My character list is full of gnomes, I love them as a race dearly, they’re my absolute favourite. But to be honest, their customization options are lacking.
So I’m just gonna lay a few out that I think would be great.
For Gnomes:
Dirty faces - Grease/Ash/Soot/Whatever, with a clean goggle outline around their eyes. They’re portrayed as an engineer heavy race, and like Goblin Engineering, not everything works properly. Things explode and break before they get better. It’s not a terribly unrealistic thing to see when working with heavy machinery and tools. And with the Heritage Armour Goggles sitting on their head rather than over their eyes, it’d be very complimentary to the appearance.
Cyber bits - Not enough to be recognised as Mechagnome, just small singular things, like a hand or a colourable eye with a target indicator or something in it. Accidents happen in Engineering, and unlike Goblins, they don’t really consider themselves expendable enough to not work on fixing the damage.
Facial Expressions - Maybe its just me, but the male Gnomes all seem extremely smiley. Even the ones that are clearly supposed to look angry. Option 4 in the faces is probably the most neutral, but I mean… You can’t even slap an angry eyebrows option on that face to make it look like he’s not very content with his life.
Whereas the Female Gnomes, none of them ever look happy without emoting. That’s the sort of neutral face I wanna see the male gnomes have, but I also wanna see some options for the females to be a little happier. The only happy option, or at least one that looks like its smiling slightly, is Option 3, the one with the noticable age to the face. Why you gotta be an old lady to be happy?!
Hair - This applies to both Gnomes and Mechagnomes. The Males get all the wild styles, the Females get the styled ones. One or two exceptions between both. While the Mechagnomes have styles that seem more like it was an automated pre-set done by a machine (which I love honestly), but the themes just seem to stick to the genders. I wouldn’t mind seeing the dudes with longer hair going down their back a bit, a Fabio-looking Gnome would be hilarious. The girls, I mean, the craziest hairstyle they had was a beehive for extra height. The pigtails they coined first and has evolved to Chibi, but now they’ve also got bed head. Basically the boys are lacking some of the normal styles in the same sense as the girls have, while the girls are lacking the crazy styles the boys have. A few styles that look like something blew up in their face wouldn’t hurt.
And on that note, since hair colours have added options to have secondary tints/details, singed tips to the hair like it had been on fire would be a nice detail.
Mechagnomes, somewhat more of the same idea, but maybe some where those preset hairdo’s went wrong, or since they have a lot of electricity involvement, ones that look like they got struck by lightning. I got several ideas in mind, but I can’t put them to words, they’re just… crazy styles…
You ever see Spider-Man: Into the Spiderverse’s Doc Oc? Her hair! Poofy and a mess, because she’s focused on the science!.. and killing Spider-man!
Tattoos - Okay, this isn’t really a priority, but so many races are getting tattoos now, why not. Ever since that G.E.A.R. formation for their Heritage questline, it’s put it in my head that each player gnome is pretty much part of a special task force of sorts, and you can find a lot of stories of the things people in such positions do, what they get, how they bond, etc, etc… So I’m thinking a couple Tattoo designs in relation to the G.E.A.R. team, or Gnomeregan as a whole. Mostly just some arm tattoos, but I’m not gonna lie, if my male gnomes could get a big Wrench down their chest just like Brock Lesner has with a sword, I would forever keep them shirtless.
“Why bother having tattoos if you’ll barely see them?”
Why have any body markings for any race if the possibility of it being covered with armour exists?!
Personal enjoyment. A gnome players camera is down low enough to see it, that’s enough to be pleased.
For Mechagnomes:
Light Colours - This is the most important. Their mechanical bits and pieces, most notably the eyes, clearly glowing a blue. They stand out. These needed customization right from the start. Blue is fine, but the Mechagnomes in Northrend had Green and Pink, surely we can just add those, plus red, purple, white, or even black to make it look like they’re shut off.
If any race needed more options to their ‘eye colours’, it’s the Mechagnomes. They have the most noticable eyes for it to make a big enough visual difference.
Paint jobs - Rusted, Silver and Gold is all we get for the arms and legs. If they’re not going to be covered by the armours, then more options to match the armours we want is a must. And surely a lot of them would go for some more personal flare and paint themselves, I mean a whole section of Mechagon was dedicated to spraypainting vehicles. Add on an option to make it look like the limbs have had their paint scratched or is starting to fade away or peel off or whatever. Don’t need to get crazy with the amount of colour options, but you can’t tell me it wouldn’t be fitting for them to want a little more individualism in design ever since they joined with the Gnomeregan Gnomes.
Hand Designs - A couple more of these would be nice, and the ability to mix-match them. Like as it stands right now, I’d love to have a Right-Hand clamp and a Left-hand… hand. A design that looks like a slot for their weapon to sit in would be nice, just to shortcut a method of integrating the weapon with the arm so that they can go full blown Kargath Bladefist.
Open ended arms that look like cannons would look fantastic with casters. Mages casting fireballs, for example, just looking like a cannon blast. Profession diddling, maybe a little extra detail to it to look like the arm rotates for a small hand/tool set at the back of the cannon for ‘use’ animations. That admittedly might be too much effort, and really who cares if the cannon hands look silly when doing profession stuff, my Monk has clamp hands and does Inscription, I’m forced to believe his clamps help him have fantastic handwriting.
Feet Designs - I mean… Yeah. Just more feet. Some that look like shoes. Or plated boots. Hell, a malfunctioning rocket boot that occasionally flashes with a jumping animation the same way Elf characters occasionally flip.
Metal extras - Okay, I’m not gonna mention the recurring meme about how people describe Mechagnomes, but small details to the torso would be nice to have to try and alleviate that. A little more detail to suggest some were further in being mechanized than others. A plate over their heart, a noticable metal spine, a crotch plate…
Depending how big they are, could even add little graffiti/art details to them. Like the metal plate over the heart, someone drew a little heart on it, or a heart-rate monitor, or even just wrote a calculation over it because it was unused space. Sentimental stuff about how they chose to not go full blown Mecha and keep their ‘Gnomanity’.
I don’t expect much of this stuff (or honestly any of it because I have no illusions about the races popularity), but that’s some of my personal wishlist. I’ve thought of and forgotten plenty of others over the years, but these seem like the most plausible with the current state of customization options.
