhead, I learned that I could create an Allied Races character on a realm where I didn’t yet have a level 110, so I was immediately able to create a Nightborne Mage on my Minor Mages realm (I’ll still have to get Kaylynda to 110 to do the Void Elf recruitment scenario, though).

Minor Mages, please welcome Koralythria!


She has pale pink hair (the color is very subtle) and no glowy tattoos (because she’s a commoner).

Koralythria is very young, as Nightborne go — only a hundred or so years old (about the same age as Kaelinda). Before — well, before Gul’dan, really — she was a junior assistant gardener at one of the smallest gardens in Suramar City, dreaming of someday becoming skilled enough to work on the Grand Promenade.

In her free time, she associated with a group of other young (less than a millenium old) people who were curious about the world outside the shield and wondered if there were things their leaders weren’t telling them. After the Legion arrived, she joined the cause of the Dusk Lily and became part of Vanthir’s network as soon as she became aware of them. Though her horticulture work had given her some proficiency with certain types of bladed implements, during the Insurrection, she discovered that she was more talented with magic than she had thought. When she came to Shal’Aran, she was overawed by Thalyssra. She was also rather disturbed and concerned by the Withered… especially by how many of them there seemed to be (so she’s even more of a conspiracy theorist now than she was before). She very quickly began to idolize Valtrois and Occuleth, though.

So… now that I’ve finally finished Suramar, what next?

Xe’ra’s Revisionist History of Illidan, then Argus, with my Demon Hunter — because the more Void Elves I see running around, the more I want to play one.

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Zandalari Balance Druids

Image from Wowhead
I am not sure whether to be jealous that they get a High Arakkoa-like form, or to be horrified by how it looks like a bizarre hybrid of High Arakkoa, Falcosaur, and Elekk…

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Allied Races & Alt Fatigue

The Allied Races are the hot new thing in Azeroth right now, so naturally Z & Cinder want to know what we’re doing with them.

Are you playing any of the new allied races?

I haven’t purchased Battle for Azeroth yet, so no — not yet.

I’ve still got quite a lot of Legion content that I want to do that I don’t want to get distracted from doing by leveling shiny new alts — and I’ve still got quite a lot to do just to fulfil the requirements to recruit the Allied Races and create Allied Race characters on the realms where I want to create them, too.

Of course I will be making some Highmountain Tauren: a Skyhorn Druid with green markings who will level from the ground up to earn the Heritage Armor; a Bloodtotem Warrior with red markings who might level from the ground up or might end up being the recipient of my level 110 Boost so that I can just play her in Zandalar already; and I plan to race-change my secondary Shaman from a Mulgore Tauren to a Rivermane Highmountain Tauren with blue markings.

I will create a Void Elf Mage, because I’ve been wanting to play an Alliance High Elf forever and this is probably as close as we’ll ever get to that. I intend to have my Void Elf become my Alliance main, but because she will level from the ground up to earn the Heritage Armor, it will be some time before she is able to fully displace Kaylynda.

As for the other Allied Races… maybe, maybe not.

Over the decade that I have played WoW, and the almost eight years that I have blogged about it, I have gone through several cycles of creating characters because I had a neat idea about an appearance-race-class-story combination, then not having time or desire to actually play those characters, and eventually pruning them when I looked at my roster and felt overwhelmed by the number of characters that I was not playing and didn’t have time to play. I call this phenomenon “alt fatigue”.

The Allied Races announcement at BlizzCon simultaneously filled me with excitement about playing Highmountain Tauren and a wave of alt fatigue at the idea of creating five other new characters just to continue having a “one of each race” collection of characters. That feeling of alt fatigue was intensified by the part of that initial announcement that said that the six Allied Races that had just barely been announced were merely the first, and there would be more Allied Races to come in the future.

I just don’t think I have it in me anymore to try to keep up with having “one of each race”. It’s time to be more choosy, and only create new characters if I’m really, truly excited about playing them. So maybe I’ll roll a Nightborne Mage… or maybe not. I’ve been saying that I’ll need to have the Elf Family Reunion in my character roster, but maybe I don’t really “need” that. Maybe I’ll roll a Zandalari Troll Elemental Shaman named for a Hawai’ian volcano… or maybe not. The chances of me rolling a Lightforged Draenei or a Dark Iron Dwarf are rather low. If the Vulpera get made into an Allied Race, I’ll probably roll one because they’re super cute. If Sethrak or Ogres get made into an Allied Race, probably not. And so on and so forth.

Z & Cinder also ask:

If you could choose the next allied race, what would it be?

Taunka.

They’ve already been an allied race of the Horde for years and years, but aside from a Taunka Shaman or two showing up in Cataclysm and the Taunka couple who are the questgivers for the Horde Garrison Stables, they’ve largely been ignored.

If Taunka were made into an Allied Race, though, I’d really like to see them get a new model for the women that gives the women the same bison-like facial structure as the men:

If Taunka were made into an Allied Race and the women continued to look like Mulgore Tauren, only taller, I might just roll a male Taunka character instead of a female one.

If the Taunka were made into an Allied Race for the Horde, then the most equivalent Northrend race for the Alliance would probably be the Frost Dwarves. The Alliance would more likely get Vrykul, though, given that folks have been pining for that ever since Wrath.

And after the Taunka, the Yaungol.
Of course, one would think that it would make the most sense for the Yaungol to go to the Horde with the rest of their racial cousins. If the devs decided to make up an excuse for the Yaungol to go Alliance because they wanted to give some other Pandarian race (such as the Saurok, perhaps) to the Horde, however, then I’d be cool with playing an Alliance Yaungol.

