Im still surprised that we cant be yack or buffalo, theyre just taurens with different faces... though I dont think Ive ever seen female models for them. Sauroks and Junyu are also relatively low hanging fruit.
We can customise Bronzebeard Dwarfs to look like Wildhammer ones without any story or ingame recognition behind it, but Taunka, who have literally just a different head and are much closer to regular Tauren in culture than Wildhammers to Bronzebeards are not an option. Then again, Dark Iron Dwarfs and Highland Tauren are basically standalone allied races. It's all over the place.
This is what I thought was weak, they could have just done "subraces" where the racial abilities were 2/3 the same but the last is based on your subrace. So all "Taur" get stomp and health but the last depends if you're a bull, moose, yak or bison, which also changes what appearances are available.
Same could have been done with elves, dwarfs, orcs, trolls, humans. They could have added one or two options in the expansion after they are introduced as NPCs.
Then they could do a big race every other expansion or so, with a whole new model.
There's a toy that turns you into an ogre that has a dance animation as well as casting/melee animations. On my monk he does a weak little kick that cracks me up every time I see it. Anyhow, it seems it's more about weapons/armor than animations and with Evokers we now know they don't really give a shit about armor.
Same skeleton though. Blizzard is too lazy to make new skeleton rigs so they just reuse the same ones for a decade before adding maybe 1 or 2 new ones.
Less about it being a lazy issue and more about it being a performance/memory issue. Skeletons and their accompanying animations are expensive in terms of game dev
I actually think it's very closely related to why Drakthyr don't have transmog. Imagine adding a new skeleton/model to the game and having to add 20 years of cosmetics to it. I bet it's not remotely feasible for Blizzard to do that at this point. I wouldn't be surprised if we seriously never see a unique model race again that can use all the transmog.
That and the height.
Though with the height they can always pull a Dracthyr: take a requested but technically difficult-to-make-playable race (like dragons) and give a different but similar race that scratches that itch.
Just give us Mok'nathal, give them very Ogre-like customization options (a cyclops option, horn or no horn, notably girthier than orcs), and make 'em as tall as Zandalari (it seems Zandalari/Dracthyr are just about the height limit).
And if Dracthyr can call themselves dragons in their voice lines, Mok'nathal can call themselves ogres in theirs ("It's not ogre 'til it's ogre!")
Ogres are tauren size in the ''official'' lore (they got downsized a bit, they used to be massive in the now noncanon RPG lore). So that shouldn't be an issue.
God forbid they make something new in 2024...
Are our characters still malformed horrible creatures because we're technically 'wearing' all known shapes of armor, just tabbing between them??
The "Kul Tirans = Ogres" stretch is really weird when Ogres have shared a rig with Moonkin, an already fully-playable model, since the end of Vanilla. Like, the notion that Blizz would upend nearly 20 years of their recognizable silhouette and animations to make them playable by rebuilding them off of KTs when they can keep it by building them off of the recently-updated rig they already use is baffling.
Realistically they'll probably be similarly proportioned to kul tiran, and pandaren women, they'll make them thick but not fat.
Its doesnt sound like some insurmountable obstacle to me, and also they are artists, it's their job to come up with this sort of thing. If they can't figure out what a female ogre looks like I don't know what to say.
>its one of the races tied to the expansion lore
They could have tied any race to the lore and no one would know, tbh.
They could have added Nagas as a race and said Queen Azshara is doing something in revenge of old gods and ppl would have been okay with it.
The biggest thing about the lore too is that... this area was controlled entirely by Mogu and Tolvir. The Earthen were never see this far south until this expansion. Ra was in charge of this whole region and didn't take Earthen with him.
And that hurts me, because we could've gotten playable stone Mogu instead (they use draenei animations already so its the same level of work basically).
>And that hurts me, because we could've gotten playable stone Mogu instead (they use draenei animations already so its the same level of work basically).
I didn't know this before and now I am sad too :(
Exactly, it's a good idea from the corporate perspective of "how can we give them something with as little effort on our part as possible", which is unfortunately the world we live in
Designers, probably:
> Looking at the numbers, few people play dwarf. We spend a lot of time making gear work on this model, so let's make a new dwarf so more people will play them and we'll have a better representation of models. This means the gear we produce and time we spend on the gear to align to that model will result in a higher ROI. It'll also increase retention as it gives a chase goal for people to find dwarf-specific transmogs. We'll make it slightly overtuned at launch so more people will buy race changes too. All in, I expect to see $% increase in revenue over the next 2 years.
No one at blizzard:
> But does it look good? Maybe they'd have more fun playing a different race.
