I made a post that includes this race topic :
In my opinion — I understand it’s interesting for a race to be introduced ahead of time, with lore, as you mentioned with Legion, where the content was focused on getting to know those races (and let’s be honest — Legion had an amazing story. I only felt Argus should have been a planet 10x more hostile…).
If we look closely, there are plenty of races introduced in the game that players already know and that have been around for years…
What I think Blizzard gets wrong is that they take way too long to release things, and even argue with the community under the banner of:
“You think you know what you want, but you don’t.”
That might be partially true, but there are a lot of reasonable people out there.
They used that phrase so much in the discussion around Classic servers, and look — it turned out to be a pretty big success. They had to give in and launch Classic, and all the backlash and arguing against it?
What was it for? Nothing.
When you have tons of people creating lore, theories, ideas, using imagination to bring concepts to life, even considering the developer’s perspective, trying not to request anything impossible, and proposing things that are actually feasible… that should be heard.
What is impossible to ask for:
“I want WoW to run on Unreal Engine, fully 3D, ultra-realistic, better than GTA VI, requiring an RTX 5090 to run.”
That’s an unfair request. Considering the team, the company’s priorities, art direction, legacy systems — that would basically mean making an entirely new game.
What is possible to ask for:
“I’d like to play as races that already exist in the game, especially those we’ve used in disguise or vision quests — like Nagas, Centaurs, or Vrykul.”
That is possible. That’s not an absurd request.
What feels strange is that everything the community asks for takes an eternity to happen — and only after a long battle where Blizzard initially says no.
I mentioned Classic as an example, but people forget that some devs were also against player housing.
In early WoW game files, there are videos and concepts that looked a lot like player villages or homes. We can’t say for sure it was housing, but it was close.
Maybe it was just test assets, but even then — it was an old idea.
And back then, some devs were clearly against it — and now they’re finally developing it.
Why?
Why take so long?
Why not just go ahead and create the content?
Honestly? I don’t think a large portion of players would be against the idea of making all known races playable, with some in-game justification of how they joined the factions.
I’d guess 90%+ of players would love it.
But Blizzard seems to always follow two rules:
- Only bipedal/humanoid races become playable.
- Only non-hostile, narratively simple races get considered — ideally ones that are already being developed, so they don’t “waste resources” and can reuse skeletons or assets from the current expansion.
And that second point is important:
Vulpera and Zandalari were created as part of BFA’s core development (according to devs in the blizzcon that i’ve watched back in the day).
So, making a new skeleton for the Zandalari, or a reskinned goblin (Vulpera), was already built into the budget and timeline.
That’s why they could become allied races without delaying the expansion.
How do we know this?
Ion himself said that to implement player housing, they’d need to sacrifice a raid or other expansion content, since the dev team (designers, programmers, artists, etc.) would be too busy working on it.
Honestly, that’s absurd.
They’re a huge company, with a solid base, tech, legacy, and revenue — and you say you can’t deliver a feature unless you cut major content?
If that’s the case: hire people for it.
In fact, they did hire a lot of people according to news from a couple years ago — so we don’t even know what they’re working on now…
All I know is: it’s all way too slow.
By the time we maybe see these requests come to life, we’ll be a lot older — and we probably won’t even have the time or energy to enjoy it properly.
And that, to me, is the biggest problem of all.
The stubbornness to say no,
The slowness in development,
The excuses,
The lost opportunities…
Example: if they were already developing female Mogu, why didn’t they consider reusing the skeletons for a playable version?
Same with Vrykul — they have their own animations and skeletons; we literally play as them in quests.
Centaurs, Ogres, even Gnolls have complete skeletons, skins, melee animations (warrior), ranged (hunters), and spellcasting (shamans).
ALL of them could have been designed with playable potential in mind — especially considering what Blizzard themselves say:
“Zandalari were the core of BFA, so we developed the race as we developed the expansion.”
Shouldn’t that logic apply to every major race introduced?
Today, the solution is simple:
Hire, train, and dedicate a team to work on these races, more armor sets, more animations — and deliver it within the player’s actual lifetime, so we can enjoy the fantasy.
Because I don’t know if they’ve noticed,
but the world feels like it’s one button away from ending.