Meet the Earthen, A New Playable Allied Race

Community General Discussion
284

I 100% agree. I so badly want them to do both winged and wingless Arakkoa, but now there’s hardly any chance because they’re not very relevant in the story anymore <.>

Similarly, I’d love for them to have Saberon as well. For those who remember, feral druids were able to turn into them in WoD and it was awesome.

Lorewise, it is possible that they could be playable. Both kinds of Arakkoa and the Saberon were brought to Azeroth when we rescued the Mag’har, and even prior to that the wingless Arakkoa were around because of the events in TBC. I unfortunately don’t think it’s likely though <.>

1 Like
285

So are they’re not making you pick a fraction IE can you go as friendly to both storm and Org?

286

What really bothers me is that some people here literally don’t care about lore whatsoever when it comes to WHY certain races become available during each expansion. They just want what they want, and that’s all that matters, and anyone who thinks otherwise is wrong.

So far we know of 3 major “races” in this expansion (if you haven’t done Beta yet, and I will never play Beta for free). That would be the Earthen (our playable race), another HUMAN (which I’m sure the Horde would love to play as a playable race, amirite?), and the Nerubians.

Now I’m sure everyone would love to play as a Nerubian since having all those arms would be super neat to do stuff with, but it wouldn’t make any sense to just start this expansion off with playing them, since I assume they are seen in general as bad guys from the start, so making a new one and sending them through the leveling zones wouldn’t make any god damned sense.

BUT, maybe we could see them as a possibility in a future expansion, depending on how their role plays out in this one. Or perhaps not. It’s not that big of a deal.

Really though, when choosing races, it all has to be “why would these characters fit as playable in this expansion?” And of the 3, Earthen seem the only reasonable option. And they are not Dwarves. They are pre-Dwarven. It’s literally the same thing as declaring Elves to just be another Troll.

Really the only “joke” race we’ve had in game were the Vulpera. And it’s probably just because Blizzard wanted something on Horde that wasn’t “scary” for the people who just didn’t want to play Horde for their lack of friendly-looking options. And I’m fine with that. They gave Vulpera a decent reason to join Horde (they were the first one they made contact with, and Horde helped them out of a jam, which is basically why Tauren are in the Horde as well).

TL;DR - Since the first expansion, there had to be an in-lore reason for the races to go to each faction, and just because it’s a race you think is cool, doesn’t mean it should be playable, otherwise we’d all be playing Old Gods and Dragons (actual dragons) and Titans.

287

I think I’ve found my new favourite NPC

3 Likes
288

Have they revealed who is the official leader of the Earthen yet?

The race at one time served at the pleasure of the Titans and their machines but with future expansions leaning away from the Titans as an ally who has risen to the role?

Has anyone that has done the Beta met the new faction leaders? Are there separate ones for Horde and Alliance?

I almost feel like Blizzard would want to push Magni into this role but we need two distinct faction leaders and Magni is not a neutral character.

289

That is so funny.

More dwarves in the game.

Same amount as elves…

And yet we cant get high elves as their own race…

Lazy game design in my opinion

You could have baked these customizations in the dwarf race…

290

Objectively false because there would have to be 4 Dwarven races to be the same as the 4 Elven races which means we still need one more after Earthen Dwarves.

Lol, High Elves are Blood Elves with a blue background that’s literally the laziest game design ever, at least with Void Elves they look a bit different and glow blue, bleed blue, sound weird, etc.

4 Likes
291

Blizzard didnt want to make high elves so they gave blood and void elves blue eyes with tanned skin tones and called it a day, i play blood elf because i dont want purple void form every time i deal damage and the sin dorei heritage armor fits a fire mage.

But id be lieing if i said i didnt hate undercity and orgrimmar. I cant go to stormwind or go alliance

292

why am I seeing a reboot of Reboot?

293

Ah, another race I will never use.

294

Earthen have been requested to be playable in the form of customization since Wrath of the Lich King when we were presented with neutral/friendly earthen (contrary to the ones in Uldaman in vanilla which were uniformly hostile and didn’t seem capable of free will).
Granted, people probably wanted something nearer to the originals. Stone hair/beards. I’m not a huge fan of the metal wire. At the very least, it should be a choice of one or the other.

The random crystal spikes look like junk that got stuck in them, as compared to the concept art where it looks more deliberate to their design.

The color palette choices also feel a bit odd as well. Surprisingly few earthy tones for the earthen, but then we get blue tints and sulfur yellow. They also missed the mark with the eyes, which could have been given textures to look like gemstones or something along those lines-- like what we see in the cinematic, rather than “colored glowing orb”.

295

Yeah I want to say some stuff about this but don’t want to get a time out penalty. But lets just say I expected something else as a race like I don’t know maby Kobalds or Ogres. Why do we need a 3rd dwarf?

296

Because it’s an Allied Race and far easier to implement than rigging armor onto/making customization for kobolds or ogres.

The whole point of Allied Races was that they were the Blizz buzzword for the long-requested Subraces (i.e. any existing racial offshoot that was more or less a reskin, without a need for an entirely new model/animations).

Also, they’re relevant to the expansion on the whole. Would it have been better had they made this separate NPC race of Earthen and then just went “you don’t get to play as one”?

1 Like
297

I like the earthen they have a good amount of customization.

As for the people “who asked for them” and “another dwarf “

  • you can’t please everyone so never expect to

  • who asked for a ton of things over the years in this game ? That’s just dumb. A business is a democracy? Since when?

A business particularly for games has a vision for their game which while it’s influenced or inspired by other games or books or movies that studio still does what THEY think is cool and hope the customer likes.

You truly try to run a business by customer decisions every step of the way - you’ll go insane and then you’ll go broke.

  • as to more dwarves? What about the four varieties of elves ? What about the two Draenei or trolls…or orcs?

Blizzard constantly has been reusing models we’ll be earthen but now people have issues with it?

Anyway it’s just funny to me how selective people are with their outrage …

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298

We already have Dark Iron Dwarves as a allied race as a sub race why do we need a sub sub dwarf race? Make it make sense.

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299

I see no point in this arbitrary limitation of 1 associated race per core race. It’d be stupid to go “Oh there’s several varieties of this-- but you only get the one. Hope you get the one you like!”

Some have been relegated to customization, such as sand trolls and Wildhammer dwarves. This would not have been feasible for Earthen.

300

Well, the post has been up for 9 days and has less than 20 likes. I am guessing everyone could care less about the new lazy race. As expected.

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301

Yeah exactly. If people were on fire for something the likes would be in a couple thousand by now.

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302

Ive been here excitedly posting about them since it went up, and only just dropped a like because of your comment :stuck_out_tongue:

2 Likes
303

well you are one vote. Who are the other 18? I mean, when your kid goes play football or basketball there is usually atleast 2 people in the stands that will cheer no matter what. I mean the staff is over 100 deep at Blizzard and there is 18 likes for this race. I am fairly certain that no one cares.

1 Like