Allied races are boring and uninspired

Title.

With the exception of the little foxybois and the fat humans they’re just boring reskins.

The little effort required to unlock them now is akin to the effort blizzard put into creating them, so that’s fitting. However it’s still too much effort for me to bother for such lacklustre “new” races.

Every now and then I make a new alt, I look at all the greyed out races and I think for a split second I should unlock some, then I have a proper look though and realise I have no desire to unlock/use any of them.

Blizzard loves a reskin/recolour

Mounts/gear was lazy but acceptable, but reskinning races is just poor form imo.

It feels like that work colleague we all have, that one guy that has no pride in their work and just wants to get away with the absolute bare minimum

It’s kinda embarrassing

/sook

Edit: give us the snakiebois :snake:

12 Likes

I agree to back to new race or new class every other expansion and make them like the old days with custom animations and their own zones

Being reskins is actually the point though. For many years players have been requesting for sub-races to happen. Various variants of the core races we’ve seen around the world over the years.

Allied races was the answer to that request. They can be mass produced like that because they have existing rigs to go off of. Brand new races with new models (like Kul Tirans) are massive projects and would only be limited to like one or two per expansion at most.

So it’s not them being lazy, it’s them literally answering what players have always wanted.

But still that doesn’t mean everything will ever happen. Some races, like sethrak, are just not on the table and were never intended to be playable. Between the two vulpera are the more realistic choice anyways.

3 Likes

It was a somewhat haphazard attempt to introduce interesting or different character customizations. I think in the end they realized it’s easier to just set fire to the lore book and introduce the customizations onto existing races, whether they made sense or not.

I seriously doubt we’ll see another race introduced as an allied race, rather they’ll just do it as a normal new race available at space launch.

It sound like you don’t like their look anyway, so I think you can ignore those and focus on ones you do like. All the choices was kind of the point, some have been wildly popular.

no, there is little effort to get the allied races because people whined it was too hard and took too long to get them so blizzard made it easier for said players

1 Like

If someone wants to play as something, why would they want to grind on something else to play the one they want?

1 Like

I want full Mythic Raid gear, but hey. It was clear from the beginning Allied races were something different that you had to work for. That’s it, that’s the tweet

I get that. It just isn’t very fun. But that’s the way Blizzard is these days.

1 Like

Allied races are and apparently were set up to be the equivalent of mainstream normal or, at least to Appeal to those that like and identify as ‘Normal’ and or mainstream.
I do play Alliance mainly because I play everything and ‘fell’ into a guild of sweet people who happen to play Alliance, though I LIKE most of the Hord races much much better than the bulk of the Alliance line up.
I would love to see a feline or rodent or serpent race added to the alliance side … and frankly if they added it to the Hord side I’d play it any how.

1 Like

Rewards are often more fun than the work to get there. -Edgar Allan Poe

2 Likes

I don’t consider race choice/character creation to be something to work for. It should be available so that people that want them can enjoy the content with them.

I also don’t like ‘work’ in a video game. I didn’t consider it work to grind reputation when I could just spam dungeons in BC and Wrath. But I got the rep I needed doing content that I enjoyed with the new race and class as they were available. I didn’t need to grind all of that just to then start a new character and grind it again to prog that character.

TLDR: The way of presenting a new race was superior in BC and Pandaria, when compared to the presentation of Allied Races.

3 Likes

well, from a simple rp stand point, the idea was to build trust with a race before they would join your faction, its not like using a tinder application

I don’t think Edgar Allen Poe was discussing game rewards.

1 Like

Which makes sense from an existing player pov in terms of the quest. And they could have just skipped it with new players, because it isn’t relevant. They harm their own lore.

Don’t get me wrong. I accept it, I just think they could have done better.

For example they could have given an option to start in Valley of Trials or Northshire or a special 1-5 starting zone. The special zone would have had all the lore bits needed to understand the lore of these characters.

Oh no, he was, it was an unpublished work.

1 Like

Keep in mind that Allied Races are meant to be the hero class of races. They start at a higher level with some gear, a mount, a tabard and riding training. Partially because they have no starter zone, partially to make them a bit more special.

So here’s my proposal to not change any of that, but to make the unlocks suck less:

  1. Hit level 10 on a character of that faction
  2. Run the Allied Race unlock scenario
  3. Profit

This means a new player finished Exile’s Reach to get their mini tutorial and were taken on a tour of their city. So they should get a new quest that takes them to the embassy and allows them to get the reason for recruiting and then the scenario to run.

This also means no one is wasting their time leveling a character to 50 that they don’t want to play. They leveled a character to 10 already, which is the level that Allied Races begin at, which means they lost absolutely nothing and pick up where they left off. Also: in order to unlock DHs, the game wants you to have a character at level 10, so this follows the same pattern.

There. Problem solved.

3 Likes

Coming back, I already had the reps and most quests for Allied Races. I just did not have to group up for the dungeons.

I didn’t know that about Kul’tiran, though, so I went ahead and soloed “Siege of Boralus” at 55 to unlock them. This was because there was a stupid bug where, after you get the quest for the dungeon, you would have to drop it and then go see Jaina at Proudmore keep to get the option to drop the need to do the dungeon.

There were still a bunch of quests to do, though, expecially with Kul’tiran. Mechangnome was easier.

So I don’t think it was THAT much easier, really. I just am anti-social so did not originally want to do the “group up for dungeons” part. Just playing the game I had all the reps to exalted EONS before that.

Back in the day, I did do the one dungeon to unlock Dark Iron Dwarves. I especially did not really like that as the “tank”, other people were standing there and I was thinking “oh oh, I think I’m supposed to be the one going and attacking things…” But it turned out OK.

I don’t think it’s way easier now, except for people like me who don’t want to group up for a dungeon. I think any other things they did to make it easier are just because someone doing Shadowlands would not want to spend as much time on “old” Allied races.

Even so, if you really want them the questlines don’t take THAT long.

Can I interest you in Furbolg?

Look at the model section before you make your decision.

2 Likes

So more development time for players that can’t be bothered to do what others did. Makes perfect sense.

The unfinished Edgar’s Allied Poem