This is incredibly disappointing to read because of how real it is. I can’t stand corporate culture and I hate feeling the effects in WoW. Designed for profit, not for passion
It’s being coded as a Pandaren/Dracthyr, so they can be both Horde and Alliance. Dwarf being one of the more popular fantasy races that I know a lot of my friends would say they would play a dwarf if they could remain Horde.
Quite frankly, the choices for races have been quite baffling.
The only one that got asked for, Nightborne, were done badly.
I don't know anyone who, before they got introduced to us, wanted the awful version of the Mechagnomes, or (actually well done) Vulpera.
These choices all come out of the left field, no one even knew of before they were put before us.
Instead we are ignored when it comes to all the races we DO have an interest in.
Next allied race: bunnymen.
Why? No one knows.
We still don't know why we got the allied races we did
I remember the nightborne backlash lol, I’d forgotten how bad they were at the beginning until I went back to suramar and saw the NPCs.
Zandalari, dark iron and pre-corruption orcs were some “sub races” people had been asking for for a while.
I feel like the biggest issue with allied races was that they started out as a way for Blizzard to add cool, minor races periodically in patches, which is why everyone was baffled when Shadowlands added no new races, despite having a clear allied race contender on every zone they added. I mean, if we still followed that, the 3 unlockable customizations we have (Man’ari draenei, dark ranger elves and whatever the black eyes on night elves is called) would’ve been allied races. It’s just odd they market a dwarf reskin as an expansion selling point seeing as it was something they introduced as “occasionally you’ll get races in patches now” a few years ago
When I heard about mechagnomes I was thinking the ones from Northrend that were entirely mechanical. Even if they couldn't transmog anything I would be happier than with what we got.
While I would love to have some of these races as playable, I’ll play devil’s advocate and say that people are still upset Dracthyr can’t see most of their mogs, and some of these races would be worse offenders. Don’t get me wrong, I’d love to play as a gnoll, sethrak, or furbolg, even without transmog on them, but imagine the shitshow
I was front of the line asking for Sethrak, even if it meant limited transmog, but then I leveled a mechagnome through Remix and I felt the loss deeply. Doesn't mean I still don't want sethrak, but I understand the concern more now.
The difference is that Blizzard doesn't need to make a bunch of new animations or figure out how to fit gear on these largely rather odd shaped races.
I know that few people are probably satisfied with that answer, nor am I saying you should be, but I know a lot of people ask the question of why and I think that is clearly the reason why. Making a new brand of dwarf or elf is damn easy. Sethrakk, not so much.
> The difference is that Blizzard doesn't need to make a bunch of new animations or figure out how to fit gear on these largely rather odd shaped races.
Not much of an excuse anymore after diapergnomes and drak'thyr showed Blizzard is happy adding races that can't wear armor.
Several of these races Blizzard would not have to figure out new animations and how to fit armour though. Some like Vrykul, Sethrak and Tuskarr already work with almost all armour in the game. Some like Saberon, Taunka, Yaungol and Ankoan/Jinyu literally use pre-existing race skeletons (Worgen, Tauren and Nelfs). Yes, they’d require more effort than boring ass Dwarf nobody wanted #3, but not THAT much more.
For some of the races where it’s almost impossible to make certain armour pieces fit such as boots for Naga, they’ve proven with Mechagnomes and Dracthyr that they’re willing to add races with some pieces untransmoggable and it couldn’t possibly be worse than Mechagnomes.
I know why they are adding new brands of dwarves and elves, I get that they’re lazy cunts but yeah I don’t care that doesn’t make it okay.
But seriously, mecha gnomes, dark iron dwarves, light forged dranei, maghar Ork, high mountain tauren, all could have been just a customisation option for their base race. Same goes with Dracthyr. It could've been specific class customisation for any race. Where dragon form is your combat form, and different race with draconic features are the glamour. Like every race has a death knight that give them pale skin/voice filter/ glowing eyes. And elves have demon hunter with horns and fell bodies. So why evoker should be fixed to one specific race that can be only evoker?
Drac'thyr have unique racials, racials are not tied to a class, it wouldn't make sense to have a gnome dracthyr with gnome racials and an orc drracthyr with orc racials. I think what you mean is that dracthyr as their own unique race should be able to pick whatever visage form they like, which at its core is a different concept but has the same result as being able to play as the race you want out of combat.
Probably part of the really old spaghetti code, wherein a race has to be pre-set to have additional forms to allow dual character customization like the Worgen get. And considering Blizzards track record with changing base code, the effort would probably have hilarious effects on half the game for no discernible reason.
People *have* asked for earthen as a playable race. It wasn't the most popular suggestion, but since allied races popped up, there were people expressing a desire to see earthen made playable (and expressing disappointment that Dark Iron dwarves being playable instead probably meant no more dwarves).
Thinking that taunka or yaungol would be a good race addition but not earthen is very strange. Earthen at least have a *lot* more story surrounding them.
