Playable Sub-race Thread

[Mace]

Night Elves: Highborne (not sure how you distinguish the models, but it's possible)

Seriously? did it not occur to you this is what Nightborne gives you? it's even in the name. (if you want them on both factions, just give the alliance one night elven ears like some nightborne have - lore reason = the fruit of the arcan'dor restores this to the nightborne, and the horde group have the male nightborne ears, - i.e. the group that was kicked out because they aided Elisande and the legion till the last moment.

but it should have occured to you taht the nightborne model is exactly how you distinguish between highborne and normal night elf. You don't need another distintive model for highborne , you just use nightborne - they really are the highborne culture night elves.

[Drewbacca]

Seriously? did it not occur to you this is what Nightborne gives you? it's even in the name. (if you want them on both factions, just give the alliance one night elven ears like some nightborne have - lore reason = the fruit of the arcan'dor restores this to the nightborne, and the horde group have the male nightborne ears, - i.e. the group that was kicked out because they aided Elisande and the legion till the last moment.

but it should have occured to you taht the nightborne model is exactly how you distinguish between highborne and normal night elf. You don't need another distintive model for highborne , you just use nightborne - they really are the highborne culture night elves.

Nightborne did occur to me, and if you’d read my post, you’d know that. I specifically said I was trying to think of subraces that wouldn’t require a new starting zone. Nightborne don’t really fit with that criteria. Plus, Highborne are definitely separate from Nightborne. My thoughts were basically a reskin of the current Night Elf model. Several of the other races are as simple as that. Don’t get me wrong, Nightborne and Vrykul would be awesome, but they require a lot more work than the options I gave. It wouldn’t seem fair to give some races a new starting zone but not others, and I don’t see them creating that many new starting experiences.

[Mace]

Here's a list of my ideas. I decided to keep it brief.

ALLIANCE
Humans: Arathi, Half-Elf
Dwarves: Dark Iron [skin], Wildhammer [skin]
Night Elves: Nightborne (Horde), Highborne [skin], Cenarian

HORDE
Orcs: Mok'nathal, Mag'har [skin], Blackrock [skin], Dragonmaw [skin] Chaos [skin]
Undead: San'layn, Unliving, Skeleton
Blood Elves: High Elf (Alliance) [skin], Wretched


Notes:
1.) Nightborne have been interacting with the Horde a lot recently..

Silgryn journeying with Liadrin is not "nightborne race interacting a lot with the horde" it's Silgryn interacting a lot with Liadrin.

Just a few points here.
All the bits where you say [skin] - i take it you mean they are customizable options rather than a distinctive sub-race. e.g. Dark iron dwarf/wildhammer are skin choices, highborne is something like my avatar (rich peripherals, moonstones etc, and silver/purple glow eye colour options with slight modifications - just like how you access demon hunter and death knight special skins.
I'm not sure there is any warrant for forsaken elves with the forsaken. Undead elves are a faction currently not allied to the forsaken undead. Forsaken are a human undead faction that are ruled by an undead elf accompanied by her female only banshee elven rangers. Therefore they should be human. Undead blood elves are already on the blood elf side, the DK blood elves match with the blood elves not the forsaken, as the Illidari blood elves match with the blood elves and not the night elves. Undead elves will join the DK Belves under the blood elves. Forsaken should have someting like Vampire (recently undead) and skeletons - other options include undead Barbarians and undead half elves. Could even make the undead half elves the vampires who are in the recently undead state although i''d prefer them to be their own model based off a straightned out and flesh covered forsaken model - skinny, but pale and not ghoul/zombie like, and vampiric, but human all the way (human based on the forsaken model not hte stormwind human model)

A Note on the Nightborne/Night Elven
I suspect the SUramar night elves would be available on both horde and alliance, except that on horde they'd be the Legion nightborne modelled ears (upturned at the tip), and on alliance, they will have their ears back to night elven ones (which some nightborne have), making them more easily identifiable as night elven nightborne, The exile story explanation may work well here, with the explanation for the ears being the night elven allied onesunder THalyssra had the arcan'dor fruit who's healing was reflected in the ears reverting to normal. The group that joined the horde were the loyalists to Elisande who only turned after her Echo decided to help out. They were spared execution because of that, but were exiled and not given the fruit. The divine energies in the sunwell keep them from deteriorating into withered now exiled away from home.

