wow Dracthyr Look-Alike Spotted in Vanilla WoW Art Book

[Starym 3,800]

 

We have a very Dracthyr-looking piece of concept art from way back pre-Vanilla, as xperio28 spotted a bulkier version of the new race coming in Dragonflight in the Art of World of Warcraft book!

There's been a lot of talk about the look of the Dracthyr, mostly focusing on their size and bulkiness, and while the art below almost certainly isn't of this specific race, as it was made pre-Vanilla WoW, it's looking very similar:

Source: xperio28.

The text is very hard to make out, but enigmapenguin and YendorWons in the thread may have figured it out, at least partially:

Greater whelp grown to man size will hunt other dragon whelps then larger dragons feed on

The whole "feed on" aspect is particularly interesting, as there's plenty of speculation going around on whether or not Galakrond, the OG dragon-eater will have something to do with Dragonflight's story (especially with the potential for the Infinite dragonflight's involvement).

We've have plenty of bipedal dragon-like creatures in WoW over the years so the connection isn't direct, but it is interesting to see how far back the idea of playable-looking dragon race goes, especially since we know the original plan was to have many more playable races, including naga.

[Borgoff33 101]

so now they are stealing from a time when they had a good development team... sad days indeed

[Arcling 898]

Still looks somewhat bulkier than Dracthyr. It could have been a Drakonid concept.

Edited May 17, 2022 by Arcling

[Omegacron 5]

2 hours ago, Borgoff33 said:

so now they are stealing from a time when they had a good development team... sad days indeed

Oh, get off it already.

[Enteg 2]

8 hours ago, Arcling said:

Still looks somewhat bulkier than Dracthyr. It could have been a Drakonid concept.

They announced since ~2 days after the reveal that they would have a bulkier option but they weren't finished so the thinner ones were shown. 

[Borgoff33 101]

18 hours ago, Omegacron said:

Oh, get off it already.

Facts dont care about feelings

[SpilledStars 71]

2 hours ago, Borgoff33 said:

Facts dont care about feelings

apparently, you don't know what facts are.   

If you "steal" from enough solid sources, including your own company's previous work, it's called research.

If you don't like the current stuff I can see it, I can sympathize, empathize, I can even believe you and believe in you. 

BUT

then complaining when they use any available materials or methods to fix it and make boo boo go away?

Like it's somehow both bad to be as-is AND bad to be anything else?

wtaf. "oh i cant accept this band-aid on my ouchie, it's way too Brand Name"

your hipster "i was cool back then" has lost its enchantment, kid.   Go run off to the PTR and whine at them directly in some fashion that will get some results.   It doesn't make you too-cool-for-your-epic-shirt out here.  It just makes you cheap-shotting.  

= = =

I for one welcome our new "hey look around in the old databases and cabinets and see if there's some cool stuff here" overlords.

flight as acrobatics?  wannnnnnt.

[Borgoff33 101]

35 minutes ago, SpilledStars said:

apparently, you don't know what facts are.   

If you "steal" from enough solid sources, including your own company's previous work, it's called research.

If you don't like the current stuff I can see it, I can sympathize, empathize, I can even believe you and believe in you. 

BUT

then complaining when they use any available materials or methods to fix it and make boo boo go away?

Like it's somehow both bad to be as-is AND bad to be anything else?

wtaf. "oh i cant accept this band-aid on my ouchie, it's way too Brand Name"

your hipster "i was cool back then" has lost its enchantment, kid.   Go run off to the PTR and whine at them directly in some fashion that will get some results.   It doesn't make you too-cool-for-your-epic-shirt out here.  It just makes you cheap-shotting.  

= = =

I for one welcome our new "hey look around in the old databases and cabinets and see if there's some cool stuff here" overlords.

flight as acrobatics?  wannnnnnt.

one question.

is your head up your *filtered* for the warmth?

[Veela 2]

On 5/17/2022 at 3:52 PM, Borgoff33 said:

so now they are stealing from a time when they had a good development team... sad days indeed

so they're "stealing" from a development team that demeaned women, and caused the death of a employee...
yeah glad times have changed

[Veela 2]

It's like they're borrowing from old warcraft lore and not Dreamwork's movies

[Dicebar 23]

22 minutes ago, Veela said:

so they're "stealing" from a development team that demeaned women, and caused the death of a employee...
yeah glad times have changed

Throwing the baby out with the bathwater, are we?

[Veela 2]

8 hours ago, Dicebar said:

Throwing the baby out with the bathwater, are we?

ish, I think it's important to recognize the harsh environment they created for allot of their employees back in those days, and yet people still hold "old blizzard" up on this pedestal.
They didn't know how to tell a story back then in game, granted some would say it's not any better now.

to say they made a better wow back than, is like saying chicken scratch is better than handwriting.
the lawsuit made something pretty clear to me at least: they stifled any creativity they had in that office by making it a miserable place to work.

Saying things like that in this community is highlighting the remnants of and sourness of the elitist wow mindset, and classic wow fanboy.
If people think that wow retail sucks, don't play it. you have wow classic - classic TBC, and soon classic WoTLK.
to me saying they had "better devs" back then, considering Blizzard has an extremally long turnaround time on most of their employees, are saying these "better dev's" are those that got fired due to the connections and bad PR as the result of the lawsuit, outside of the former founders, and the ones that left to form there own companies...
to be honest the ones that left probably wouldn't have left if it weren't for that toxic work environment, something I feel the passed along pretty well in their games community.

