My Expansion Theories

In a recent post, Mark Jacobs alludes heavily to a "big" announcement at the end of this month. Many rumors are swirling around regarding this pronouncement, and my guild has been discussing this ingame and on our forums. From these conversations, these are my theories.

Dwarf and Greenskin Melee DPS Careers: 

This is the most probable announcement, and it is also likely the easiest to implement, from Mythic's viewpoint. After all, they've probably already done most of the work involved, since the careers were cut early on. They have had a good bit of time to tweak and iterate these careers. And with the successful re-launch of the Blackguard and Knight of the Blazing Sun, anticipation is high regarding the last two careers. The Choppa and Slayer are favored to be the new careers. The Hammerer is widely rumored to be out, and a Euro CSR has stated that the Hammerer is a "relic of beta". This statement was in regards to some players being able to access the Hammerer career on the PTS for a short time. The CSR went on to state that this was a bug, and the Hammerer was not going to be made available.  As far as implementation goes, Choppa and Slayer npcs, with complete combat animations are currently ingame, and so all Mythic would really have to do is flesh out the itemization and mechanics for the careers. I am totally going to roll one, or both careers when they hit release.

New Races:

My money is on Skaven for Destruction and Lizardmen for Order. Many of my guildies call for a Vampire Counts/Bretonnian pairing. I disagree based on several factors. First, I feel that both Order and Destruction players will have problems with the races. I can already see Destruction not wanting "emo vampires" and Order complaining about "lame knights". The KotBS was criticized for not looking as cool as other careers, due to the use of feathers and codpieces in their design. In addition, Vampire Counts in particular do not usually directly involve themselves in events. Instead, Vampires usually stay behind the scenes and manipulate events from the shadows. Also, Vampires are extremely powerful beings, with a slow rate of population growth. It would be very difficult to implement them as even a player race, since lore-wise even fledgling vampires are significantly stronger than even seasoned warriors. The balancing would be tricky. Bretonnians are not as difficult to implement lore-wise, but they are pretty similar to the Empire,  at least on a basic aesthetic level. Which touches on why Skaven/Lizardmen make more sense.

Skaven and Lizardmen are aesthetically very different from all the other races. If you recall, four out of six races are mirrors of each other visually. Empire and Chaos are both humans, and High Elves and Dark Elves are technically the same race. These races are differentiated mainly by the appearance of their gear and the overall color scheme of their cultures. Were you to remove all the gear from a Chosen and a KotBS, and stand them side by side, they would be very similar in appearance. The distinctive profiles of the careers are created mainly by the gear they wear and in the Zealots' case, the posture.

Whereas Skaven and the Lizardmen would be immediately recognizable and obviously different from all the other races, in the same way that Dwarfs and Greenskins  are. Skaven are already ingame, and so again, they would only need some touchup to animations and gear. Lizardmen would need to be designed from scratch, of course

The main problem I see with the Skaven/Lizardmen pairing would be that both races don't really mesh seamlessly with the existing Cities. I mean, it's kind of hard to imagine Lizardmen casually walking through the streets of Altdorf! The Skaven would be easier to integrate into the Inevitable City, but I think the best thing to do would be to give them their own capitals. Yes, Skavenblight and Itza/Tlaxtlan!(?)

And so, to properly introduce these new races and their cities, we need...an EXPANSION!

Announcing a new expansion is listed as number one in Snafzg's post, "Mythic's Top Ten Priorities for Warhammer Online in 2009". I heartily agree with this as it gives us rabid gamers something to look forward to and theoryhammer over. Don't underestimate the anticipation that forms around MMO expansions, and this sort of buzz is what got many of us playing WAR. A major feature of course would be the new races and capitals. I don't think we need another 10 Ranks though, I'd like to see WAR move away from the whole deal of adding 10 levels every expansion. Instead, I'd like horizontal expansion. New quests, new weapons, new items, while still keeping the highest level "new" items on a similar level as existing endgame items. I don't want expansions to invalidate previous content. I would much prefer that the items look different and "new", while being equally, NOT MORE, effective than current gear.

So say a weapon from the Lost Vale does 78 dps with +67 Strength/Wounds, while a similar weapon from the Lustian dungeon have identical stats, but a very different look. Look to WoW for proof of this lesson, the expansions are great, but they basically trivialize old content, and new items are leaps and bounds better than existing content, so everyone blows through to level cap, grinds out the uber gear, and everyone looks exactly the same again...

I'd like the option to have my own look, while still maintaining effectiveness. For example, I'd like to have one of my characters have a savage/Lustrian based look, with obsidian weapons and armor from a new dungeon,  while another character can have the Darkpromise set, but perform at the same level as the first guy with the new gear.

As always these are just theories and predictions, but it would be so cool to be right on at least one point. That way, when they announce Skaven and Lizardmen, I can say...Called it! 

What do you want the big announcement to be about?