All signs point to new Dracthyr classes coming soon

Do you want to play as a Dragon Warrior in World of Warcraft? I know I sure as heck want to play as a Dragon Warrior, and that opportunity — Dracthyr getting new playable classes, such as Warrior and Mage — might be getting here sooner than we thought, if certain recent developments are any indication.

Back when Warbands were first announced, keen-eyed players were quick to notice an official Blizzard picture showing a low level Dracthyr wearing leather armor — something that would have been impossible unless the race got access to a leather-wearing class and the ability to skip the Dracthyr Evoker introductory experience. At the time, Blizzard pointed out that this wasn’t meant to be taken as indication that Dracthyr were getting other classes. However, a similar thing happened months later, in an episode of Blizzard’s WoWCast: a Dracthyr Warrior can be spotted at 1:32 of the video — exactly at the moment when Associate Game Director Morgan Day is talking about “players having new ways to express themselves.” A clear hint, or just a coincidence?

But what really stoked this particular fire was the datamining by Wowhead of several new class animations added for Dracthyr. Behind the scenes, a lot of work has been put into making sure that the Dracthyr models are capable of performing class-specific animations for nearly every class in the game. The only exceptions seemed to be Monk and Demon Hunter, and while the latter is, in fact, an unlikely class for Dracthyr to get, Monks should be a viable option — albeit one that uses a lot of class-specific animations, so it’s understandable that they weren’t ready yet.

And then, Game Director Ion Hazzikostas finally talked openly about this during a recent group interview with content creators at Gamescom. He all but confirmed that, at the very least, Warriors and Mages will become options for Dracthyr during The War Within. In the same interview, he also said that certain classes like Druids are unlikely to be offered to other races at the moment, for lore and fantasy reasons — but he also added a “never say never” statement to cover all his bases. And yes, when looking at the current state of Azeroth and how the Dracthyr fit into this world, it’s hard to expect them to become Druids, Demon Hunters, Death Knights, Paladins, or Shamans, at least immediately — but everything else seems fair game. And what might also delight some players is that in that same interview, Ion talked about Dracthyr being able to fight in their Visage form, saying that “it would be cool to have it.”

So at this point, we can confidently say that it’s only a matter of time until Dracthyr are able to roll other classes, with Warriors and Mages leading the pack, but probably also joined by classes such as Hunter, Rogue, Priest, and perhaps Warlock and Monk — the classes that are already widely available to every race, and that don’t require too many special art assets or convoluted lore justifications.