So, it’s been about two years since 9.2.5 when we got the previously NPC-only dark ranger skin tones, eye colors, and armor, and with dark rangers officially becoming a Hero tree in TWW, I think it’s time to inform or remind people of how poorly the addition of those customizations was handled.
They were created for NPCs and then given to players without being properly refitted
Each dark ranger skin is just one texture mapped to the first face on a race’s model, meaning if you switch to another face, your character will suddenly have larger lips, fewer creases, or no freckles compared to if you used any other skin tone. This is because they weren’t originally meant to be used by players and were haphazardly made usable by changing a flag from “false” to “true”, or “0” to “1”.
The skin tones and eye colors are joined together
Related to the above, dark ranger options are linked together like pre-SL Night Warrior skin tones, so you can’t play as, say, a night elf dark ranger with red eyes and black skin or a blood elf Darkfallen mage with gold eyes and pale skin. They are compatible with blindness options, which I assume is because those are separate textures overlaid on the character’s eyes.
Death knights and demon hunters cannot use them
Unlike the aforementioned Night Warrior options, you can’t use dark ranger options on a death knight or demon hunter. For DKs, at least, not having the options is absurd when they’re both forms of undead and Lady Alistra has been here for over 15 years.
Contrast all of the above with the eredar options given to draenei not too long ago. Those were created from the ground up, you’re not forced to go with red skin + green eyes, and you can use them on a DK.
Nightborne didn’t get anything
This isn’t quite the same as the above issues, but when the Lordaeron storyline launched, there were complaints about how dark ranger options were going to every elven race except nightborne, justifiably because the options for those three were recycled assets and nightborne dark ranger NPCs didn’t exist, so there was nothing to recycle for the latter. But Blizzard decided that void elf Darkfallen can exist, so it’s not like there’s much barring nightborne.
So, to sum it up, Blizzard should:
- Make new dark ranger skin textures that adjust to your character’s face normally
- Separate the skin tones and eye colors
- Make them usable by DKs and DHs (or, rather, DHs just get the skin tones because they have no eyes to turn red)
- Nightborne get dark ranger options, or some alternative like felborne