It is fitting this way seeing the High elves are exiled away from their main city, while the rest of the race is on the horde. Like wise, being night elven, the nightborne and SUramar remain with the night elves, but an exile group is with the horde. It also fits th story as Elisande's loyalists are like the blood elves in TBC, who went bad first, but came back to our side at Shattrath. Whereas Thalyssra and the rebels that won back the city are like the night elves who never compromised to the Legion in the first place.

THere is also 2 distinct philosophies, between Elisnde's followers and Thalyssra's, even when they are fighting on the same side. THalyssra would see the nightborne return as defenders, Elisande's group would see the Kaldorei Empire rule the world again as conquerors - and although they won't be all out evil, they are more in line with the horde.

It also is fitting that the best bit of the Kaldorei empire, Suramar city, remains/returns to the night elven whole and not split across a faction war, seeing most of them are from there anyway, it would feel wrong for it to go to the horde as well, denying a key step up in growth and development to the night elves of the alliance. (even though it is also night elves on the horde) - it's not good for ALL the alliance night elves to be the poor ones, and the horde night elves to have all the fancy stuff. is what i'm saying. Can you imagine- Tyrande, Jarod, Maiev, MAlfruion and Illidan's home city (and most of the 10k year old night elves) now all horde? it just feels wrong.

I also feel the nightwell will be fired up again. They have options for the story though, Thalyssra and the alliance nightborne have proven they are masters of magic by being willing to let go of the nightwell, so when circumstance forces them to power it up again, they are trusted to be guardians of it, having being the beneficiaries of the near death experience going overboard caused to their people.Anything from the city losing power, to needing power to fight Azshara. However I feel the be best story will stem from the different philsophies of the two groups of nightborne. Let me explain

How the Nightwell Gets Fired up again: - (a potential scenario)
A group of nightborne, consisting mostly of the former Elisande loyalists feel its a massive mistake to power down the nightwell and their people should be seizing the power to do good in the world. THalyssra and those controlling the city disagree, we're better off - however the long time taken to supply enough Arcan'dorfruit and the pain of enduring without the nightwell whie waiting for the fruit, combinedwith this biewpoint causes the dissenters to organize and force the hand of Thalyssra and the nightborne council. With some of their new found blood elven friends who agree with this view point and unable to resist the prospect of a powerful nightwell aiding all the causes they may have, they work together to force this and get control of the power (for the good of all nightborne, the city, elfkind and the world (they convince the idea being, once they have control, Thalyssra and the others would have no choice but to fall in line and would be thanking them them.

With the tomb of Sargeras sealed, the exiles used their contacts to re-acquire the eye of aman'thul and power up the nightwell, however in the rush and in-experience of their new allies with this level of magic caused it not to be done properly,lost control,erratic power, needed the expertise of Thalyssra and the rest of the nightborne in the city as well as Tyrande and others who were re-connecting with old friends/fmaily, they rallied, stablised the power flow in a combination of all the disciplines (arcane, nature and an act of Elune) and prevent an eruptive explosion that could potentially have destroyed the broken isles. The nightwell is stablised , but now it would be too risky to drain the nightwell as the power was now suffuising the entire isles and no one wants another sundering type event. With the attempted coup botched, the group is hunted downfor arrest and execution (most of them were Elisande loyalists, and that was the last straw, cannot be trusted), however they escape with their blood elven accomplices, a fairly large group (like 20-30% of the city, including all those Loyalists who were recovering from their defeat at our hands during the legion invasion. working with the blood elves also tarnishes them to Thalysrra and this is how we get the nightborne split into two groups not liking each other and allied with peoples that are at conflict with one another. So like the high elves were exiled for breaking the rules, so too are the conspirator nightborne for their actions.

