WoW Q&A with Senior Producer Travis Day and Senior Concept Artist Jimmy Lo from April 2018.
Travis: So, Thin Man and Fat Man are what we call them internally. And no, they’re not intended to be a different race, [they’re] just variants on Kul Tirans. So, generally, when we’re spawning up Kul Tiras on the design side, we looked at using them as kind of our… maybe it’s a little bit like, ‘The big guy’s the bouncer!’ Or, ‘The big guy’s the ruffian who’s got a little guy up by the neck! And then the little guy’s more the scoundrel and they’re always holding daggers or leanin’ up against something,’ and, I don’t know, it just gives us a little more flavor and texture to the world.
That’s from nearly 6-months before BfA even launched.
It’s subsequently explained, in-game, why such distinction(s) exist between Kul Tirans, Gilneans, and Stormwindians.
A group doesn’t need to be of a completely unique, entirely unrelated biological makeup in order to constitute a “race”. A couple of terms closely related to “race”, anthropologically speaking, would be “type” or “breed”.
Hence the comment about selection pressures.
I noticed you didn’t provide me a precise counting of how many boxes with “Pandaren” written beneath them exist on the character creation screen. What gives?
Get on the treadmill with me. Blizz called you big boy.
That doesnt change direction.
Except…it isnt. There is no proof of this anywhere, Blizzard has gone on record and said that KTs are just regular humans. There is no Drust in-breeding with humans, its not in the game at all.
I didnt know fat people were a different breed of humans than normal ones.
Even if they are historically Gilnean, that doesnt change the fact they are just regular humans.
playable alliance high elves sole difference from blood elves is their political ideology
the sole difference between tushui and huojin pandaren are their political ideologies
playable alliance high elves therefore turn the hordes most popular race neutral. the same cannot be said for pandaren and its a joke comparing the two at this point
Blood Elves would still be on the Horde, so no, it wouldn’t.
As much as you want to keep pushing the Blood Elves = High Elves ideology, High Elves on the Alliance wouldn’t make Blood Elves neutral, because Blizzard has gone out of their way to show you they’re different, despite minimal physiological changes.
Is the Thin Man and Fat Man thing even referring to SW vs kultirans though? It sounds like they are referring to thin kultirans vs the fat ones.
So if it doesnt have to do with SW vs KT then trying to apply it to them comparing the two and slapping SW humans and KT humans together when counting humans doesnt make a lick of sense.
This. People get excited for allied races. I doubt we’ll see as many added at once as there was in BfA, but Blizz will likely use the system to help sell future expansions
In all honesty, the AR system is the best way to introduce races as playable in WoW going forward, it’s a low-effort, low-cost implementation of content that is essentially considered an “expansion seller.”
For a company looking for the highest profit for the lowest effort, it’s a golden goose in the eyes of Blizzard, and there’s nothing stopping them from changing the UI of the character select screen to consolidate all current and upcoming ARs in BFA, and continue to add more races, Allied or otherwise.
Unfortunately as discussed earlier it’s locked behind rep reqs. Then when we look at zandalari and Kultirans for release it took wayyy to long to get there.
