New player models released in stages could be the best approach

[Mace]

So if you haven't heard, New player models are 25% done and will very likely be released in stages. This could be the best approach because it could mean some much needed time devoted to each race and even mean the introduction and availability of a minor race related to a main being finally playable and accessible.

How? Well, the models take far longer than phasing an existing zone for 1 to 6 levels and adding a few quests.
Secondly, if you're taking all that time to redesign a major race, it is relatively one or 2 minor cosmetic changes away from being a minor race. and have another team add some quests and an intro narrative to start the minor race. You don't need a new zone or a huge deal like a full major race does since a minor race is tied to a major race and can/should share capitals and most of the earlier zones. You could eventually have something like this.

ORC:
Blizzard spend ages re-doing new orc model - male/female incl new and extra animations etc.
Easy to add Mag'har orc by simply providing a brown skin tone range and some tribal ornamention accessory- animations don't need to change
Easy to add Dragonmaw orc by simply providing black/grey skin tone ranges
Slap on a sub menu after selecting orc on character creation to display options for green orcs/brown orcs/black orcs and you're there
Wanna be special? Then add a phased level 1-6 version of Twilight Highlands for Dragonmaw and Nagrand for Mag'har orcs.. with a shor story line that has them packing to Durotar after level 6 to join the regular levelling trail.

make the phase 1-12 instead of 1 to 6 and you can sell it as a major attraction/feature of the next expansion - which would have minor races and not just "new character models" even though it's the same thing.

[mber341]

I think you're setting yourself up for huge disappointment when the new models are implemented in-game.

[Valnoressa]

I think you're setting yourself up for huge disappointment when the new models are implemented in-game.

Have to agree, I honestly don't think we're going to see Blizzard bother with anything other than giving us updated old models with perhaps some little changes to some of the races to replace things lost in the conversion. If they wanted to do that they'd tell us they were overhauling the character customization, which they haven't.

[Mace]

I think you're setting yourself up for huge disappointment when the new models are implemented in-game.

then is it another case of failed or missed potential, not capitalizing on an effective and comprehensive boost?

it would be a huge boost and incentive to go into a new expansion having a host of new races to play packaged as minor races you avoid the enormous work introducing a full new race costs and provide huge incentive to attract old players back and capitalise on race change facilities.

afterall, whiles a new race model would be nice, introduing in stages and intorducing minor races with each race released would present a huge incentive for race changes.. not to mention the lure of having the ability to play as mag'har orc, highbourne, dark iron dwarf, high elf, taunka, wild hammer, high elf, dark fallen, dragonmaw etc etc will actually have on players and the marketing campaign would seem almost criminal to bypass.

an mmo on decline kinda needs something like this, clever moves that have huge impact with very little extra effort required, remember, the bulk of the work is actually the new models, adding the variation to produce a minor race is a very small extra compared to the main race update, and releasing them in stages makes it easy to add extras like phasing an exisiting zone to serve as a start area for a minor race. I mean come on, level 1-6 phase, is something that won't require more than 10 quests per minor race...and you don't even have to do that, you can have each of them start in the major races area and simply add a narrative with different words to the start cinematic, and voila , you have a well introduced minor race.

you don't have to do anything else, minor races can easily have class restrictions/additions as an appetizer - e.g. highbourne will allow the warlock class given a way you can play warlock wiith that model, high elf could allow a druid class that has forms that use the night elf model but with a different colouring scheme which is far easier than implementing a brand new model

[ravenmoon]

You can repeat the procedure for every single race: and it would work, it is something that excites me..afterall, being able to pay High Elf, Mag'har orc, Dark Iron Dwarf is far more appealing than a simple oh.."new models are now available for each race" much more appealing esp to players who have left for other games.

• Night Elves: Highbourne - using blood elf new models and faces/animations but at night elf height/eyes/skin tones ears etc & High Elf using night elf models and faces/animations but with blood elf skin tones/height/ears etc and blue/grey/green eye variations
• Highbourne can start in a phase Ferals/Dire Maul and High elves in a phsed Crystal Song Forest/Dalaran.
• Tauren: Taunka: Tauren model but witih tuanka faces on both male and female: Same with the panderian tauren cousins forgotten their name.
• Taunka start in a phased Borean Tundra/Dragonblight
• Troll: Amani troll: Same troll model with higher muscle mass and mani skin tones/ ice troll - same troll moel but with drakkari skintones
• Forest Trolls start in a phased Zul'Aman or Hinterlands, Ice Trolls start in a phased Zul'drak
• Dwarves: Dark Iron dwarves - merely a different skin tone- maybe omit some of the more benevolent face options, Wild hammer - lengthen the model slgithly and make it a little lieaner, omit some of the more sinister dwarf facial options ad add tribal features.
• Dark Irons start in BRD - City of Tharussian and Wild Hammers start in phased Hinterlands or Twilight Highlands. Other options include Earthen dwarves.
• list goes on. Humans could have half elf alternatives using human models with faces & animations but adding shorter versioned elven ears, sightly less musculature, but human eyebrows.
• Forsaken could add Darkfallen elves which will be the new blood elf models with red eyes and pasty white /deatch cold blue or green skin tone variations - could even make blood elf/high elf/dark fallen all start in quel'thalas for 1-6 and the story phase changes or they choose what alignment/direction they go at level 6 and the rest of the phase pays out - if blood elf you carry on in Quel'thalas, if high elf you get kicked out and take a journey into alliance lands, if Darkfallen, you get killed and raised as undead in undercity where you continue.
• Gnomes - cyborg gnome - new gnome model that have a robotic customisation, have a robot half face, or a robot arm or some other cyborg implantation - gnome could also run with a leper gnome minor race and a mecha gnome one too.