[Andser 34]

3 hours ago, Veela said:

ish, I think it's important to recognize the harsh environment they created for allot of their employees back in those days, and yet people still hold "old blizzard" up on this pedestal.
They didn't know how to tell a story back then in game, granted some would say it's not any better now.

to say they made a better wow back than, is like saying chicken scratch is better than handwriting.
the lawsuit made something pretty clear to me at least: they stifled any creativity they had in that office by making it a miserable place to work.

Saying things like that in this community is highlighting the remnants of and sourness of the elitist wow mindset, and classic wow fanboy.
If people think that wow retail sucks, don't play it. you have wow classic - classic TBC, and soon classic WoTLK.
to me saying they had "better devs" back then, considering Blizzard has an extremally long turnaround time on most of their employees, are saying these "better dev's" are those that got fired due to the connections and bad PR as the result of the lawsuit, outside of the former founders, and the ones that left to form there own companies...
to be honest the ones that left probably wouldn't have left if it weren't for that toxic work environment, something I feel the passed along pretty well in their games community.

Its still old blizzard that people loved. If they wanted to give new products to a new target audience they should have split at some point and made a different product.

[Veela 2]

6 hours ago, Andser said:

Its still old blizzard that people loved. If they wanted to give new products to a new target audience they should have split at some point and made a different product.

I fail to see the logic here, a game company has to keep making new games, and bringing in a "new target audience" that's how the industry works.
The simple truth right now is the majority of gamers now adays like faster action-paced games, I've tried introducing WoW to friends who've never played before and they say it's to slow, boring, those who liked it got lost in the story since after the tutorial you're flooded with quests to every single expansion.

Look at Final Fantasy who switched from turn-based combat to action based, they're wanting to do the same to Dragon Quest.

I think what's got people more upset is how Bobby Kotick has ran the reputation of the games into the ground, with a motto of "everything we make has to be a yearly multi-million dollar franchise."

A company can only be as good as the leaders, and with Activision Blizzard, they had a Warcraft leader who didn't play warcraft, a upper management team more concerned with drinking and groping female employees, and a CEO who just wanted something out every single year regardless of quality.

I hope this merger goes through with Microsoft, so we can see the return of a devolvement leadership who cares about the quality not meeting the "game a year" target

[SpilledStars 71]

If you have to consider all things old from the franchise to be forever tainted and 100% evil before such-and-such-time-when-There-Was-Evil-present...

that's not only "throw the baby out with the bath", that's "why are you still here, it's obviously perma irredeemable, CAST IT INTO THE MAW."

Look, I wouldn't want one of their deservedly-fired to get too close to me at a convention or something.

But I also don't want them to get away with murdering the game.

Yeah
ok
Let the company as it exists now do their freakin' Maw dailies to please you.   They'll manage to please some of us.  Everyone they don't please after all can stop harrassing forums that are for the community of people who still want to play.
 

[SpilledStars 71]

7 hours ago, Andser said:

Its still old blizzard that people loved. If they wanted to give new products to a new target audience they should have split at some point and made a different product.

They seemed to recognize that Classic and modern released WoW were sufficiently different products that they "split" and re-released Classic.

afaict, that's gone pretty well for them.

[SpilledStars 71]

To get back to the art actually posted -  consider the in game dragonids stomping around the Wetlands.   They're a bit more heavy in the tail and maybe have more the stance of a squirrel who can wield weapons.  

I find myself wondering if this art inspired the stance of the Worgen, because the body positioning of the wolfen form is much more like this, just without the small wings.

 

[Veela 2]

2 hours ago, SpilledStars said:

If you have to consider all things old from the franchise to be forever tainted and 100% evil before such-and-such-time-when-There-Was-Evil-present...

that's not only "throw the baby out with the bath", that's "why are you still here, it's obviously perma irredeemable, CAST IT INTO THE MAW."

Look, I wouldn't want one of their deservedly-fired to get too close to me at a convention or something.

But I also don't want them to get away with murdering the game.

Yeah
ok
Let the company as it exists now do their freakin' Maw dailies to please you.   They'll manage to please some of us.  Everyone they don't please after all can stop harrassing forums that are for the community of people who still want to play.
 

thank you for putting it so eloquently.
"that's not only "throw the baby out with the bath", that's "why are you still here, it's obviously perma irredeemable, CAST IT INTO THE MAW.""
should be something said to the first post, I've kind of gotten sick of looking for news of an expansion, I've been waiting for to find everything flooded by those kind of comments.
 

 

1 hour ago, SpilledStars said:

To get back to the art actually posted -  consider the in game dragonids stomping around the Wetlands.   They're a bit more heavy in the tail and maybe have more the stance of a squirrel who can wield weapons.  

I find myself wondering if this art inspired the stance of the Worgen, because the body positioning of the wolfen form is much more like this, just without the small wings.

 

I actually pointed this out in another post trying to compare it to HTTYD
they're in:
The caverns of time, Shadowmoon Valley, Wyrmrest Temple, and Blackrock.
And it makes sense if they have the same body structure since they can reuse the rigs for both Worgen, Draenei and Tauren

Edited May 19, 2022 by Veela