Sadly this is also true sadly I can not excuse why they can’t a lot of smaller name and and devs have been able to keep up with these… Blizz being such a giant in the MMO’s industry makes you wonder were is the “investment” or “money” is going in if their not hiring to increase productivity and lessen the load of the dev teams…
Some of my friends didn’t come back to DF in favor or staying in smaller MMO that actively can add such “small adds”…
Then again, WoW player base in the billions… or so it was, I think it much smaller now.
So, your right guys are right on that too… so are my friends who refuse to come back and like they say: “Support or reward half-bake content, it wont make a difference to them, but at least it does to me”
I have an idea that we could try to push for but I want your opinion on it. Since people love customization so much and it’s not something that we should have to wait a few expansions for, Blizzard could introduce a reward scheme that:
Would allow artists to submit ready customization options like hairstyles, tattoos etc which would be approved by Blizzard,
Blizzard would then list these options in its in-game Shop which could be bought,
The Artists who submitted the options would receive the majority of the payment, and Blizzard would be entitled to a commission for hosting it on its store!
It’d be similar to the customizations that can be bought in DOTA 2. Some items like standalone hairstyles are cheap, but other more complete customization appearances cost more
It’d be a small source of side income to Artists and also help promote their art as they will be credited for the submission!
What do you think? Would that be a complicated thing to implement by Blizzard in its shop? It’s profitable for both sides and relieves the devs from spending valuable resources in character customization instead of world development. It’ll also allow for the introduction of more races in the game without equating to the sacrifice of time and development to other races (cough, Drakthyr cough)
I don’t think it’s feasible tbh. Blizzard would loose control over the specificity how the races are portrayed which seems to be a thing for them. Also, Blizzard has became increasingly less approving of player created content since its War3 days, it would require a whole change of heart.
I could see customizations becoming a thing in the in-game shop, but it would have to be done in studio by Blizzard, or at least outsources like Overwatch skins are, in a way they can have more control over it than userbase generated.
But yeah, I don’t think it’s feasible with how Blizz is run.
I think it’s feasible because Blizzard will have the last say of what makes it into their shop and what doesn’t - anything that is irrelevant or subpar in quality could just not be approved.
It’s been 20 years since then. People change, and times change too. Dota 2 may not be as big a business as WoW, but honestly I cannot really see the downside in this other than Blizzard will need to give some instructions in terms of the code in which the 3D art must be submitted to be compatible with Blizz’s code.
I feel like Blizzard would never go for it but I am very much happy with the idea of artists who have clearly been doing good things for the community for years being able to work with Blizzard to get those ideas into the game where applicable.
Blizzard would have the final say and all that so I can’t see too much going wrong with that concept. Someone of course is going to claim its pay to win somehow because you have to pay for it but that’ll happen no matter what anyways. lol
I do think it would be complicated for Blizzard to define what they’re exactly looking for and what their process for determining if something is valid to go through the system but other than just having the manpower and team to see to this sort of thing I don’t think it would be immensely complicated.
that far up the food chain, in terms of culture and politics, they wont do anything outside of their own art house that isnt corporate, as the big corps all scratch each others backs.
I have to say I’m quite thrilled with the abundance of void elves I’ve seen in Dragonflight so far.
Also the subtle implications of more void content down the line has me hoping they may be involved here and there further, though the dragon focused aspect of the expansion will probably mean they wont. Still its really nice to see so much representation of void elves with a few new options becoming entirely canon, such as natural hair on blue skinned void elves.
I really wish that our drakes though for dragonriding could be Twilight dragon themed… would be really nice. (also chromatic themed too would be nice.)
Very excited to see what new npc void elves we’ll see as the expansion continues onward.
Have you seen the Void Elf NPC in the Spa Island? Under his name it says ‘‘Model’’!
I was so ecstatic when I got towards the end of the sands of time questline with Chromie and read all the whispers!
If they saw that the community supported it and was vocal about it there is a chance they would consider some form of solution, at the very least working with some external artists even if it meant approaching this in a different way of their choosing.
Heck they could just have an inbox dedicated to receiving 3D art submissions and approving them as well as giving some instructions, then uploading it in the shop after agreeing some form of compensation method
I kinda count him among the Dark Rangers on account of his looks. Though I actually have not run across him myself yet. Still its nice to see those options being attached to what appears to be a void elf model. Wish we had more info on him.
Due to some lag issues I put off heading into the Azure Span until today. So I haven’t gotten to Chromie’s line yet. Can’t wait.
I really liked the questline in the Waking Shores where you find the Sundered Scales forces having some interesting whispers issues.
Oh plenty of other companies have kinda similar concepts. Its not at all impossible. We’ll see if Microsoft jumps at any sort of community submission concept in the future.
I doubt we’d see anything like it with Blizzard under Activision directly.