Malfurion wades into the debate by pointing out that maybe it would work for the best, they will need its power to fight Azshara and the tide of darkness of the void he warned about in the EMerald Nightmare, and Tyrande notes the blessing of the goddess on the nightborne who seem to have proven they have true mastery over magic by being able to willingly give it up. They recognise the city is whole and of one mind with all those who sought magic for power gone, They make a pact together to use the magic to restore the health and vitality of the elven people and Azeroth itself and to use it to fight evil threats like the void and any who would seek power as means to enslave, destroy or corrupt. It tis a momenotous occassion, because it is the first time in over10,000 years,all3disciplines have united in full agreement and to accomplish one purpose.

Meanwhile the exiled group make it Silvermoon, they are bonded in their dislieke for the other group and dismayed at thier failiure to seize power to destroy their enemiesandbenefit thier lives - although this is exactly what the night elves use the nightwell and their magic for, the motivations and drive behind it come from two very different ways of thinking.

- - - Updated - - -

Nightborne did occur to me, and if you’d read my post, you’d know that. I specifically said I was trying to think of subraces that wouldn’t require a new starting zone. Nightborne don’t really fit with that criteria. Plus, Highborne are definitely separate from Nightborne. My thoughts were basically a reskin of the current Night Elf model. Several of the other races are as simple as that. Don’t get me wrong, Nightborne and Vrykul would be awesome, but they require a lot more work than the options I gave. It wouldn’t seem fair to give some races a new starting zone but not others, and I don’t see them creating that many new starting experiences.

ah my bad, i guess i got carried away. Sub-races don't need a starting zone, while some can start with the main race in their area, many are actually better off just having a unique scenario like we had for class quests + artifact quests at the beginning of legion. Blizzard simply use the current wrold environment to tell their tory - most of htese groups have areas they come from anyway, so it's easy, and the level scaling tech makes it possible for blizzard to plug the race in at any level they want. e.g. The Taunka scenario can start from level 70 in Borean Tundraaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa

[Hallowseve17]

Silgryn journeying with Liadrin is not "nightborne race interacting a lot with the horde" it's Silgryn interacting a lot with Liadrin.

Okay, you're right, the Horde and Nightborne haven't interacted a lot. I was trying to keep my notes short and sweet and thought I'd get the point across that way.

[Eurhetemec]

Very thorough treatments here, and I think most of the likely subraces - and a bunch of unlikely ones - are well covered, with good reasoning (even if I think a lot of it is unlikely to pan out).

[Mace]

Very thorough treatments here, and I think most of the likely subraces - and a bunch of unlikely ones - are well covered, with good reasoning (even if I think a lot of it is unlikely to pan out).

yeh , i like he is approach to them, it matches the sort of thing most of us hope for. And the thing about sub-races is that they can keep ading them, the expansion should aunch like anyting from 6-12/13 and then keep adding more as they are ready, plossibly in pairs, as in one from each faction or just alone, who know might get more peopel to faction /race change.

it's a serious money maker too, for race/faction changes, and if they hadlike a couple of u nique ones purchaesable from the blizzard store - like say Half-elf and half-orc which can play both sides and have really cool special models, that would also be a huge hit i thinkg.

[Rhlor]

Silgryn journeying with Liadrin is not "nightborne race interacting a lot with the horde" it's Silgryn interacting a lot with Liadrin.

I remember the blood elves interacting with the nightborne in suramar



I think nightborne become a sub race for night elves and blood elves

[meowfurion]

......I think it's time for a draconic playable race....Maybe naga...Sub races are not my idea of "exciting." Just add different customizations to our races already. That's all it really amounts to, isn't it? Red Draenei, metal gnomes, black dwarves, red orcs, winter tauren...etc...

