Neutral races should be called out for what they are. They are shallow, lazy and delivering a lesser product for an increase in price.
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I don’t disagree, but Earthen seem to prove that they’re going that route 
They could do a split for each faction.
With midnight being an Elf focused Xpac they could do San’layn/High Elves or something along those lines.
I am getting tired of Blizzard reusing models for races though.
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Well I guess we get San’lyn now, if your a Death knight.
When I saw the art for the evolved Nerubians I was mad they weren’t our race instead of earthen. I’d play the heck out of a spooky spider lady
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In the last panel they just had the crowd cheered louder for dynamic flying then earthen lol
Dwarf fans are already playing the Dwarves they like… Give us the things we are asking for!
Are they trying to outdo themselves on Mechagnomes?
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Yeah I don’t think many people are excited for Earthen at all, and even though I will play one (I have one of every race on Horde) I don’t know if I’ll enjoy it
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Neutral races is a topic I’ve been thinking about since the expansion’s announcement, which I also have mixed feelings on.
Seems like faction identity is kinda being thrown out the window when we put Dwarves on the Horde, and Darkfallen on both factions kinda sets a precedent for San’layn being neutral as well because of it. So while I can see faction specific races still being utilized, I can also see more neutral races favored to save on development costs for better or worse.
I’ll go into more detail of my thoughts on neutral races when I can better convey it here and in other race request megathreads. Honestly though, if I get to have playable Horde San’layn, I’d take it over never getting playable Horde San’layn.
–Still dreaming of playable Horde San’layn as a full race! 
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Neutral race should be done when it must be done. We can do the both. I think it’s time to give some races to the Alliance and the Horde, not only neutral except for Mogu, Tuskarr and Vrykul:
- Broken, Jinyu, Mogu (or neutral Mogu) for the Alliance
- Ogre/Mok’Nathal, Taunka, Forest Troll, Gigoblin, Saberon, San’layn for the Horde
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If they go down this route then they should officially and bluntly disolve the factions.
Then there is no horde earthen, alliance san’layn or other nonsensical faction race combo’s but races just become playable.
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They seem to have a very lukewarm reaction at best. Barely any reaction at the recent Deep Dive as well. Not saying they don’t have fans, but I’ve seen more grumblings about it than anything.
I typed up my thoughts on the Earthen in other threads, but if anyone is particularly interested, I’ll leave a clickable thing below if you want to read it. I will say it is just my personal opinion and that I wasn’t frustrated because I didn’t get what I particularly wanted.
Click here to see a frustrated Bagzak go all grumble grumble about the Earthen!
Simply put: I’m not particularly thrilled by the Earthen, and there are a number of issues that I have with them.
Let me be perfectly clear: I stated my expectation/hope for if we got new playable races was that any of them would be races people have been requesting. After all, several of them have been requested since the game actually launched, and with BfA, a lot of us have been submitting feedback regularly in support of them. Part of me was kinda expecting playable Neutral Tuskarr if we got any playable races if I’m perfectly honest.
I also want to state that I’m not against new races being created in general. A lot of races were at one point new to Warcraft in general. Vulpera, for example, had their own identity in looks and culture despite using Goblin animations, and NPC races that use skeletons like Sethrak, Saurok, Saberon, and so on would still be their own race if they became playable while utilizing models of other races.
Earthen as a whole…kinda bother me for several reasons. I’ll try my best to explain how. I’ll preface by saying this is all my own personal opinion and I say a lot of this out of frustration. Again, I’m not salty because I didn’t get what I specifically wanted. That said, let me try to grumble grumble in some coherent way to convey how I honestly feel.
The biggest problem is that the Wildhammer Dwarves, who had importance to the Alliance since the RTS Warcraft days and has a statue in front of Stormwind, gets a PowerPoint slide reveal of Bronzebeards LARPing as them. Whereas this race race, that could just work as a Customization Race given how they look pretty much like edited Dark Iron Dwarves (about as lackluster as LF Draenei or HM Tauren), gets to be a full race.
Speaking of, races like Wildhammer Dwarves, Darkfallen, and Man’ari get slapped onto parent races as customization races while losing their identity in playable form, but Earthen get to be a completely separate playable race? Something feels really off on this thinking and is really making the already muddied waters even more muddied.
Furthermore, the idea that since BfA, we’ll be at 3 expansions since then with the newly announced expansion, and despite feedback of many races we want to see playable, it was somehow discussed and agreed upon to have a neutral race of Dwarves that, at least initially from what we’ve seen at the time of this post, don’t have a lot of visual differences over regular Dwarves and Dark Iron Dwarves. Again, something seems a bit off with priorities here.
