No allied races currently planned for Dragonflight, but they are still open to using the system when it makes sense in the future. For now the focus is on the Dracthyr.
Verbatim:
Crendor (Question): Are there gonna be new Allied Races in this expansion, and would any of them be Tuskarr or is that something you can’t talk about?
Ion (Answer): Um, there are no - no Allied Races currently planned, though it’s a system that we have that for sure we’re very open to, you know, using where it makes sense, where out through our journeys, we encounter new cultures that, you know, could we could see joining the Horde or the Alliance or both? We’ll see where that leads us down the line. But for Dragonflight right at launch? No, our focus is on the Dracthyr as the new race.
No Tuskarr.
No Gnolls.
No Centaur.
No Drakonids.
No (insert whatever is on your wishlist).
Good. At this stage.
I don’t necessarily want the story to have to end on terms where X race has sided with Y faction. I want to see a standalone, Tuskarr/Centaur story, unrelated to Horde and Alliance that could go anywhere. Maybe with them even being on bad terms with us.
It is a dragon themed expansion with dragon themed race. This is MOP 2.0, but instead of pandas it is dragons. The content visually looks great, hopefully they learned to tell a story without robots and ultra super villains who did all the things. The talent system will have a bumpy start, but I accept that as necessary.
Moving forward I’d like to see the allied race idea scrapped for more race customization. As an example, the Mag’har could’ve been an Orc skin. Same with the Blood Trolls of nazmir; they would make an excellent skin for the Darkspear.
I get that skins are not as cool as adding an entirely new playable race, but I’m sure the majority of players would be content with them barber shop customizations.
The catch there is that Allied Races have always been culturally distinct from the “core” race.
Yes, they could have added brown skintones to Orcs, but AU Mag’har are culturally distinct.
Yes, they could have lit a few beards on fire, but Dark Iron Dwarves are culturally distinct.
Yes, they could have just given us antlers, but Highmountain Tauren are culturally distinct.
And so on.
The same would prove true for the vast majority of “subrace”-esque Allied Race suggestions. Wildhammer Dwarves, Dragonmaw Orcs, Grimtotem Tauren, Forest Trolls, Earthen, Arathi Humans, Fel Orcs, Broken Draenei, and such… none of these make complete sense if they’re added under the umbrella of the “core” races.
Even the most popular suggestion of all time, High Elves, are predicated almost entirely on being culturally distinct from Blood and Void Elves.
They’re still relatively low effort additions. I just like seeing those cultural distinctions given a nice coat of paint with a few unique customizations, racials and class options to distinguish them. This wouldn’t be possible if we just amalgamated them all.
i’d like to play as a gnoll, but i’d rather they improve the races we already have than them add new races.
some races have customization options so simple that you don’t even have good options when building your character.
We have Jinyu, Hozen, Naga, Furbolgs, Tuskarr, Vrykul, Arakkoa, Gilblins, Mogu, Saberon, Taunka, Frost Dwarves, and plenty of other races with established lore, cultures, and relationships with the big factions. Instead we keep getting brand new shoehorned races.
I love the customizations, but no armor in dragon form, no mounting up etc in dragon form, being only one class, and spending a lot of time in the belf male/human female silhouette is kind of a bummer.
To soothe the wound a little, Ion did state that they could do “more” with Dracthyr armour when it comes to Evoker tier. So we should be able to see a good chunk of that stuff.
Outside of Kul’Tiran, Zandalari, and Vulpera the other 5 are just add-ons to already existing races, so im not really concerned.
Gnolls would be cool, but they’ll probably have to come up with some bs about joining the Horde, like alliance commiting terrorism on the Vulpera cause horde interaction.
I cant take anything Ion says seriously so idk lol.