[Rhlor]

Seriously? did it not occur to you this is what Nightborne gives you? it's even in the name. (if you want them on both factions, just give the alliance one night elven ears like some nightborne have - lore reason = the fruit of the arcan'dor restores this to the nightborne, and the horde group have the male nightborne ears, - i.e. the group that was kicked out because they aided Elisande and the legion till the last moment.

but it should have occured to you taht the nightborne model is exactly how you distinguish between highborne and normal night elf. You don't need another distintive model for highborne , you just use nightborne - they really are the highborne culture night elves.

the skin color of the queen azshara I do not remember that can choose

[Deleted]

There's no real reason to keep denying us proper sliders. Any subrace you can imagine can be easily expressed with some careful slider work. Adjust height, limb thickness, musculature, every bit of the face and bang, you're suddenly in 2017 with well-made MMOs.

[Eurhetemec]

yeh , i like he is approach to them, it matches the sort of thing most of us hope for. And the thing about sub-races is that they can keep ading them, the expansion should aunch like anyting from 6-12/13 and then keep adding more as they are ready, plossibly in pairs, as in one from each faction or just alone, who know might get more peopel to faction /race change.

it's a serious money maker too, for race/faction changes, and if they hadlike a couple of u nique ones purchaesable from the blizzard store - like say Half-elf and half-orc which can play both sides and have really cool special models, that would also be a huge hit i thinkg.

I think Blizzard would be smart to keep them out of the Blizzard store. Part of why people are happy to pay a sub is that they feel all the "real" content of the game is there to be earned, with only silly stuff from the shop. Change that to HE/HO (two races RPers in particular would KILL A MAN to get lol), and whilst you absolutely will make money, you will enrage the community and draw attention to the fact that people are being charged in addition to subs and expansion packs.

Better to just keep making money off race-changes. Also give every existing character which is of a race that has sub-races, a free sub-race-change option (or something similar). That way a lot of people will change to a sub-race, regret it a few weeks later, then pay Blizzard money to change back and won't even be mad because Blizzard freely gave them the choice to change and it was their own mistake!

That CHA-CHING you hear is Blizzard's cash register, and the relaxed sigh is that of the PR department slumping into their chair knowing customers are happier even as they pay more!

[Lorgar Aurelian]

There's no real reason to keep denying us proper sliders. Any subrace you can imagine can be easily expressed with some careful slider work. Adjust height, limb thickness, musculature, every bit of the face and bang, you're suddenly in 2017 with well-made MMOs.

It took them ages just to update the models no way in hell are we getting full sliders.

[Deleted]

It took them ages just to update the models no way in hell are we getting full sliders.

So, once again, we are down to "Blizzard sucks too much to do this". Kinda sad tbh.

[Lorgar Aurelian]

So, once again, we are down to "Blizzard sucks too much to do this". Kinda sad tbh.

More or less, it would also be far more trouble then it would be worth as they would have to build it from the ground up.

[Eurhetemec]

So, once again, we are down to "Blizzard sucks too much to do this". Kinda sad tbh.

It's a bit more complicated than that.

The trouble with sliders is two-fold:

1) Most players barely use them. Sure, a fair amount of players slam height up to maximum or minimum, or tit size up to maximum or minimum, and if there's a "musclarity" slider that tends to get jammed one direction or the other, but all the other elaborate ones? 80% of players ignore them. Maybe 15% of players do use them and have cool characters with some individuality. The other 5% make the most hideous, stupid-looking, troll-y nonsense possible, which helps the drag the game down.

The more sliders you have, the less get used, and the worse the monsters are.

BDO is a pretty great example. Most characters are:

A) Female character max height slider max tit-size slider, one of the generic faces barely altered if at all.

B) Female character min height slider max tit-size slider, one of the generic faces barely altered if at all.

C) Male character max height slider max muscle slider toughest looking face.

