Lack of Man'ari Customization

Community General Discussion
12

The purple skin tone was already there from day 1. The manari got bright lobster red, darker brick red and that’s it. Those are the skins that will trigger the fel Gift of the Naaru forehead glyph.

The patch also added a very, very white skin, which I suspect was a mistake and was either supposed to be the orange man’nari skin tone or the very dark purple man’ari skin tone.

The white is nice, though and paired with the very white hair and yellow eyes options a normal draenei can be more or less indistinguishable from a Lightforged.

13

Woah, I didnt realize there was a ‘hidden’ appearance to this. How cool

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14

Yeah pick a red skin and use your racial ability.

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15

They also got new eye colors and a unique visual effect for Gift of the Naaru. This wasn’t supposed to be some big project.

There was absolutely no chance of them adding a slot for an entirely new physical feature alongside a few new color options in a minor patch. Wings wouldn’t even make sense because they’re limited to the most powerful man’ari while a draenei character with man’ari customization is just a generic grunt.

16

I hope they give us more options down the line. It’s worth noting that draenei still have fewer customizations than Lightforged. :expressionless:

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17

Here is a post with some suggestions for Man’ari Eredar customizations.

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18

I still want this:

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19

The fact that Draenei customization could be so much better yet it remains consistently disappointing is embarrassing on Blizzard’s part.

Two of the new hairstyles added to Draenei in SL have clipping issues and holes within the model where the crest and hairline meet on male Draenei.

The fact that we still can’t mix and match Draenei headcrests with different hairstyles is wild to me, when fan-lead projects have been able to get this working without much issue.

Beard, moustaches, and sideburns are still all tied together on Draenei, whereas on other races they’re separated out into different selectable options.

The tendril options for both male and female Draenei leave a lot to be desired. The large tendril option for female Draenei still clip into each other and male Draenei have yet to get a small thin tendril option.

Lightforged Draenei get to choose which Naaru headrune they’d like to have, whereas regular Draenei are still stuck with the single outdated graphical version.

Also, the fact that the Gift of the Naaru animation still clips into the male Draenei’s head should’ve been fixed ages ago… Yet it has stayed in the game since WoD.

Adding the new eye color options along with the new skintones was a step in the right direction, but Blizzard still needs to fix a lot of what’s already there.

Personally I wouldn’t like them to fuse LF Draenei options with regular Draenei, but instead focus on the more Shamanistic/Tribal themes of the Outland/Draenor Draenei so that they have a sufficiently unique niche aesthetic comparatively, rather than mimic the same thing that already exists.

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20

Yeah, I wish they’d leaned into this way more from the beginning. WoD did a really poor job of selling “the lost glory of Argus” shtick.

I’d have liked to see horn and tail ornaments, distinctive Naaru symbols, and - to borrow something from LF that I actually really liked - broken and prosthetic horns. There’s definitely a whole lot they could do.
Continues to be absolutely mind-boggling that night elves are apparently the only race to have met the criteria for developing scars (and then only on their faces).

Man, if they really needed ideas, they could’ve scrolled through Isei-Silva’s gallery again.

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21

I couldn’t agree more. They definitely leaned way too hard into this as the expansions rolled out, which disconnected them almost completely from Draenor/Outland. Especially odd when in older Draenei dialog they still consider Draenor to be an ‘ancestral homeland’ to them… and their main motivation for joining the Alliance in the first place was so they’d have allies in retaking and rebuilding their civilization on Draenor.

But hey, I guess it’s kind of a pattern for Blizzard’s portrayal of the Draenei. Written consistently inconsistent, and whatever we are given is usually given in marginal amounts and leaving a lot to be desired.

Feel like Blizzard has always struggled with what they wanted out of the Draenei, never really felt like they had a solid grasp or idea on how they wanted them to play out or even appear aesthetically. Like, as an example look at their accents. In TBC the accents of the Draenei were all over the place, felt like every V.A. had a different idea for what they were trying to do…

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22

Give them an inch…

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23

The fel scar skins are probably being saved for when the demon hunter class gets proliferated is my guess.

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You play manari guilt Manari, not the actual cool demonic ones.

