I’m still enjoying it, but have lost some enthusiasm. Midnight’s release soured me a little on how they’re going to handle faction/racial decor going forward. We kind of knew it would be this way, but the reality of it is hitting me now. Midnight is a blood elf expansion. I expected there to be tons of blood elf decor, and I love most of it. I just didn’t realize how slanted it would be. There’s like 200+ new blood elf items, 50-70 each for void elves, amani, and haranir. And… 0 for any other race. I thought there’d be at least ~20 new items for everyone else upon release, but no. I suppose when everything has to be tied to a quest/achieve/rep/currency, there was no way to include anything else. God forbid they give anything but generic stuff away without tying it to content.
It really drives home that until a race is in the spotlight, they probably won’t get anything major. For some races that could be years. Sure they’ll probably add a trickle of minor items here or there, but not much beyond that. Poor tauren/forsaken. Those two still have half as much as most of the other races. Have to wonder if they’ll have a presence in 12.1/12.2, and maybe there’s more on the way. That’s sort of what they did with void elves; they had little in early access because most of their stuff came in Voidstorm.
If the concern is being able to create new assets for both the open world and housing, why is so much stuff from TWW/DF still missing? Both of those have amazing art and textures, yet much is missing as decor. Even BFA/SL had pretty HQ stuff.
Looks like there is a lot of stuff coming in 12.0.5. Most of it is foliage, which is nice as lots of us have wanted that. But racial furnishings? Not much. There’s some stuff for tauren/earthen/kul’tiran, but it’s extremely basic. Humans have a few things, and again more blood/void elf stuff, plus some new Skyborne elves? On top of that there’s a lot of stuff for a new series called “opulent”, which looks identical to the “elegant” and “elegant elven” series. But again that stuff has always looked more like blood elf style than anything else, just purple, and can be dyed anyways.
It’s especially discouraging for certain categories too, like paintings. They really should’ve had a handful of paintings or artwork for every race upon release. It’s nuts that there’s now more paintings of Eversong Woods than all other paintings combined. IMO they really should’ve used Endeavors to cycle through other races for each faction so everyone was always getting stuff.
And this isn’t a knock on blood elf stuff. Again, it’s their expansion, and I actually do love their stuff. It’s awesome that I already have multiple of some really nice pieces now, like the bookshelf from running Magister’s Terrace dozens of times. But it’s a bit discouraging getting countless cool blood elf stuff, while most other races will probably be stuck with the same early access stuff for a long time. And I know it’s still early to be complaining about lack of choice, but I don’t think this will change any time soon given they’ll likely only ever bring out ample new offerings when tied to a patch. So I’m still having fun playing around with what is available, but also hesitant to fully invest. Perhaps when templates come out I’ll be more likely to try things out knowing I can restore them later.