[Wildmoon]

[*]Night Elves: Highbourne - using blood elf new models and faces/animations but at night elf height/eyes/skin tones ears etc & High Elf using night elf models and faces/animations but with blood elf skin tones/height/ears etc and blue/grey/green eye variations

Highbornes look exactly the same as average NE. It was a position in their society not a specie. You could see some npcs in WoE dungeon they were highborne. This is the same situation as High Elf is the exact same thing as Blood Elf but different faction.

[Mace]

Highbornes look exactly the same as average NE. It was a position in their society not a specie. You could see some npcs in WoE dungeon they were highborne. This is the same situation as High Elf is the exact same thing as Blood Elf but different faction.

you do realize that's only because they want a very specific look for each race in-game to give them as much distinction as possible. if you observe the original wow-trailers, humans had more faces available as a selection, but some of those faces were locked specifically to night elf and forsaken after a while. in fact, you do realize that nearly all non-animal/human hybrid races literally use different human faces in real life with just the typical race adaptations of green or purple/blue skin or long ears, long eyebrows glowy eyes etc right?

whiles we all know highbourne are night elves, in order to give them more of a distinctly different physical appearance to select from, blizzard should be clever and use the blood elf model with night elf feature adaptations to be used as highbourne. Highbourne would have blood elf faces and the same arrogant blood elf animations but with night elf skin colour, silver glowy eyes, night elf height and ears... similarly they could do a similar twist to high elves. Yes we know high elves and blood elves are the same races, but they could use the night elf face and model with it's animations and give that night elf model blood elf skin tones, high elf blue/green/purple normal eye options. blood elf hair colours/height/ears. But essentially night elf animations and face types.. gives them a different feel.

it's clever.. it doesn't they are different.

[Jaojin]

Amani trolls? Taunka? Well I suppose you can dream.

Sorry to burst your bubble though, these races won't be implemented because of the silhouettes. You see, each race has a distinct silhouette, which they want to be easily recognized as that race. Adding alternate models would mean that they have abandoned this way of thinking. So until you can give a good reason why they should abandon it, that relates to the reason they had it in the first place, or proof that they have abandoned it already, then your only dreaming.

Edit: I'm not gonna even go into the fact that some of those races are not part of faction alliances (All other trolls look down on the Darkspear clan, almost as if it's not even a real troll race.)

[HeedmySpeed]

It's the best approach because you'll have players race changing to the "snazzier" races.

I just hope it's the one of the races I play.

[Romanthony]

I still think its a Red Herring, so they keep people off the scent, and use blizzcon to announce it

[Dragore]

Yeah going to have to agree with some folk. People need to stop over thinking this you are going to get your hopes up so much that when they are released there will be a huge let down. Don't bother with it.

I don't think they should release them in stages. I want them all to have the same quality. They release Orcs/dwarves first, they get feed back then the next races get a little better so on and so forth. First wave will look like blood elf quality last wave being panderan quality.

[The Stormbringer]

It's true that this would be an awesome feature, but unfortunately I don't think it's likely to happen. Also, I doubt that (as Dragore said), the first wave will look 'Blood Elf quality'. Pretty sure they've improved a lot since then and are moving towards Pandaren right away.

[DarkTZeratul]

Garrosh's 5.4 model is probably a very good indicator of the level of quality you can expect to see.

[Wildmoon]

you do realize that's only because they want a very specific look for each race in-game to give them as much distinction as possible. if you observe the original wow-trailers, humans had more faces available as a selection, but some of those faces were locked specifically to night elf and forsaken after a while. in fact, you do realize that nearly all non-animal/human hybrid races literally use different human faces in real life with just the typical race adaptations of green or purple/blue skin or long ears, long eyebrows glowy eyes etc right?

whiles we all know highbourne are night elves, in order to give them more of a distinctly different physical appearance to select from, blizzard should be clever and use the blood elf model with night elf feature adaptations to be used as highbourne. Highbourne would have blood elf faces and the same arrogant blood elf animations but with night elf skin colour, silver glowy eyes, night elf height and ears... similarly they could do a similar twist to high elves. Yes we know high elves and blood elves are the same races, but they could use the night elf face and model with it's animations and give that night elf model blood elf skin tones, high elf blue/green/purple normal eye options. blood elf hair colours/height/ears. But essentially night elf animations and face types.. gives them a different feel.

it's clever.. it doesn't they are different.

That would not make sense lore wise at all. They all look the same in lore but why they look different in game? Since HB is NE so they must look like NE.

