I’m more bothered that they clearly don’t have a standard of quality for Allied Races, or didn’t until Void Elves. There are clear discrepancies between Highmountain/Lightforged/Nightborne, and Void Elf/Dark Iron/Mag’har/Zandalari/Kul’tiran.
It’s painfully obvious the former were worked on first, and for less time than the latter.
The Blood Elf customization was just gold eye options for 6 faces. Only thing that bugs me about it was that it wasn’t done sooner. Would’ve made sense anytime after the end of TBC, with Cata being when I would have done it, to coincide with the “passage of time” Cataclysm showed to the old world.
I’m convinced they don’t care at all. With people complaining about the requirements of getting said allied races, they are discouraged on working on more allied race and want to bury the hatchet.
I think you are judging everything without having an idea of how development works.
Void elves don’t feel so bad (to you) because they just had the least amount of changes. Blizzard took blood elf models, made a few new blue skins (four of which having very minor differences), then worked on hairstyles. That’s it.
The faces are the same, the animations are the same, there are no tatoos or extra customization categories. Void elves look fine because they took a fine model and changed it slightly. The end.
Nightborne, on the other hand, were the ones that received the most attention among the preorder races. Blizzard took the night elf model and reworked proportions, created whole new faces (the most difficult part of the body to animate), made a new standing animation for females, added tatoos and so on.
Why nightborne feel unfinished? Because they are. They received the most work, but they were also the ones that needed the most work.
Development has time constraints, and Blizzard couldn’t spend all resources in nightborne alone.
It may be weird to think that the nightborne received the most attention and yet ended up not that good, but that’s because they were the ones that needed the most changes to begin with. The reason they lack hairstyles and other variety of options is because the time slotted for their development was filled with changing their models, specially the male body and both gender’s faces.
Zandalari and (specially) Kul tirans are the only allied races that are above nightborne in development resources spent. Even mag’har and dark irons aren’t so different from their base races.
Yeah, thats something I have a difficult time explaining to people.
Alleria is a High Elf with void powers. Void elves are former Blood/High elves that have been transformed by the void (blue skin, tentacles in their hair and such) and have void powers.
That’s the thing with Alleria, she is technically a Void Elf, that much is true, but all the differences that make the rest of the Void Elves visually distinct from Blood Elves, she doesn’t have them, looking exactly like a regular High Elf. So she’s either a Void Elf that looks like a High Elf -which reveals how weak is the actual differentiation between HE and VE- or she is a HE with Void Powers, which then separates her from the race she leads. cause he is not quite the same.
She’s a unique case regardless. She got her powers in a different way compared to the initial batch of Void elves. I don’t think they’ve bothered to give us an explanation on how they’ve done the transformation for additional Void elves.
I’m pretty convinced on Alleria being a “High elf with Void powers” due to nothing else about her “normal” appearance changing when she gained her powers. The rest of the Void elves have changed. Some, like Magister Umbric (compare his original voice with his voice after the change) changed physically more than others. (The player voice is fairly minor in comparison.)
My thoughts on this are pretty simple: did Alleria change her appearance after learning how to wield the Void? Did she change after absorbing L’ura’s essence? If you put past pre-Void Alleria side-by-side with current Alleria, does she look different? No? Then she’s still a high elf. She just has special powers.
Sometimes I think the Alliance is going to continue to get disappointing or worst allied races unless of course some of them get completely scrapped. I’m not really looking forward to the idea of Junker Gnomes, Lightforged Undead, Night Elf Worgen. or random Allied Races that noone will be brothered to play with.
As of right now Alliance Allied Race side isn’t doing much better. While I do adore the Lightforged Draenei and Kul’tirans aside the fact most of the playerbase really don’t like the idea of playing as a Light Space Goat or Fat Human. They’re pretty much the only 2 allied races I do enjoy. I’m sure there are others who are not fans of them since people wanted broken draenei as well as Vrykul within the Alliance but That’s just my opinion that is. Other two are just disappointing. Void Elves well you already know that I and others really don’t like them since they really don’t offer anything so called unique than being a Blood Elf Model Reskin with Blue Skin. Same can be said with the Dark Irons since they too are also the same reskin race but with black skin color and live within in a lava mountain than a normal one.
