"Ugh why aren't Zandas/KTs available at launch?"

Community General Discussion
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A really frustrating complaint to see the community making about the Allied Races is over the fact that Zandalari and Kul Tirans were not available at launch, a lot of which are littering the video they just put up of the last Allied Races to be added to BfA.

Now before I’m called a shill (and let’s face it, some among you will do that no matter what I say), Blizzard deserves to eat platefuls of :poop: for their constant PR blunders and questionable design philosophy in main systems and story direction, but there’s nothing about the complaints about the Allied Races that doesn’t smack of either entitlement at best and willful ignorance at worst.

BfA adds 8 new races. The last time 8 races got added to WoW, it was 2004 and the game was launching with the original faction races. Compared to the two races we got in BC and Cata, 8 is an explosive uptick in choice.

Let’s save the riots for when they make races only to put them behind a cash shop.

“But the Zandalari and Kul Tirans were selling points! Key features that we didn’t get until 7 months later!”

They were never the only selling point. The Allied Races as a whole were a selling point. Half of them were avaiable early and and another pair were available when you unlocked them.

“But I shouldn’t have to unlock a key feature!”

Unlocks in a game are not new. Smash Bros has always had playable characters behind unlocks. Whether or not you agree the requirements are reasonable is another matter entirely, but acting like Blizzard is kicking your dog because the trade off for four times the number of new races we got in BC and Cataclysm is that you have to unlock them first.

“But they’re not actually new races! Just reskins!”

They have unique class selections, visuals, customizations, and a full kit of unique voice emotes, sillys, and flirts. More importantly, they all have unique racial abilities. Model animations is not where you want to hang your hat on this one.

“Why should I have to OLD reps for some of these races!”

If we start lifting reputation unlocks for old rewards just because they were from a previous expansion, where do we stop? Should we make all the rewards available from the BC reps as well just because they’re 10 years old? Mounts, tabards, pets, etc. There’s an argument for that I guess.

i still want that fishing board thing from the Anglers or maybe that water-walking mount. But I don’t want them bad enough to go back and do it every day, and that’s my choice to make, because clearly if a player wants it, they’ll unlock it. Why should it be different for anything else?

“I’d have played these seven months ago but too late I’m unsubbed :^)”

Don’t kid yourself. The game has much steeper problems that new races aren’t going to fix and probably did more to drive people away from the game than not having these races straight out of the gate.

“BuT fOrCeD eNgAgEmEnT tImEs!”

This is personally frustrating for me 'cos I think it’s probably true and yet I don’t know why people think it’s a bad thing. Show me a game company where the developers wouldn’t prefer you spent more time on their titles than their competitors. What exactly is unreasonable about Blizzard building their game around encouraging you to spend more time in it? What’s the difference between content you find worthwhile to sink time into and content you won’t bother with? Your willingness to get the reward at the end of it?

People treat this point as a hammer to bludgeon every little thing they don’t like with it. Islands aren’t fun? Muh engagement times. Why don’t we have flying? Muh engagement times. Artificially lengthening your time in the game. I think this applies mainly to acquiring Azerite gear and the entire philosophy around RNG lootboxes from Warfronts, assaults, mythics, etc. It’s bad and predatory when it’s used to length your pursuit of weapons and gear, things that directly impact your performance in a raid (and I don’t mean by the 1% margin that your race accounts for, since that only seems to matter to super-dedicated min-maxers).

Are the unlock requirements behind the Allied Races a matter of arbitrarily stretching out engagement times or a reasonable trade-off for the sheer number that were being added through the system as a whole? Maybe two things are true at once, and i don’t mind it in this case. Considering the prereqs are all so easy you can do them without really having to go out of your way, this ain’t it chief.

Focus on the actual problems with this game, not the fact we got 8 races in a trickle instead of all at once.

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Zandalari were announced to unlock at launch back at Blizzcon 2017. I’m not defending those who are hating on the video, but you can’t deny that they were right in their complaints over the Zandalari not being released at launch.

(As for “story hooks,” there was a completely good opportunity for the Zandalari to join the Horde after Zandalar Forever.)

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Perhaps Blizzard wants to get into the religious business and this is a test run.

Trying to teach us that patience is a virtue.

