I think this is rather petty. Just because the Allied Races released aren’t your fancy and aren’t High Elves does not mean you can write them off for anyone but yourself. There are plenty of people enjoying and messing with these races. Not every, or any, Allied Race has to be your cup of tea. This notion that “everyone is getting catered to but me” is a really silly sentiment when you’re talking about a game with 21 races to represent millions of people.
And straight out hoping that a likely Allied Race for your faction ends up being poorly done just to make your case for High Elves arguably stronger is like top-tier petty.
If there’s any race that’s as is uninspired, it would literally be High Elves.
I know you all have made a lot of art and extrapolations as to what High Elves might or could become, and while there’s nothing wrong with it, all it amounts to are arbitrary, fan-made changes you’re making to circumvent the issue Blizzard has with them being too similar to Blood Elves for players.
It’s not at all representative of what High Elves are according to Blizzard, which aesthetically so far is just Blood Elves with one or two minor cosmetic differences, be it blue eyes, pale skin, or whiter hair.
I said “many” because it’s a fact that many players like the idea of High Elves. I didn’t give a number, but there’a a really sizeable amount of fans compared to any other Allied Race suggestion. High Elves is a popular request, I’ve found people talking about High Elves on Wccftech, PC Gamer, Reddit, Gamespot, MMO Champion just naming a few.
But, I agree that I do not represent these people. I’m only acknowledging the fact that many people want them.
The fun fact though, is how more popular the Horde Allied Races are compared to Alliance versions. I can’t wait to see Vulpera and Junker Gnomes in this list:
Things can’t get much worse actually, an Undead model well or poorly done will change nothing. If we end up with Derek model, then Alliance will have three Human skins: fat, skinny and rotten. Actually, a carbon copy of undead will be more unique.
A variety of unappealing options is still unappealing outside of a small niche. Better to give the players what they want, no matter how “uninspired” it may be, and have more players happy than dissatisfied.
I agree that makes no sense to take a ranger and make her a spellcaster.
And I agree that Alleria not being transformed physically was a huge error.
At the very least, Alleria should have gone blue like every void elf. The fans would judge that and be prepared for void elves a few months later (and I bet they would not have reacted well).
But I think the idea of void elves and their final look was only decided after the 7.3 storyline was ready to be released.
It’s not hoping, it’s realising that Blizzard has no idea of what to do with Alliance races. People wanted things like broken draenei, wildhammer dwarves, high elves or vrykul.
We got so far: paler draenei, blue blood elves and fat humans, and the most likely next candidates are half-robot gnomes and glowy undead. The only well-established, classic race added is/will be dark iron dwarves.
It’s pretty underwhelming, and completely miss all of the most often requests.
People lost hope that Blizzard can deliver something good. In my case, I can say that I’m caring way more for news on the Horde races than Alliance ones. Blizzard already fumbled everything I wanted for Alliance, no possibility ahead interests me. Meanwhile, Horde has the chance of getting vulpera and ogres, both of which would be awesome.
It’s not like Alliance players have been silent on ideas or requests, either. And I’m not even talking about High Elves here. There have been a pretty huge number of various requests over the years on both sides - some more popular than others, sure, but in order to be successful, all Blizzard really needed to do was take some of the ideas that people had been asking for, and mix them in with a few new, fresher ideas. It’s what they did with the Hord, and the overall reaction on Hordeside has been ‘okay, there are some bad/weird races in there, but on the bright side we got a couple that we’ve been asking for for a while now (Zandalari and Mag’har are long asked for fan favourites; Nightborne were very popular in Legion and became hotly requested, and while people were asking for Highmountain customisation for Tauren rather than Highmountain Tauren as a race, I think it’s a bitter pill to swallow, but swallowable nonetheless), so at least they’re listening.’
I think the broad list of Alliance Allied Races don’t really feel like a sample of hotly requested races in the same way. Sure, Alliance got Dark Iron Dwarves, but given how niche Dwarves are already, I don’t think they cut through quite in the same way. In addition to that, there’s Kul Tiran Humans (A different bodytype of human isn’t exactly inspired, and while providing different bodytypes has been asked for, this is kind of a cursed monkey paw of a solution), Lightforged Draenei (similar situation as Highmountain Tauren, but without enough other decent races alongside to get the benefit of the doubt), and Void Elves (which are popular, but are broadly criticised for having shallow roots, poor justification and generally really lacking in lore content).
The Horde side Allied Races feel like the community was listened to. I don’t think it can really be said the same for the Alliance. They feel more like what someone thinks Alliance players might like if they hadn’t bothered to actually ask Alliance players.
Even the highmountain tauren, the most underwhelming option among Horde allied races, got a lot of lore and exposure before they were revealed. They may not be a popular race, but they weren’t shoddily introduced like the lightforged or the worst offender of all, the void elves.
