Considering under the current setup and way animations are now handled, we are in a situation where Blizzard can perform any animation on any “skeleton”.
Updated Spellcasting, updated melee, Monk animations, and shared sets like the Heart of Azeroth are indicative of this. Races like Seth’rak use some Worgen animations and some Pandaren.
I would so be down for a “Fighting Style” system where we could choose the animation set for a specific weapon or spell from a particular race. Tie it to book/manual drops like those from Vanilla for the Rank X abilities. “Kal’dorei Kombat: A Knuckleduster’s Knowledge” would be a Night Elf fist animation set manual, etc. Something fun like that.
Could technically do the same for dances. It would certainly add more RPG feel back to WoW, which I feel has been slowly boiled out over the years in favor of “quality of life” changes. I was actually happy to see Portals cleaned up and removed, as getting around was supposed to be a Mage specialty, which was diminished by chains of portal hubs from expansions past.
This is a really fun idea and I really like it, although I’m not certain the riggings on the models are quite at the point of being 1:1 to that extent just yet. Would love to be wrong about that though, more of that kind of customization would be a lot of fun to see.
This sounds pretty interesting and could work with most “straight-backed” humanoid races. The problem would be more unorthodox races with unique stances/looks like Tauren, Worgen, Draenei, and Male Trolls.
/edit
Looks like Tabasa beat me to the punch. Sorry to double up!
Yeah, I’m also not sure if they updated the previous key frame animated sets for the races to the current universal sets they can apply to anyone now, or if they just made sure all new sets are universal use.
Would still be a neat system if they put in the work. Would truly let everyone feel unique, and let us opt out of certain animations we don’t like (Blood Elf Male 2H I am looking at you, you mess of shoulder clip you).
Most likely not a hawkstrider. The High elves have been trying to distance themselves from the Blood elves (hence the Quel’dorei Steed and Hippogriff from the Silver Covenant) as to what it COULD be… I’m not quite sure.
Blizz has gotten quite a bit of backlash due to the amount of horses on the Alliance side recently, and as much as it would be pretty easy to update the ol’ Quel’dorei Steed… but it would likely cause a lot of backlash.
That could be the subject of a completely different topic of its own.
And… I kinda agree. Especially with all the ones that drop in dungeons/raids with their stupidly low drop rates that make you farm for months/years and make you glare at the person who got it on “the first try” and go loudly proclaiming it in chat and prancing around with it in the center of town and then you have those freaking gold sink mounts that just cost a stupid amount of gold for the sake of gold and like, how are you supposed to get that much gold in the first place and they park those FREAKING DINOSAURS RIGHT ON TOP OF THE MAILBOXES SO YOU CAN’T CHECK YOUR MAIL AND YOU CAN’T ALT+TAB
Irony being we, again, have so many mounts that we already have four Unicorns, including the blue one that was picthed for High Elves in one of the early threads from yesteryear.
Were it up to me, I’d make some lore to explain why high elves would be getting further apart physically from blood elves. I think adding differences makes them more interesting and makes it easier to tell the elves apart. Could be caused by another magical transformation (like the storm elf idea) or even by the period without Sunwell jumpstarting a small but continuous evolution in them.
I don’t speak for everyone, but Light knows I want Furbolg, they seem very easy to do. I certainly want them more than Saberon, because they are far longer established and seem to have a modicum of more intelligence, plus far easier motivation to write as being Alliance.
And they could bring a barbarian warrior culture with strong shamanic theme.
You don’t need lore to explain why they would use different hair styles, beards jewelry or why they appear to have more muscular definition, even further why they could stand differently, plus there are already lore expalantion for non glowing blue eyes and different skin undertones. For the ideas Alamara suggested i agree some of them might need, but a recruitment scenario can help.
Imagine if every single customization option or visual differences for two variations of a race required a lore explanation. There’s no point on inventing parameters or rules to the implementation of the High Elves that simply didn’t existed or applied to other Allied Races.
In World of Warcraft apparently visual ideas and art design came first and lore explanation (if it exists) came after, i don’t know much examples of things going the other way.
You realize that it was a play at Alamara saying she would write lore explaining the changes…when I was making a joke about Blizzard writing in this expansion.
Had nothing to do with gatekeeping at all. You guys need to relaxxxx
I addressed that aswell, but for other minor things, no need, i’m saying this because there were people literally saying that stuff like tattoos and braided hair are headcannon we invent.
Warcraft developers and designers by admission have indeed traditionally followed “Rule of Cool” :
Deliver cool thing
Create Lore to justify thing
OR
Expand on existing Lore to justify thing
OR as last resort
Retcon Lore to justify thing if necessary
It’s no secret that most new stuff in WoW (and Blizzard in general) gets concept art and sketched first as a starting point. Just look at literally any of the Behind the Scenes videos.