I’ve been trying hard to pick a class for Worgen, and despite the most obvious options, I cannot move away from the idea that they’re a half-step removed from Pandaren animations. If you enjoy your worgen, I’m happy for you, and I absolutely don’t want to ruin your good time, but I can’t be the only one who is put off by these animations, and I dare say it’s a small part of the faction imbalance problem.
If Blood Elves gave the Horde a pretty option, my guess would be that Worgen were supposed to give the Alliance their Monster option. Let’s assume for a moment that’s true, just for the sake of argument.
Worgen, on paper, look amazing, but I think they’re plagued by a few other problems. Worgen currently rank 10th out of the races at 120 according to worldofwargraphs. This isn’t wildly bad - they beat out other core races: Dwarves, Gnomes, Pandaren, and Goblins, but it does mean that they’re getting beaten by at least two Allied Race - the Void Elves and Zandalari Trolls.
We can’t deduce a ton from that information more than the obvious. There’s nothing inherently contrapuntal about the Belves and the Worgen other than the assertion I’ve made which is “Pretty to the scary faction; Scary to the pretty faction.” That’s not dogma, but we can guess looking at things that it was probably the plan.
The problems with Worgen, though, have to be putting a dent into the population, and I’m not really clear why we’ve only fiddled around the margins in terms of their looks. The uptilt of the skulls, and the tightening of the run were a move in the right direction, but it also tells me that Blizzard is away of the problems and I’m guessing they’re hoping that was enough of a fix. I don’t personally think it was.
Worgen are a Cataclysm creation, and from the revamping of Alliance quests in Cata, you can conclude that the Devs were in a…whacky mood during that expansion. But I do think we should consider more of a revamp on the class to help with the options the playerbase has. I say playerbase instead of Alliance because I think Worgen are a good landing pad for Horde players looking to switch factions while keeping the edge. But we can agree that Blood Elves, being 18% of the total population - a good 5% higher than the next race (humans) - would not be as high if they had some of the same problems Worgen have, which are:
- Running Wild - I think it’s a weird ability anyway, but the hoppy gallop they have fits neither a class fantasy that I’ve seen, nor any real historical representation of a werewolf that I’ve seen.
- Helm - Thank god for transmog because finding a non-absurd helm for the Worgen is not easy, to the point that if I make a Worgen, I ship him some gold so he can transmog the heirloom. In fact if Blizzard wants a low-lift fix, I think they could intro a few new heirlooms that doesn’t look absurd for the worgen
- The foot - likely a personal problem, but they are massive, and we can’t even hide them in boots. I personally think that’s the easiest move - giving worgen boots and damning the torpedos of player backlash - but making them less…expanive would be very helpful.
- Holding the weapons while running - In a game where clipping is rampant, I don’t expect this to be resolved, but the bow my Worgen Hunter was running with has been smashed on the ground so frequently while running it should be Red.
The run and the cast animations have been adjusted slightly recently, so I won’t be as harsh regarding those, but to me those are bandaids, not resolutions. I personally think, before we consider a worgen-framed AR for them, we should absolutely overhaul the worgen in genera.
tl;dr - Worgan are low pop because they look like crap, and we should fix them before announcing the next ARs.