I think the general decline of the Alliance player population has a lot to do with the choice of Allied Races given to them in BFA. There are more reasons for the decline than that, but I still think it is part of the problem.
Please be aware that this is just my opinion on the subject and I hold no ill will towards anyone who chooses to select any race to play. The goal, as always, is to have fun.
In my opinion Kul Tirans and Mecha Gnomes should have been new customization options for Humans and Gnomes. I don’t think there was enough to justify them becoming part of the Allied Race package in BFA. Kul Tirans are at the end of the day, Humans of a different body type. Indeed, while not playable there are “Thin Humans” based on the Undead player model that exist in the game world and files. I would have rather seen “Kul Tiran” and “Thin” Humans both added as additional body-type customization for Humans.
As for Mecha Gnomes, I don’t feel like steam-punk/magitech prosthetics are enough to distinguish into being a separate race from Gnomes. Again, it feels like the realm of additional customization that could have boosted the popularity of one of the less played races of the Alliance.
As for Void Elves, well they should have just been High Elves, full stop. Void Elves just sorta materialized out of the thin air in regards to the story, whereas the Alliance and Alliance players have much, much more history interacting with High Elves. All the way back in Vanilla when they had the goofy super low poly models, even.
Dark Iron Dwarves, at least to me, fully satisfy the requirements of an Allied Race. They were separate from Dwarves and the Alliance, having been enemies turned reluctant allies. They have distinct practices that separate them from the base Bronzebeard Dwarves and they bring a new flavor to the faction that also has a basis in lore behind them.
Lightforged are…Draenei. But more zealous, I guess?
Have less differences from Dwarves than Kultiran and Humans, and Kultirans were also separated from the Alliance.
Different to Dark Iron, who were actually under Moira, an Alliance character.
I agree with almost all of it, but Void Elves. Yes, people wanted High Elves, but I’m happy with a new take on the usual “Elf + Magic + Paladin + Human cheerleader” thing.
But that’s just me and some other Void Elf fellows.
Kultiran and Mechagnomes cannot compete with Zandalari and Vulpera. Happy for the people that like them, but in my opinion, Horde won the AR in BFA while ALliance won it in Legion.
Yet another thread where the Alliance can never be satisfied with anything they get. Keep 'em coming - the loud, squeaky, irritating wheel gets the grease.
I agree for certain about Kul Tirans and Mechagnomes working best as expanded customization.
If Blizzard had put in the effort to develop Void Elves, I don’t think I’d have minded as much, but everything from their introduction to their presence has been a series of missed opportunities and narrative failures.
Why were the Void Elves former Blood Elves? I just do not see the point of this beyond some petty, “You guys want to play Blood Elves so bad? Fine. Have Blood Elves.” Would it have been so hard for Alleria to borrow the Silver Covenant from her sister to go looking for remnants of her people from the Alliance Expedition, only to find them as part of a trap, resulting in the Silver Covenant being transformed into the Void Elves?
The Void was just… purple portals. That’s all we really got from it in BFA through the Void Elves. That and enchanting dino bones to move, but animating the inanimate has been a power of the arcane for a long time. Nothing about Void Elves developed the Void itself as a power. We could’ve, should’ve seen Void Elves tapping into the minds of Horde soldiers for intel, brain washing them, turning them into sleeper agents that would try to kill their leaders on first sight, etc…
The Void Elves were entirely absent for any story that actually involved the Void. Artificial Old God on a rampage in some Titan Facility? Leave it to Brann. N’Zoth slapping eyeballs on people’s foreheads? The human shamans can fix it. Because of course they can. Azshara starts a war, and there is an entire segment of her lair with void mages? Why should the Void Elves be interested in that. At all. A cure for the whispers is needed for Ebonhorn? The cure was in Karazhan. Because why wouldn’t it be? Why would the people that’d be looking for a cure have anything to do with it? And my personal favorite, 8.3. Just, the entirety of it. The Void Elves were utterly absent, sans the Vision of Stormwind where they were just Old God flunkies.
The Void Elves were an utter failure because Blizzard refused to put in the same time, effort, and focus other Allied Races got. If this is what they give us, then it should’ve been High Elves, because at least their story was told across multiple expansions for us already.
