For starters, they need a rig that’s more friendly for armor so it would require borrowing the undead rigs and re-animating them to do what the Low Arakkoa can do.
Then they need to add in the class-specific attack animations since those are missing from the actual models themselves.
Finally, some touch-ups with customization options and additional voice acting to finish it off.
The High Arakkoa need less work than that structurally, but have more animations missing as well (not counting the ones the Zanda Boomkins have).
All in all, it is a bit of work, but yes… They are BADLY needed. Breaks the monotony of mammals only.
Just to add, there’s also a few toys in game that will turn you into an Arakkoa. There’s one for the cursed ones that drops from Terrok from Outlands and another toy that will turn you into the uncursed ones from WoD.
They have played with the cursed Arakkoa model some for the BFA expansion. The witches in Drustvar in all their hunched over glory are reskins of that model, so they have added animations to it.
I want the uncorrupted version for a character though (though if they go this route both should be options), but I will confirm that at least with the WoD toy that turns you into one, there is no animated dance. So it’s at least missing a few of the base animations that most playable races have (lamentably, the dance seems to be forgotten often? Like gorilla bear Mage Tower guardian druid form doesn’t have a dance, either). They just added a raptor one for raptor travel forms, though.
That is interesting to note, but like the Low Arakkoa, they’re covered from the chest down in that giant hood. It’s partly why I suggested using the undead rigs as a base to finish off their animations and allow for the use of PC armor.
IIRC bird gender is expressed in color patterns no? So it’s possible to have either different color plumage, or only males getting plumage period to illustrate gender.
I initially considered that, but then people would have still gotten confused if they knew nothing about birds and ActiBlizz have a nasty penchant of making their PC races SUPER dimorphic…
So I gave a compromise instead. Plus some birds, like parrots or ravens, don’t follow even the color dimorphism rules.
