Hey all. I’ve spent a lot of time reading former posts on this, but I feel like there’s a few more points that were never brought up, and a couple worth highlighting again.
I’m not going to argue that Zandalari will completely kill the Darkspear because that’s ridiculous, but let’s be realistic here. Blizzard has argued that the “hunch” is part of the Darkspear identity. If that were true, the Darkspear females would hunch as well. They’re Darkspears too, aren’t they? Or do females not share in cultural identity? Arguing that if you want to play a straight backed Troll, you should roll a Zandalari is not a fair thing to say, because there is no gender equality. Only the males are forced to pick another Race to stand upright.
Then, let’s talk about the Darkspear identity. They were literally a bunch of jungle Trolls that joined up with Thrall. Sen’jin and Vol’jin were their identities, so much so that the Trolls are now leaderless. The Darkspear identity died with Vol’jin. As per Blizzard, they’re trying to “figure things out” now. Part of that could be looking to their new allies, the Zandalari, and standing up to look them in the eye as equals.
And half of these posts are people replying to say blah blah blah Darkspear shouldn’t be able to stand upright because reasons… But no one is advocating to take away the option to be hunched. But it should be an option that players get to make the choice. The developers won’t make it an option because they know you’ll only see 1 out of every 10 (or less) Darkspear males running around hunched. (Food for thought: Maybe Blizzard wouldn’t lose 3 million active users in a quarter, if they would quit dictating to players how they must play every single aspect of their game with a “take it or leave it” attitude.)
This would, in fact, add racial diversity back into the Horde. I’ve personally tried playing a Darkspear, but I can’t do it. It’s too off-putting walking around with my knuckles dragging the ground behind me. And I’m not alone. Just do a web search, you’ll see all the threads on these very forums.
Because of the Zandalari, the development time has already been invested into making a Troll skeleton that walks upright and performs normally. And I’ve stood next to Darkspear Trolls on my Zandalari. They’re roughly the same height for males. This shouldn’t require an extreme effort to implement, and it definitely should be implemented.
It’s been framed that hunching is the “Darkspear thing” and it won’t be implemented because that’s what makes the Zandalari special. Well, standing up straight was also supposed to be the “Mag’har thing” but was given to normal Orcs as an option.
The fact of the matter is, letting Darkspear Trolls stand upright would not impact their “identity” at all. It would give the players a choice, increase the overall Darkspear player population, and anyone who wanted to live in a bell tower in Orgrimmar could still have a hunchback if they wanted to. If you like the hunch, this wouldn’t effect you at all. Letting those of us who want to stand upright as a Darkspear Troll do so wouldn’t impact your gameplay at all.
TLDR: Darkspear should be able to walk upright. The option doesn’t hurt anyone who still wants to hunch. It wouldn’t make Darkspear vs Zandalari any different than Orcs vs Mag’har Orcs, Tauren vs Highmountain Tauren, and Draenei vs Lightforged Draenei. They’re similar Races, but they’d still have their differences.