i like maghar orcs but it seems silly that they just went “travel to alternate draenor to recruit the maghar orcs” when we had perfectly good ones just sitting around in outland that could have been an unlockable skin tone for the regular orcs (the idea being they, like garrosh, cromush, and many other orcs decide to join the horde on azeroth). it feels like the same deal as lightforged and highmountain tauren where the question is “why is this a separate race and not a customization”? we could have had broken draenei and taunka/yaungol instead of this
Highmountain were the laziest of all (Lightforged come a close second). They’re literally the same thing, just with antlers. Their culture, their mannerisms, everything about them is identical to normal Tauren. Instead, we had Taunka who joined the Horde and at least looked a little different (I forget if there are female models though, but that’s fixable). But no, can’t have that.
It’s ok, I’m still waiting on my skinny Kul’Tiran.
Also, Fat Paladin, when?
https://www.reddit.com/r/wow/comments/9bg9o6/the_ideal_paladin_body/
I assume because a new allied race is more of a draw for a patch/expansion vs new customization options.
My main issue is how few customization options some of the allied races have. It’s one thing to rush an allied race with limited customization options for the sake of getting it out there, it’s another thing to just leave them in a state where the only have a small handful of options. I’d say this is especially true for Mechagnomes as they can’t even transmog or even see many of their armor slots.
Cries in Mok’nathal
At least Highmountain have unique horn models.
Mag’har are literally just a texture change. No new geometry, no new modeled pieces, literally just a texture change.
Honestly, Blizz should just roll these options from Mag’har, Highmountain, and Lightforged into the regular races. Having the limited options for the allied races doesn’t make up for the minuscule amount of difference.
They didn’t
/thread
Same reason as most of the allied races. Easy way to add a race with minimal effort.
The meta reason is because Mag’har and Kul’tirans weren’t on the table.
Blizzard were not originally certain that they would be able to pull off Kul Tirans as an allied race from a technical and artistic point of view. Making a new playable race from scratch is one of the most time-consuming parts of an expansion’s development, and as a result most allied races are variants of existing races. Kul Tirans are an exception to this norm, as they have a completely unique model with a new animation rig. In terms of art resources, this made them just as costly to create as, for example, the pandaren in Mists of Pandaria and more time-consuming than every other allied race combined. Because of this uncertainty, only Dark Iron dwarves and Zandalari trolls were announced as post-launch allied races at BlizzCon 2017. However, as development of Battle for Azeroth progressed, the team felt increasingly bad about this and felt that since the main story of 8.0 revolved around befriending the Zandalari and Kul Tirans, having both races become playable was what the story deserved. They realized that they could make Kul Tirans playable if they stretched, but it wasn’t going to be able to happen until patch 8.1.5. Once this was settled, it made the most sense from a story perspective to pair the Kul Tirans with Zandalari. Thus, Zandalari were moved back until 8.1.5 so they could be released alongside Kul Tirans, while Mag’har orcs, originally slated for 8.1.5, were moved forward to 8.0 as the Horde equivalent to Dark Irons.
I believe that wasn’t an idea until Shadowlands with the elf tones on void elves and dark rangers on elves.