Don’t get me wrong; I love not needing to do a reputation grind for another allied race. However I don’t understand why Man’ari Draenei didn’t just become an allied race. Lightforged Draenei are basically just Light Draenei, whereas Man’ari are basically just Fel Draenei. The unlock quest line could have remained the same but it makes sense to me for this to have just been another allied race.
Especially because some racials would add some depth, as well as heritage armor. If we’re gonna break the rules regarding lore, why not just go all-in with it?
I’ve heard a rumor, for which I have no evidence so take it with a grain of salt, that Blizz regrets the entire Allied race concept. It cluttered up character creation, required a slew of new racials, all without really adding much to the game that couldn’t have just been done cosmetically. If true, I doubt we’ll be seeing any more allied races at all any time soon.
Again, this was rumor, no I don’t have a quotable source, feel free to completely disregard me, that’s entirely fair.
The Krokul/Broken have already been a part of the Alliance/Exodar for ages. And the updated Broken/Krokul models we got in Legion are just draenei with different faces/tails.
I doubt blizzard would ever give us a third draenei race, but Broken/Krokul customization options seem very doable and it makes much more sense than literal demon Man’ari that tried to genocide the draenei for thousands of years.
They haven’t added an ‘Allied race’ sine BFA. I think they were a fad that created unintended confusion on how to obtain them after they had been around for several patches. They also have their own racial traits, heritage armor and mount, quest chains, etc.
There is the whole tit for tat horde and alliance thing. If the alliance got an allied race the horde would have to get one or everything would be “unfair”. Same would be true if the horde got an allied race without the alliance getting one.
In theory they could just say that the Horde will get one in the future, but we know that people that play this game would not accept something like that.
So they just gave a little quest and some customizations without making it a full fledged feature. Also, they didn’t have to expend any wider ranging design time on what the racials would be. Or make a mount and heritage armor.
While I can easily see the other races mentioned becoming customizations options like the Man’ari and Darkfallen were, I actually don’t see that happening with Forest Trolls. Even though the female model is the same, the player male Darkspear model is different from the male NPC bulkier model.
Because creating a few customizations for existing races is easier than having to create a new system to earn each one, needing to go back to fix the parts that got broken, and then having to go back to it years later to make it evergreen.
I think it’s because Blizzard had a shift on exactly they wanted to use the allied race system for. The allied race system was very much used as a way to unlock variants of the existing playable races, such as the highmountain tauren and lightforged draenei. Most of the allied races present follow that mindset, with the notably exception of the vulpera who are the goblin allied race equivalent.
Since they made both the darkfallen and man’ari available through customizations, I’m taking the guess that going forward this customization race system is how they will be handling most variants on the current existing races. For example I can easily see frost dwarves or fel orcs becoming available through this, and I say most variants because not all the models perfectly match one another. Case in point while jungle and forest trolls share a female model, they have different male models with the jungle trolls lean and the forest trolls bulky.
The Man’ari eredar we got aren’t actually man’ari in that they use the custom models from legion, Actually.
The legion man’ari models had black veins on their faces and glowing green horns.
The man’ari we got are unironically nothing more than retextured draenei.
It could be that blizzard isn’t done with the customization options yet, but honestly the whole thing feels half-baked. I didn’t mind the questline, i thought it was sort of interesting, and i really do like the option to have playable eredar, but it still felt half baked.
Granted, it’s interesting how the Gift of the naaru visual effect is different if you play with the eredar customization. Instead of the holy yellow glow you get a glowing fel green glow when you use your racial. Makes me wonder if we’ll get to see different racial visuals for Wildhammer skinned dwarves and high elf skinned void elves.
