Playable Sub-race Thread

[Eurhetemec]

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.

I think the visual design in BDO is significantly less of a mess than ArcheAge. BDO has a strong basic look that stays strong better in game than ArcheAge. They are similar of course in that both are very much "Romantic High Fantasy" MMORPGs with a strong Korean-take-on-Western-Fantasy visual style. Some of the cash-shop stuff BDO has added to the game, and the tendency of players to just make a giant moe doll-woman with boobs the size of half-basketballs rather detract from that, though (and it's really sad given how real-yet-still-beautiful/handsome you can make faces look with a little effort!).

I was actually surprised, when I played ArcheAge, by how much of a mess it looked. It always managed to look shit-hot in screenshots and even some videos, but it seems like those were pretty selective. I remember getting a very "2013 character models, 2009 world, 2003 gameplay" vibe from it. It also had a UI that makes BDO's UI look like a masterpiece (and BDO's UI isn't great!).

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.

I can see why they'd desire more customization. Not sliders specifically. This is what I'm getting at.

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.

Yet that's what you're also doing Your approach has been "Don't want sliders? You're fucking stupid and suck."

The real problem with your entire "WE NEED SLIDERS!" approach is that you haven't yet explained "Why Sliders?".

You're treating them as an unqualified good, the value of which is obvious to all. Well, I'm experienced MMO player, I'm good with sliders, I use them, personally, I have an artistic background, so I should be the target audience, right? But I'm not see the particular value of sliders for a heavily stylized game like WoW.

So putting aside anything else, can you explain why specifically improve customization with SLIDERS, not any other way of improving customization, taking into account the fact that WoW is a stylized game, and I think we can agree that the devs think it's important for WoW to have a specific style?

Personally the only obvious "good fit" I can see for a slider in WoW is height - allowing people to change height a bit (nothing vast) would add a bit of diversity to WoW. Other stuff, like body builds, hair length, waist size, and so on, stuff often hit by sliders, I feel like if I were a visual designer for WoW, I'd prefer to keep in my control by using a number of presets, rather than sliders (GW2 also takes his option - slider for height, presets for builds). You could have sliders for faces, but I feel like the amount of effort you'd need to make them work and not seem meaningless might make them not worth it. Might be better just doubling the number of pre-gen faces and going for some looks not already covered.

[Deleted]

strong Korean-take-on-Western-Fantasy visual style.

That's the strongest impression I had so far.

I can see why they'd desire more customization. Not sliders specifically. This is what I'm getting at.

Your faith has blinded you. A fistful of breadcrumbs is not as good as a bacon roll for me no matter how much pigeons love the breadcrumbs. Five more preset faces that are - let's be optimistic - just half as retarded as 90% of currently available new models, makes no difference whatsoever. Ability to make them look good - with sliders - makes a world of difference. To me and some others (read: people I did talk about it in the past).

Yet that's what you're also doing Your approach has been "Don't want sliders? You're fucking stupid and suck."

Where did I call you stupid for not wanting sliders? You're close to the intent of some of my posts, but not exactly there yet.

The real problem with your entire "WE NEED SLIDERS!" approach is that you haven't yet explained "Why Sliders?".

Point to me that "WE NEED SLIDERS!" of mine. Could be my propensity to shit-posting taking over communicativeness, but I suspect some reading comprehension issues here.

You're treating them as an unqualified good, the value of which is obvious to all.

I'm not, unless you mean the post in which I take your fallacious statement and repeat it word for word, just exchanging the PoV.

Well, I'm experienced MMO player, I'm good with sliders, I use them, personally, I have an artistic background, so I should be the target audience, right? But I'm not see the particular value of sliders for a heavily stylized game like WoW.

Again, your faith has blinded you. Heavily stylised game means bold visual choices made by game designers which might not be to everyone's taste. Deep customisation pretty much negates the issue.

So putting aside anything else, can you explain why specifically improve customization with SLIDERS, not any other way of improving customization, taking into account the fact that WoW is a stylized game, and I think we can agree that the devs think it's important for WoW to have a specific style?

Agreement about Blizsigners considering specific style as important is completely irrelevant. The only situation where it would matter is if the style was strong and strongly appealing to everyone. WoD models and faces don't appeal to me at all. In GW2, Cabal 2, Aion, Archage etc the sliders allowed me to make characters stylistically different from presets envisaged by game designers. On the other hand, when I tried to change a BDO witch's face so that it wouldn't look like an 8yo boy, I failed, but then again, I spent very short time on that so far.