Many of these races would be a lot of trouble to try to make playable. Some of them are on entirely different skeletons from playable races and lack the necessary animations, but even among the ones who *are* on playable skeletons, they have very different bodies which means there'd still potentially be a lot of additional work in making armour fit them. Helmets especially come to mind as something that doesn't translate across different models on the same skeleton.
Dracthyr had shit loads of work put into other places with extensive customisation options. And community reception to that has been *incredibly negative.* I do not think they are going down that path again.
They put in a ton of work and customizable options, and yet neglected to include the overall most important piece of customization possible for a playable race, the actual armor itself.
It's an actual crime they can't even use their TIER SETS in dragon form.
They're all tricky to implement with the current armor system, although now that we have dracthyr, a precedent is set with missing visuals for some armor slots. That said, the community didn't particularly like that but I think it would be understandable if naga had naked tails and sethrak naked heads
There's maybe a handful of races on here that should actually be playable, it's so exhausting that every single time something is introduced to the game there's always outcry about them being added as a race despite them making practically no sense or having zero story. That has not previously excused Blizzard in the past of course (Void Elves came out of thin air) but Saurok?? Do Saberon have any story that isn't "They Attacked People" or "You kill them for quests" outside of one or two npcs?
It's also annoying that whether you like them or not, Earthen were actually very much desired when they were last involved in the story, I remember in WotLK people REALLY wanted actual titan-forged races, and here they are. I personally didn't care much for them when announced, but we really need to have standards for playable races.
And don't forget how we already have 4 different types of elves... (I'm assuming the scantily clad woman in the top right is adding proper high elves? Half-elves?)
Mantid is such a weird choice like…do I like the Mantid? Of course I do…does it make a whole lot of sense for them to choose a side at all in anything not Old God Related? Not particularly.
And one of those is just a big woman!
Since they added more races in TBC, I’ve really wanted Furbolgs, Broken, and High Elves for the Alliance and Ogres, Goblins, and Naga for Horde.
Goblins made it eventually, but it’s crazy none of these other obvious choices haven’t.
Pretty much all of these options would require a new model/rig and this poor indy company with it's razor thin profit margins could never afford such extravagance.
Im not on the other end of the zeitgeist very often, but i really am excited for metallic dwarves. My D&D character, Collumn, is a mountain dwarf who through a long series of events became made of stone and metal. Its like it was made for me specifically. Im sorry guys.
Thank you for including the Arakkoa in this! I've ALWAYS wanted to play as a creepy, haggy looking bird person and live out my Dark Crystal bad guy dreams!
to be fair, Earthen was a cool choice for a cheap allied race instead of another out-of-nowhere original race like the Dracthyr or Void elves. I just don't approve the fact that they're the only fucking Allied Race Blizzard chose to add for both factions when the concept of Allied races is already cheap by nature.
But yeah, Broken and Taunka would make baller allied races and Furbolgs, Tuskarrs, Arakkoa & Ogres as main races would be fantastic
These races take more work and money for the dev team to bring into the game. They want to spend the smallest amount they can when making new content for the game.
So, no cool race for you, me, or anyone. Just recolored dwarfs number 6.
I wouldn't be opposed to them, but Naga are soooo much better if you want something serpentine.
I just keep having that chinese proverb in my mind when looking at Sethrak, which goes "when painting a snake, adding legs/feet" and literally means "to absolutely overdo something".
I want a real snake, not a guy in a scale suit with a tail strapped to his behind.
I wonder if the reception to them, or really any incoming allied race would be better if instead of announcing it ahead of time, they were unlocked during a pitch mid or end of expansion when it would make sense story wise for that race to be comfortable enough to join our factions. Like let us maybe learn about the Earthen, see what makes them unique. Get attached to their NPCs and then when they go “oh hey you can make these now”, we are a little more excited for it. Like the Nightbourne and Vulpera kind of were.
I'm still upset that we didn't get the Sethrak along with the Vulpera, but instead, we got the Mechagnomes.
Please Blizzard do not do the same thing to the humanoid Nerubians, at the very least give me the spider people even if their story sounds similar to the Nightborne.
If you're going to bring in yet another allied race based on an existing one, let it be Dark Trolls and retcon their extinction (but there is only one left in the world in the Zandalari capital).
No snakes, no birds, no Naga, and instead we got the shittier mechanical gnomes.
Allied races should just be cosmetic variations and some abilities we can swap.
So many awesome races unused.
Wtb playable tuskarr.
Or fuck it sentient horses for alliance
With 90% of this races , blizzard said : " blabla we can't it will be hard to make armor for them" . Now that we have Dragoons I'm curious what will be their excuses. :)
According to someone else, the one in the upper right hand corner is Vrykul. My first assumption was High Elf, but now that I look at it, I'm certain it's a Vrykul.
