If I were to guess, the likely reason for pushing the heroic version was that they needed to cut the megadungeon into two regular dungeons and edit how the dungeon will flow, seeing as you wouldn’t be doing it all at once. There is also testing for both dungeons to make sure both are manageable difficulty-wise as well as making sure quest-related objectives, the King Mechagon kill for example, will count. I’m eager to get it done so I can unlock the new races and make my characters.
Weirdly enough the Alliance races all appeal to me more than Horde ones. I’d take a Kul Tiran and Mechagnome over anything the Horde offers. I’m only shackled here at the moment because my RL sister won’t give up her damn blood elf, and because my guild/85% of my friends list are all Horde.
I have liked most of the allied races so far, although the Alliance ones appeal to me more as well. The dark iron dwarfs turned out really well and have tempted me to change my pally. The Kul Tirans look good, too, and I especially like the themes of their druidism. The Zandalari and Nightborne are probably my favorite Horde allied races, because they both have so much lore and history.
I’ve preferred the Horde allied races more, though that’s moreso because I like the Horde more in general. I do like every allied race for different reasons and know that some of them have made people very happy to be playable. I remember seeing people ask for Mag’Har Orcs and Dark Iron Dwarves as sub-race options across many expansions, for example.
Hopefully we’ll see more allied and core races in the future. BfA has been a great time to gather player feedback on the different races people want playable.
Mag’har are probably the best allied Horde race concept-wise, but their racials are just such garbage that it’s hard to get excited about them.
Nightborne are nothing like the originals we came to know and love during the Legion expansion.
Highmountain are just regular tauren with antlers. Cool racials but not really much to get excited about. Very limited class choice too. I wish they could be warlocks.
Zandalari have the same issues as regular trolls (namely their feet) and those never appealed to me either.
Meanwhile I like every Alliance allied race for its own reasons, and am sad I can’t really main one at the moment. I think the difference is that the Alliance allied races are very clearly designed to appeal to different tastes and niches, while the Horde allied races are more of a general appeal kind of thing. I also think that the Alliance races are more hated for that reason as well, because not everyone shares those tastes. Love the idea of religious militarism? LF Draenei are there for you. Love the darkness and goth flavors? Can’t get better than a void elf. Identify with the element of fire? Dark Irons are literally that. Water? Kul Tirans! Fan of sci-fi and robotics? Mechagnomes!
It’s established that normal gnomes and leper gnomes still don’t see eye to eye, so very likely not. Even tauren are likelier to get Grimtotem customization.
Here are my suggestions for mechagnomes to help improve them.
Have them share hair color and styles with regular gnomes.
Add new skintones for regular gnomes and share them with mechagnomes similar to dwarves and humans. Human- wide skin tone variety. Part of the turn off for gnomes in general is the limited skin tones. The hair variety is cool though.
Add a color dye system to there robotic parts. This would be fashion friendly and a good way to personally customize your mechagnome and match sets. The limited color pallete on the leg armors are an eye-sore. The diaper thing is annoying too. An option to cover that up would be appreciated.
Keep adding new arm and leg models as mechagnome only transmog. With the dye system it would be more aligned to robot fantasy and customization from other games like mech games. The mechanocat was a good example of it. If they could get new dyes for there metal bits every so often that would help tremendously. It would be similar to the vulperan bag of tricks.
Allow for full robotic features. Those are the mechagnomes we originally asked for blizz not cyborgs.
A new casting animation for magical spells that uses a hand gun. So your mage would should spells out of the gun. Projectiles would launch from that point. Or maybe a chest or head laser sort of thing.
Give them playable shamans. They have unique technology. They control the weather. Shaman would go very well with them. The shooting lightning storms along with the hand-gun casting machine suggestion would make it feel like you are using the guns from mechagon. It would go well with making there spellcasting unique. A form of gun-magi.
I am really surprised that they don’t have shamans already. However I think this leads me to conclude that goblin shamans are probably more magical than technical.
It is possible that leper gnomes could be a customization for regular gnomes. Some leper gnomes have been driven crazy and are hostile to everyone, but there are a number that are mostly sane and have left Gnomeregan to join other groups, such as the Royal Apothecary Society, Venture Company, and Dark Iron Clan. Some of these sane leper gnomes could be convinced to reintegrate into gnomish society.
Additionally, the gnomes of New Tinkertown are close to developing a cure for the radiation, even turning a sludge temporarily back into a gnome. Maybe they could finally be successful in restoring the minds and bodies of the leper gnomes, but unable to reverse the green skin. I would probably choose the leper skin for my warlock if it were made it available, so I hope it is!
Just wanted to wish everyone a happy new year. It’s not too much longer before we’ll be able to make our MechaGnomes and Vulpera, and I for one am excited and eager to get them both unlocked.
On the subject of doing the unlock criteria on Horde, I’m tempted to do the heroic Mechagon wing needed on this character, my Horde main, to see if I can do the MechaGnome unlock questline on my Alliance main and report back. I’m assuming it should count and allow my Alliance main to unlock the MechaGnomes, since a few other allied races have worked that way before. I see no reason why it wouldn’t work with MechaGnomes, but we’ll have to see come next patch.
I really hope this happens. Gnomes currently have five shades of pale that I can barely tell apart. I think the model updates in WoD affected the skintones for several races, because I remember there being darker options in the past not only for gnomes, but for humans and dwarves as well.
I would love for this to happen, but any color dye system even for transmog seems unlikely in the near future. Even one or two more metals in the character selection process would be cool. Death knights could get dark blue saronite as their special class customization. And who wouldn’t like a nice copper patina (JK … kind of)?
We have the option for fingers or hand clamps and different levels of armor plating, so I could see other character customization down the line. For example, flesh that extends to the knees that would turn pants into shorts instead of briefs. If this were a transmog, it could open up a whole lot of cool possibilities for other races, too. Kul Tirans could have pirate-y peg legs, and Shattered Hand Mag’har could have hand blades like Kargath.
Having a customization option where metal plating fully covers the head instead of just the top half would be nice and allow for the full robotic look. The heritage armor also provides that full robotic look. Unfortunately, it only comes in the gold color that matches just one of the three body metals. There are NPCs on the island that wear the heritage armor in both a silver color and a rusted color that would match perfectly with the other two body metals. I hope all three versions are released, so people can achieve the full robot look in shiny gold or rusted iron.
LOL, at first I thought you meant that the mechagnomes would install actual guns at the ends of their arms instead of hands. Impractical perhaps, but very gnomish. It would be amazing if all races got unique spell appearances like this, such as night elves getting Elune-themed spells or Zandalari getting loa-themed spells.
Yes! I thought that paladins (devoted to Mimiron and the titans) would make sense for mechagnomes, but several people have pointed out just how much they have going for them as shamans, too. I was really hoping that the mechagnomes would get a new class to set them apart from regular gnomes (and perhaps losing access to warlocks, which do not really make sense for them).
