What I’d give for Broken, Ethereals or Arakkoa.
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The bad thing is that he isn’t even engaging “his people.” I am a raider and I enjoy raiding to at least AotC each tier with some additional mythic bosses. This current direction leaves much to be desired.
Ion isn’t engaging me because of the constant mandatory tasks he keeps throwing in my face. Meanwhile, the secondary tasks that reward cosmetic gear seem to be absolutely repetitive and dull. And then there’s random timegating for no reason.
Here is an example of how he definitely isn’t catering to raiders: conduit energy. Who in their right mind at Blizzard thought this was a good idea? So…you build a system with three possible soulbinds and multiple choice options. Then you fill these multiple choice options with items that - depending on your choice - can change your character in different ways. Then you make about a dozen of these things per spec and some general ones, coming out at approx. 30 items per spec.
And then you put a restrictive timer on it for how much I can engage with this system?
What is this? Why does this exist? What does this thing add to my gameplay? “Meaningful choice.” Come on, we both know that if I can only have a limited amount of options per day/week, the most efficient one is the one I need to take. I can’t test around with AoE/utility/survival/ST builds because if my guild suddenly needs me in M+ and I have a build that is horrendous for M+ without “credits” to change back? I want to try out so many different builds during the raid, but I can’t due to some arbitrary fear of “people changing builds too much.”
These smaller restrictions exist at every turn, seemingly gating you from engaging with already half-finished systems and limiting them even more.
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The Alliance has some serious visual homogeneity going on. The Horde has much, much greater skin tone and silhouette diversity.
Something like krokul, naga, sethrak, ethereals, or dragonsworn would inject some much needed variety into the faction. I’d love to see any one of those races added.
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You’re being kind.
Alliance:
7 humans
2 elves
2 goats
1 Panda
Human - normal
Human - tall and husky
Human - short and stout
Human - short and stout, smells like charcoal
Human - shorty
Human - shorty and semi-mechanical (w/human face)
Human w/ dog alter-ego
Elf
Elf - other
Goat - blue
Goat - yellow
Panda
Horde:
2 Orcs
2 Cows
1 Zombie
2 Elves
2 Trolls
1 Goblin
1 Fox
1 Panda
Orc - Green
Orc - Brown
Cow
Cow - other
Zombie
Elf
Elf - other
Troll
Troll with a spine
Goblin
Fox
Panda
1 Like
Man, it really drives home how bleak the situation is seeing it laid out like that.
Here’s hoping that, maybe, possibly, Blizzard will show the Alliance some love next expac? Please??
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i wish i could be as optimistic as you
i’m not sure it’s optimism so much as stockholm syndrome at this point
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For some reason the forum’s letting me post here specifically despite being unsubbed since last November (thought this only worked in the Lounge - maybe realm forums work too?), so I’m gonna take advantage of this to be very depressing at your hopes.
The Alliance will not fulfill your desire for expanded and less humanized character design anytime soon because it (and the Horde) are based around very simplistic concepts. The Horde’s job is to be ‘weird’ and ‘wrong’ and ‘other’ and ‘exotic’ and the Alliance’s job is to be ‘normal’ and ‘right’ and ‘self’’* and ‘familiar.’
Essentially, your wish for the Alliance to have more variety and out-of-the-fantasy-norm character options is in the same boat as wishing for the Horde to be written as a cohesive group rather than a bunch of malcontents oscillating between ‘evil, evil, evil’ or ‘must repent for being evil, evil, evil;’ or for either faction to be depicted as people with a variety of good and bad traits rather than cartoon cut-outs: it’s hoping for something that the product has never once been designed to be. I’m sympathetic to your desires and share several of them, but I don’t think you’re going to get any of your hopes satisfied by the game as it’s always been written. I’d recommend looking to fan content for that, or making some yourself.
Besides, it’s not like the story’s better than bad fanfic anyways. Read some good fanfic and you’re already half a leg up on it.
*please don’t ask too many questions about how, in parallel with this, the horde ended up with numerous playable species that are essentially monsterized racist stereotypes and the game’s humans took until shadowlands to receive character options that weren’t white, with a holdover stop in WoD where they literally nerfed melanin to make sure you couldn’t make a human character that was ‘too black’.