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the Allied Races are here and I am Not Ready!

(for best effect, imagine the post title said in the tone of voice that Arcanist Valtrois uses when she says “I am restored!” when you give her Ancient Mana — because that is how I am imagining it in my head)

I’ve only satisfied the unlock criteria for the Highmountain Tauren — and I don’t have a level 110 on the realm where I want to create them.

I’m about three-quarters of the way through the unlock criteria for the Nightborne, but I don’t have a level 110 on the realm where I want to create one.

I haven’t been to Argus, to unlock the Void Elves and Lightforged Draenei, at all, let alone having a level 110 on the realm(s) where I might create one.

And I still have so, so much to do in Legion content, most significantly leveling nine more classes and experiencing their Order Hall campaigns.

So for me, at least, pre-purchasing Battle for Azeroth can wait. Besides, that’ll give me some time to decide if I want those Collector’s Edition mounts enough to pay the extra money.

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in which Kaelinda is a Good Suramaritan

Over the past few weekends, I set myself to completing the 7.0 half of the Suramar campaign. With both Kamalia and Kaelinda, the point I’d stopped at was just before Ly’leth Lunastre’s instructions to meet with Vanthir. When I finally went to meet with Vanthir, and did the Waning Crescent chapter of the campaign, then I began to understand why Anne Stickney has been praising the storytelling in Suramar all expansion long. I hadn’t really felt like I could relate to Thalyssra and Valtrois — or even Occuleth, though I liked him better than the other two. But when I started to meet common folk Nightborne like Vanthir and Deline, then I started to be able to think of what a Nightborne character that I might create could be like.

Meanwhile, BTH recently decided to re-sub up to WoW and has been busily plowing through the Broken Shore and Argus campaigns. After having spent a lot of time corpse-running in the Midnight Court area of Suramar yesterday evening while working on the Statecraft chapter of the Suramar campaign, this evening, I enlisted BTH to help me with the quests in the first part of the Change of Seasons chapter that required me to return to that neighborhood. That made it much easier!

Now that I’ve finally completed Broken Isles Pathfinder, Part One, I think it’s time to go to the Broken Shore and do Broken Isles Pathfinder, Part Two before I continue on to the 7.1 half of the Suramar campaign.

As for Koralythria, my future Nightborne Mage… Not all Nightborne are over 10,000 years old, like Elisande, Thalyssra, Valtrois, and Occuleth. We know this because Nightborne have children — I love that there are so many Nightborne children in Suramar City (and that there are child models for the Zandalari Trolls in the datamining from the first Battle for Azeroth build) — which means that there are Nightborne of all ages. So she is relatively young, probably about the same age as Kaelinda — who is a young adult, as Blood Elves go, at a little over 100 years old. She lived in the southwestern half of the city and recieved help from Vanthir at the Waning Crescent, then joined Thalyssra at Shal’Aran. As a commoner, she does not have any glowy tattoos. I observed that only the elitest of the elites have those — not even nobles such as Ly’leth Lunastre or her friend Lady Aurore have the glowy tattoos. She’s probably an artisan of some kind — perhaps an apprentice or assistant to one of the merchants in the Evermoon Bazaar, or maybe one of the horticulturalists who tended the Glitterpools along the Grand Promenade. She’s a Mage, so she’s done some scholarship of magic, but that won’t become her main career until after the Insurrection.

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perhaps predictably, I am all a-squee that…

There are Highmountain Tauren in Thunder Bluff!

I’d heard that the thing in the place was visible from as far away as Thunder Bluff, so I went there with Kamalia to see if she could see it without having done any Antorus LFR.

The answer to that question was “no”; I could not discern any such ominous object on the horizon. As I was hovering near the central totem tower making sure that I really couldn’t see anything unusual in the distance, I spotted something much more interesting nearby.

Looking around the city, I found a couple more!

Then, of course, I had to investigate further. Would there be Nightborne in Silvermoon? Void Elves in Stormwind? Lightforged Draenei in the Exodar?

I looked around Silvermoon with Kaelinda — no tall, arrogant blue elves with upturned long ears. I looked around Stormwind with Kaylynda — no short, pouty blue elves with funny glowing hair. I looked around the Exodar with Kaprikka — no strange gray Draenei with golden markings.

I didn’t see any Void Elves or Lightforged Draenei around the Stormwind Embassy when I visited it with Kaylynda, but when I visited the Orgrimmar Embassy with Kamalia, I saw several Highmountain Tauren there, as well as a few in the Valley of Wisdom. I didn’t see any Nightborne around the Orgrimmar Embassy, however.

The Underpowered Death Knight can also see the Highmountain Tauren in Thunder Bluff and in Orgrimmar. So can level 60 Mama Kawneiha. So can a level 1 character on that realm.

But my level 33 Goblin Mage, who logged on to check out how the construction of the Embassy had affected the Bilgewater Cartel NPCs in the area, didn’t see any Highmountain Tauren.

From these data, my current hypothesis is that to see Allied Race NPCs around the Embassy and in the ethnically related capital city, one must have a) completed the requirements to unlock that Allied Race and b) a level 110 character on either that realm or its connected realm.

If this hypothesis is correct, then I should start seeing Nightborne at the Orgrimmar Embassy on Kamalia’s realm when Kaelinda finishes the Suramar Insurrection storyline. I should start seeing the Horde Allied Races on my Mage realm once Kaylynda reaches level 110. And I should start seeing the Alliance Allied Races on my Mage realm after a) I go do Argus with somebody, anybody, and b) Kaylynda reaches level 110.

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