[Eurhetemec]

Agreement about Blizsigners considering specific style as important is completely irrelevant. The only situation where it would matter is if the style was strong and strongly appealing to everyone. WoD models and faces don't appeal to me at all. In GW2, Cabal 2, Aion, Archage etc the sliders allowed me to make characters stylistically different from presets envisaged by game designers. On the other hand, when I tried to change a BDO witch's face so that it wouldn't look like an 8yo boy, I failed, but then again, I spent very short time on that so far.

Okay so if I understand correctly, the main reason you want sliders is so you can move away from the type of stylization and look Blizzard want in the game, towards a look you want in the game, even if it conflicts with Blizzard's idea of how their IP should look?

I mean, that makes sense on a certain level - if you don't like WoW's styling on a basic level, the best tool to depart from it would be sliders - powerful sliders, particularly. Some of the extreme creations people make in BDO and the like how how far one can go with this. So in the practical sense, yes, wanting sliders make sense for you, as an individual.

However, if we look at it from Blizzard's perspective, it makes little sense if they value the stylized and specific aspect of their IP. If they value that, they would be smart not to have many sliders, if any.

BDO has a less-distinct look than Blizzard's Warcraft, so it absolutely makes sense, in that context, that they have sliders allowing greater customization. GW2's degree of distinctiveness is firmly between WoW and BDO in terms of the character models (GW2 mostly expresses it's distinctive stylization through use of a peculiar kind of art-design in cut-scenes, concept art, loading screens and so on), so it makes sense for them have a mix of sliders and settings. It wouldn't, to my mind, make sense for Blizzard do bring in sliders for WoW unless they wanted to move to a less-stylized, more generic, less-visually-distinct look.

Which isn't impossible - I could see it happening long-term, after they dilute their own distinctiveness sufficiently with other customization features, but that hasn't really happened much, despite 13+ years to do so (amazingly), so I think you may be waiting a while. That said, sub-races would arguably be the first major step on that road (barber shop, particularly with the hair from one race being fairly lazily transported to another, was a much smaller one).

[Mace]

Blizzard i doubt would do sliders in wow...

they seem to have gone the many races route to give you differnet options. Tall and skinny choose night elf, slimmer toned, choose blood elf, short and squat choose dwarf, extra muscly choose orc/draenei. Monster options too.

Add sub-races to that, and you will get even more variation, especially if they do something like forsaken vampires and model them after the D3 necromancer look - that's how they do options

[Deleted]

Blizzard i doubt would do sliders in wow...

they seem to have gone the many races route to give you differnet options. Tall and skinny choose night elf, slimmer toned, choose blood elf, short and squat choose dwarf, extra muscly choose orc/draenei. Monster options too.

Add sub-races to that, and you will get even more variation, especially if they do something like forsaken vampires and model them after the D3 necromancer look - that's how they do options

I prefer more race options (sub races) over sliders, at least for WoW. I feel this is the best way to make sure the existing races are easily distinguished. Most games have pretty few races and WoW has a lot, with so many classes and adding slider options on top to be short/tall, fat/skinny etc it'll be hard to tell what race people are playing.

In a lot of MMOs you can make your elf look like a human and vice versa, I don't like that.

[Mace]

I prefer more race options (sub races) over sliders, at least for WoW. I feel this is the best way to make sure the existing races are easily distinguished. Most games have pretty few races and WoW has a lot, with so many classes and adding slider options on top to be short/tall, fat/skinny etc it'll be hard to tell what race people are playing.

In a lot of MMOs you can make your elf look like a human and vice versa, I don't like that.

I agree, i mean given a choice between the two, I'd choose sub-races, i hink having them in is a milestone development, and can set things up for many omre in the future, whiles if they give sliders instead, that would be it, we may never see sub-races, because peole are satisfied with sliders.

[Lupinemancer]

Notable Characters:
Arator the Redeemer
Galadin and Giramar

Hmm... I'm having a hard time understanding this one. Both Alleria and Vereesa Windrunner (the mothers of Arator the Redeemer, and Galadin and Giramar respectively) are both High Elves, and their fathers are humans.
Knowing that, why would you categorize them as Half Blood Elves?

[Bathory]

I want subraces above everything else, but all the "half orc/elf/ogre" options are meh.

[Kayb]

Blood Elf and High Elf are the same species. They just had a break up and call themselves two different things.

[Deleted]

http://warcraft.blizzplanet.com/blog...aces-datamined this is a real datamine but it's still not 100% comfimed that these will be subraces

[Synstir]

I do hope that the next x-pac turns out to be a customization x-pac with loads of sub-races and loads of options for all races/subraces.

Also, I really like the Silverpine worgen art. Would be great if they add that to wow.

[ercarp]

Some of these are a bit of a stretch, with Cenarion not even being so much a sub-race as it is just... a race. With that said, I would happily have all of these in my game.

