Why a Brand New Race Isn't a Reasonable Request

Community General Discussion
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Making the race model is easy. Adapting all the armor for it is the hard part.

Up until MoP, all armor except helms and shoulderpads were just painted on the Race’s model (even capes, the cape is part of the model, that part just stays invisible when you aren’t wearing a cape).

So when Blizzo added Blood Elves and Draenei, all they had to do was to adapt all Vanilla helmets and shoulders from vanilla to the new model.

When they added Goblins and Worgen, they had to adapt all helms and shoulderpads from vanilla, tBC and WotLK. A lot more work but still doable.

When they added pandas, they had to adapt all helms and shoulderpads from vanilla, tBC, WotLK and Cata. That was the last “easy Race”

MoP introduced the concept of 3D belts, and Legion exploded the concept with 3D everything.

When BfA came and the Kultirans were created, they had to adapt every helm and shoulderpad from tBC, WotLK, Cata, MoP, WoD and Legion, plus the 3D belts from MoP, WoD and Legion, plus the 3D chespieces, pants, gloves and boots from Legion.

As you can see, as time passes and the game adds more and more gear, creating a new Race model becomes more and more unreasonable.

If they were to create a brand new Race model in The Last Titan, they would have to adapt all the helms and shoulderpads from tBC, WotLK, Cata, MoP, WoD, Legion, BfA, Shadowlands, Dragonflight, TWW and Mid, plus all the 3D belts from MoP, WoD, Legion, BfA, Shadowlands, Dragonflight, TWW and Mid, plus all the 3D chespieces, pants, gloves and boots from Legion, BfA, Shadowlands, Dragonflight, TWW and Mid.

I could be wrong but it seems to be that the humongous backlog of armor made the sheer amount of work necessary to create a brand new Race just not worth the return of the investment.

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What? You telling me bliz ain’t heard of an armor stretcher? Everyone knows it’s made by the same company that brought us the bar stretcher and headlight fluid.

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Is that what Goku used in Dragon Ball to make his power pole work?

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I am going to say yes so I appear to know about cannon ball z beyond the name and also because I’m super agreeable this morning.

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I really, really hoped I would put that scene in someone’s head. I feel really good about that joke now haha.

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Robert Baretheon was a kul tiran, and I won’t hear any arguments.

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Never thought that before now. I could t argue if I wanted to.

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I heard they use a 4 foot yard stick to measure everything.

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Like the old saying goes cut several times then measure. Then cut more or get a fresh piece of lumber depending on what’s needed.

I have the most misshapen jenga stack on the block. It’s very dangerous.

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While yes it would be tons of work to create a new race. This isn’t a starting company that was funded by “Go fund me”. This is a multi million dollar company. They have resources and could put teams on creation. Its not like one guy would have to do everything. We can’t even have basic character customizations. The company is lazy and wants to spoon feed us slivers of content so they can say its a " feature" and make a big deal about it. Look at Velf DH just one race got one class.

The company is going to cut corners and do lazy practices because they want to save money. That’s what’s it’s always been about.

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I get what you’re saying with the ever growing pool of gear, but that would only be a problem for adapting if they aren’t following some basic conventions to keep them compatible. By cata, it was already too many to individually test and adjust. There must be tools they use for this.

So i think if it was possible a few expansions ago, its still reasonable to ask for now. Whatever internal tools are needed to make it happen just contribute to later potential features for character customization

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A couple of years ago i would agree with you, but we have AI nowdays and it is the perfect tool to do all the heavy work of adapt all sets for the new body models, saving dev time and money to be used on other parts of the game.

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“You’ve gotten fat.”

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Counterpoint: We have races like Vrykul and Naga that are already rigged for armor that they’re just not using.

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They may be rigged for armor, but is the armor rigged for them?

Making a new model rigged for armor is easy. Adapting all the armor to their body shape is the hard part.

Naga and Vrykul are rigged for armor, in the sense that they have the UV map done in a way that the textures for “painted armor” that works with us will also work with them, but unless Blizzard makes 3d armor bits for them they won’t be able to use modern armor.

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Last I checked Naga had shoulders/gloves with extra parts working on their models

Makes sense for helmets not to work on them considering the whole thing they got going on

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I dunno when compared to the dracthyr problems. Stretching issues because of customizations so perhaps it could be should better with a few cuts. Maybe even the wings? :carpentry_saw::robot:

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AI isn’t magic, stop pretending that it is.
Simply saying “AI can do it” just demonstrates you don’t understand what AI even is.

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They do this already. And it fails miserably.