I don’t particularly like any of the allied races. Outside of vulpera, and possibly zandalari, they are all just customization that could have gone to an existing race without all the hoops to jump through.
The allied race selection likely didn’t help but I don’t think they’re a primary driver of the Alliance’s loss in popularity. After all, the most popular races by a wide margin are humans with pointy ears, humans, and green beefy humans.
The decline started as far back as TBC, when Horde got a “pretty race” and opened the floodgates of Alliance players who had been silently coveting the Horde’s status as the perceived faction for “good” or “serious” players but had been holding out because none of the original Horde races appealed to them.
Where things really started to go downhill was around MoP with the advent of WoW “influencers” on Twitch and YouTube along with rising promotion of WoW as an e-sport by Blizzard, which put a nitro boost on the playerbase’s obsession with the “meta”, followed by Every Man for Himself getting gutted without a replacement in WoD. It was the perfect storm for large masses of players to jump ship; even players who never watched youtubers/twitchers or cared about competitive PvP got pulled along for the ride via network effects.
If Blizzard wanted to prevent this outcome, they should’ve been implementing balance countermeasures as early as WotLK, but this never happened.
DID have an extensive history on the Alliance side with them being enslaved to Ragnaros as well. Of all the races they are the ones the player has encountered often enough.
You’re not honest to the actual problem: Getting not what you have been asking.
No. Calling them Diaper Gnomes by their own players feels not right.
The racials are the reason I went Mechagnome. I’m super lazy and the fact that I am an anvil, forge, hammer, pick, skinning knife, lock pick, wrench, and cooking fire is 100000000% my favorite thing about being one. I just wish I had wheels instead of feet. The cheat death is okay, and the combat analysis is decent.
Surely Kul Tirans would have been way better if they had been thought as the result of a mixed Human-Drust lineage. Everyone would have appreciated a Vrykul-flavoured race. Rn, they’re Humans.
LF Draenei are Draenei. I for one think that a better idea would have been to make them the Lightbound from AU Draenor, so that the Alliance was given something from that world, just like the Horde had the Mag’har.
Ren’dorei are… not uninteresting I guess ? But clearly people wanted Quel’dorei.
The problem is, they were too scared to just go all out like they should have. Too afraid of overturning “traditions” like Ion mentioned recently. Hitting the brakes too much when they should have been pushing on the gas.
Void Elves - Should have been Lightforged Elves led by Alleria. The previous lore had Alleria leading the Army of Light, which were elves and humans (LFD were retconned in). The void stuff was so forced it was like packing a suitcase for a long vacation. It just didn’t fit. (I did come around to the idea eventually, but in the context of the time when they were released it didn’t fit).
Lightforged Draenei - Should have been Void Krokul. We meet them, help them, and then just leave them to die when we are done. TBH I really felt like these and Lightforged Elves were originally intended, but someone “flipped the script” halfway into development. Which is why Void Elves got attached to the Krokul rep and why there was a bunch of holy customization options dropped on Blood Elves out of the blue with no context.
Dark Iron Dwarves - Great! How all ARs should have been. Likely the model for all ARs, with Shoc’s thread on subraces on MMOC (showcasing what a Dark Iron would look like) probably being the inspiration.
Kul Tiran Humans - I like the idea of a big boy human, but they really should have made them full Drust/Vrykul humans instead of this weird halfway mix. Fat and bulky can look awesome, but they made their bellies a bit too balloonish which makes armor look stretched and cartoony. The Vrykul body type with a bit of fat would have been fine. Plus, Drust tribal themes would have been the icing on the cake.
Mechagnomes - When people were asking for mechagnomes, they weren’t asking for some kind of cyborg. We wanted robots, full ones. All they had to do was make a new model based on Mimiron with all sorts of robot customizations. Lore would have been titan themed, instead of invented out of the blue. But they were too afraid to just go all out, and made them gnomes+ instead.
In my opinion, the way ARs should have been setup is to have a subraces tab with no slots and then just expand core races as well as have extra customization on top of each core race.
I think would be better to just have more categories. However I am no game developer. I don’t know what kind of issues they face with implementing this for sure.