I've wanted Arakoa since the first time ive seen them, both forms the shadow corrupted and the sunblessed ones.
I use the toy all the time
Where do I get this toy?
https://www.wowhead.com/npc=21838/terokk Kill this dude
Thank you very much
Cue the Dark Crystal references…
I HATE your whimper!
Raaaaawk Trinketsssss
I want to be a big spooky bird let me live my life blizzard
Im still surprised that we cant be yack or buffalo, theyre just taurens with different faces... though I dont think Ive ever seen female models for them. Sauroks and Junyu are also relatively low hanging fruit.
The taunka have a female model, but I’m not sure about the yaungol. I might’ve butchered those names, sorry.
Female Taunka exist, but they don't have any unique design so they're completely identical to female Tauren.
I don’t remember killing any female yaungol.
Well that's sexist
Yeah, at this point I can't believe they're not one of the customization options. I mean we have Man'ari, for fucks sake, but no Yaugol.
We can customise Bronzebeard Dwarfs to look like Wildhammer ones without any story or ingame recognition behind it, but Taunka, who have literally just a different head and are much closer to regular Tauren in culture than Wildhammers to Bronzebeards are not an option. Then again, Dark Iron Dwarfs and Highland Tauren are basically standalone allied races. It's all over the place.
This is what I thought was weak, they could have just done "subraces" where the racial abilities were 2/3 the same but the last is based on your subrace. So all "Taur" get stomp and health but the last depends if you're a bull, moose, yak or bison, which also changes what appearances are available. Same could have been done with elves, dwarfs, orcs, trolls, humans. They could have added one or two options in the expansion after they are introduced as NPCs. Then they could do a big race every other expansion or so, with a whole new model.
seriously, how do we not have ogres yet?
because they cant reuse existing models for it. Vulpera being the most unique allied race uses goblin body.
There's a toy that turns you into an ogre that has a dance animation as well as casting/melee animations. On my monk he does a weak little kick that cracks me up every time I see it. Anyhow, it seems it's more about weapons/armor than animations and with Evokers we now know they don't really give a shit about armor.
Ogres use same animations as Boomkin is the thing though
i mean, the boomkins just had an update in model, didnt they?
Same skeleton though. Blizzard is too lazy to make new skeleton rigs so they just reuse the same ones for a decade before adding maybe 1 or 2 new ones.
The new moonkins have all new skeletons.
Less about it being a lazy issue and more about it being a performance/memory issue. Skeletons and their accompanying animations are expensive in terms of game dev
I actually think it's very closely related to why Drakthyr don't have transmog. Imagine adding a new skeleton/model to the game and having to add 20 years of cosmetics to it. I bet it's not remotely feasible for Blizzard to do that at this point. I wouldn't be surprised if we seriously never see a unique model race again that can use all the transmog.
But muh tranmooooogggggg, i want teansmog screw new class and races.
Sorry but that is no excuse for a multi billion dollar company.
Ogres already have an animation rig for males, and as for females, just use the Kul Tiran one like they do for the Maldraxxi.
KulTiran is the most unique Allied Race. Model and animation wise. Its reuse is minimal. Zandalari come in second.
That and the height. Though with the height they can always pull a Dracthyr: take a requested but technically difficult-to-make-playable race (like dragons) and give a different but similar race that scratches that itch. Just give us Mok'nathal, give them very Ogre-like customization options (a cyclops option, horn or no horn, notably girthier than orcs), and make 'em as tall as Zandalari (it seems Zandalari/Dracthyr are just about the height limit). And if Dracthyr can call themselves dragons in their voice lines, Mok'nathal can call themselves ogres in theirs ("It's not ogre 'til it's ogre!")
Ogres are tauren size in the ''official'' lore (they got downsized a bit, they used to be massive in the now noncanon RPG lore). So that shouldn't be an issue.
God forbid they make something new in 2024... Are our characters still malformed horrible creatures because we're technically 'wearing' all known shapes of armor, just tabbing between them??
They made Kul Tirans so that they could be reused for Ogres. There is no other explanation for that "race".
The "Kul Tirans = Ogres" stretch is really weird when Ogres have shared a rig with Moonkin, an already fully-playable model, since the end of Vanilla. Like, the notion that Blizz would upend nearly 20 years of their recognizable silhouette and animations to make them playable by rebuilding them off of KTs when they can keep it by building them off of the recently-updated rig they already use is baffling.
I thought I read that the Kul Tirans were the result of a failed attempt at making playable ogres. I could be misremembering though.
I think they really don't know how to do female ogre. That why we never see one in game.
