One of the biggest changes coming in World of Warcraft’s next expansion, The War Within, is the addition of more race-class combinations for the game’s newest race, the Dracthyr.
The change that will allow Dracthyr to have access to more races was confirmed by WoW game director Ion Hazzikostas in an interview with content creator MrGM. And in a recent post on the WoW subreddit, players are already hypothesizing which new Dracthyr classes we could see in The War Within.
WoW fans particularly pointed toward classes like Warriors and Mages as being ones they’re most excited for, with one player commenting that they couldn’t wait to dive into the class fantasy of a “blue Dracthyr Arcane Mage” and another sharing a prospective plate transmog set they’d wear on their Dracthyr Warrior.
At the start of Dragonflight, Blizzard had a hard and fast rule in place that Dracthyr could only be Evokers and Evokers could only be Dracthyr. The race-class lock was the first of its kind for WoW. Although some classes in the past (such as Demon Hunter) were limited to a handful of races for lore reasons, the Dracthyr-Evoker relationship was unique in that it only had one option available in both the race and class departments.
There is no confirmation at this time as to what classes Dracthyr will be able to play, but we’re willing to bet that Warrior, Hunter, Priest, Rogue, Mage, Warlock, Monk, and Death Knight will be in the lineup as all of those classes are available to every other race in the game.
Another big change coming to the Dracthyr race in The War Within will be the ability to use your Visage form in combat. One of the biggest turnoffs for prospective Dracthyr players in Dragonflight was the restriction that you’d have to be in dragon form whenever you were in combat. This restriction led to many players searching for workarounds, including using the Atomic Recalibrator toy to temporarily change their race.
Dracthyr visages typically look a bit like Blood Elves, considering they stand slightly slanted and are slender in nature. Some players are still having reservations about this change, with one commenter on Reddit fearing that they’ll just be a “glorified Blood Elf,” and another worried that Dracthyr will “functionally be Blood Elves with more hairstyles.”
Regardless, we expect the overall population of the Dracthyr race to increase when The War Within goes live later this year. The change to make Dracthyr more accessible will occur slightly before the launch of the expansion, likely during its pre-patch phase.