5 Likes
As someone just venturing into FFXIV, I’d disagree with that. I know the story is going to take off and never stop, but right now in ARR? I fear the current crop of Blizzard writers would take the sudden and often jarring dark turns ARR can have (A botched healer hanging onto the head of a dead tank that happened to be her future husband. Implied assaults of the grossest variety) and just turn the dial up to 11 in WoW.
1 Like
I’ve always wanted the Saurok as a playable race. Especially the ones that think they were created by an invisible sky Devilsaur. They are more brutish so most would say they would be horde but with some feasible writing, they could go Alliance as well giving them another beast race.
I mean they can easily write it in that some gnome or someone in the Kirin Tor has been studying them since the Isle of Thunder and somehow managed to give some of them heightened intellegence/a conscience through magical means or alchemy.
Just for fun class options for Saurok:
Warrior
Rogue
Mage
Hunter
Shaman
Monk
Priest
Paladin (The sky devilsaur is a loa or something who cares LIZARDMAN PALLY)
2 Likes
Speaking for myself, I didn’t want Mechagnomes.
Also speaking for myself, I rolled one and enjoyed myself immensely. Mechagon provides a LOT of options in terms of mounts and transmog that really makes Mechagnomes shine, and as I said earlier, if you look closely there is a LOT of polish to this race. Someone at Blizzard worked very hard at them and it shows if one bothers to look.
I didn’t want Mechagnomes. I’m glad we have them.
Besides, Sethrak are very much so a Horde race in terms of story and culture and even location.
As I said before, the problem with Blizzard is that they’re creatively bankrupt. The Alliance’s Allied Races are like wishing on a Monkeypaw.
Players: “You know what race we’ve wanted on the Alliance since 2004? High Elves.”
Blizzard: “Done! Also because everyone loved Alleria we’re making them Void Elves who are purple and tentacle-laden and also they’re former Blood Elves and not Alliance High Elves like the Silver Covenant.”
Players: “Dwarves are awesome! It’s high time we got to play Wildhammers!”
Blizzard: “Oh don’t worry, we’ve got, ‘plans,’ to add Wildhammers. In the meantime, enjoy these Dark Iron Dwarves. I mean, they’ve been in the Alliance since Cataclysm anyways, so its about time they were made playable.”
Players: “What?! Wildhammers have been in the Alliance since Vanilla!”
Blizzard: “Do you want Void Dwarves?”
Players: “No! No, Dark Irons are actually cool, its fine, just please don’t ruin Dwarves for us, they’re our only originally cool race!”
Blizzard: “Good.”
Players: “Man those Krokuul on Argus sure were awesome! Broken Draenei have such amazing lore and stories, I’d love to play as one.”
Blizzard: “Draenei on Argus ARE awesome! We’re giving you Lightforged Draenei. They’re exactly like regular Draenei, only with 150% more Light!”
Players: “Know what would be a cool race? The Mechagnomes. Those little robot guys from Ulduar were awesome! An actual robot race would be really unique and interesting.”
Blizzard: “We’re happy to reveal that you’ll be getting Mechagnomes! But instead of being cool Titan-Forged robots, they’re a group of fleshy Gnomes that have been hacking off their arms and legs and other body parts to become more mechanized. Unfortunately we can’t actually let you wear actual pants or sleeves, gloves, boots, or wrist armor, since we want to really show off these mechanical prosthetics, but we’ll at least add the groin covering for pants. We promise this won’t look like diapers.”
Players: “You know, its pretty cool that Orcs finally got upright backs. I wonder if humans can get something like that? Maybe new body types? Skinny or fat. I mean, we’ve had skinny and fat humans in the game since Wrath!”
Blizzard: “Fat Humans it is! Your new Allied Race is fat humans. They’re from Kul Tiras.”
Players: “But that’s not a new race…”
Blizzard: “No, it actually is. We had to put in as much work into them as we would an actual new race. New rigs and everything. Why aren’t you happier? Ungrateful little turds.”
