I have actually. I feel like if the Vulpera and Sethrak, are horde/alliance in relationship and both released together, they’ll fulfill a ‘new race’ kind of spot instead of an allied race.
It’s just a hunch…but they could also be the last given ARs that…don’t necessarily fill the AR requirements that the others have.
Honestly, if we find a Sethrak mug, that would get me excited. Afterall, the Horde seems to have one more mug than the Alliance, so it would be a good thing to keep an eye out for. It also makes sense for the Vulpera’s Alliance counterpart to be something of a new race of sorts, as opposed to a variant of an existing race. ^^
In the meantime, I’ll hope for a Horde Ogre mug to appear for Brewfest someday. Or maybe a barrel with a handle on the side. <- <;
What makes an allied race an allied race? Being a modified version of an existing race? At their heart, they’re still built on the goblin rigging.
They have a reputation associated with them, the Horde meets them during the course of questing and gets to know them then and there…
A new race, at least to me, would be something that neither faction has really met yet, and has to have its own starting experience to explain who they are, what they fight for, and why they join the side they do. Vulpera already have pretty much all of that covered, don’t they?
I can only see them being spun off into a core race if they leave the Vol’dun vulpera non-playable and introduce a new branch of them from elsewhere. Maybe an uncharted island?
Well so far in some way every Allied race has been related to another. Is that a rule governing over this system? I don’t know. We don’t know. Blizzard knows and until Blizz-con I can guarantee we will not find out the fate of Vulpera as a race or Allied race.
It seems to me that an allied race is just a race that doesn’t start off having joined one of the two factions, and you have to work into getting them to join. This is different from core races where they do join and are available at the start of an expansion.
Granted, you can make some arguments here, like how Worgen and Goblins aren’t part of their factions until the end of their intro quests, but it’s the best I can think of, currently.
To quote the quests to recruit them (Not gonna use exact wording.).
Anduin: We never formally offered you an invitation into the Alliance, Will you join us.
Moira: Aight.
I think the main distinction isn’t really whether they’re joining, but whether the recruitment scenario is played out on your main or the new character itself.
Since we already work with Vulpera, they don’t necessarily need a start zone to show how they joined the Horde as with Bilgewater goblins. On the other hand, a “prequel” start zone to show their history would be helpful. So really it could go either way.
I believe what really makes the difference between a core race and an allied race is whether you can reduce development time in making their models.
While kul tirans and zandalari have a lot of investment between their druid models and the male kul tiran custom rig, neither would fly if Blizzard tried to make them an expansion feature because they are just not “new” enough.
This is the reason I believe Vulpera would have to be an allied race. While they obviously have more work behind them than lightforged draenei, they still rely too much on what they inherited from the goblins to be an expansion feature. Blizzard would get called out for being lazy unless they rebuilt the Vulpera from the ground up with entirely new assets.
Blood elves, goblins and worgen all existed in game before becoming core races. They were all rebuilt from scratch. If blizzard plans to release the current vulpera model as a playable race as all evidence indicates, they could only do it as an allied race.
I’m already looking at FF XIV right now and my brother and friend are already jumping ship not gonna continue feeding this sub all year just to still be kept in the dark or end up disappointed.
Perhaps we will see more story for Vulpera in 8.2 as well. I believe I heard one of the devs mention that there will still be content outside of the new zones in regards to the war campaign, along with something like: “Where you will be seeing and talking to others around the world as well.” …Now I wish I had a source though. I think it’s in that 8.2 stream, actually!
Vulpera have the most of my confidence for an Allied Race. Plus, they said feedback is very important, so with how many talk about these folk here and other places, I’m sure Blizzard knows they are wanted ^^