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I have no issues with reskinned model Allied Races being unlocks through storyline and rep.

I have a major issue with a brand new unique rig being implemented in the same fashion, when those brand new unique rigs in the past were new base races that required no unlock.

KT set a bad precedent.

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Why do people go out of their way to defend the indefensible? It’s silly how many excuses people are willing to make on behalf of a lying company.

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The problem is Battle for Dazar’alor has come out already and we still have no idea when 8.1.5 is coming.

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Where’s the lying? Blizzcon information is never set in stone. We know this. Heck, there’s stuff we’ve seen at Blizzcon that never even made it into the game at all.

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is this what happens when someone wants more attention?

they create redundant threads in GD?

yesterday someone created a whole thread to ask what an insult ingame meant and today you’re protecting against complaining with a laundry list of strawmen?

did you type this up in world and copy and paste it over?

how far down does this commitment go?

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I really really want to play Zandalari bad. I’m very impatient and wish I had them now. With that being said, I’m not angry at Blizzard. At the end of the day it’s such a minor issue that I am okay with waiting because I have plenty of stuff to do until they pop out. I do think they should have been released a little bit sooner, but it’s not something that’s going to ruin my day.

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Unlocks are nothing new, true. I don’t have a problem with any of the other than ones where the unlock was in the prior expansion.

Yes, The were a selling point for this expansion and while we have always had unlocks, I cannot think of one where it was a major selling point of an expansion and unlocked in a prior expansion.

If you level through Legion as a new or returning player, you will never even see the races required to grind for Lightforged or Void Elves. I just leveled another alt and it only took two zones to out level the expansion. I didn’t do Highmountain or saw the other horde race. So, that’s 4 of them and you out level the expansion with a total combined reputation of 0 in all the required unlock races.

Flying was one of the selling points of TBC. I know that I wouldn’t be thrilled that I couldn’t unlock flight until I fully level reputation on 4 races that I never encountered. And they are all back in Vanilla.

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I got tired of waiting for Zan’s and KT’s long ago. They can keep them.

They are incapable of telling the straight up truth in their advertising.

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Based off what blizz said originally trolls and kt humans where gonna be at launch. But since the kt humans where not ready and needed way more work the plan changed.

We will eventually get them though.

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I find it really difficult to raise a big fat stink over the Mag’har being tucked in before the Zandalari. The same number of races were available at launch and it makes way more sense to treat the Zandalari as analogues to the Kul Tiran.

But people aren’t going to pay attention to story hooks when it means they can complain, right?

Flying was a major selling point for BC. You still had to get max level and pay for the learning, though.

The difference is one’s a gold sink, the other is reputation. Both are unlocks of a major selling point.

The only bad thing about the Kul Tirans is that the PC doesn’t look like the vast majority of other Kul Tirans, but I’ve already banged on that drum a ton.

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Probably somewhere around 7% of the race are giant sized, with zero storyline as to why. It’s pretty ridiculously dumb.

But more important to me is having a brand new unique rig treated like a reskin unlock.

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I think this is a pretty silly stick in the mud that shouldn’t be as big a deal as people are making it out to be. Being this focused on model animations is missing the forest for the trees and that’s why I attacked that point in the OP.

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:face_with_raised_eyebrow: Its a brand new rig/skeleton. Completely unique. All other AR are just reskins or recolors of existing models. That’s fine to not have starter zones and make them unlocks.

But a completely unique race should be treated like the others before it. And it means every single race from here on out will be an unlock, regardless of how little effort or how much effort is put into them. And I call shenanigans on that.

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I know they have a new rig/skeleton.

I just think this idea of asset equivalency as a determination for whether or not they should be available right away or unlocked is stupid.

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The timeframe isn’t my problem. I could care less about KT or when they’re released.

Treating a brand new race like a reskin unlock is the issue.

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I would rather play my new races and classes by buying expansions rather then proof my worth or whatever or spin blizz wants to give it .i have already pre ordered ff14 shadowbringer expansion and will be getting my new race and classes as soon as expansion goes live cuz I have a real life .i don’t need to waste time and money to unlock a race or class that I like to play .

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I’m not sure if I’m coming across clearly. I think you’re making a mountain out of a mole hill.