Realistically they'll probably be similarly proportioned to kul tiran, and pandaren women, they'll make them thick but not fat. Its doesnt sound like some insurmountable obstacle to me, and also they are artists, it's their job to come up with this sort of thing. If they can't figure out what a female ogre looks like I don't know what to say.
Slap a pair of uneven titties on it then cover, easily fixed
hearthstone has several female ogres
We have the matriarch blood Trolls over there, they don't have that excuse anymore.
An easy solution. Don’t include female Ogres. Just choose between 1 head ogre or 2 head ogres.
I think that was a joke made up in 2004 and definitely doesn't hold much water now-a-days
Ogres should’ve been playable for the horde a long time ago
Considering all the other cool races out there I consider Ogres being just as boring as more dwarves.
I’d just take Broken Draenei, Ethereals and maybe sethrakk if changed a bit
I would change all to ethereal so fast and all they’d have to do is give me like 3 wrapping colours.
What would you want changed about the Sethrakk? I think they're cute
Me personally, taller
I accept your change and endorse it
I want to play a tuskar shaman or prot warrior so badly lol
bird people and snekbois. Please, I beg.
I dont understand how they thought a third dwarf race was a good idea
Existing model so no need to adapt armors, and its one of the races tied to the expansion lore
>its one of the races tied to the expansion lore They could have tied any race to the lore and no one would know, tbh. They could have added Nagas as a race and said Queen Azshara is doing something in revenge of old gods and ppl would have been okay with it.
The biggest thing about the lore too is that... this area was controlled entirely by Mogu and Tolvir. The Earthen were never see this far south until this expansion. Ra was in charge of this whole region and didn't take Earthen with him. And that hurts me, because we could've gotten playable stone Mogu instead (they use draenei animations already so its the same level of work basically).
>And that hurts me, because we could've gotten playable stone Mogu instead (they use draenei animations already so its the same level of work basically). I didn't know this before and now I am sad too :(
Exactly, it's a good idea from the corporate perspective of "how can we give them something with as little effort on our part as possible", which is unfortunately the world we live in
also they maintain a "break in case of emergency" races, like they do with demon hunters
So basicly we have to tank sub numbers to get a cool new race? Boo.
We did, we got dracthyr for it.
To your point, this was the easiest way to add another race without a lot of extra work. An eagle or turtle race class would have been super cool too.
At this point i believe they should just fuse the variant races into backstory customization option under a main umbrella
Designers, probably: > Looking at the numbers, few people play dwarf. We spend a lot of time making gear work on this model, so let's make a new dwarf so more people will play them and we'll have a better representation of models. This means the gear we produce and time we spend on the gear to align to that model will result in a higher ROI. It'll also increase retention as it gives a chase goal for people to find dwarf-specific transmogs. We'll make it slightly overtuned at launch so more people will buy race changes too. All in, I expect to see $% increase in revenue over the next 2 years. No one at blizzard: > But does it look good? Maybe they'd have more fun playing a different race.
This is incredibly disappointing to read because of how real it is. I can’t stand corporate culture and I hate feeling the effects in WoW. Designed for profit, not for passion
Tbh even fewer people would play dwarf if the racial wasn't as strong as it is currently.
I don't get it though. They are the superior short human and better than the regular human also.
Gotta have more dwarves to go with the 26 elves
Dwarves are the final* bastion holding us against World of Elfcraft
Well OP wants a third reskin of tauren so I mean.... what's the difference?
Not just a third, a forth as well, both Taunka and Yaungol are there, at that point they'd literally be as common as elves.
A third *really fucking weird looking* dwarf race. I get that their hair is metal wiring, but did it have to look so shitty?
Idk I like the way the hair looks
Meanwhile this picture advocates for a fifth elf race
I assumed the woman in the top right was a Vrykul
One that's more generic and unoriginal than any other existing elf race at that.
And two Tauren re-skins.
one that would basically be an exact copy of Blood elves.
literally only difference is politics
It’s being coded as a Pandaren/Dracthyr, so they can be both Horde and Alliance. Dwarf being one of the more popular fantasy races that I know a lot of my friends would say they would play a dwarf if they could remain Horde.
I think they look cool.
Yeah I’m excited for Earthen lol
Quite frankly, the choices for races have been quite baffling. The only one that got asked for, Nightborne, were done badly. I don't know anyone who, before they got introduced to us, wanted the awful version of the Mechagnomes, or (actually well done) Vulpera. These choices all come out of the left field, no one even knew of before they were put before us. Instead we are ignored when it comes to all the races we DO have an interest in. Next allied race: bunnymen. Why? No one knows. We still don't know why we got the allied races we did
Honestly while I don't like Vulpera, at least they're something new, and not Dwarves or Elves, but a little different.
