The reason behind the so far non-reveal of Alliances next allied race...

[Flurryfang]

Blizzard like to drip-feed information to the public when it comes to their new content, so ofcourse we are not seeing maghar and the new alliance race at the same time. It helps keeping the hype somewhat alive, that new things are being shown again and again.

[Imperium Romanum]

High-mountain Tauren is literally just a different Tauren nation. They have very slight differences (Antlers instead of horns) could be compared to the differences for humans: An Asian vs a European. In the end they are both just Tuaren.

Orcs and Dreanor orcs have a skin colour of separation. The leftover of demonic corruption colouring one green.

Dark Iron dwarves are literally another nation/clan of dwarves vs the Bronzebeard (Ironforge) dwarves.

I am actually a bit more happy that the KT humans are getting a more distinct body shape over just "Well here are humans with a different skin tone and hair".

See, that is a more important topic. If each nation was a potential allied race, we'll end up seeing more Human nations (Stromgarde, Dalaran to supplement the human variety as a beginner), more Orcish clans (Blackrock, Dragonmaw, Black Tooth Grin etc), more Dwarven clans and so on and so forth. While that adds choices, it also makes it chaotic and a true challenge. Thus it begs to ask whether the developers can handle such a future.

[Directionalk9]

A WoW youtuber put out a video about the Blizzard's faction bias. I think it was BellularGaming, not sure. I agreed with what was said in the video. That the Horde was built around diversity and being the under-dogs, whereas the Alliance are fantasy tropes and do-gooders, sentiments expressed in this thread quite extensively. I more or less agree with the video's message.

One way to remedy that is to give Alliance a race that really butts heads with their ideals. Right now the the Night Elves and Void Elves are are the bigger outcasts and just barely if at all. As it stands there aren't a lot of races that seem Alliance friendly or have history with the Alliance to buck the trend.

Certainly there is a giant push to get the Sethrek in the Alliance and it would definitely bring out stories similar to what the Horde has. But, alas it doesn't look like that's the case. The model itself is a cool but basic NPC model.

Wildhammer are a go to for potential Allied Race, but right now probably isn't the time and I don't think they do enough visually and culturally to push the Alliance toward better storytelling.

Future races Blizzard makes up is kind of the best hope. If I could "fan-create" something real quick (not that quick, I've been sitting on the idea since Wrath/Cata) Add a faerie race, beautiful, winged, maybe cute antennae. The could be druids and shamans, but, they're real ruthless bastards and pretty evil, just as likely to kill one of their own as much as their enemy. They could be the Alliance's analog to the Horde's Forsaken, they're there more or less because alone they can't survive.

I tend to agree, the Alliance is getting a bit of the shaft, but unlike most, I don't think Kul'Tirans are a shaft Allied race.

[Deleted]

You mean you don’t want to rp as king Robert?

I want to be Euron Greyjoy. The sexy one-eyed blue-lipped book one, not the lame biker show one.

[shoc]

If Alliance get Drakonid over Horde I am going to KMS.

Alexstraza, Kalec, Wrathion, Chromie, the ghost of Ysera, are all more likely to join the Alliance than the Horde.

[Veldoranz]

Alexstraza, Kalec, Wrathion, Chromie, the ghost of Ysera, are all more likely to join the Alliance than the Horde.

Yeah, I know. I play Horde almost exclusively and selfishly want them for myself. If Alliance got Drakonid I would probably faction change my 12 max level horde toons, not even kidding.

[Slowpoke is a Gamer]

Alexstraza, Kalec, Wrathion, Chromie, the ghost of Ysera, are all more likely to join the Alliance than the Horde.

I mean Alexstraza and Chromie likely remain neutral parties.

Kalec is I guess married to Jaina so he's already in. And Wrathion joined the Alliance back in MoP so yeah.

Ysera is dead pls no ghostie.

- - - Updated - - -

New Q&A this thursday. inb4 Ion casually drops Kul'tiran in a question about Allied Races.

Also inb4 they don't have any Allied Race questions.

[Friendlyimmolation]

I want to be Euron Greyjoy. The sexy one-eyed blue-lipped book one, not the lame biker show one.

Titans I was strong then.

[Kaleredar]

Neither there was reason for Void Elves to defect beyond "Blizz made Alleria forget about Horde helping her on Argus". BTW, VElves weren't kicked out of the Horde, they were forbidden entrance to Sunwell.

I'm of fair certainty that void elves exist solely as an excuse to give the alliance "high elves" without actually giving them high elves.

[Slowpoke is a Gamer]

I'm of fair certainty that void elves exist solely as an excuse to give the alliance "high elves" without actually giving them high elves.

Essentially this. Which is hilarious because Dark Irons exist as exactly what apparently was too reskinney for High Elves to be added.

[Andromedes]

I'm of fair certainty that void elves exist solely as an excuse to give the alliance "high elves" without actually giving them high elves.

Welcome to the Alliance, faction of compromises and unfulfilled desires. Want Vrykul? Here is compromise in form of kul tiran half giants we never heard of. Wanna High elves? Here is compromise in form of void elves we never heard of. Wanna broken draenei? awww fuck it

[Pachycrocuta]

Essentially this. Which is hilarious because Dark Irons exist as exactly what apparently was too reskinney for High Elves to be added.

