To be fair, the more I read about them and the more I think about it, playable Earthen are really cool. They’re sentient, sapient, have all the emotional depth and variety as any organic race but have forms that are hard stone inlaid with metal and sharp gemstones. Do they even have a sense of touch? Taste? Smell? They have standard Dwarven tropes, ale, forges, gryph-riding, but with whole new twists and for separate reasons than their organic kin-folk do.
I was far too down on them when they were first revealed, and for that, I am very sorry.
There is a lot to discover about them and for the people who like and play Dwarves, certain they are happy about this journey we’re about to take. Hoping maybe we can pull some new people into the Dwarf community.
Alliance pop can probably be considered in most to least played:
Night Elves
Humans
Void Elf
Draenei
Worgen
Dwarf
Gnome
Pandaren
Kul Tiran
Of course, throw the varieties in there somewhere (Mechagnome, Lightforged, Dark Iron).
The Dwarf community is a solid one and ppl who RP Dwarves are pretty loyal to RPing more Dwarves. This will give them something amazing.
I’m just personally surprised that Blizz did this. Same when they gave us Robognomes, which are now likely the lowest on the scale, as far as played.
Personally I am at the point of thinking that new races will never entice the same way they used to, no matter what they do.
When we had four races, five was game changing. Six was cool. Seven was great for particular folks. Every addition since has been more choices, but less broad enthusiasm. More niche additions. They were thoughtful in adding races that they thought would generate mass appeal at the start, not just from the vocal fans but from regular people who were fine playing what they were playing but may have also been open to something new. After that? When you’ve shoved all the big rocks into the jar, all you can fill it with further is sand.
Dwearthen are expac appropriate and if the reaction to a new race will probably be “meh” by everyone anyways, then you’ve got nothing to lose in doing what you want. So I think they did what they wanted and hoped for the best.
Maybe the female orc dance? But I never really made that connection… Though I did actually get more of a vibe from the Harronir lady’s dance… Which I am really hoping becomes an AR. But anyway, it’s just odd to me the way they made Faerin look in the CGI, she was just missing some little Garona-style nibble tusks. But her model in-game doesn’t look like that at all, which makes me think it was a deliberate choice.
I agree, while having more guys to choose from is great. I like the guys that we got and I wish they would give more attention to some of them.
Even though I don’t main dwarves I’m pretty excited for them since I RP with Dwarf players and we like all the Dwarf/Titan stuff a lot so getting more of it is nice.
I don’t mind a new Dwarf. I play Dwarves. They’re not my top race to play, but I like them.
I think new races aren’t enticing because the ones we keep asking for are never the ones we get. No naga, no sethrak, no ogres, etc. The ones people beg for are completely ignored, possibly because there isn’t a body frame for them on a current playable race. That explains why Kul’Tirans didn’t get the skinny model we all expected, too. Ofc, it doesn’t explain why we don’t get tuskarr, taunka, beards for certain races…
I think if Blizz decided to stop taking the easy route to reskin and actually gave us playable races we’re asking for, the player base might be more incentivized to jump on them.
I like dwarves but I don’t really “get” earthen, because they’re more like… golems than dwarves, right? They aren’t mortal, they presumably don’t drink (!!), they have American accents apparently, they are disconnected from dwarven culture as we know it. Basically I think WoW has more than enough immortal, aloof, disconnected beings and I am more keen to see hungry mortals deeply intertwined with politics and recent history.
From a dwarfy perspective the most interesting bit in this expansion is Moira’s son growing up, not Earthen. Because young beardless Moira Jr. exists at a complex intersection of dwarf cultures, he’s presumably the future leader of all dwarfkind, there’s just a lot more narrative meat to him and his mom than immortal rock guys on an island we never heard of.
But I dunno, maybe Earthen will get an interesting hook and I’m not giving them enough credit.
The concept of allied races is really dumb to begin with and has diluted so much of what makes Warcraft good. They should have just been skins and the Earthen are no exception.
They look neat, but come on. There’s no lore except “they are robot dwarves” and “they like Titan stuff.” There’s no culture. No exciting visuals. Nobody’s clamoring to play an Earthen.
The Nerubians are popular not just because they look cool but because they have a really rad architecture, society and personalities.
I agree with everything you said, but there’s a reason they created crab mode so people don’t have to look at spiders in the game. A playable spider race wouldn’t be great.
Huh? What are you talking about? You just said that a playable spider race “wouldn’t be great.” How come it’s less triggering if they’re not playable?
For that matter, why wouldn’t rat-people or genetically-engineered toad monsters be triggering? How come this one narrowly specific example is too much but everything else is fine?
I think it would be as triggering whether they’re playable or not. Just they’ve now implemented “aracnophobia” mode that turns all spider models into crab or lobster models.
I think arachnophobia is a much more common fear in people.
I think the devs are just trying to be considerate and compassionate to those who have that fear, so they can still play this very spider-heavy expansion.
That doesn’t make any sense at all, though. They made separate models depicting the spider-people as crab-people? Why even make a spider-people expansion to begin with, then?
For that matter, many more people are affected by genocide and violence in their lives than people are affected by arachnophobia. How come that’s fine? Why is racial warfare okay when so many people suffer with the impacts of that today?
Then your entire argument is kind of farcical, isn’t it? You said we can’t have playable spider-people because it’s triggering. But you are saying that non-playable spider-people aren’t triggering? Huh?
