I don’t think it was “their” expansion. They were involved in it, but they weren’t the central driving force. I’m pretty happy with what we got, actually. In two zones, they fleshed out the Earthen more than most races who have been in the game since launch. If you’re the kind who does all the quests and reads all the dialogue and interacts with books and stuff, there is an awful lot about how the race operates, how they think and how they reproduce, how they live and die, what the whole cycle of their life looks like. I say this as someone who was extremely underwhelmed and skeptical coming into the expansion, feeling like they would be boring.
The only thing I wasn’t a big fan of was how the meta narrative for the Earthen was all about accepting differences until the very end, when they all agreed that hating the Titans was the one correct way to live. Rather than both sides learning to tolerate the sincerely held beliefs of the other, it turns out the rebels were right all along and hierarchy bad. Left a bad taste in my mouth, but everything leading up to that was so good I can forgive it.
In all seriousness it is widely speculated that much of the larger story of The War Within was trashed in order to segue it into the worldsoul saga after much of the content had already been developed, when Metzen was put in charge of the creative/story side of WoW and Steve Danuser stepped down. I think it lends to a pretty big sense of anticlimax overall, as the most interesting thing happens at the beginning (destruction of Dalaran), and the expansion ends with the death of Dimensius, a villain from a TBC questline who we thought was dead up until now. As for the Earthen, anything of any importance that they do will probably happen in The Last Titan, which seems to be majorly Titan/Worldsoul themed.
Story wise their point is to get us rubbing shoulders with the inner workings of world soul stuff. They’re our guy on the inside.
Allied race wise, their point is low hanging fruit used as content. They already use the dwarf rig which works for mounts and gear, and they are already giving them customizations for the NPCs. So, why not make them playable?
I’m sorry you can’t take two seconds to read the quest text and look at the lore interactables.
They’re a bunch of robots granted true sapience by Azeroth herself who fought a bloody rebellion against their Titan Keepers. Plus they have an Adeptus Mechanicus.
Tour character having involvement in the story can easily be explained by bronze dragon timey wimey shenanigans. I mean we’re literally in the middle of canonically replaying an old expansion right now!
Surprisingly, the Earthen seem to have far less relevance, impact and cultural standing within the factions of both the Alliance & Horde than even the Pandaren do … And that’s saying something, lol
To give horde the ugliest and worse dwarves. But they ruined us getting dark iron 15 years ago when the ruler of iron forge married the dark iron (stockholm syndrome)and the got all uppity with the alliance until they accepted them and her unborn baby since she is the ruler of the dark irons now
Because they needed something to market and they were already framed and modeled and required minimal dev time to introduce as a playable race. Allied races will always be some variant of existing playable character models.
Earthen are tied deeply to the lore, anyone who genuinely cares about WoW would know that. There are many instances of them being mentioned and present in the game dating all the way back to vanilla wow. Earthen eventually became what we know today as Dwarves through the curse of flesh, a curse placed on them by Yogg-Saron. There have been Earthen all throughout the game and almost every expansion where they are aiding us in our efforts against existential threats, just not a playable race until TWW.
The cool part about Earthen being a playable race is just that, they’ve been unplayable since the beginning of WoW while existing throughout the entirety of it. They were also crucial in establishing the lore for the zone that was quickly over-shadowed by Xal’atath and company but that’s an entirely different question.
If nothing else, the fact that they are a playable race should inspire confidence(cope) that other unplayable races like Tuskarr, Hozen, Arakkoa, and Furbolg might be playable at a future date.
But I guess this is retail WoW and the amount of people that know lore or care for it is waning by the day.
What is your point? Everyone knows Earthen are a longstanding race, Troggs have been present dating back to Vanilla as well, there’s not a huge push for them to be playable.
Just because you, and whoever on this particular forum post, didn’t anecdotally ask for Earthen doesn’t mean others didn’t or aren’t excited to have the ability to play them. I’m absolutely positive it was focus tested by Blizzard before being implemented, and most likely aimed at lore buffs, not forum complainers who are never happy with any implementation. (Coincidentally enough I’m fairly certain this is a driving factor in why Blizzard is choosing to cater to Asian, more specifically Chinese audiences over Western ones.)
Personally I could have it either way, but I’d rather a new playable race than none at all. The majority of the griping I’ve seen from people online about Earthen is the beards on the female Earthen, not serious criticism, just don’t make a female Earthen with a beard.
Regarding your comment about Troggs, I don’t ever remember them playing a major role in aiding us against existential threats like the old gods, the scourge, or countless other storylines like the Earthen has… In fact, I’m 100% certain they were always an enemy with MAYBE 1 or 2 outliers.
You’re “absolutely positive” that Earthen, a race that, according to the best data we have, cannot crack 1% of the playerbase, were “focus tested” by Blizzard? You must have a lower opinion of Blizzard than I do. Be charitable, you negative Nancy!
Anyway, I’m a “lore buff,” the target demographic for Earthen, according to you, and I think they’re a giant waste of a slot.
Are you just totally unaware of video game discourse in East Asia?
