The Nightborne female models actually don’t share the same rigging as the Night Elf female models. The Nightborne female models have like the Draenei female’s rigging on like the waist down, which has always looked really strange.
Rigging is my concern for Demon Hunters, though. When Demon Hunters use various playable race appearance changing toys basically all their action animations don’t run, which might mean that Demon Hunters would take a lot more work to give to all the other classes than even the remaining ones that need mounts, totems, or new skins for Druid forms.
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I feel like Demon Hunters and Druids would have to be opened with 11.0
There’s just too much work in opening them to all races to add them into a patch. Paladins and Shamans have their fair share of work too, of course, but I feel like it’s not as significant of a resource and time cost as those other two classes. I mean, for Paladins all you’d really need is race specific chargers, and even then you could just release the class for all races, and all in race-specific chargers later.
Shaman totems would be tricky, but once you’ve got one for a race, all you have to do is color-swap it three times and you’re done. Meanwhile Druid forms are each unique.
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Personally, I would think totems would be the easiest. It’s a static object with a spell effect. They make one and then just copy pasta it three more times and change the color of the spell effect.
Paladin chargers are probably not that difficult either since a lot of the races already have a racial mount, so all they would need to do would be color swaps and maybe a few extra glowy bits tacked on. But, you’d still have to make sure it all fits the model’s rigging and animations.
I agree that Druids and Demon Hunters aren’t going to be any time soon. Definitely probably next expansion given the amount of work they’d need to develop dozens if not hundreds of new assets for them.
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I don’t know. They weren’t willing to put the effort in to give the nightborne a Darkfallen skin despite their counterpart AR getting one. Wouldn’t surprise me if the next DH pass forgets them too.
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The Nightborne in general were a rush job.
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No Nightborne were raised by Sylvanas or the Scourge, whereas it’s entirely plausible that a High elf Darkfallen who was allied with Sylvanas at one time has moved to Alliance. The skin is there as an optional roleplay ability for people who want to play High elves on Alliance. Multiple times they’ve given Void elves cosmetic skins that point more towards their high elven heritage because nobody asked for or wanted Void elves.
It’s amusing that some people are stuck up on this.
And yes, Nightborne never should’ve been an allied race.
Well, I think they’re fine as an Allied Race. It makes a lot of sense that they’d ally with the Blood Elves too. Perhaps a good alternative outcome would’ve been if they were neutral, and a Nightborne had the freedom to choose whether to re-establish relations with their kin among the Kaldorei, or to build new friendships with the Blood Elves. It might have made the Fourth War a little unfortunate as we’d see Nightborne fighting other Nightborne, but I think the idea of Thalyssra knowing they’d only just rejoined the world and needed time to understand it better, would’ve been more than enough justification to stay out of the fighting in an official capacity, and permit volunteers to support whichever side they chose.
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I really don’t think they work as an allied race at all. They don’t really add anything the Horde didn’t already have with the Blood elves. The only difference is that they’re purple and don’t have any Light worship or themes. Preferably they would’ve been neutral and unplayable. Not much of a difference in the long run since I’m pretty sure they’re down there with goblins in terms of representation. I feel similarly about the Lightforged, who should have been customization options for normal Draenei at most.
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I mean… this is the case for almost all Allied Races. What do Mechagnomes bring to the Alliance that Gnomes didn’t? Or Dark Irons, for that matter?
Typically Allied Races brought lore and customization to expand on player options, and I am a big supporter of more options for players, always.
That having been said, yes, most Allied Races should’ve been customizations for core races. Now that we even have body-type options, it doesn’t feel so absurd to link Zandalari and Trolls, or Kul Tirans and Humans. The only races which stand out would be Vulpera, Nightborne, and Void Elves. Vulpera feel like what the Allied Race system should have been: an entirely new race, perhaps using an existing race’s model, but so different from that race that they’re a different race in truth. As for Nightborne and Void Elves, Nightborne models got altered, but again, body types are a thing. Maybe just combine Nightborne and Night Elves, and then Void Elves and Blood Elves, and make both races neutral.
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Because they weren’t suppose to add anything. Their entire purpose was to act as a trade to give the Alliance the Thalassian elf model. So, the Horde got a Night Elf model (albeit a very poorly made version).
Same could be said of virtually all the Allied Races except for Vulpera.
- Highmountain? Tauren with moose antlers.
- Lightforged? Draenei but with more Light.
- Void Elves? Blood Elves painted purple.
- Nightborne? Night Elves but thinner.
- Mag’har? Brown Orcs.
- Dark Iron? Dwarves with darker skin and fire hair.
- Mechagnomes? Gnomes who replaced their arms and legs with robot parts.
- Zandalari? Trolls but with less options (granted the males have an entirely different model, but it could’ve just been a toggle like the upright Orcs)
- Kul Tirans? Taller humans.
Other way around my friend.
Nightborne in Legion were awesome. Both sides wanted them. If having to pick one faction, the clear choice was the Horde, because of the Blood Elves.
