I admit people want Dark Rangers. I want Dark Rangers.
I cannot want Dark Rangers and say that nobody wants Dark Rangers.
Plenty of people want Dark Rangers.
But that’s not what’s happening in this thread.
After all, when someone complained that Void Elves would have Blood Elf colors and Void stuff and that it wasn’t fair, I’m the one that said, “What about Dark Rangers, or Felblood Elves?”
And they’re still flipping out about Felblood Elves still.
It isn’t a genuine request. Not in this High Elf discussion thread that ironically started as a blue post.
Because if it was, it would have been phrased like that.
But it wasn’t.
It wasn’t, “Hey Blizzard I also want Dark Rangers.”
It was, “You’re getting something and have something and that’s not fair!”
Sand Trolls make no sense in the lore to join up with the Darkspear narrative yet there they are.
Keep in mind the current level 1-10 experience is the “canon” one at this timeframe that these new players will come in as so Dark Ranger skinned Belfs would be coming into the game on the Exiles Reach. Nothing is being broken in the Lore anymore than anything else does.
Just want to add on here, that there have been some other megathreads attempted in the past but they did not live as long as the High Elven ones.
Probably because until recently it was less easy to see how it would get done exactly.
Balesong captured the text too where Dark Rangers report to see both Sin’dorei and Forsaken as their kin. I do not think its a stretch given the model, and most prominent Banshee being Sylvanas still identifying with Quel’Thalas to believe the customization would go to them.
Combined with the new player experience technically being Exiles Reach, I don’t think its a matter of “Dark Rangers need to be accepted into Quel’Thalas” it’ll be player agency for your character, given you could technically I believe still skip exiles reach and just do the regular starting zone.
Darkspear Trolls aren’t into a lot of the newly playable Trolls currently. Just because you’d have to be a Blood Elf to pull off the Dark Ranger customization doesn’t mean you’ve gotta hang out in Silvermoon…
Though the Undead sort of need a new capital…
Wildhammer Dwarves shouldn’t have Bronzebeard racials or Bronzebeard totems but here we are.
The choice Blizzard has made is to allow you to play the race you want by customizing a similar race… rather than flooding the race select screen with allied races.
Just imagine if you had every type of Troll on the select screen. =P
“Do you want to be a Frost Troll, Jungle Troll, Darkspear Troll, Sand Troll, Amani Troll… etc etc etc.”
Exiles Reach is the canon current start zone up to date on the timeframe though, the old start zones are effectively just so you can still play through old content.
True, but at least those Trolls are biologically near identical, while the Dark rangers and Blood Elves, Undead and living, I mean even the voice overs would not fit there.
It’s not a perfect fit either, but at least they’re undead. My preferred placement would be a new race slot. Doesn’t have to be an AR, could be a new base race.
Void Elves also have a voice filter though. So that’s obnoxious.
It’s definitely not an ideal solution to the situation.
But the alternative was to add like 20 Troll Allied Races and that’s not useful either.
They need customization options within each race. Like a toggle to switch between Void and High Elves. But then without extra work it wouldn’t limit what skin colors you could do and that’s just more effort. Same for Trolls. Clicking over to a Sand Troll would limit skin colors and why bother?
I don’t heavily disagree with those changes you listed (despite lore breaking implications), but they don’t overly push the lines to the point where it’s both living and undead being the same race.
I think we are at a time of compromises. HE fans would have preferred a race to itself as well. Same with Wildhammer, and so on. Gilgoblin fans are also looking at the possibility of being customization as opposed to their own distinct race. And I think everyone needs to be open to customizations as a route to implement requested asks.