When you think about it in retrospect. Horde has gotten better treatment in Allied Races than the Alliance. 4 Allied Races were requested and given to the Players while the Alliance only got 1 which was Dark Irons and they were meh, other 2 were unexcepted but they were a mix bag and 1 was disappointing and probably the worst race within the lore.
I may sound like I’m complaining but I just fear for the Future of Allied Races since Alliance side continues to get worst ones instead of True Classic Nostalgia Allied Races or Different Unique Ones like the Vulpera being on the Horde while the Alliance only gets 2 reskins of a Horde race and Alliance one.
I would probably take Sethrak, High Elves, and Deep Ginyu over Junker Gnomes, and Lightforged Undead. But if High Elves gets rejected as well as the San’layn because too many elves crowd. I rather have Sethrak and Ginyu. Yea they seem like completely new and out of nowhere but atleast they’re little more original than Reskin of a Gnome Race or Undead Race that’s for sure.
What enfuriates me, is the fact that Blizzard keep bringing uninspired races for Alliance that lack uniqueness, but the only race that many Alliance players want without being 100% unique, they refuse to make.
I’m sure that Redeemed will be carbon copies of Undeads, and I hope so, since it’ll be one less failed excuse against High Elves.
if the alliance counterpart to vulpera isn’t sethrak the only acceptable alternative is the ankoan we meet in nazjatar. Junkers gnomes are not acceptable. The issue isn’t just they are vastly unpopular. The bigger concern is they would be taking the only 2 gnome characters with actual development. Mekkatorque has to to live and kelsey wants to be part machine.
Personally I think they would be better suited as additional customization unlocked via a questline. The junker gnomes we liberate join the regular gnomes and bring with them the technology to mechanically augment the gnomish body. Some gnomes would choose to do this on their own for various reasons but others could have suffered horrendous wounds such as in the case of mekkatorque and choose to receive augmentations to remain combat capable.
To be quite honest the only people who wanted these races are the probably the ones who never even support or loved the Alliance Faction like people continuing to request for the Redeemed Undead and Junker Gnomes just to have the race exist only to then not play them.
Its more likely Blizzard is going to continue making more Mistakes than learning them after the Void Elf Controversy.
That would be more acceptable if Junker Gnomes were a Customization Option to the Regular Gnomes than being a True Allied Race. Plus with the Gnome Heritage Armor coming it would make more sense for the Junker Gnomes to be a Option than having Blizzard waste Content recourses on a random race that no one will be brothered to play with.
Nah, they’re going to be humans with pallid skin tones and glassy eyes, like Derek. They’ll throw in some scraggly hairstyles and WC2 themed heritage armor (You like WC2, right? Incoherent RAWR Deathwing? Muh Dockmaster Cyrus? …what’s a “High Elf?”) and call it good.
I really just… don’t get why Void Elves couldn’t have been more like Alleria, or have customization resembling her more so they’re not just strictly another branch of purple elf.
I even did the Lordaeron battle on my Horde character and saw the cinematic again and noticed how her hands were unusually purple, almost like her skin tone is far different from any of the ones Blood Elves have access to.
Honestly, I found it pretty stupid that Alleria was messing with the Void at all. What a strange character to pin this whole Void narrative onto, being a ranger and not a mage or even caster of any noteworthy mention.
Then, when we see her go through absorbing all of this Void stuff, including an entire Darkened Naaru, and we see her all purpled out, we get back to the Vindicaar and it’s like it never happened. She’s all “Nah I can still be pretty despite literally absorbing these massive, powerful Void entities.” It made an already stupid thing feel worse because it had next to no consequence. She’s supposed to wield this dangerous, maddening power, but aside from the Three Sister’s comic, we don’t see any of it. No struggle, no internal monologue (one would’ve fit perfectly at multiple points at the Battle for Lordaeron when Alleria directly confronts Sylvanas), and no apparent difficulty in maintaining her otherwise normal outward appearance.
It makes me wonder again why they even bothered to put this storyline on her if it wasn’t going to have weight, which leads me to believe her price has yet to be paid.
![:duck:](https://d38bqls1q93fod.cloudfront.net/en/wow/images/emoji/twitter/duck.png?v=6" ":duck:")
![:lips:](https://d38bqls1q93fod.cloudfront.net/en/wow/images/emoji/twitter/lips.png?v=6" ":lips:")
Interesting tweet.