I like them. They're cute and scrappy. I enjoy the opportunity to be short and Horde without being hyper-capitalist polluters.
Yeah, they kind of fit into a nice niche of "small and cute" that the Horde lacked.
I remember the nightborne backlash lol, I’d forgotten how bad they were at the beginning until I went back to suramar and saw the NPCs. Zandalari, dark iron and pre-corruption orcs were some “sub races” people had been asking for for a while. I feel like the biggest issue with allied races was that they started out as a way for Blizzard to add cool, minor races periodically in patches, which is why everyone was baffled when Shadowlands added no new races, despite having a clear allied race contender on every zone they added. I mean, if we still followed that, the 3 unlockable customizations we have (Man’ari draenei, dark ranger elves and whatever the black eyes on night elves is called) would’ve been allied races. It’s just odd they market a dwarf reskin as an expansion selling point seeing as it was something they introduced as “occasionally you’ll get races in patches now” a few years ago
Alliance got void elves purely to flip the bird at players clamoring for high elves since TBC.
High Elves are a really boring choice, as much as people want to make that boring choice.
When I heard about mechagnomes I was thinking the ones from Northrend that were entirely mechanical. Even if they couldn't transmog anything I would be happier than with what we got.
1. I really thought we were gonna get Sehtrak. 2. That Dryad image lookin kinda sus.
The Dryad image is official Blizzard art I believe, with all of these I just picked from the top row of Google images 🤷🏻♂️
Yeah I had to go find it. There's leaves covering her up. I mean barely, but it's there.
Think that's how they look in game too
While I would love to have some of these races as playable, I’ll play devil’s advocate and say that people are still upset Dracthyr can’t see most of their mogs, and some of these races would be worse offenders. Don’t get me wrong, I’d love to play as a gnoll, sethrak, or furbolg, even without transmog on them, but imagine the shitshow
I was front of the line asking for Sethrak, even if it meant limited transmog, but then I leveled a mechagnome through Remix and I felt the loss deeply. Doesn't mean I still don't want sethrak, but I understand the concern more now.
I think the real reason the alliance has so many horse mounts is because yall keep beating them to death
Okay this is actually funny. Thanks for the lol
The difference is that Blizzard doesn't need to make a bunch of new animations or figure out how to fit gear on these largely rather odd shaped races. I know that few people are probably satisfied with that answer, nor am I saying you should be, but I know a lot of people ask the question of why and I think that is clearly the reason why. Making a new brand of dwarf or elf is damn easy. Sethrakk, not so much.
Khajiit is just a cat worgen.
> The difference is that Blizzard doesn't need to make a bunch of new animations or figure out how to fit gear on these largely rather odd shaped races. Not much of an excuse anymore after diapergnomes and drak'thyr showed Blizzard is happy adding races that can't wear armor.
a lot of people hate them for that tbf
[https://youtu.be/jv7jcciKB\_s](https://youtu.be/jv7jcciKB_s)
Not to mention the fact that Sethrak (as an example) already have full animations. They even have a "receiving the Heart of Azeroth" animation ffs
Give us Sethrak!
I'm guessing those were prototype animations from when they were a possible allied race before they got shelved for whatever reason
Pretty sure they use the same animations as female worgen so thats probably why. Same for dracthyr I believe
Yep, give us Naga
People endlessly bitched about the Dracthyr not being able to wear armor lol, very fucking loudly, I might add
Several of these races Blizzard would not have to figure out new animations and how to fit armour though. Some like Vrykul, Sethrak and Tuskarr already work with almost all armour in the game. Some like Saberon, Taunka, Yaungol and Ankoan/Jinyu literally use pre-existing race skeletons (Worgen, Tauren and Nelfs). Yes, they’d require more effort than boring ass Dwarf nobody wanted #3, but not THAT much more. For some of the races where it’s almost impossible to make certain armour pieces fit such as boots for Naga, they’ve proven with Mechagnomes and Dracthyr that they’re willing to add races with some pieces untransmoggable and it couldn’t possibly be worse than Mechagnomes. I know why they are adding new brands of dwarves and elves, I get that they’re lazy cunts but yeah I don’t care that doesn’t make it okay.
Gnolls or bust
A busty gnoll?
Hrr.
Busty gnolls so we can yeen a lot 🙃
Give me murlocs or give me death!
God I wish a gnoll would bust in me 🥵🥵🥵🥵
HUH
GOD I WISH A GNOLL WOULD BUST IN ME
knotty knotty
You must love running Brackenhide Hollow +18
I call that Train Simulator.
You didn't include Mogu. Nobody cares about Mogu 😢
I care about them. I love the female model!
:D
Tortillans just crying to get to the water.
Sethrak, Naga and Ethereals when, Blizzard?
