High Elves: Endgame

With the advent of the info-chocked April newsletter, a burning question expected to be answered unanswered: so what’s the last High Elf class, the final class of the game?

“Silence!” sayeth Mythic, “Do not doubt! Pig hats!”

Seeing as how we’re not getting a lot of help from them until the May newsletter, and since thoughtful speculation is a pleasant way to pass an afternoon — unless you’re raping and pillaging your way through GTA IV — we don’t mind if we do!

We’ll start with the general consensus: many people on forums and web sites have long assumed that the melee-and-pet White Lion class would take this last spot, to the point where it’s being stated as a presumptive fact. In Warhammer, White Lions are expert axe wielders who have proven their dominance over nature — most specifically, the defeat of a dreaded white lion. Think of skinnier Paul Bunyans with a smaller Babe the Blue Ox fighting loyally at their side.

The evidence for this being the last HE class is fairly substantial, and not just for the loud noise that people make over the possibility. A WHA forum poster who attended the NY Comic Con dug through the Tome of Knowledge’s High Elf section and reportedly saw “White Lion” listed along with the other HE classes. A huge convention poster that Mythic uses, which appears to show off a High Elf warrior and his beastly companion, is also mentioned quite a bit.

And if that’s not enough… even the official Warhammer site went “oopsie!” and let us peek behind the curtain in the Making of the WAR Cinematic Trailer (read the section called “Step Two: Storyboards”).

We also know that Mythic has confirmed that the final HE class will have a pet — whichever class that might be. Some have complained that the White Lions actually kill/skin/wear the lions from which they derive their name, but others have coughed up proof that the Warhammer tabletop game supports the class mastering lions as pets.

So if this all seems like a foregone conclusion, why hasn’t Mythic just come out and announced the class already, even if they’re not prepared to showcase it? Could it be they’re just trying to string us along on the last little bits of unreleased new info before the game launches? Possibly, but I’ll once again point to WoW and that game’s history. If any of you recall, the final class added to the beta in WoW was the much-anticipated Hunter, which with the taming and use of dozens of types of beasts in the game, made it one of the more complicated classes to prepare.

The other possibility, although slim, is that Mythic is preparing to do the mother of all misdirections by announcing a different class entirely. It would certainly make me laugh, since people who’ve lived and died on the assumptions as fact will find themselves floundering for a way to say “I knew it wasn’t true all along.” The problem here is what other class could it be, particularly if it involves a pet? I haven’t found any good research for this, but we do know that Mythic has created entirely new classes from scratch — with GW’s help — that don’t exist in the tabletop version (see Disciple of Khaine).

Any pet class adds a new layer of complication on top of what devs normally have to handle when it comes to a character’s role. The AI of a pet has to be good, able to navigate the landscape alongside running, jumping, touched-in-the-head players who sometimes think that cliff diving is a national pastime. The pet has to be carefully balanced to provide the right amount of damage and skills as to be beneficial, but not overpowered. Perhaps there’s even another layer of pet customization to consider. All of this takes time, and it’s not hard to believe that whatever pet class Mythic is constructing, they might need some extra room to hash it out.

I guess we’ll see in a little less than a month, and until then feel free to pipe up in the comments section: are there any viable alternatives to White Lions as a final class that you can think of?