You play the ones that were ordered at gun point to kill all life on this planet and cry themselves to sleep every night

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The accents are all over the place, yeah. In MG I chalk it up to regional differences, which is definitely not what Blizzard was going for but…what can you do, I guess. The best thing draenei have going for them is from a community of invested artists and theorycrafters, which is kind of bleak from Blizzard’s side given they came out in TBC.

With Man’ari, I’m pretty worried for the state of our Heritage. The idea of the disparate Eredar factions rejoining to form one big civilization together would be a bit more compelling if not for the lack of a cohesive identity. Since WOD, Lightforged feel like “draenei, but draeneier”, and krokul got passed up entirely despite being more emblematic of the forgotten TBC concept art by Blizz.

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26

You just described my life

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27

“here’s a little something for you guys,”

Players:

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28

Lightforged Draenei do so little with the idea that they might as well not exist. They should have a similar level of Light “mutations” as Fel-blooded Man’ari have in demonic corruption.

Wings, of course. Crystal horns. Floating crystal horns. Floating geometric crystal horns! Like they’re so filled with Light they’re they’re taking on Naaru-like properties.

Glowing hands, glowing hooves. Glowing scars! Metalic gold and silver skin-tones.

As it stands right now, a Lightforged draenei has very little going for them. A very limited color pallet. Very few things that the normal draenei can’t imitate or flat-out pull off better.

They have nice hair and crests. That’s about it.

The normal draenei should get customization that reflect that this is a refugee culture. After the fall of Shattrath it was how many years of living in hiding? Then the Exodar crash? These should be a people in technological decline and that should be reflected in their garb.

Scars. Lots of scars. A draenei could be a survivor of several attempted genocides in their life time. War paint and tattoos. Lots of leather/hide/textiles in their armor as well as scuffed and cracked glowing crystals.

Forget Argus. You have a young generation of Draenei that look at the Ruins of Shattrath like “We built THIS? I grew up in a mushroom.”

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29

Fell tattoos like DHs would be nice. Also, new horn designs and horn jewelry. Oh, and a forked tip tail.

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30

Exactly, it’s baffling to me how Blizzard has stripped away so much of the Draenei’s connection with Draenor when realistically there’d be multiple generations of Draenei that would have no connection to Argus at all.

Initially, it seemed that Blizzard did portray the Draenei as having very little connection to Argus, having a more heavy emphasis on the importance of Draenor to their people. To the point wherein quest text they emphasize how most Draenei don’t even know of Argus’ existence per TBC quest text:
www.wowhead,com/tbc/quest=9693/what-argus-means-to-me

From what we understand, over the course of the expansions Blizzard has consistently lowered the amount of years that the Draenei had lived on Draenor. From 5,000 down to 2,000 to 200, and in some sources merely 20 years before the opening of the Dark Portal (this becomes increasingly ridiculous when you take into consideration that they’ve built an entire civilization in that amount of time).

Also really weird considering Draenor is literally named after them.

But going back to the initial point, there’s a sorefully underutilized aesthetic that they could’ve used within this understanding. Their shamanistic connections being one of the many opportunities Blizzard has had to express something wholly unique with the Draenei.

That, and of course the initial theming of being a race of exiles in hiding whilst in diaspora from their fallen civilization on Draenor. Lots of aesthetic potential there when you consider the idea of them piecing together their former holdings, traditions, and lifestyles whilst in that diaspora.
An example of a customization option that could emphasize this, like you said, could be stuff like scars, war paint, shamanistic or ritual tattoos.

I do hope that they actually go for something like this in their heritage armor (if they ever get one), instead of opting for the LF heritage armor but purple…
Something more along the lines of this:
static.wikia.nocookie,net/wowpedia/images/6/6f/Playable_Draenei.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20200618152517

Another oddity among Draenei customization is that there’s barely any customization surrounding jewelry. No earrings, nor piercings, nothing beyond a head circlet and the minor customization we’ve been given surrounding tendril-rings. Very odd considering Draenei are supposed to have a strong connection with jewelry, to the point where they have an actual racial passive in the game to emphasize this connection.

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Neither of the skin colors we got are Off-Brand to the Manari.

They just lack Fel Scars.

They did though?

Techncially all Draenei are Eredar. Draenei and Manari are just Offshoot names for the different factions and in a way races of Eredar. So they’d need to include Manari in the Eredar Name or it doesn’t fit.