Alliance 'Draenei' are the latest race to join World of Warcraft

*ThumbBot* · 05-10-2006, 12:39 PM

A new Alliance race for World of Warcraft has been announced on Blizzard's official site and the lucky race is... the Draenei.

The new race will appear as part of WoW's latest expansion pack: The Burnning Crusade; putting an end to the months of debate over which race should be used.

According to WoW lore, the Draenei are descendents of the demonic Eredar race with a messianic hatred of all things orc, and form one of the three groups of inhabitants on Draenor (the place where most of the Burning Crusade action takes place) together with ogres and orcs.

According to other reports, along with trailers of other areas and new mountable beasts, the next big dungeon in the game will all be on show at E3.

Posted by Ben Andac

Associated Companies
- Blizzard Entertainment

DanJW · 05-10-2006, 06:18 PM

Worst. the Dranei are among the most boring and unremarkable of Warcraft races. Compared to the Blood Elves: total suck.

Trithemius · 05-10-2006, 07:10 PM

Quote:

DanJW:

Worst. the Dranei are among the most boring and unremarkable of Warcraft races. Compared to the Blood Elves: total suck.

Aren't they basically Nephilim + Smurfs or something? Not even the creepy-ass stealthy dudes from WC3:FT. Ripped off.

Twilo · 05-11-2006, 12:19 AM

I'm pretty satisfied with these guys, though I would have prefered it if they were a bit more monstery.
There's a nice symmetry there with the blood elves, they're a demon-ish race that's taken to holy magic and joined the alliance, while the blood elves are a good-ish race that's taken to demonic magic and gone with the horde.
What I really want to know is what their /dance looks like.

Oath · 05-11-2006, 04:56 AM

There aren't even any female models of them in the game yet, right?

Also, you've got a minor spelling error in the second paragraph, Ben.

Twilo · 05-11-2006, 05:46 AM

In the game right now? They're certainly in some of those Burning Crusade screenshots.
As for the game as it is sans expansion, the draenei that you can see around the place (swamp of sorrows and blasted lands) are pretty far removed from the new ones in the expansion. From the looks of things, the new male model is based on the Tauren male, and the female one on the night elf female (lazyyyyy).

Oath · 05-11-2006, 05:55 AM

Quote:

Twilo:

In the game right now? They're certainly in some of those Burning Crusade screenshots.
As for the game as it is sans expansion, the draenei that you can see around the place (swamp of sorrows and blasted lands) are pretty far removed from the new ones in the expansion. From the looks of things, the new male model is based on the Tauren male, and the female one on the night elf female (lazyyyyy).

Oh, right. Didn't bother clicking the link, figuring I already knew what they looked like. But yeah, that's lazy, even though they look pretty cool.

DanJW · 05-11-2006, 05:03 PM

Yeah, apparently they have retconned the previous dranei to be "genetic offshoots" caused by magical corruption. The new look does nothing to interest me further.

Twilo · 05-12-2006, 12:42 AM

Well it's not a total retcon, I remember them saying for a while now that the draenei used to be more human-like, though I also remember them saying that they were native to Outland (which they aren't, I guess).
Also, they seem to have a spaceship or something. WTF?

DanJW · 05-12-2006, 07:16 AM

I'm hoping the "ship" wil be more of a spelljammer type thing; a zepelin or something enchanted to fly through the twisting nether. All this space stuff gets me down - when a fantasy world starts introducing sci-fi flavour, it almost always spells the death of it. Before you know, magic is revealed to be psionics by another name, demons are retconned into aliens and the whole thing loses it's charm.

Oh, the WoW forums are also undergoing a battle (although when are they not) based around the changes to the Sargeras story that these new dranei/eredar have brought with them. The old story was that Sargaras defeated the Eredar demons while still good, but contact with them aided his fall. Now, it seems that the Eredar were just another mortal race until the already-evil Sargaras turned up and demonified them. Sloppy lore-keping eh? I have a number of problems with this whole episode, which I may list later.