JF Asked When we Want More Customization

Community General Discussion
141

My take on this is that I wouldn’t mind if they just took a year to get a bunch of customizations put in along with heritage armors and a few other things they’ve been wanting to do but couldn’t. But…then the game would fall by the wayside without the e-sports stuff (read m+ and raids and arena PvP). To be fair, I don’t DO those last three things, which is why it wouldn’t bother me much. But that’s a lot of money for the company, and if you’re chasing after money, …that’s kind of what happens.

That sort of thing certainly doesn’t make -me- happy, but I imagine investors and such might feel a lot differently. And people that enjoy those aspects of the game, if they were told, “We’re doing nothing this patch except for adding customizations and new things in the world, like different kinds of drinking glasses, chairs, horde items that aren’t all spikes, and quests for heritage armors!”–would be screaming about how there’s “nothing to do!” anymore and how if this trend continues they’re going to en-masse quit.

Do I wish they’d do the latter and deal with the complainers for six to eight months? Sure. Do I think that’s feasible? No.

I loved the idea above that they hire on contractors to do some of this work that we want while they continue to work on “the big new thing,” but they’re still making money by stringing those things out over several patches, as many of us who want those things continue to play and pay monthly fees (or buy tokens, etc.)

Really, though, it would be a lot easier to know what is and isn’t feasible if they’d release numbers for paid subscription accounts that are active (not counting accounts paid for with gold, etc.) and also the number of average monthly purchases of WoW tokens (over a given year or six months, or something like that). Without those numbers, it’s really hard to know the kind of money they’ve got to work with when it comes to game development. That’s not to say they couldn’t take out a loan or something, but that gets into the territory of risky business ventures, and I’m not sure, as likely a lot of creditors probably aren’t sure, if that’s worth the investment. To be fair, I think the company could manage it; I’m just not sure it would be worth it.

tl’dr I’d like a whole patch of nothing but customizations, but the people who actually do e-sports stuff (M+, raiding, arena and rated PvP) would be crying on these forums for years to come and probably quit the game.

142

There’s a very simple solution to this: you bake customization updates into the patch cycle. When players know they can expect X new hairstyles or whatever to be added at Y time intervals, they’re a lot more satisfied. A certain other MMO has figured this out.

If Blizzard had been making regular, small additions to character creation over the past 3-4 expansions, we would have so much more than what we have now.

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143

Ultimately blizzard needs a win for an expansion.

And arguably to me, still refusing to do player housing, and now combining that w backing away from customization for all other races is a bad move once again from them.

Like if they were finally doing player housing I could understand a pause in customizations for races outside of the new race, (a pause though as in I’d expect them to get back into it in 10.1 / 2 etc) but they aren’t doing player housing, and now they aren’t continuing customization it’s exhausting.

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144

I know I wish they would hire and dedicate a group of at least 5 persons working solely on character customization nothing else

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145

Honestly, I think Feasel is kind of in the same boat the rest of that team is, kinda clueless and ignorant. Putting all your eggs in ones basket is never the answer because realistically, you’ll have majority try out the new race for a bit with a few sticking with it. The pay off is just not there IMHO.

While I also don’t see the BIG thing about more current race customizations. I think they could just as well release every .5 patch some customization, or release playable tortollan in 10.0.5 since they have the rig etc… :face_with_hand_over_mouth:

I think they simply put their eggs in one basket. Tough sell.

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146

Still waiting on all the customization they said they would do throughout shadowlands. They backed out once the expansion started and I’m still salty about that

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147

Kind of sad considering how terrible the customization we got is. Why is it that some races get 3 tabs of customization and can choose to have scars or makeup and yet human’s scars are tied to skin color of all things? Like wtf? What idiot thought that was a good idea or even acceptable? Or how humans can pick what makeup they want but Goblin’s makeup is tied to what face they pick? It’s so inconsistent and just terrible.

Then you look at Orcs customization compared to like Gnomes or Pandaren and the latter two barely got anything at all.

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148

Well they said they didnt forget them and sinse we,ll be back on azeroth it make more sense to release them with their appropriate quest/story

  • They haven’t forgotten about Heritage Armor and now that we are returning to Azeroth there is room to tell those stories.

