The Queue: Where are my Gnomes?

Okay, fine, there are these new Allied Race whatsits in the game now. Sure. Fine. Whatever.

But none of them are Gnomes, so I really don’t see what the big deal is.

I have to admit that I feel like the only person who isn’t super hyped about Allied Races. They’re neat, but I’m just not that excited about the idea of playing an Elf with a new skin tone. Sure, all of the races have some really cool storylines behind them (particularly the Nightfallen), but enough cool story to make me drop everything and level a new character? Nah.

With just one exception which of course isn’t in the game yet): Zandalari Trolls. Have you seen their Druid forms? That’s really all you need to know about them. I’m sold. I’m not sure if I have the patience to level another Druid, but I’m thinking about it. And I might pick a new race for my Alliance Paladin — I have a Horde Paladin at max level but not an Alliance edition, though I have made some stumbling starts at leveling one. But that’s less about being excited about the new races and more about just wanting a Paladin on the Alliance side.

But my Gnomes are absolutely staying Gnomes. (And if they could be Druids, that Zandalari business would already be out of my mind.)

Once you get the achievements, they’re account-wide, so you can unlock the associated races on either faction. So get the achievement grind done on one character and then you can unlock Allied Races anywhere.

But despite the fact that you can unlock those achievements on either faction, each Allied Race is faction specific. Nightfallen are only Horde and Dark Iron Dwarves are only Alliance.

Yes, which is a bit of a nuisance. While you can easily grab the needed achievements on any character, you still need a 110 of the appropriate faction to run through the scenario and unlock the race. That makes it more challenging for players wanting to jump factions specifically for Allied Races: now they need a max-level character first. (However, when you do go through the scenario to unlock an Allied Race, you can make a new character from that race on any realm. So you don’t necessarily need a 110 on the realm you want to play on.)

Blizzard’s answer, of course, is to use your level boost. It’s a quick fix, though frustrating for anyone who did have plans for that boost. Long term, however, I suspect Blizzard will open up these requirements. It’s fine for now when we’re all waiting for the expansion and have time to kill, but as we advance in Battle for Azeroth and just want to start new alts or join friends on new realms, I think the requirement may start to feel onerous. I’ll be surprised if it’s still around by the end of BfA.

So far, they’ve addressed the issue by saying “we’ll tell you later.” No, really, that’s what customer service is telling people right now.

This is a particularly annoying with Battle for Azeroth, as you can play whole new races with the pre-order — but if you want a physical collector’s edition, it’s not even on sale yet. My own, pessimistic guess is that it’s going to be the same as always: if you want a physical collector’s edition and in-game bonuses for pre-ordering, you need to buy two copies of the game. I think if they had a better answer to that problem, they would have rolled it out with the pre-order hype. Instead, everyone with any interest in Allied Races is already buying digitally… so you’re stuck with the original problem, even if Blizzard does solve it later.

Everyone will be getting four new character slots, but they aren’t live yet, whether you’ve unlocked the new races or not. Blizzard has said they’ll show up in the next few days.

Yes! Just nab a WoW token on the auction house (the price varies based on demand) and, once it shows up in your mailbox, you have the option to redeem it for a month of game time or $15 in Battle.net balance (on North American realms). So you’d need to nab four tokens to have enough to buy the standard edition or five to get the deluxe. (Depending on local taxes. My digital deluxe edition set me back $75.77, so I would have needed six tokens and I do not have that kind of gold handy.)

Really, just play through Legion.

Each zone has a great story that makes it worth playing through in full. Play through all of Suramar (which you’ll have to do to unlock the Nightfallen anyway), especially, as it’s some of the best storytelling Blizzard has ever done. Depending on the Allied Races you want, you’ll have to play some of these zones from beginning to end, anyway, but they’re all worth doing. (And with the gear a 110 boost gets, you shouldn’t have any trouble tackling any Legion content.)

But beyond the game stories, each and spec has its own story. You’ll want to go through every quest in your class campaign, which you’ll find in your quest log under “<class name> Campaign.” If you can do Artifact quests — and I’m not sure if you can or if you just have your Artifacts already if you boost to 110 — do them, because each weapon you pick up has a story of its own.

And that’s all for today, everyone! Anne will be back here tomorrow to answer more of your questions, and I’ll see you next week!