And speaking of neutrality, I’m not particularly fond of the idea of them being neutral, as we’ll be seeing Dwarves running around Orgrimmar. Especially since from the sound of it, their group is comprised of a few broken up factions that may come back together again…only to break up more when joining the Horde and Alliance, and likely even more if there was ever a faction war again. At least with Void Elves, despite being a dubious choice for different reasons, fit with the Alliance since High Elves were and some still are part of that faction. Here, it just makes faction identity a lot weirder with the choice of letting them be on the Horde.
A lot of it strikes me as laziness and cost cutting to me. Some variants of existing races can work well to be different from Core Races, like Kelfin and San’layn can still be much different from Goblins and Blood Elves while feeling unique. Earthen just feel…cheap to me. And despite there being some mentions and such of Earthen in lore, feel really out of left field.
I think if the Earthen were more rock elemental in looks as opposed to looking like edited Dark Iron Dwarves, I would be a lot more receptive to it. But the fact that they look like edited Dark Iron Dwarves, likely will have the same animations and dances, and barely look different than either playable Dwarf race at the time of this post makes them really banal. Much as I hate to see playable races as opportunity costs, I feel like the resources could’ve gone into making something more unique as opposed to something that could have been a Customization Race, moreso when Wildhammer Dwarves continue to get the short end of the stick.
I’m sure I could go on, and may have forgotten a point or two, but regardless of how I personally feel…we’re kinda stuck with Earthen. Who knows? Maybe we’ll see them edited more and be more unique visually and through their culture. Maybe I’ll be more interested when I actually see and work with them in quests and stuff once the next expansion launches.
However, I do feel like I had to let out how I honestly feel in some way as some sort of feedback. Again, I’m not against new races being made from out of nowhere and becoming playable, but I would hope that they would be unique enough to stand on their own as their own race slot. Kelfin, San’layn, Broken, Wildhammer Dwarves, and several other races have more of a unique flair to them and have importance to their respective factions. Earthern…really don’t have that feeling from the looks of things, and the constant shoving of the Wildhammer aside really doesn’t feel great in the grand scheme of things.
Ok, enough of the grumble grumble from me. As I said, I’ll make a post in the near future about the other announcements of the next expansion and some things I think would be worth discussing (allied race system, neutrality, etc).
And no, I’m not giving up on races I want to see playable. I knew this would be a marathon instead of a sprint when I first came to the forums, and I fully intent to keep at it with support playable Ogres and Saurok on the Horde, along a few other races I want to see playable of course.
Hopefully I was able to explain my thoughts on the Earthen without being too RAWR about it. I’m far from a perfect person, but sometimes, you gotta let stuff out before you feel better. At least there will be more chances of playable races in the future.
As said before, one silver lining in this is that the Allied Race system is being utilized, so that is of big importance to several race request megathreads and something to consider for future expansions.
–Still dreaming of playable Horde San’layn as a full race!
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“Dark Ranger” is on that hero list - and Dark Rangers got customization explicitly as well.
Yes, San’layn is a spriest talent.
We literally have Void priests as a class/spec. We also have Void elves.
We have holy priests/pallies yet also lightforged draenei.
Making a class feature doesn’t auto-turn off the idea of a race, but I do find it interesting how some lunge for the throat of people wanting this so to speak and immediately say it’s not happening because of a vampire spec finally coming to Death Knights (which they better get red eyes for) which is long overdo.
We can in fact have repeated themes and do, often, with the stories being taken in plenty of different directions.
I mean - we’re getting stone dwarves not too different from DID. At this point, anything goes and the people who want this are going to keep asking for it/giving feedback.
If you want my opinion, they should change ‘San’layn’ as a name to ‘vampyr’, but that’s just me. They could also just call the elves we’re wanting “Vampyr” elves. Name swapping can happen - or they can even call themselves something entirely new, but we’re asking for the elves that were turned into vampires via the blood curse back with the raising of Lana’thel - and any of those that happened to come after via the same curse.
Also… we know San’layn can be a bunch of different classes from lore >.>
Lol I had this same thought. I wouldn’t be bothered given Nerubians have established lore and that’d be a happy middle for ‘playable nerubains’. I would definitely play one. See, that’s what would have gotten people hyped. I saw them and were like ‘what? so those aren’t an AR? What were they thinking?’
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I still wholeheartedly support the san’layn but I’m still worried ya know? Hope I didn’t come across as lunging for anyone’s throat
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Oh no that wasn’t a comment at you, I promise.
It’s fair to be worried. I think it’s good to temper expectations.
There’s ‘bad signs’ and ‘good signs’ I guess. I’m mostly curious as to what they mean about “scattered elf tribes” for Midnight…
Buuuut we’re not going to know anything about that for a long time.
