San’layn/vampyr Elf ALLIED RACE Coagulated Megathread of Ideas{Re-VAMPed} (Part 1)

It would really depend on how they implement new races on a cash shop of sorts whether I would feel comfortable with it or not. I honestly feel like it would get bad reactions in general.

To be clear, what I type is referring to paying money on a cash shop for new races specifically. There is a difference between new races being a feature of an expansion and being plopped into the cash shop at any point and time just to purchase said new race.

On one hand, it does take a lot of resources to create a brand new race, even for ones like Lightforged Draenei which may not have a whole lot of difference at least in terms of models and animations, so paying for the service of new races being added could be argued.

On the other hand, there are several problems I can see with this. New races use to come with expansions, so would all forthcoming new races be part of a cash shop then? How much would they be? How popular would it even get? Sure, I’d pay $25 for playable Horde Ogres, but would other people? If it doesn’t take off, would it turn off Blizzard from making new races in general?

Theres also storylines to consider. Would we see these new races actually join the Horde/Alliance in-game to advertise they’re playable? Or would we just suddenly get Alliance Kobolds available and they’re all over Stormwind with no stories based on how they got there, why they’re accepted, and won’t have a story presence altogether?

There can be arguments made for and against paying money for unlocking new races. Other MMORPG’s have done it before, but with WoW, it really would depend on how it was implemented. I want to see new races, but I also know races in a cash shop may garner some negative attention.

On one hand, I’d like to hear other arguments for and against paying money specifically for new races to form a better opinion. On the other hand, I have a hard time seeing this implemented in the game in any way that would satisfy everyone or at least the majority of people.

All of this is just my opinion, of course. As I said, there are arguments for and against money for new races specifically.

In general, I think that’s a pretty horrible precedent to set. It’s one thing to have mounts on the cash shop; they’re temporary vehicles with limited sets of animations. Even if you don’t buy them, there is such a wealth of mount offerings in the game itself that you can find something just as impressive without having to pay out of pocket.

Races are not the same thing as mounts. They are the fundamental lenses through which the entire game is experienced. Encouraging Blizz to put something so fundamental to players’ experience behind a paywall in a game that is already incredibly expensive for players to take part in would only result in potential expansion features being carved out and sold as glorified DLCs in an MMO. I don’t really see that as being a good thing.

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I pay for expansions. I pay for a subscription. Players have the option to engage in a cash shop. I do not see why I need to pay more money on this game.

How about they give me what I already pay them to do?

This

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Well, lets look at what is announced for SL. No new allied races. Why? It wasnt in the budget.

If it pays for itself, then we would see more of what we want. Sure, your sub pays for content, but its content that blizz picks and chooses.

If the options were, that I had to pay to play as Sanlayn, or not get them at all, then I am all for paying for things I specifically want.

Meh I figure I’d pay for them. I am waiting x amount of years. Thought I was gonna die from this virus when I got it, and some other stuff that happened in my life. I wouldn’t mind spending money on stuff that I want to see in game like some playable races. But I do enjoy the unlocks in this game. San’layn already sort of are in the horde which is why I would love to see them playable sometime soon. My 2 cents.

I don’t think that’s a fair conclusion to make. What are you basing it on? You’re saying it’s cheaper for them to overhaul customization options across all 13 core races as opposed to just releasing another 4/6 new allied races?

There’s a lot of speculation based on the recent datamining that the covenant races will be made playable anyway, so I don’t think it’s a budget thing at all.

Also also, I don’t think there’s any timeline where Blizz would see allied races as a bad monetary investment. It’s highly likely that even some of the lower effort races, the void elves, highmountain tauren, nightborne, and lightforged draenei, heavily contributed to the massive amount of preorders that BFA benefited from in January of 2018.

Setting a precedence is one of my worries, and I can see implementing paid races backfiring in both ways.

First let’s assume they do this. At any point in time, they add in San’layn as a playable race. The only way to play as them is to pay money in a cash shop, are a brand new race, and get story presence to promote them suddenly being playable.

What price would be placed on them? Even if 100% of the money would go to charity, it’s hard to imagine them being decently priced, given all the work that goes into making a new race. Even then, it alienates a lot of consumers, and only a few races getting released this way would likely be more played than female Dwarves.

If this practice becomes popular, would we then only see new races released this way? What if the price increases more and more as new races come out? How would balancing work with racials to make sure they’re not pay-2-win in things like PvP?

If the practice fails, would Blizzard give up on adding new races in general? Would they receive even more negative media attention? Not to mention lost revenue in planning, setting up this system, and designing the new races in a cash shop?