Also this
They hope to lift the Dracthyr race/class restrictions in the future, but it is just a hope at this point

Maybe the new race will get class later on in the story

149

Well my guess is they are focusing their all on dracthyr more as a test. Cause apparently you have way more options than other races and even body shape. So maybe if it goes well that type of customization will be added to all other races after a ltle while

150

To be honest I think a lot of the reasons a lot of races have been skipped is due to Blizz giving in so much to the high elf crowd for their rp customization.

I think Blizz just saw all of that and lost the motivation to do anything for other races

151

Imagine giving up on something so much of your playerbase wants because of some re-colours for something so much of your playerbase wants.

152

I fixed it for you.

If it was a regular new race, many people would be race changing, if for only a few weeks or months and just for the novelty. Day one of every new race people are swapping to the new thing.

Except this time.

Exactly zero people will be race changing to the new race this time. This time if you want to try the new race, you’re rerolling and playing the evoker. Don’t like evokers? Too damn bad. If you love dragons and love to tank? Too damn bad.

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153

It immediately lost interest when I saw they are using the Blood Elf skeleton from 2007 or so. And the females use a female human rig.

MAKE.
SOMETHING.
NEW.

PLEASE.

World of Recycled Content, and they wonder why everyone has pretty much moved on.

Also, pretty sure the only people left that are excited for this race are the furries.

Most people play something more humanoid, like an elf, so this race won’t be too appealing to them/me.

154

The fact there isn’t a team that works solely on race customizing is a complete let down. We were sold Shadowlands with one of the key features being “the customization expansion” and that eventually we would all get the Orc, Troll, Tauren, Human, Night Elf, Dwarf treatment. They said at Blizzcon they would continue then a week later we got an interview answer saying “we’re done with customizations.”

We’re going back to Azeroth in 9.2.5? Allegedly? Would be a great time to add in some Allied Races and new customizations. We are being pushed into a season 4 with no new content, just new affixes. They better be giving us a lot aesthetic options for races and new allies races if all there is happens to be rehash.

Gimme my Sethrak! :snake::snake::snake:

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155

Ugh, 18 years of game and all they could think of was “let’s add dumb greys and whites to transmog”.

Best representation of how Blizzard design stuff: hold it back until years later then act like it’s such a craaaazy new feature.

156

No you didn’t. Anyone can play it. You choose not to.

Anyone can start the new race/class combo. You choose not to.

157

If this fit the expansion … they would … like you see … everything it’s possible :laughing:

158

I agree, honestly.

It’s not a flex at all considering 90%+ of the playerbase will never main an evoker in any serious capacity. Pair that with the fact that Dracthyr are locked SOLELY to evoker and it seems like a lot of wasted effort.

Maybe it’ll pay off once they open up Dracthyr to additional classes, but they really ought to improve the customization options of the current races too for folks that prefer those.

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159

WoW is miles ahead in “competitive gameplay” is more disingenuous than anything I’ve written. Games don’t have to be the best in competitive gameplay to be fun, and WoW is not miles ahead in gameplay of games like FFXIV, Lost Ark, or GW2. It’s entirely preference which game you enjoy, but every other game has better character customization than WoW, and doesn’t sacrifice content for it.

Giving a handful of options to a handful of races and none to others with absolutely no indication of when or if this would ever happen again? I’d like to see where people were complaining and criticizing the new options, and I’m not surprised people were complaining and criticizing that it took so long and that we don’t get enough updates.

Character customization in an RPG is a dud is such a bad opinion I can’t really even say anything about it, if that’s your opinion fine, but that’s kind of ridiculous. It was never meant to be a gold sink and it shouldn’t be, and in a game where your entire interaction with the game is through your avatar, I don’t think an argument can be made that it’s a dud.

Blizzard can and should put their resources into something like player housing and more customization. This isn’t some indie company with 2 developers in a garage, this is a AAA studio with one of the largest games to ever exist, and they’ve gone on record about how it’s less and less difficult for them to make these sort of changes as time goes on, “resources” isn’t a valid excuse.

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160

way i see it, this new race will be a testing bed for new customization ideas that can then be put on other races in future content patches.

i see no reason to be upset that this new race gets more customization options then the rest, as long as the new idea’s the team uses on them (if they work out) get put onto the other races.

i myself am more excited on the charge mechanic being implamented into other classes.