The problem with a lot of the added customization options is that a lot of them didn’t seem to have a lot of thought put into them from an in-universe point-of-view.
What I mean is that the races that “won” in terms of new options had new customization that even lightly touched upon that race’s culture and history. Night Elves got options like leafy hair to show their culture as one with a strong affinity toward nature and their preferred habitats in the forests of Azeroth and the burn scars and night warrior eyes to represent recent events and that they were survivors of them.
Then there is the Blood Elves that got some jewelry and a couple new haircuts. Keep in mind that our characters are always wearing some sort of jewelry no matter the race and that a few new haircuts and skin tones(options most other races also received) do nothing to represent the history or culture of Blood Elves. No runic tattoos to represent their affinity toward magic, no farstrider markings to represent their, admittedly lighter than Night Elves but still present, affinity toward nature. Blood Elves took a big “L” on customization.
What needed to take priority in adding new options to each race was the race’s culture and history and how that can be represented through the character’s model and as this wasn’t done in most cases I do hope the door isn’t shut on adding more options as we further explore the cultures of each race and more of their history comes to light, especially with certain allied races and how they can be further set apart from races that are similar(LFD,HMT,VE,MKG) and ones that are new that has yet to have their history explored at all.(Vulpera)
Many of the ARs would like to have a word with you on that.
That being said, all races need tattoos, scars and scars that make sense.
My Worge has a scar on his right eye while a Worgen, but as a human… I can only have that scar on the left eye. Like… wut? LOL
All races and males also deserve jewelry. Guys can look swank too.
All races need glasses and eye patches added to character customization, so that we can wear hats and helms with them. A pair of glasses should have never been a helm.
Most of the ARs got nothing while elves got a lot comparitively. ARs need some serious love. They’re races, too.
Yes, Blood Elves got pretty much nothing good. Farstrider tatoos, jewelry, better hairstyles, anything would be nice. I’ll even take some Light-related stuff.
That’s cause, and this is just my opinion, it was treated like an attention grabber rather than a feature.
It was half baked, unbalanced across races, didn’t hit every race, didn’t hit the ones it did in the same meaningful way and ignored widely the cultures of those races.
Blizzard treated it as though it was meant to generate a purchase rather than a feature they would actually work on.
We also lost visual uniqueness to give VEs two visual distinct set of options allowing them to be void and non void.
And BE males cannot use the jewelry, and all human skin toned races got added diversity options (which I applaud) but I’d note for BEs who have 14 skin tones 10 of them are shades of white, 4 new skin tones that should be expanded on as well.
A bare minimum pass while losing visual uniqueness, and people try to conflate it with “elves” well maybe BEs aren’t NEs, nor are they VEs with two visually distinct themes now.
Really? The most played race in the game didn’t also get the most/best customization options? That’s a shame.
I would say Kul’Tirans got the worst of it.
SL was also sold on core races with no mention of ARs until one AR jumped into the core race pass and again in the AR pass, (I applaud them doing ARs) but BEs lost visual uniqueness which makes their lackluster bare minimum pass felt that much more, and core races are still lacking across the board.
I do feel their very much implying BEs are fine / trying to paint BEs under the umbrella of “Elves”
I’d rather have this current patch go back to core races but yet no customizations are being fit in. BEs got to see more visual uniqueness lost in both passes they’ve done so far though.