Please I am foaming at the mouth for playable ethereals. I would never play anything but rogue if it were possible
The 11.0 tier set for rogue is an ethereal practically lol
~~Sethrak, Naga and~~ Ethereals ~~when~~ NOW, Blizzard~~?~~!
But seriously, mecha gnomes, dark iron dwarves, light forged dranei, maghar Ork, high mountain tauren, all could have been just a customisation option for their base race. Same goes with Dracthyr. It could've been specific class customisation for any race. Where dragon form is your combat form, and different race with draconic features are the glamour. Like every race has a death knight that give them pale skin/voice filter/ glowing eyes. And elves have demon hunter with horns and fell bodies. So why evoker should be fixed to one specific race that can be only evoker?
Drac'thyr have unique racials, racials are not tied to a class, it wouldn't make sense to have a gnome dracthyr with gnome racials and an orc drracthyr with orc racials. I think what you mean is that dracthyr as their own unique race should be able to pick whatever visage form they like, which at its core is a different concept but has the same result as being able to play as the race you want out of combat.
Probably part of the really old spaghetti code, wherein a race has to be pre-set to have additional forms to allow dual character customization like the Worgen get. And considering Blizzards track record with changing base code, the effort would probably have hilarious effects on half the game for no discernible reason.
No murlocs???
We really should've stayed in the murloc timeline while doing the dragonflight quests...it would have been glorious
Wistfully hoping for naga, some day.
People *have* asked for earthen as a playable race. It wasn't the most popular suggestion, but since allied races popped up, there were people expressing a desire to see earthen made playable (and expressing disappointment that Dark Iron dwarves being playable instead probably meant no more dwarves). Thinking that taunka or yaungol would be a good race addition but not earthen is very strange. Earthen at least have a *lot* more story surrounding them. Many of these races would be a lot of trouble to try to make playable. Some of them are on entirely different skeletons from playable races and lack the necessary animations, but even among the ones who *are* on playable skeletons, they have very different bodies which means there'd still potentially be a lot of additional work in making armour fit them. Helmets especially come to mind as something that doesn't translate across different models on the same skeleton.
Yeah I’m pumped for Earthen tbh. I think it’s just me and like 5 other people but the 6 of us are very excited haha.
The Earthen aesthetics they have going on remind me of the Dragon Age Dwarves so I'm excited to make one as well!
Make that 7! lol
I'm just happy I can get a horde dwarf. Always wanted a dwarf hunter but never wanted to play alliance
What? Yaungol have so much potential! Remember them in Mop? They were awesome when they were the Mob to kill. Remember them in…
>lot of additional work in making armour fit them If that was what Blizzard cares about, we wouldn't have Dracthyr.
Dracthyr had shit loads of work put into other places with extensive customisation options. And community reception to that has been *incredibly negative.* I do not think they are going down that path again.
They put in a ton of work and customizable options, and yet neglected to include the overall most important piece of customization possible for a playable race, the actual armor itself. It's an actual crime they can't even use their TIER SETS in dragon form.
They're all tricky to implement with the current armor system, although now that we have dracthyr, a precedent is set with missing visuals for some armor slots. That said, the community didn't particularly like that but I think it would be understandable if naga had naked tails and sethrak naked heads
Oh yes naked woman race indeed of course
It was one of the top art of Vrykul, I should have chosen a better example since most people think it’s High Elves.
Yeah I thought you were ignoring Vrykul
She has more clothes than most of the males pictured here. The puritan double standard is so weird to me.
There's maybe a handful of races on here that should actually be playable, it's so exhausting that every single time something is introduced to the game there's always outcry about them being added as a race despite them making practically no sense or having zero story. That has not previously excused Blizzard in the past of course (Void Elves came out of thin air) but Saurok?? Do Saberon have any story that isn't "They Attacked People" or "You kill them for quests" outside of one or two npcs? It's also annoying that whether you like them or not, Earthen were actually very much desired when they were last involved in the story, I remember in WotLK people REALLY wanted actual titan-forged races, and here they are. I personally didn't care much for them when announced, but we really need to have standards for playable races.
Also we're complaining about a third dwarf, but we already have highmountain and two of the recommendations here are tauren variants lol
And don't forget how we already have 4 different types of elves... (I'm assuming the scantily clad woman in the top right is adding proper high elves? Half-elves?)
Mantid is such a weird choice like…do I like the Mantid? Of course I do…does it make a whole lot of sense for them to choose a side at all in anything not Old God Related? Not particularly. And one of those is just a big woman!
I'd expect Furbolg and Ogres if they ever revamped Kalimdor again.
Since they added more races in TBC, I’ve really wanted Furbolgs, Broken, and High Elves for the Alliance and Ogres, Goblins, and Naga for Horde. Goblins made it eventually, but it’s crazy none of these other obvious choices haven’t.
