((TL: DR before the links)
So, I was bored and searched for official art of Male Night elves. as one who is constantly (and obviously failing since I doubt my voice alone will change much) found a thread on MMO champion from 2008 and this part made me chuckle:
This ofc left Nelves far behind, rather than on par in a wild beauty vs polished beauty kinda way. So now, working on them together, makes me think there is a real chance for night elf models to come out decent… fixing animations like their walking and their casting, which were horrendous [night elf male i’m looking at you], I think they tried to shoot for a deadly grace in the night elves but came out with goofy/flaky,flimsy feel.
This was talking about the remodel coming or a remodel coming, for some reason, but it seemed to me that they were always like that, Blizz intends them to be always like that (even with the terrible casting animation the male has) and possibly won’t care updating or changing, unless they update every race in some other patch/expansion, but keeping their figure the same.
As a company, I am sure Blizzard knows they can’t stay stagnant for the sake of nostalgia, and they haven’t stopped at rechanging classes for this, either. Shadow Priest with Voidform is one. So, in this case, I feel changing models physique should take a nice priority over nostalgia as well, because otherwise… well, is bad.
It is scary how long it took to fix the Worgen and Goblin, and even then, they didn’t get a physique change, just a texture update for the most part. And only, or mostly, because they looked older since they were not updated in WOD, if I am not mistaken. I know it takes a lot of work, but you did it with Zandalari, you did it with Vulpera, especially did it with Kultirans.
And Night Elves (contrary to Nightborne) would not require a complete physical overhaul. It’s mostly their chest/waist, neck as they look hunched and some animations. They Idle animation, Stealth and primary casting animation. I feel they have a good second casting animation when they separate their arms then shoot it (You could see an example when casting Flurry with a male Night Elf) .
Nightborne has less problems, because even if they share many, their idle animation is not bad, they look more updated for logical reasons, but retain several problems regarding the headache casting animation, all but one face are old, extremely old faces when this should not be a thing, as we know Nightborne have no problem having kids. So young Nightborne should be a thing not only reduced to a face that’s hardly young either.
They could look skinnier than male Night Elves, but there’s no reason to look so much. In fact, male Nightborne in Suramar didn’t look that skinny physically in comparison to Night Elves. And when you use NPC models of Suramar in BFA content and not the playable model, you know there’s a problem with it.
These two races need help, and the rig is not the problem, because, again, look at Zandalari.
I could be editing this post with more things and making it better to read if it gets enough attention, though. These type of remodel petitions are not as popular as it was with Worgen and Goblin for logical reasons, and I know Blizz knows, but they might think is not enough to warrant using manpower on it.
TL:DR: searching a bit further, I stumbled to some threads requesting changes (won’t put mine, though) and if it’s possible, if all of these are in one single post, Blizz could notice. We could also put the Nightborne model here as a request, as it is unfair how Zandalari, Nightborne and Male Night Elves have the same model and if you see Zandalari standing beside the other two, you’ll think the Elves are from Classic WoW in comparison.
(Feel free to add yours and I could edit it, but most of these are of recent time)