The Horde got their second “short race” as an AR in BFA. The Alliance got theirs in Vanilla. Obviously I write this as a dwarf - it’s not that I’m opposed to shorter races, but two of our 4 ARs were other short races. They could have done better.
Honestly, I’d even be fine with the Dark Iron. I like the fire Beard and aside from their totems I have no complaints.
And while this isn’t a direct attack on Mechagnomes - if you like them, I’m happy for you - but who in their right mind thought this was the right things to do? Give 2 additional short races.
One of the cooler races the Alliance have - Worgen - has some elements to it them that people would have welcomed as modified ARs. Less haunch, helms that don’t look bad, a lot of folks want tails, maybe some calf muscles.
Kul Tiran, for all their faults, were a nice addition. I’m honestly OK with them. And while the LFD could have been cooler the biggest complaint is thier class selection. It’s probably correct lore-wise, but if that’s the case, maybe give us Broken or something else.
At the end of the day, they’re ARs. We got one different looking race (Vulpera, and KTs), and everything else was a different looking races we already had. Still I feel the doubling of our short races was capital S, stupid.
Personally I feel cheated with Void Elves, just no effort were really put into them, which is a shame cause 8.3 had plentiful customization and story narrative potential to include them to further both.
ARs would have been better if they were unlockable customization rather than races considering how most of them look so close to their parent race.
But yes I feel like we were cheated compared to the Horde. There were hundreds of posts asking for mechagnomes to NOT be an allied race and they were turned into one. There were similar complaints about Kul Tirans along with people asking for at least “Stormwind” human model and if possible the skinny one. We still got them anyway.
I think mechagnomes are fine. For the most part, allied races are sub-races. Just off shoot branches from the core ones. Most of the core ones got their own counterparts and it’s only fair that gnomes get theirs too. Especially when Blizz gave an entire island dedicated to it. It just makes total sense. The other races Alliance were requesting back then were so obviously not in the cards.
It doesn’t matter if a race is tall or short, there will always be some who like them. And what’s wrong with short? Can they not be taken seriously just because they’re small? I’m not getting that part.
It’s more variety! Now each side has two smol races/sub-races. The scales are balanced.
I think Alliance got burned pretty bad with those Mechagnomes. Now they could have been cool if Blizzard put in some werk and gave them neat cosmetics like flame thrower arms or busted arms with sparks flying out. Things that you go to the barber and change. Oh well.
I dont think its appropriate to say alliance got burned with mecha gnomes, its like saying they were made to be massively unappealing on purpose.
This was never the dev intention and it shows they are expressing their creative freedom with their races and their story. Of course this means we wont always have something that is positively received.
I never want to play a game that has a story purely driven by fan interests, it would be horrible.
I think it’s more to the fact that it was predictable that they wouldn’t be appealing to begin with. It’s no big secret that the reception to Mechagnomes (as a potential allied race) well before 8.3 was lukewarm to poor.
I applaud developer ingenuity. I just prefer it to be done with races that larger groups of people want. Where is that ingenuity with Naga that people have been wanting since Vanilla?
I think two things can be true.
Fan-driven stories can be terrible and Blizzard’s decisions on Allied Races can be terrible. I don’t see why one relates to the other.
Only because they didn’t “finish” ARs. They did all the races that aren’t shared between the factions… except Worgen/Undead.
If every race got an alternate, it’s whatever.
But we missed out on a Worgen alternate in favor of… Diaper Gnomes I guess?
In comparison to the Goblin Alternate effectively being Vulpera, which are fairly popular.
I’d say I just don’t like Diaper Gnomes, but realistically any Gnome alternate would be trash and it rubs me the wrong way because if we’re going to be “missing” 1 Allied Race slot forever, I’d have preferred it to be that.