If the Alliance would have gotten blood elves and not the Horde, I am sure we would have gotten high elves instead of void elves. What the high elf lovers don't seem to understand is the ONLY difference between blood elves and high elves, visually, is their eye color. That's it. I guess they could have made a bit of a compromise and just did like back in classic WoW:



Honestly, I think that would have been better.

[Jack Black]

Welcome to the Alliance, faction of compromises and unfulfilled desires. Want Vrykul? Here is compromise in form of kul tiran half giants we never heard of. Wanna High elves? Here is compromise in form of void elves we never heard of. Wanna broken draenei? awww fuck it

Its tempting to make this as signature.

[KyrtF]

If Alliance get Drakonid over Horde I am going to KMS.

The Alliance can have Drakonids, Ethereals and Arakkoa so long as we get Naga, Mantid and Ogres.

[Magistrate]

Now we all know that Horde are getting AU Orc clans for their next allied race, they're basically finished already (mainly because a lot of the assets were already there to be used). So I've been wondering, is the reason we haven't seen the Alliance counterpart announcement is because Blizzard are playing a sort of waiting game?

AU orcs weren't announced, either. They've been spoken of quickly and with little detail, but we've yet to see any real announcement. The hype is all coming from datamining. I would keep that in mind when speculating.

The Alliance doesn't have a truly obvious choice like the AU Orc clans or the Vulpera. The obvious option it does have has been received either fairly poorly or with a decidedly 'meh' attitude (the endless fat jokes about the Kul'tirans, effectively turning them into a joke before they're even confirmed, not to mention the 'yay more humans....sigh' effect) so...are they simply holding back and weighing up their options?

I don't think they're holding back--they just want to announce the next set of Allied Races together. Since they haven't really announced anything in an official, press-ready capacity for Horde, I wouldn't get too worked up about it and start reading into it more than surface level facts.

Aside: This whole idea frustrates me because really the same could be said for orcs, which alliance players are mad we're getting. "Yay more humans" is the same as "yay more orcs," which I really don't see being said among the Horde. I guess the difference is we're more grateful? Idk. Ironically, all of the Magh'ar are literally just reskins, whereas (*if* Kul'tirans will truly be a playable race keeping the dev note on how they're approaching race design going forward) the Alliance ones have new models, and the stocky ones have a new skeleton.

I mean it would be a smart thing to do. See which possible options really resonate with people. They won't do High Elves because the sole reason they introduced Void Elves was to get around that (even though the fan made concept art shown on here for the making them like the Warcraft 2 High Elves with facial tribal tattoos and the like was awesome) plus I imagine they've seen the numerous 'World of Elfcraft' jabs.

The truth is that all of this stuff is developed and planned over months or, in some cases, as much as a year+. I highly doubt that they would react to sentiment that quickly and scrap dozens of hours of paid work for the World of _X_craft pun of the expansion. There are a few very vocal people who see what they want to see and say, oh god, this single thing I don't like and my friends don't like is taking away millions in profits, therefore Blizzard must react in x way. That's rarely, if ever, how things work.

So the High Elves are basically ruled out, the Kul'tirans aren't that well received so I imagine they're working on something that may require a bit more work. Now as much as a I hope Sethrak are the obvious pick they don't make sense to pair off with the AU Orcs. I picture them as probably an 8.2 sort of time period release. Though the Vulpera are fast becoming basically show time ready and it is clear there is work on them in the back end because armour sets are slowly being fine tuned on them (when they were first released a lot of armour sets looked janky on them but now those same armour sets seem to be fine).

Idk. My skepticism says that it's important to look at how a complicated, huge game like WoW is developed and not get too suckered into the combination of datamining and timing and overanalyzing things. They don't really work on things in a linear fashion--multiple teams and people work on multiple projects at a time. The state of Vulperans doesn't necessarily indicate anything more than that they just happen to be the project coming out in recent alpha updates--updates which are realistically a build or two behind internal builds. For instance, in the last couple builds we saw a ton of detail come out for Zandalari tattoos and druid forms, but this doesn't indicate that they're more important or receiving more attention than the Dark Iron; it's more likely that their dev time just happened to crop up more in recent builds, and that fans are jumping the gun on conclusions because they need to validate what they fear or want to be true.

Hence the 'wait and see' approach.

This bit of wisdom should have been frontlined in your post, tbh. It's the honest truth. We're pushing through alpha builds rapidly, and things are changing constantly, and people are making quick judgments about unfinished work without waiting for context or what comes next.

[Fenixhart]

Their use in the lore should never have happened to begin with. This is what they get for turning Easter eggs into an expansion.

Easter eggs that helped found Orgrimmar.

People still wrong about Pandaren lore this long after MoP. What fun.

[Coconut]

Guys, I found this old trailer for the most fitting Alliance race ever, but unfortunately Blizzard watched it all the way through and decided no to make it anymore: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Es_uivijpek

[Techno-Druid]

Guys, I found this old trailer for the most fitting Alliance race ever, but unfortunately Blizzard watched it all the way through and decided no to make it anymore: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Es_uivijpek

Playable condoms? Hell, at least it's original, not just a fat version of another race. We'll take it!

[Coconut]

Playable condoms? Hell, at least it's original, not just a fat version of another race. We'll take it!

Now THAT would be epic! I imagine they would use Podlings as a base for their model.

[Magnagarde]

Easter eggs that helped found Orgrimmar.

People still wrong about Pandaren lore this long after MoP. What fun.

Chen's participation in the W3 campaign regarding Orgrimmar was entirely optional. Yes, an Easter egg.