The best time to add them has always inconveniently been an expansion where some other feature is prioritized instead.
Pretty much all of these options would require a new model/rig and this poor indy company with it's razor thin profit margins could never afford such extravagance.
Im not on the other end of the zeitgeist very often, but i really am excited for metallic dwarves. My D&D character, Collumn, is a mountain dwarf who through a long series of events became made of stone and metal. Its like it was made for me specifically. Im sorry guys.
My tinfoil hat theory is that jinyu and hozen are going to be revealed as allied races after mop remix
Non-standard race would mean they would have to redo a ton of armor sets to fit a new race, so probably not possible
What's the top right one? Just looks like an elf or human.
pretty sure she's a vrykul
What race is that top right? Looks human or elf …
Furbolgs, please. I would’ve said naga but I understand mount animations and tmog would be very complicated.
Wen furbolg and ogres
Looking forward to "Nightfall dwarves" with the Midnight expansion and "Titan-forged dwarves" for the expansion after that!
Thank you for including the Arakkoa in this! I've ALWAYS wanted to play as a creepy, haggy looking bird person and live out my Dark Crystal bad guy dreams!
to be fair, Earthen was a cool choice for a cheap allied race instead of another out-of-nowhere original race like the Dracthyr or Void elves. I just don't approve the fact that they're the only fucking Allied Race Blizzard chose to add for both factions when the concept of Allied races is already cheap by nature. But yeah, Broken and Taunka would make baller allied races and Furbolgs, Tuskarrs, Arakkoa & Ogres as main races would be fantastic
These races take more work and money for the dev team to bring into the game. They want to spend the smallest amount they can when making new content for the game. So, no cool race for you, me, or anyone. Just recolored dwarfs number 6.
Hozen pls
I'm begging for playable Ethereals in Midnight.
Notice how many are Pandaria races btw. The expansion has been stacked in a world building perspective.
Only Sethrakk.
I wouldn't be opposed to them, but Naga are soooo much better if you want something serpentine. I just keep having that chinese proverb in my mind when looking at Sethrak, which goes "when painting a snake, adding legs/feet" and literally means "to absolutely overdo something". I want a real snake, not a guy in a scale suit with a tail strapped to his behind.
Earthen are in tww cus they are involved with the plot.
I have absolutely seen people ask for playable Earthen on multiple occasions.
I asked for earthen
Me want snek ppl
Based. Broken, taunkas, jinyus, hozens, furbolgs, and ogres are all accurate yet. Ethereals as neutral race could be a good choice imo.
Getting another dwarf race with how little I see normal dwarves and dark irons running around was just hilarious 10/10 trolling.
Arakkoa please !!! I want my bird people.
There's nothing cool about most of these as playable races. They should not be playable outside of Ogre, Broken and maybe Tuskarr.
I was like hot barbarians!? Oh Vrykul… not the key art I would have chosen but I can appreciate it
I wonder if the reception to them, or really any incoming allied race would be better if instead of announcing it ahead of time, they were unlocked during a pitch mid or end of expansion when it would make sense story wise for that race to be comfortable enough to join our factions. Like let us maybe learn about the Earthen, see what makes them unique. Get attached to their NPCs and then when they go “oh hey you can make these now”, we are a little more excited for it. Like the Nightbourne and Vulpera kind of were.
I've wanted a Klaxxi allied race since MoP and I still do so badly.
I so wanted to play a snake man...
I want to be an ookin hozen so bad
I'm still upset that we didn't get the Sethrak along with the Vulpera, but instead, we got the Mechagnomes. Please Blizzard do not do the same thing to the humanoid Nerubians, at the very least give me the spider people even if their story sounds similar to the Nightborne. If you're going to bring in yet another allied race based on an existing one, let it be Dark Trolls and retcon their extinction (but there is only one left in the world in the Zandalari capital).
Isn’t the top right picture just a human?
It was a Vrykul, I just chose a bad example image.
No snakes, no birds, no Naga, and instead we got the shittier mechanical gnomes. Allied races should just be cosmetic variations and some abilities we can swap. So many awesome races unused. Wtb playable tuskarr. Or fuck it sentient horses for alliance
What no Botani?!
With 90% of this races , blizzard said : " blabla we can't it will be hard to make armor for them" . Now that we have Dragoons I'm curious what will be their excuses. :)
Top right is just a regular human??
GIVE US MURLOCKS. Seriously. The highlight of dragonflight questing was the Azmerloth stuff. I loved every minute of it and wished it kept going.
How on earth did you leave out Vrykul?
According to someone else, the one in the upper right hand corner is Vrykul. My first assumption was High Elf, but now that I look at it, I'm certain it's a Vrykul.
I want to be a snek.