[Beloren]

http://warcraft.blizzplanet.com/blog...aces-datamined this is a real datamine but it's still not 100% comfimed that these will be subraces

give blood elves the void elves any day over nightborne
nightborne will lose their identity and blood elf lore will shift to the alliance and to humans as the popularity of the high elf will draw the lore that way. - i hope to be proven wrong but we'll see. not a good move that way round. should have been void elf with blood elf, nightborne with night elf.


i don't see the horde having much interest in nightborne elves, and seiorusly, blood elf fans want more blood elf lore on the horde, not on the alliance .. and i thought the alliance fans all wanted the nightborne anyway... give us lightforged Draenei instead.

[Amunrasonther]

give blood elves the void elves any day over nightborne
nightborne will lose their identity and blood elf lore will shift to the alliance and to humans as the popularity of the high elf will draw the lore that way. - i hope to be proven wrong but we'll see. not a good move that way round. should have been void elf with blood elf, nightborne with night elf.


i don't see the horde having much interest in nightborne elves, and seiorusly, blood elf fans want more blood elf lore on the horde, not on the alliance .. and i thought the alliance fans all wanted the nightborne anyway... give us lightforged Draenei instead.

You'd more likely get Man'ari Eredar than Lightforged.

[Beloren]

You'd more likely get Man'ari Eredar than Lightforged.

either would be better than nightborne.

[Deleted]

give blood elves the void elves any day over nightborne
nightborne will lose their identity and blood elf lore will shift to the alliance and to humans as the popularity of the high elf will draw the lore that way. - i hope to be proven wrong but we'll see. not a good move that way round. should have been void elf with blood elf, nightborne with night elf.


i don't see the horde having much interest in nightborne elves, and seiorusly, blood elf fans want more blood elf lore on the horde, not on the alliance .. and i thought the alliance fans all wanted the nightborne anyway... give us lightforged Draenei instead.

saw this post earlier on reddit too and someone said that it looks like a place holder but if put in it would be, Night Elves - Nightborne and Blood Elves - Void Elves

[Wildberry]

Just going to quote myself in another thread since migration to this one for subraces being datamined seems likely:

Elf-woes aside, I do wonder how far they're willing to go with subraces. To be specific, in the sense that the "subraces" deviate from the base models.

Take Orcs and Dwarves for example. Orcs will most likely be getting Mag'har skins & possibly Blackrock/Dragonmaw/Shattered Hand ones. Dwarves will likely get Wildhammer and Dark Iron Skins. Those are simply skins stretched over the base model.

If Draenei and Tauren get Lightforged Draenei and Highmountain Tauren respectively, those will simply have different customization options. Lightforged Draenei will obviously have different skins and particle effects, but from what we've seen, they also sport unavailable horn options. Highmountain Tauren will obviously have antlers instead of horns.

Then, we have the Nightborne and Void Elf bit. Should Blood Elves get Nightborne, and Night Elves get Void Elves, those are going to be major deviations from the base model. Silhouettes, skeletons, and available textures will be changed completely.

If this is actually the case, how far do you guys think we can reasonably expect subraces to go, in terms of model deviation? Feel free to elaborate in a general sense, or spitball your own, of course, but just in terms of gauging reasonability, I'd like to hear thoughts on the likelihood of the following:

Draenei: Broken. (The Argus Broken have far more model similarity from the shoulders down than the BC ones. So it seems likely to me, but like I stated before, I've been wanting subraces since WotLK so I might be getting trigger happy)
Tauren: Taunka. (Canonically loyal to the Horde, similar to Tauren from the head down)
Gnome: Mechagnome (Just spitballing here, because Leper Gnome seems to be the only alternative. Would require some/all flesh replaced by machinery. Too much?)
Undead: Reskinned Humans and/or Elves (Nathanos Blightcaller and Sylvanas. The former seems more likely to me)

[Wyrt]

I see subrace in a similar way to how I see 4th spec ideas. If you don't give one to everyone people will be angry. If you try to forcefully shit out one for everyone then you'll get a bunch of half-assed shit and people will be angry. There's no way to win other than to not play.

[ravenmoon]

http://warcraft.blizzplanet.com/blog...aces-datamined this is a real datamine but it's still not 100% comfimed that these will be subraces

if this is true, blizzard my warcraft heart will love you forever. It would mean high elves on the alliance.

[Coffeh]

I really don't understand the hype behind sub-races. I'd much prefer a whole new race with all unique characteristics. Whatever minor details they change on these sub-races...you still have the same character model. Deck yourself out in gear and you won't even know you're playing a different sub-race.

Would add a lot more to game with new races like ogre, arakkoa, murloc :P, or any other cool race that is a significant departure from races already in the game.