Also, though, ‘San’layn’ is very much an elf thing, and name in general 
It makes me wonder, actually, if there will be lore and quests with these things. FFXIV has ‘class quests’, and WoW did something very similar with order halls.
Because it’d be like giving a priest spec name ‘Ren’dorei’ or something, which would be odd? I wonder if there’s more to that name choice in terms of what we may see show up in lore (if there is lore), because ‘vampyr’ and ‘vampire’ as a term does very much exist in WoW.
I’ve also seen people point out how ‘dwarf like’ one of those is, I think ‘mountain thane’? Hm. Good to think about how these names came to be - and if we will see ‘why’ in the story?
Edit: To emphasize this being an elf thing - Void Elf jokes even state it, ironically.
“No, we do not drink blood–that’s the San’layn. Totally different emo elf.”
San’layn. Elf. It’s been in lore too of course but here, a clear cut example most have likely heard.
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The San’layn should be very helpful against the void considering they can control the undead which would account for 90% of the elves of Silvermoon.
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No thanks to this. I’m still only for some barriers being lifted, but not the whole thing gotten rid of.
As far as San’layn, just gonna still hope for some customizations at least. Maybe in Midnight. Not gonna count on it. But it’d be cool.
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Yes to all of this, I’ve always been a fan of the faction separation myself so I’d hate if it was removed 100% due to it being literally one of the key elements and foundations of World of Warcraft.
Also yes I’d still prefer a San’layn Core Race or Allied Race for the Horde but I’d settle for just getting customizations for Blood Elves if that’s the way it has to be.
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Exactly.
Looking more into the undead being immune to the void thing, I think it’s more resistance than anything, and a fan theory. However, we know the void or something was miffed at Sylvanas for being undead for one reason or another in some point in lore. I forgot why or what specifically 
I just know that the undead are favored to use against the void for whatever reason. Or that in the very least it was implied.
As for customization - would not be good enough unless we got a lot of story.
In my opinion, San’layn are unique enough with so much that can be expanded upon curse-wise that they should 100% get more than the scraps.
If Blizzard can make stone dwarves that really don’t deviate much from Dark Irons a thing, then they can put effort into something that deviates much further than their ‘parent race’, which would be San’layn.
The name ‘San’layn’ being used in a way that makes 0 sense for various class abilities aside, the upcoming lore beats tell me there is more than enough room in Midnight for San’layn to be a full race. I was content with being meek and accepting customization only before. That has now changed with these dwarves which - good for the dwarf community - but tells me 100% that they very well can do this and the ‘no more [insert race here]’ people can take a walk/deal with it.
The only way this whole Hero move being called ‘san’layn’ would be reasonable would be if a San’layn taught the Death Knight that specific empowerment ability. Otherwise - flat out - they should change the name.
San’layn is legitimately an elf thing only. Again - it’d be like calling a void priest thing ‘Ren’dorei’ which would be silly unless a void elf was ‘teaching it’ and therefore more lore was given on void elves.
Now - before someone twists what I’m saying - the blood curse is not an elf only thing and it being expanded lore-wise to a bunch of others this way would be fine. But they should give it a different name. “Vampyr”, “Vampire”, “blood drinker”, “The Cursed”, something, would be interesting.
I have extremely little hope that this ‘hero class’ business thing will be interesting and actually have proper customization AND story, though, so it really doesn’t intrigue me one bit. It literally sounds like ‘hey here have some new talents’. Doesn’t feel like a ‘new system’ at all. Fancier glyphs. That’s it.
(Also I am very anti-faction myself but 
Understand a lot of people want them to remain in some fashion.)
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I was gonna post in this thread. Midnight sounds like the Ideal time for San’layn! And some elf based classes. Maybe warden, I want spellblades! Spellbreakers also come to mind. Anything battle mage sounds fun to me! And is what I am hoping for!
Honestly excited to see there will be an attack on the sunwell and the elves reuniting. That seems like a fun story line and has things discussed in this thread before. Hope that San’layn will be an allied race eventually and yea while I love the manari, the cooler stuff allied races tend to have would be appreciated. Like would love to see a heritage set for manari.
Earthen I am excited for horde dwarves, will maybe delete some alliance dwarves for them. The female dwarf model is nice. I hope they add metallic and stuff like lighting eyes to earthen it would truly elavate them to be much better options.
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I don’t know if I’ll play them personally but I do like the female Dwarf beards it’s cool, I wouldn’t use them personally if I do play them but I really do think it’s super cool and hope that eventually more races can share customizations like that on both female and male characters.
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