The Alliance got the Thalassian Model as a trade so the Horde could have Nightborne, and it really showed with the Void Elf customizations. Unlike other Allied Races, Void Elves were limited to just the main five options (hair color, skin color, hairstyle, facial hair/earrings, face). They still don’t have any expanded customizations which even core races now enjoy, such as scars, tattoos, hair ornaments, etc… Blizzard took the Thalassian model, dyed it blue, came up with some of the worst hairstyles in the game and made them worse by slapping tentacles onto them, and called it a day while devoting more time and resources to trying (and utterly failing) to make the playable Nightborne even a FRACTION as cool looking at the NPCs were.
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We’ll just have to agree to disagree. I firmly believe the Void Elves were concocted first as a means to monkey’s paw the people wanting High Elves for the Alliance. The fact the playable Nightborne look nowhere near as good as the NPCs in Suramar is my deduction that giving Nightborne to the Horde was an afterthought as a means to “trade elves” to justify Void Elves.
I mean, of all the playable Elves the Nightborne remain having the least amount of customization options and were the only elves left out of getting the Darkfallen options. To me it’s clear that the Nightborne being a playable race was entirely an afterthought on Blizzard’s part.
The fact the Nightborne don’t look as cool as the NPCs is because the NPCs hadn’t been made to wear armor. Blizzard had to use a rig that would enable them to wear armor. In the end, Nightborne had far more customization categories than Void Elves did, including having the Night Elf model tweaked and adjusted. Void Elves, as was said previously, were Blood Elves dipped in purple. Their lore has that same sort of slapdash quality to it. I mean, they didn’t even exist until the last five minutes of their own recruitment scenario, and over the weekend mastered the eldritch power that has, without fail, corrupted Dragons, Gods, and Titans alike.
I’m not sure I agree with this to be honest. As I said before, Void Elves don’t even have expanded categories for customizations, and all of their, “New,” customizations were either copy/pasted from Blood Elves, or we have the tentacle toggle which… doesn’t even fix the holes left in the hair if one bothers to look.
Void Elves honestly were the lowest quality Allied Race by all metrics.
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Again, we’re just going to have to agree to disagree. I think Nightborne are the second lowest quality Allied Race at this point and are routinely ignored by Blizzard because they didn’t intend to make them playable until they decided Void Elves were going to be an Alliance race and therefore they needed to give the Horde something in return.
I think the Void themes of the Void Elves are far superior to the lackluster and barely visible Arcane themes of the Nightborne. Their arcane markings are barely visible to the point they might as well not even be there. They didn’t even get the glowing hands until Shadowlands 9.1.5. By that point, Void Elves had gotten twice as many updates to make them look more and more like High Elves. And then in 9.2.5… they got the Darkfallen option alongside Night and Blood Elves, despite it making zero sense, while Nightborne got left out.
The only race I’d put below the Nightborne in quality and customization options are Mechagnomes.
Didn’t the orc heritage quest make that OC no one cares about canonically the last Shadownoon
Do you mean the purple skin, or the tentacle hair? Certainly it can’t be anything the Void Elves have actually done with the Void. It’s just been routine mage stuff like opening portals. That or psuedo necromancy that one time.
Void Elves weren’t even a concept until Blizzard saw players’ react favorably to Alleria. Even then they had no actual reputation to link to for unlocking, so Blizzard went with the Krokuul of all things. They weren’t seeded into the game or the lore at all. Void Elves are clearly the after-thought race here, a trade so that the Horde could have the infinitely cooler and better developed Nightborne. Where the Nightborne failed was their visuals, but that was all.
As for Darkfallen options, I don’t get why Void Elves got those either, other than that they were, again easy to just copy and paste from Blood Elves. The Void Elves haven’t received any unique customizations since they were introduced to the game, and that all of their new customizations (copy and pasted from Blood Elves) is just to make them look more like High Elves just goes to show how little Blizzard put any effort into Void Elves as a concept.
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Yes. I like Lovecraft horror stuff, so I put those above the barely visible Arcane themes of the Nightborne. If the Nightborne’s arcane markings were far more visible (maybe give players a sliding scale to control the visibility) and if they were given some more color options (like Fel green for Warlocks and gold for Priests) then I would start considering them better than Void Elves. At this point in time though? Not even close, in my opinion.
No offense, but you deserve better than Void Elves for that. Because the Void Elves’ entire, ‘Void,’ identity is, ‘Arcane magic, but purple.’
This is, of course, all a matter of opinion, and you’re entitled to your opinion, but I’m sorry, I cannot agree with you. Clearly more effort was put into the Nightborne than the Void Elves, and Void Elves are still the most low quality of the Allied Races.
Yes, I feel similarly about most of those races.
Aside from KT having a strong nautical culture that granted them shamans, and a culture of druidism that only Gilneans really have but with a focus on the aspect of death over life in the cycle.
And there’s other differences on most of those races besides. In most of these examples you’ve given you focused most on the physical appearance, which I had no comment on. Physically, Nightborne are visually distinct from the other elves on the Horde, but culturally are not. Whereas Void elves are culturally distinct from Night elves even barring their obsession with the void.
I also disagree that Nightborne were not supposed to add anything. If they don’t add anything really unique, they become disinteresting. And I think that is the general sentiment around Nightborne among most players, they’re disinteresting.
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I just don’t think Evokers will work as another race. The Race/Class are too intertwined.
All the other classes would work.