Hey Blizzard since it definitely seems the Earthen was a more company inspired pick as a new playable race can the next race be a player voted one? I’m the same way they did the promotional for the Horde / Alliance bike’s but we vote on a a limited selection of possible Neutral race? Then a multiple selection of Horde / Alliance allied races to vote on? For example a selection of Neutral races Aarakoa / Vrykul these 2 imo are viable candidates for Neutral races in terms of story & player character interaction as well as popular player requested races. I’m not saying they are the only ones either. Faction Specific voting Horde Naga - Sethrak Alliance Jinyu - Saberon ( just throwing out possible examples not absolutes lol)
I think something like that would be cool to do and make players feel more invested into the game and bring a part of developing the world we play in
I’d like to see Ogres for Horde, Vrykul for Alliance. Ogres have been a part of the Horde in different forms in the past and Vrykul have a connection to humans and could easily be added lore wise with friendly Vrykul. We are going back to Northrend in The Last Titan so that could work. It would also give bath factions another big class.
You know the answer is no. They’re not going to redo the armor for a new skeleton/frame. They didn’t for Drakthyr (cant wear armor), and they didn’t for Earthern (didn’t need to). Those days are likely past.
Personally, I don’t really want WoW’s character selection process to devolve into something akin to D&D or Pathfinder TTRPGs.
I’d much rather see similar-races combined first (Humans, Kul Tirans, and Worgen combined into a single “Human” race option with sub-options available). Arathi would be much easier to add too.
Going on that, If they did choose races it would most likely be races that share the skeleton of existing races, so nothing unique like Naga would get chosen.
I think only Kulʻtirans and Pandas broke that trend. every other race added shares the skeleton of another race already in the game so as to fit armor/ animations and such.
They have to fit a new race into the plot of the expansion or the one after it, not randomly throw them in based on popular demand and with no relevance to said plot. The closest thing to the latter happening was Dark Irons and Mag’har being added in BfA, but they were also justified as the Alliance and Horde needing allies, and their leaders have some degree of relevance in TWW.
Every race has been a company-inspired pick. They put their own vision for the game before their customers’ demands for the same reason Nintendo doesn’t listen to the people who want Mario or Link to have a gun. Arguably the only races whose additions were influenced by popular demand were the two mentioned above, and all the others were likely planned in advance.
No. Absolutely not. This is not something that the playerbase should be allowed to directly influence, mainly because then the story would need to be rewritten around the race chosen. A choice between several races isn’t remotely the same as a choice between two mounts, mainly because race discussion is 1,000x more incendiary.
At most, you’d get a choice between something like an orc reskin and a goblin reskin. They’re not going to do something as audacious as using a popularity contest to decide if the Alliance will get vrykul or sethrak, because then the losing side would throw a fit and openly harass the winners. I know this because of how often sethrak supporters attacked mechagnome fans for existing after the latter race was confirmed for 8.3.
The idea of a Horde Arakkoa and an Alliance Vrykul is ludicrous on the grounds that both proposed faction ideas are for races that hate the primary members of these Factions: The Arakkoa heavily dislike the Orcish Horde on account that the Orcish Clans had regularly attacked the Arakkoa in the past and there’s plenty of bad blood lingering between them for the Shattered Hand and Bleeding Hollow Clans; even in the Alternate Draenor Arakkoa who would have more than enough reason to hate the Orcs due to the events of The Iron Horde. Meanwhile the Vrykul may be the progenitors of Humanity, but that doesn’t mean they were benevolent parents for the most part: the Winterskorn Vrykul which most of Humanitys’ genetic stock had come from held an intense hatred of perceived weakness in their people and a dislike for The Curse of Flesh that Yogg-Saron afflicted them with, and despite his own views changing on how he views Mortals in regards to his Vrykul; Odyn is a major dickish Titan Keeper and a control freak as The Prime Designate who would clearly have no desire to align his Valarjar with the Alliance.
Instead, I believe that the Arakkoa would find a kinship with the Alliance as they had done in the Lore: where during the events of The Second War, the League of Arathor had contracted the help of the Arakkoa as their guides through the savage world of Draenor in order to do battle with the Orcs on their behalf, and whose culture has a strong inclination towards the Holy Light, Arcane, and Druidism; along the fact that if this is the Arakkoa from The Order of The Awakened from Alt. Draenor; than these Arakkoa would join the Alliance not only on the aforementioned grounds of fighting the good fight against the Mag’har Orcs that had left them for dead, but also to keep a weather eye on the two Draenei groups because of their wariness towards the possibility of them turning out like the Lightbound.
Meanwhile the Vrykul whose culture prides itself on Strength and Glory in battle would undoubtedly find a kinship with the Orcs: namely, I think that this would be a choice motivated entirely by one group of Vrykul that the Players can help out with: The Jandvik who live just to the east of Suramar City, and whom the Player Character is now the Jarl of.
Beyond this, there’s other Races that we could toss into this cooking pot to pull out some interesting groups to play as: namely some Non-Humanoids that have fully articulated models and both sexes visible already. I believe that having Centaurs and Nerubians as a Playable Race would be an interesting mix: the Alliance would get the scary Spider People, while the Horde would get the noble Horse Men.
The Alliance Nerubians are a sect of Nerubians originally descended from Azjol’Nerub who had escaped during The War of The Spider and fled from Northrend for their survival and had heard tales of The Alliance who stood valiantly against the Undead Scourge and would try to seek them out for survival and the chance to reclaim their homeland once again, with many of these Nerubians taking up the arms and beliefs of the human kingdoms to show solidarity and trust in their new allies.
The Horde Centaurs are representatives of the Maruuk Clans from the Ohn’ahran Plains who wish to leave the Dragon Isles to explore the world and find out what became of the Centaurs in other parts of Azeroth, and hearing that there were other Centaur Clans out on Kalimdor had decided to find out more about the Theradras-derived stock for themselves, and to try and smooth tensions with them and the Tauren who call the southern half of Kalimdor their home.
This reasoning doesn’t rly make any sense, since 1, they not being"benevolent parents" is not 100% true, as humans survived exactly because their parents were benevolent to save then, but because it doesn’t matter NOW and not every vrykul rly knows of this history.
Odyn valajar are not the only vrykuls in the world, you dont need pre-established factions for a new race to be playable. They can merely introduce a new vrykul clan and make it join the alliance with a consistent storyline, in fact, they could have done here, isle of dorn, populated by a clan of then, instead of lame rock dwarves.
That is more popular yes, back in the days people imagined ogres going horde and arakokoa going alliance for the outland races.