Speaking only for myself, while I would pay money to be able to play as Horde Ogres, Saurok, and San’layn, it’s not clear if others would want to pay money to play their most wanted races and if this would be a success or an abysmal failure. Something that use to come with expansions as a feature now just being tossed on the cash shop is a very tricky and dangerous idea.

I do think new races have their place in a MMORPG. They generate hype for an expansion and leads to other revenue streams in related services (race changes, etc). I’m not sure in the long run trying to monetize new races is the best of ideas.

There is more that I can type up, but I need to think on it some more. Just my two cents, is all.

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Thank you for this thread :heart:

More than a copy paste high elfs, I want this race. This is 2020, the year of vampires. So, the least blizzard could do is add this race, not the SL vampire race, they look copy paste Nightborne but more ugly.

I really don’t care if this race is horde only, finally we would see more San’layn race than bloodelfs.

Also, if this race is horde then the alliance can finally get their high elfs. T H E E N D.

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I appreciate the slippery slope angle, but paid content has proven to work, its the age we live in, and its not going away.
Blizz already does it in other games. Necro in d3, co op commanders in SC2 and HotS.
Yes, our sub gives us content, but if paying more gives me more of what I want, then bring it on.

Pricing isnt an issue. If you cant afford the things you want, then you have bigger problems than not being able to afford high elves in WoW.
Its like complaining that you cant afford a 4k tv. It sucks, but thats life. Find a solution.

I would just pay with tokens mostly. Wow is base 50 cents a day. So I think of it like I am paying double for a month for some purchased content. It would make me feel a little better. But San’layn difetly shouldn’t fit in that boat. I would put to purchase the rather unlikely races to join right now. Such as Mantid, Tuskarr, Harpy, centaur. The ones that are lore plausible would be fine as the normal route.

I don’t think I’m a fan of the idea with Allied Races on the shop. Beyond my own personal distaste for the idea of races being on the shop (I feel it should be only for mounts and pets at this point, with a few mogs I guess but that obviously didn’t work out). there’s another factor to consider.

If they toss a bunch of races on the shop, these races will be neglected and get 0 additional lore. It’ll just be a cash grab. Unless they add lore to add interest of course, but they haven’t really done that for much of anything on the shop (not that it’s needed for mounts/pets).

I’m saying this as someone who’s fully capable of affording this stuff too, assuming it’d be reasonably priced. Not to mention, the racials might give someone who buys these shop races an advantage, unless the racials are copies from another race not buyable and just different cosmetically.

Also, the fact that Venthyr are basically copies of Nightborne except extremely ugly is a very good point. Everyone is saying “NO MORE ELVES” and revering the Venthyr for being ‘different’… but yeah, they’re basically even uglier Nightborne. :woman_shrugging:

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You’re literally comparing apples and oranges here, though. Starcraft 2 and Diablo 3 weren’t in active development when they started adding small content to their in-game shops. Diablo 3 had its entire development team relocated before Reaper of Souls even hit the markets. In cases where in-game shop premium content would be the only way we’d see new content, I suppose I’d be in favor of that. Hell, I’ve purchased every co-op commander that ever came out for SC2 and I don’t regret those purchases.

But that is very much not the situation that WoW is in. We pay upwards of $60 every two years in addition to $15 per month and god knows how much more for in-game services and cosmetics. Partitioning off new races on top of all that just seems gross.

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I sort of want toys that would effectively change your race for however long you want. So I would unlock this toy in-game and as long as I want would race change to say Murloc. Or for example Quillboar. Or maybe Sethrak. So all my character would have the option to use them. It could be like disguises 2.0 but have like actually customizable and savable options when you use them so you can keep your base race racials. And have options to just play as other races via a toy on all your alts. That’s the best way I would do it and it could even be lore-unfriendly models to play with. Non-lore canon if they wanted. Just for fun.

Not saying I would think San’layn work like that but other races I would like to play but maybe have no reason to join us.

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More and more game-related items in the $ shop = another step closer to ‘pay to win’.
Skäl
:beer:

What if the choice was pay for Sanlayn, or no playable Sanlayn at all.

Our sub money only pays for so much. They have a budget, and allied races didnt meet the budget for SL, hence why they said they have no plans for allied races at this time.
People assume DLC or paid content, is purposely held back from the base game, just to be sold separately. Not true.
Its content that wouldnt have existed, unless they could justify it financially.
There are requests for so many allied races, and at this rate, we are barely getting the undead one, which looks like it is leaning to one of the covenant races.
Developing and selling allied races changes that, because now their is more financial justification.

Can they just keep including allied races with sub? Sure. But they obviously didnt feel it was going to push SL. Next announcement could be from next week to 6 years from now, to never, and they could go with kyrian over Sanlayn.