2) They're really difficult to do well. Most games either have sliders that are meaningless because they do so little (esp. once you have armour on, you can barely tell), or ones that fit the above pattern, where they do a lot, but that just scares most people so they only adjust 1-2.

If your players are demanding "BIGGER TITS!" or whatever, a) Ewww just go to pornhub or something you creeps and b) It's far easier to just implement a choice of tit sizes than a slider.

So there's really no upside to sliders for an ALREADY successful game. If you are marketing a game, like BDO was then "You can make amazing characters" is good marketing. And with BDO, it's even largely true. The face on my character looks more like a human being, an individual, than any game I've played with character creation, single-player or MMO (only ones were artists pre-made characters for a big-budget AAA look better, like Uncharted).

Trouble is almost no-one does anything interesting. Even looking through the galleries of characters to download (something the game has built in, kind of impressively), 90% of them are super-generic moe-types - hell my one got a ton more downloads than most simply by looking like a person.

Sliders also undermine strong visual design. Again, BDO is a good example - it has pretty strong visual design, nowhere near as strong as WoW, but strong, and the really awful characters some people come up with, either through dumb-ness or trolling just drag the game down in a way that just never happens in WoW.

So it is not "Blizzard suck". It's "Blizzard are too smart for that". More customization they could and probably will do. Sliders? No.

[Deleted]

More or less, it would also be far more trouble then it would be worth as they would have to build it from the ground up.

They had what, 13? years to do it. Multiple MMOs managed to implement it in shorter time.

[Lorgar Aurelian]

They had what, 13? years to do it. Multiple MMOs managed to implement it in shorter time.

They haven’t wanted to do it in 13 years that’s a horribly flawed premise.

[Deleted]

It's a bit more complicated than that.

The trouble with sliders is two-fold:

1) Most players barely use them. Sure, a fair amount of players slam height up to maximum or minimum, or tit size up to maximum or minimum, and if there's a "musclarity" slider that tends to get jammed one direction or the other, but all the other elaborate ones? 80% of players ignore them. Maybe 15% of players do use them and have cool characters with some individuality. The other 5% make the most hideous, stupid-looking, troll-y nonsense possible, which helps the drag the game down.

The more sliders you have, the less get used, and the worse the monsters are.

BDO is a pretty great example. Most characters are:

A) Female character max height slider max tit-size slider, one of the generic faces barely altered if at all.

B) Female character min height slider max tit-size slider, one of the generic faces barely altered if at all.

C) Male character max height slider max muscle slider toughest looking face.

2) They're really difficult to do well. Most games either have sliders that are meaningless because they do so little (esp. once you have armour on, you can barely tell), or ones that fit the above pattern, where they do a lot, but that just scares most people so they only adjust 1-2.

If your players are demanding "BIGGER TITS!" or whatever, a) Ewww just go to pornhub or something you creeps and b) It's far easier to just implement a choice of tit sizes than a slider.

So there's really no upside to sliders for an ALREADY successful game. If you are marketing a game, like BDO was then "You can make amazing characters" is good marketing. And with BDO, it's even largely true. The face on my character looks more like a human being, an individual, than any game I've played with character creation, single-player or MMO (only ones were artists pre-made characters for a big-budget AAA look better, like Uncharted).

Trouble is almost no-one does anything interesting. Even looking through the galleries of characters to download (something the game has built in, kind of impressively), 90% of them are super-generic moe-types - hell my one got a ton more downloads than most simply by looking like a person.

Sliders also undermine strong visual design. Again, BDO is a good example - it has pretty strong visual design, nowhere near as strong as WoW, but strong, and the really awful characters some people come up with, either through dumb-ness or trolling just drag the game down in a way that just never happens in WoW.

So it is not "Blizzard suck". It's "Blizzard are too smart for that". More customization they could and probably will do. Sliders? No.