If they were able to make an email inbox just for submissions and allocated someone to approve / not approve as well as send an instruction template to artists, it would not require more than a single person to manage it.
But of course they’d need to set up a payment plan first with their policy on commission before putting the submissions up on their shop for grabs.
I see a lot of pros to it. Apart from Blizz paying artists and others for their submissions each time someone buys the shop item, as well as showcasing those artists on their shop, players will be able to enjoy new character customization without having to wait a couple years (SEVERAL years, actually) for it. And this will save a lot of development time for the stuff directly employed by the company who can focus on more complicated stuff (class skins hello!) like player housing for the future, updating the rigging for old vanilla models (like humans and dwarves) or other big projects.
It’s not a small indie company, and with Microsoft buying it they will definitely have the resources for it. We just need to let them know we want this to happen.
He does have VE lines as well, so IMO it does edge on him being a “VE” or VE aligned rather than an undead horde elf using a VE hairstyle.
I do think he’s meant to be more of a “vampire” or San’layn with the concept of him being alluring and beautiful enough to be a model, so it’s interesting the aligned that to a VE.
When I said I count him among the Dark Rangers I meant a void elf dark ranger not some sort of Horde aligned thing. Far as I can tell Dark Rangers are now partially Alliance and Horde since they do specifically state some of them returned to their brethren (At least for the Night Elves).
I’d still like some more lore and interactions showing void elf and even high elf dark rangers alliance side just gently mentioning they’ve rejoined for sure since thats a little more vague than the night elf dark rangers but what can you do?
I can see it but I also don’t know that I’d say he is for sure. Either way not the main bit of Void Elf lore I want to see expanded personally. Or more so that I’m really interested in. Its neat and nice and great for folk who are going that angle, but it doesn’t really expand the void themed concepts of void elves.
Oh that’s the thing, I can’t even be sure if he’s supposed to be a Dark Ranger.
Indeed, he’s not really expanding the Void aspect of Void Elves. He’s a neat addition, but TBH he’s not expanding anything in terms of lore at all.
Like as long as we don’t even know where exactly the “VE” Dark Rangers come, it’s really more of a neat player customization option more than anything. Cause rn the most likely is they are Dark Rangers that switched sides, so that means they were High Elves in life. Maybe they started studying the void after switching sides? Practitioners of the Cult of the Forgotten Shadow that delved deeper? Really no way to know.
Its also entirely plausible that they’re void elves raised during the battle of Darkshore. Supposedly there was some back and forth and Sylvanas was not a stranger to raising Alliance side forces clearly.
Part of what frustrates me that they don’t just add those little lore tidbits is how easy it would be to make all sorts of little stories for this with very little effort.
I really would love to see the Cult of the Forgotten Shadow expand beyond just the Forsaken and take root among the Void Elves, Worgen and even some of the orcs.
It would be a grand place to start an order of Void Knights for that paladin void skin concept and give us some long awaited lore both for those races and for the Cult.
(Also side bar but I’d love to see Natalie Seline become Forsaken which would have made much more sense overall in the first place.)
Exactly. We can speculate a lot, but at the end of the day there’s nothing solid in terms of evidence. Only thing we know is that one of the elves that came to Calia for help, Kitala Starshadow, was a thalassian elf, but when was she raised or if she returned with the NE DR to the alliance, it’s also speculation.
There is so much that could be addressed in little ways, but that would require VE’s getting any new lore lol.
Whenever the Light is the enemy of the expansion, I really hope we see the Cult of the Forgotten Shadow back. If there’s a time for the void to get expanded it is then. Maybe then will VE’s finally get the spotlight.
I kinda like that Natalie Seline looks fresh you know? Makes her feel like the opposite of Calia: a Void powered undead. I do wish she gets a new model that looks a bit creepier, but she still looks non-decayed.
Aye, this is something I hope occurs down the line. We have so much potential even in just these little bits that don’t have to do with the void directly, its just flabbergasting how much we could do with the actual void theme on its own.
Oh absolutely. While I don’t have high hopes as I can’t remember Blizzard remembering the Cult except during Legion, I would love to see them and the Twilight Cult show up during a void expansion.
Speaking of where are the Twilight Cultists in DF?
Eh, as she is the main founder of the Cult and its mostly a Forsaken thing these days I’d have preferred if she were similarly undead after all that time. Minor thing though.
Still think that’d be an opportune time to have Seline consult Alonsus about an order of void wielding paladins to combat the Light.
We’ve already gotten peeks at how heavy handed the Light can be, so being prepared is a pretty good idea. Did no one listen to Illidan?
Really like the concept of void using priests following the same path that paladins once did.
Learning to mesh martial and void powers together and use heavy armor just seems like a prudent thing to do if your order already uses the void and can see the effectiveness of paladins for the Light.
- anything that is irrelevant or subpar in quality could just not be approved.
