If our megathreads were viewed by the devs and inspired them any, I would think some inspiration would happen in the final product, but not so much all of what we write in its entirety.
Likely, the devs would want to implement their own ideas and such for a new race. Of course, that doesn’t mean that they would always just ignore megathreads entirely. There are plenty of great ideas that get put into the megathreads, and if the devs did view them for feedback, I could see some discussion going on about them in the offices and being inspired by ideas we have presented. They did say they were looking for feedback regarding new races, and at the very least, megathreads would play some part of that marketing statistic, big or small.
Speaking only for myself, whenever I write and put ideas, I do so from a “heres some neat things and ideas I wrote” to show how to implement a new race or design them in some way. I don’t really expect the devs to implement them exactly as I typed, assuming they pay attention to it of course. They’re just meant to hopefully inspire ideas should anyone take interest in them.
I do recall a long time ago, for another game of some kind, seeing talk that game companies don’t really take whole ideas specifically from fans and put them in exactly as we type them without saying anything. Something to do with legal reasons, although I don’t recall seeing a source about it. I’ve always stated that if the devs somehow like any of my ideas, they are welcome to use any of them in some fashion. It would likely mean they would be looking to implement playable Vulpera/San’layn/Ogres/Saurok for the Horde in some fashion, and that would be enough of a reward to make me happy.
To be clear, this is not to say that our megathreads are useless and ignored. Far from it. I do think a lot of ideas and writings we do here are awesome enough that there is a chance to inspire, to a certain degree, some neat ideas for new races.
All in all, I still think people should keep supporting and offering ideas for a race’s megathread that they want playable regardless. Some feedback is better than no feedback, in my opinion.
And if we do get San’layn playable and don’t get snarky Dreven, I’ll just be making my San’layn with that personality anyway, so there will always be snark of some kind.