[Mace]

That would not make sense lore wise at all. They all look the same in lore but why they look different in game? Since HB is NE so they must look like NE.

ythey aren't looking any different, they just have different animations.. it's no differnet from locking a selection of night elf faces and making them only available if you select highbourne. the only difference here is that highbourne will use different faces to those useable by night elves and will use blood elf animations. they won't look different, they won't look like blood elves even though they are using the models animation and faces.. they'd have night elf skin colours, night elf eyes, night elf ears, etc... you do realize that just because a highbourne casts a fireball using an animation in game doesn't mean that all highbourne in lore cast aniamtion like that right?

these "distinct " animations are only there to help give the different races a more distinct feeel, but in the lore, a human can cast a spell in a similar looking way a night elf or high elf or orc does, in fact you would be very surprised that any two humans will cast spells exactly the same way although in game every human casts spells exactly the same way. makes sense?

[Shurkuris]

Hasn't it taken like 1.5 years (Please correct me if I'm wrong, I got this number stuck in my head and thinking about it, it's most likely wrong. What is it, 0.5 years? I'm browsing the web right now) for them to reach 25%? What is it going to be, every expansion pack I get to play around with 1-2 new races?

But hey, that's better than waiting 4 years, for them to be released all at once? I mean there will only be 40 new MMORPGS coming out and the GTX Titan will be about $110 when we get them. Right?

[Hitei]

Hasn't it taken like 1.5 years (Please correct me if I'm wrong, I got this number stuck in my head and thinking about it, it's most likely wrong. What is it, 0.5 years? I'm browsing the web right now) for them to reach 25%? What is it going to be, every expansion pack I get to play around with 1-2 new races?

But hey, that's better than waiting 4 years, for them to be released all at once? I mean there will only be 40 new MMORPGS coming out and the GTX Titan will be about $110 when we get them. Right?

As was mentioned by the devs, the 25% represents a percentage of the content, not a percentage to the work on a time scale.

E.g. if you have to write a four page research paper, and have two months to do it, you might write one page (25%) over the course of a month, because you're just doing it whener you have free time. And then right the other three pages (75%) in the second month.

[Deleted]

Seriously for most "minor races" Blizz could simply phase a zone from where they come from.
Mag'har -> phased nagrand + all mobs and stuff lowered to levels 1-10
Dragonmaw -> phased TH

Amani, Zandalari -> phased isle of thunder.
lore: "after learning of Thunder King's downfall many trolls among Amani and Zandalari tribes cowardly ran away and tried to join the horde"

Taunka, Yaungol/Grimtotem -> phased northrend + tauren starting area
comment: well Taunka joined the horde in Wotlk, while we had that grimtotem bitch poison garrosh's weapon and no one really cared if she was there or not. While grimtotem and current taurens don't really like each other - they don't have to. Nobody likes forsaken and gnomes either.

Forsaken: undead orcs, undead elves -> phase some battleground place (possibly gilneas) as elves were aiding worgen many of them died, same for orcs. Sylvanas could raise them.

Blood elves, goblins, pandaren -> no idea.

[Maximus Testiculos]

All those sub-races that you try to propose require many new quests and lots of work. I don't think they will care about that.

[Mace]

All those sub-races that you try to propose require many new quests and lots of work. I don't think they will care about that.

the beauty about the minor race is that you don't have to give them any new quests, you can throw them in right at the start point of the major race they are apart off, a different starting narrative could easily explain how they get there.

However to be interesting and exciting, I feel it woudl be better to do at least 6 levels of a phased zone for each, some think 12.. but look at it this way, they are not introducing ALL the new races at once because of the enormous time it takes, this means you will get at most 1 or 2 races every few months... so, if you're introducing the minor race with the new model of the major race, it becomes a lot more feasible to start them up with a phased version, of at least 6 levels and possibly even 12.

why? because you're not desining a new starting area, you're using an existing zone and just writing a different quest, which doesn't take much to code, the majority of the work for a new race comes in actually drawing zones from scratch and doing the model with it's animations - then integrating the story through the whole game for the expansion... minor races AVOID all of that work which makes them very easy to do whilst generating the same or even greater impact than a new race - i'm sure for many people playing Mag'har orc, high elf, or forsaken human would be more exciting than playing an ogre. For the minor race, you've already done the model - because you're using the new ravamped model of the major race with some minor differneces like different skin tone or tribal markings for the minor race, you're not designing any new zone either because they could easily start in the same zone as the major race or phase an existing zone. You don't have to build up any background for them because they're already integrated in the agme as adventurers meet every single one of them amongst the major races, they're already there.

you're not inventing new lore, the highbourne aren't suddenly teaming up wtih the blood elves, nor are the high elves, the Forest trolls haven't suddenly abandoned Hinterlands to join the naga or the night elves if you get me... so you don't have vast amounts of lore to generate... and it's easy to add information and incorporate some progression for the sub group in the new expansion which will have x amount of quests anyway that ou'd use some to tell some new story or just have an npc.

Point is, it's very little work for a very huge output. IF every time you introduce a new model for one of the major races you launch a minor race or two with them it's a WOW factor, add a phased zone with the some quests to advance their lore a bit would even be more compelling and not hard to add.