So again, if it comes down to, pay for it, or nothing at all, I’d rather pay for it.

I’d love San’layn and this thread is really well made (love the art!)… But ever since Venthyr got a small chance to being an Allied Race due to datamined shenanigans, I keep asking myself if San’layn will ever see the light of the day (no pun intended!) because the flavor is so similar to the Revendreth race.

What you guys think?

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I think a lot of that has to do with the future design philosophy when it comes to customization options, and that’s a bit tough to peg down.

Bear with me, brevity is not my strong suit, I’m afraid :frowning:

Alright, so let’s entertain the notion that Venthyr are 100% confirmed as a future race. Would they be allied or core? Well, it’s possible that there’s no longer a distinction between the two. If I recall correctly, the images of the new race selection screen on the alpha don’t differentiate between which races are allied and which races are core; they’re all just sort of thrown together on the same screen. If we have to make an arbitrary distinction for our purposes, then I suppose we could say that allied races represent subcultures of core races that require more attention (read; unique racials or class options) than mere customization options can allow for. So a forest troll can be represented with green skin on a jungle troll, but a Zandalari troll needs to be its own race due to its dramatically different posture, class options, druid aesthetics, and customizations. Vulpera, however, are an interesting beast. Gameplay-wise they are the allied race for the goblins. Lore-wise, however, there is nothing linking the two together and, aside from a shared skeleton and similar heights, the two races bear very little resemblance. So, could Venthyr be treated as an allied race for the undead? Could they be treated as a new core race? My answer is… it doesn’t matter. We’ll circle around back to that, but in my opinion the simple fact that they’re being added after BFA likely means they will be subjected to the new design direction that governs core race customization options.

What do I mean by that? Well, let’s look at the evidence. All racial starting zones are optional now, and the new customization options on alpha let you represent the styles of racial subcultures that might have been allied races if we really wanted to stretch the system that far. What this means is that when you choose your race you are no longer strictly locked into playing as a member from a specific location. For instance, we used to differentiate the two kinds of human by calling one “Stormwind human” and another “Kul Tiran human.” That’s no longer valid as the core race human no longer necessarily comes from Stormwind. This is the entire reason for the new “Exile’s Reach” experience.

So let me cut to chase; There exists a possibility that San’layn won’t be added as customization options for blood elves, but rather as customization options for the venthyr.

How do we know this? Well, the more I read about Revendreth’s lore the more interested I become. Firstly, it looks like the venthyr function in a very similar manner to the kyrians in that “redeemed” souls have a choice to literally become venthyr. Kael’thas is a prisoner and isn’t “redeemed” when we find him, which is why he’s still a blood elf. Uther, on the other hand, is a full-blown kyrian in the datamining so far. As far as we know the other two covenants don’t operate this way; Ardenweald is about rebirth, so it more or less regurgitates the souls that come its way back into the world as opposed to keeping them in the realm. Maldraxxus seems to value individuality greatly, as Draka, Kel’thuzad, and Lady Vashj are all denizens there but none of them have been fully transformed into necrolords and more or less resemble the forms they had in life.

Given this, we can draw a pretty important conclusion; It is entirely plausible for venthyr to have once been san’layn before arriving in Revendreth after their death. In fact, it’s probably highly likely that most San’layn found their way to Revendreth considering the fact that being undead usually means your soul is “damned.” And if we consider damnation in WoW lore to be analogous to “sin,” that would definitely fall under the territory of the venthyr covenant.

So I can actually imagine a scenario where venthyr become a new playable race, but thanks to the new customization option overhauls they can choose to better reflect various races that became venthyr. Maybe, once venthyr start leaving Revendreth after the massive revolution against Sire Denathrius that we take part in, those subdivisions start to become more prominent. So maybe, by the end of it, Prince Renathal represents the venthyr’s overall racial leader, but Kael’thas would be to the venthyr what Falstad is to the dwarves; technically also part of the same race, but using noticeably different and distinct customization options.

So here’s my personal ideal scenario, and this will basically function as the TL;DR of my entire essay; Venthyr become a new playable race. You get vampiric racials and a fitting voiceset to better represent the fantasy. You then get the option, through customization options, to alter the appearance of your venthyr so that they resemble the san’layn, and canonically they would be san’layn. Kael’thas is present as a major lore figure to better bridge the lore between the san’layn and the venthyr, effectively serving as the Horde’s version of Umbric (although hopefully he isn’t ignored as much as Umbric was).

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Oh wow, that makes sense! Thanks for the detailed input.

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Just a little bit of new hope from WoWhead.

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