Alternatively, you can summarize three of the Alliance’s Allied Races as, “The race, but with 150% more of what makes them their race.” Draenei but with more Light, Gnomes with more Technology, Humans with more Human.
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Activision Blizzard genuinely has so many resources available that their stances like this are more from the current development team which, personally, translates to: “The suits that run this company don’t want to shell out the money to allow for more time and people on these projects.”
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Same thing happened with Eyes of the Beast. They said they lost the code or something and couldn’t put the ability back in…low and behold they brought it back with classic and Shadowlands.
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Which is ironic because if they actually allowed devs to do these kinds of creative things and actually pushed the devs to listen to players the suits would get far more money. It’s interesting when greed mixed with being out of touch and arrogant lol.
It absolutely was from a place of utter ignorance but I recall there being an Alex Afrasiabi interview (pretty sure it was the one I always draw my reference of ‘Garrosh wasn’t supposed to be mildly likable/understandable from Stonetalon, he was going to be a big bad but Afrasiabi missed a memo’) where he said that the major narrative beats were decided by the heads rather than the actual story team. The story team just has to fill in the gaps around it.
I think my jaw dropped. Again, from not maybe thinking about the obvious but still.
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But you see, you don’t have any evidence of that, hm?! Maybe everyone but you just likes WoW! That’s why their income is up (despite MAU being down). You don’t have evidence that listening to the players would bring them more money…!
Now, if there only was a game out there that has a lead developer who listens to players and provides good, technical responses to what they can and can’t do. And if only that game was in the same genre as WoW and had - according to said dev - grown expansion-to-expansion three consecutive times.
Alas, there is no evidence…
3 Likes
Oh don’t worry, we’ve got, ‘plans,’ to add Wildhammers. In the meantime, enjoy these Dark Iron Dwarves. I mean, they’ve been in the Alliance since Cataclysm anyways, so its about time they were made playable.”
To be fair though, people did request dark irons in the past.
“Man those Krokuul on Argus sure were awesome! Broken Draenei have such amazing lore and stories, I’d love to play as one.”
I do agree. Krokul would have been better. Even though I am on the side that reskins can be okay as allied races, LF draenei are just way too similar to draenei and lazy. LF draenei have even less custom options then their core race.
“We’re happy to reveal that you’ll be getting Mechagnomes! But instead of being cool Titan-Forged robots, they’re a group of fleshy Gnomes that have been hacking off their arms and legs and other body parts to become more mechanized. Unfortunately we can’t actually let you wear actual pants or sleeves, gloves, boots, or wrist armor, since we want to really show off these mechanical prosthetics, but we’ll at least add the groin covering for pants. We promise this won’t look like diapers.”
I am not entirely convinced people who be happier with full robot mechagnomes.
Say they gave this a model update while remaining faithful to its current design I still think many people would hate it or maybe hate it even worse. One thing to remember is that a lot of people don’t like this race because they wanted/expected something else(namely sethrak fans). This means that even if it was literally anything else many would still hate them.
But that’s not a new race…”
Blizzard: “No, it actually is.
It kinda is though if we go by real life standards. Chinese, Asian, black are all considered different races irl.
Delete this before our next three allied races are Dalaran Humans, Stromgarde Humans, and Alterac Humans.
I don’t disagree, but the point is people had asked for Mechagnomes in the past, and with the Ulduar variant in mind. A race of robots is an interesting concept to play around with, when you get down to it.
The Alliance’s Allied Races are all variants of what players had asked for over the years, rather than just giving the players what they asked for. This isn’t something the Horde had to suffer.
Horde asked for Zandalari? Horde got Zandalari.
Horde asked for Nightborne? Horde got Nightborne.
Horde asked for Vulpera? Horde got Vulpera.
Horde asked for Mag’har? Horde got Mag’har.
About the only thing the Horde didn’t get from their requests was Taunka, but at least Blizzard didn’t go, “Okay, so here’s the Taunka, but they’re all voided out now so it’s pretty much ruined and guarantees we’re never adding the race you actually wanted all this time.”
1 Like
the biggest brains know to use Kul Tiran character models for this