Something I've noticed: races' height seem to be a bit out of whack

Community General Discussion
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I really noticed this more specifically with the BFA races, Kul Tirans and Zandalari, but also stands out with the Dracthyr.

Basically, it seems like the size and scale of the player races – in relation to one another, and what they’re “supposed” to be – seems to have gotten a bit… inconsistent.

I feel like most of the Vanilla races feel scaled correctly, save that Night Elves feel maybe a bit short (in WC3, Grom Hellscream immediately recognized they weren’t the Elves he’d previously encountered, specifically commenting on their height being unmistakably taller).

I don’t know whether that means Night Elves could stand to be a smidge taller, or perhaps Orcs a smidge shorter; the latter seem so close to Tauren in size, I wonder if they might ought to be brought down a tiny bit? I feel like the vision was always that they were “way more buff, savage counterparts to humans”, but as-is, they’re like literal giants by comparison.

Conversely, I actually feel like the Undead might be a teensy bit too small? That might just be because they’re surrounded in the Horde by races mostly much larger than humans, but again, just kind of my personal gut-feeling on that one.

Now, in the case of the Kul Tirans; this is an actual problem. They’re significantly taller than any other race on the Alliance, which I don’t think really accurate. They feel like they were scaled purely in relation to normal Humans, but the problem is that when they tower over Night Elves and Draenei alike, it gives a very distorted perspective. Even for being very stylized, it gives off the impression that these guys must be like 10 ft tall or more.

I would levy much the same description towards the Zandalari. Now, I get that technically, they’re basically the same height as vanilla Trolls are when they stand upright (very briefly during one of their idle animations), but again, it feels strange for them to be so much larger, to the point Blood Elves barely come to chest height, taller I believe (or at least comparable) to Tauren, who were always presented as the largest of the player races.

Dracthyr seem to have taken much the same issue, and maybe even dialed that up a bit as well. They’re so tall, it makes it virtually impossible to understand what their size is “supposed” to be. Are they really supposed to be like 12ft tall? I mean, I genuinely don’t know, it’s possible! But judging by their proportions, I feel like they’re probably intended to be in comparable height to the Night Elves; noticably taller than Humans and their ilk, perhaps not quite as tall as Tauren. Again, that’s hardly anything scientific, just a gut feeling.

Personally? I’d love to see the player races get some minor visual updates over the next year or so. No need for full-revamps – save for maybe Night Elves (use Malfurion and Shadowlands-Tyrande as the base to work from) – but just cleaning up some of the textures, things like that, and maybe adjusting some of these height-differences in the process.

Again, nothing in need of dramatic change or anything, it just feels like they’ve become a little… inconsistent over time.

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I wish blood elves were as tall as the dracthyr visage form

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Night elves, at least the females, have actually been shrunk down a few times (they’re taller in Classic).

Why is an enduring mystery, but my money is on a dev who mains a male orc getting his feelings hurt by the night elves being taller than him in Dalaran.

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Nah./ten100

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A Kul Tiran female + a normal human male is like, snu snu territory.

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Tauren were scaled down from how tall they’re supposed to be. In game they are around 8-ish ft tall when they should be 10. Worgen, and night elves (I believe), are also shorter than they should be

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Nearly incoherent rambling

What we need… is a height slider.

But not a slider. Instead a list of height options, and those options would be different heights that already exist for all of us. Because we have many.

Take out the outliers such as the anime cell (that makes you huge) and whatever the super shrinker is.
Then have a list of all the options, from seesaw to elixir of giant growth, including firewaters and the pygmy oils (all the stages).

This would allow us to customize our character’s height while keeping it within reason using resources that already exist.

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Zandalari Trolls were originally smaller. About the same size as Nelves if i recall correctly, but were made taller after Blizzard got a lot of negative feedback regarding their apparently “small” stature. So they were made to be as tall as regular Trolls when they stood up straight.

But yeah, WoW has a problem with “size creep”. People don’t realize it since everyone plays with the camera fully zoomed out. But everything in this game is absolutely gigantic.

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I keep hundreds of stacks of Giant Growth potions on my Kul Tiran shaman lady to capitalize on this fact.

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That’s a really good way to explain it, I think. It feels like “bigger = cooler”, and so everything new winds up being larger and larger. Ironically, I think it causes us to want to zoom our cameras out further and further, which kind of perpetuates the idea of newer races need to seem even bigger.

Like I said, definitely not the end of the world. But definitely something I think is worth re-evaluating over time.