The Queue: Ask an Alpha Tester

I can’t believe we made it through a full week of Queues since alpha launched, and I’m the first one to use this title. Just amazing.

This is The Queue, where you ask us questions and then we go find out the answers.

I kinda doubt we will, and after seeing them in the alpha I would lay a dozen Blizzard Watch bucks that they won’t make the cut for Allied races either.

Until BfA mixed it up with dinos and Drust, vast majority of forms were all representative of creatures that are beloved of Elune. Even Cheetah form got switched to Stag to make the quintet complete. While Kyrian certainly look like big fluffy owlpeople in the same way as moonkin, their lore paths are totally different. We’re not sure yet of the origins of the Kyrian per se, but in the world of unending mid-morning of Bastion it would be tough for mother moon to get much of a foothold.

The Kyrian are written in an intellectual middleground as well. They’re clearly sentient beings capable of some speech and communication, which would be different from all the other Druid forms. But as I was going through the quests there, their speech is somewhat simplistic to the extent that it would be difficult to make them a fully-fledged race — or kind of tedious to sit through. This being WoW, I wouldn’t exclude a curse or the like that will reveal itself toward the end of the quest line, and it would certainly be possible, but it seems like having them written in such a deliberate way would be really tedious to read after a while.

On the other hand, Trolls. So.

The Shadowlands alpha characters are kitted out in what look like mid-range blues, but we skipped the whole intro where we arrive and go through Oribos and all that. I just got plopped directly into Bastion, so it’s tough to gauge exactly where we are power-wise. My Hunter is at roughly 450 ilevel right now and the pre-rolled character with 75 ilevel in every slot didn’t feel too different as I played power-wise, though naturally I’m missing my beloved bear and these silly little fox-things aren’t cutting it. Also, where the heck did all these BUTTONS come from? Wild.

There aren’t any of the mechanics having to do with the Heart of Azeroth, at all. The starter gear included a 75 ilevel necklace, and I’m assuming the devs aren’t going to leave us hanging without a viable neck slot for too long. Some of the more vital abilities have been baked into the classes since, but most are going back into the vault. See also: Artifact abilities.

Surprising nobody, I still haven’t been able to upgrade my bow.

I’m literally just including this because, same. I also need to stop being so lazy and set up some tanking weakauras and timers, because I’m finding it a lot easier to quest at a crappy ilevel as Brewmaster, but man is that a lot of buttons and buffs to keep track of.