9yos will do 9yo things without such tools anyway.
They can and they do play midgets without sliders, because gnomes are playable.
They can and do play giants because Tauren are playable.
Lack of sliders does not prevent them from finding and using particular toys and effects to stick 12 supersized mammoths on top of a vendor.
They can and they do satisfy their hormone storm by obsessively abusing xmogs and, when everything else fails, hacks - like the kid who once landed next to my nelfgirl druid in Nordrassil Inn, set his toon (male human) in needed distance and started the /dance animation. Just one, without change, for several minutes. Guess which one. I stayed to make sure it's not a glitch or coincidence.
So no, proper customisation very certainly will not make the game any worse, because it already offers sufficient tools for assholes to satisfy their need to be assholes, while not providing sufficient tools for people who want to customise.

You throw a lot of very arbitrary percentages around. Since you base a point on them, care to name a source?
Everyone I know in WoW uses xmogs extensively. These people range from serious raiders to complete casuals, men and women, young and middle aged. All of them use whatever customisation they have at their disposal and would welcome more options.

So no, it's not that everyone except you is a neanderthal brute and doesn't deserve to have options. It's that Blizzard sucks and badly at that.

[Eurhetemec]

You throw a lot of very arbitrary percentages around. Since you base a point on them, care to name a source?

They're based on experience. BDO most recently, which has perhaps the best set of sliders in the industry. It's like £6.99, you can go look yourself.

Everyone I know in WoW uses xmogs extensively. These people range from serious raiders to complete casuals, men and women, young and middle aged. All of them use whatever customisation they have at their disposal and would welcome more options.

So no, it's not that everyone except you is a neanderthal brute and doesn't deserve to have options. It's that Blizzard sucks and badly at that.

If you think Xmog'ing is in any way similar to having dozens of sliders, you're being extremely foolish, frankly.

I'm not sure why you even want sliders over say, a few well-made body shapes or the like. There's no advantage in cartoon-y game like WoW. I'm kind of wondering if you've even played an MMO which had them.

[Deleted]

They're based on experience. BDO most recently, which has perhaps the best set of sliders in the industry. It's like £6.99, you can go look yourself.

Got it yesterday, downloaded overnight, spent about 10 minutes playing it this morning. Sadly, it's one of the ways-too-many "next gen" MMOs like Wildstar, TERA or Skyforge where authors thought people play MMOs less than 10 years ago because they are MMOs and not arcade games. One would think the staggering success of the most ovehyped ones (Wildstar and TERA) should have taught them better.
This means no WoW-like healer, which means it has no chance whatsoever to become a high profile alt for me, nevermind the main, like SWTOR managed to in the WoD->Legion break. Didn't have time to properly play with the sliders yet, but I can see what you meant by "default moe look". Huge respect for the devs for providing multiple lighting settings right in the creation screen BTW. How different would you say are the visuals and styling from ArchAge? For now I could see very ArchAge like world graphics and Cabal 2 interface.

If you think Xmog'ing is in any way similar to having dozens of sliders, you're being extremely foolish, frankly.

If you think customisation of your character by xmogging is not very closely related to customisation of your character with sliders, you are being extremely foolish, frankly. If you can't see why people for whom xmog is one of main time sinks in WoW could desire sliders, you're being blind and completely dissociated from humane realities.
See, I can speak this lingo too.

I'm not sure why you even want sliders over say, a few well-made body shapes or the like. There's no advantage in cartoon-y game like WoW. I'm kind of wondering if you've even played an MMO which had them.

I'm not surprised you are unsure. You seem to be quite deep into "if you disagree, you never experienced anything I did, so you are also obviously wrong and possibly foolish" territory. So you played some MMOs with character customisation and never got the point of it? Tsk, tsk.
BTW "you disagree? you know nothing!" achieves one thing and one thing only: it tempts people to perceive you as a blind buffoon bordering on solipsism. Someone can very well be exposed to pretty much the same event as you have been and have a completely different experience and draw completely different conclusions.