The Lightforged annoy me in particular because they’re a shallow answer to what should have been a deep and interesting piece of lore. I mean, they could have been a combination of Alliance and Horde races who fled Draenor through one of Ner’zhul’s portals and were cast into the Twisting Nether, then forced to unite to survive against the Legion with the aid of the Naaru.
Or they could have been a coalition of forces, a wide range of refugees from countless worlds, a mirror to the Burning Legion that paled in comparison (basically take Lothraxion and just run with it and come up with a bunch of Lighforged demons or something) and was struggling to hold back the tide.
But instead they were homogenised into an army of Draenei that have been floating around for ten thousand years. Which honestly has the whiff of cut content due to time constraints. But then they made an Allied Race out of it, which just made it worse.
The Army of Light could have been really interesting. That’s what annoys me.
I agree, shoehorning the whole Legion invasion into a single expansion just didn’t do it justice. If the expansion had ended with the Nighthold story, and then ‘Legion part 2’ or whatever was about venturing out into the Nether, gaining footholds on distant, Legion-held worlds (or protecting worlds the Legion was trying to invade - imagine if the Legion Invasion Points on Argus were the levelling zones for an expansion, with Argus as the expansion hub. The imagination goes wild with possibilities!) and eventually diminishing the Legion’s influence and strength until you’re able to push into Antorus.
Just imagine how the latter half of Legion could have benefited from being able to spend a full expansion dev cycle (rather than the content patch cycles) really expanding on the scale and scope of the conflict, and all the story and lore contained within.
It seemed like, at the time, they were trying to set up a narrative on the difference between light and dark with Turalyon and Alleria being lovers and representing two completely opposite forces.
Then they did nothing with it. Alleria sits on a boat in Boralus and Turalyon is a background character in a Warfront.
I am seeing a lot of Kul’tirans out and about but not as many as the number of Zandalari I saw before I faction changed last weekend.
I think LF Draenei and Highmountain aren’t popular becauase both could have been easily introduced as customization options as opposed to full-on Allied races.
It’s just surprising to me that they could think outside the box to give Horde alternate universe Orcs but for Alliance they don’t seem to seek any kind of inspiration or creative purpose to what they do.
Void Elves only made sense to the devs. They’re another example of how their vision for the game is far removed from what the players would actually find enjoyable. I’m hedging my bets for now that at SOME POINT they’ll offer more customization for the first 4 allied races that are seriously lacking.
I’m also hoping that at some point (maybe if Ion is fired/leaves) someone on the development team will realize the impact of adding an actual Allied Race to the Alliance that Alliance players would LIKE to play. What it might do for sub numbers, player engagement, and their “having fun” metric they claim is the ONLY metric they care about.
TBH out of all of the ideas I’ve seen in BFA, I think the whole Night Warrior thing could have made for an interesting Allied Race if they’d tweaked the story a bit - make the ritual a group ritual, explain that Tyrande and a bunch of Night Elf survivors for Teldrassil underwent the ritual, and it’s made them a group of wild, vicious zealots with a bunch of strange, new powers (plus, opportunity for a bit more Elune lore, maybe give a bit more exposition to the whole ‘dark side of the moon’ angle they hinted at.
Plus it’d give the Night Elves an opportunity to shift back towards being more aggressive, and I think people have been asking for that since…well, Vanilla.
I would have preferred something like that over Void Elves.
So what? Do you think your opinion matters more because you have more invested in playing a particular race?
If so you can see how that pov totally messes up anyone supporting High Elves if they’re not even going to play them. Not seeing anyone here rejecting their support of High Elves.
Why are you linking race distribution concerning people who are at least 5/8 on Mythic raiding? That’s an absurdly small subset of the WoW community (and has been traditionally), and has little bearing on a comment about Allied Race success, adoption rate, or popularity in an overall picture.
This is a better slice, at least regarding max level players: https://www.worldofwargraphs.com/global-stats/races
As for Kul’Tiran vs. Zandalari, we all knew who was winning that one. I’ve seen many more Zandalari as race changes than fresh 20s doing the Heritage slog. Being a new Paladin option coming off only 2 is a big factor in this.
You can wish for Ion’s head if you want (it wouldn’t be the first time and likely won’t be the last that a player hinges everything they don’t like about the game on the director at the time), but metric-wise, Void Elves remain the most played/rolled Allied Race, a spot that maybe only Zandalari will even remotely come close to in coming weeks.
“Give us an Allied Race we actually like and want to play.” is a silly thing to say, when all data points to Alliance LIKING to play Void Elves (self-hating Velves of this thread excluded of course).
I’d prefer to call it the “race that was clearly given the least amount of time, thrown together at the last minute, and currently have been one of the most under utilized in the expansion… elves.”
Use whatever pronouns you wish. I’m sure Blizzard took your concerns about Void Elves to heart when you forked over money for your recent faction change to play one.
![:lying_face:](https://d38bqls1q93fod.cloudfront.net/en/wow/images/emoji/twitter/lying_face.png?v=6" ":lying_face:")