BFA Horde x Ally so far - Overview

[Varodoc]

wrong, invincible actually uses a hippogryph skeleton thats why i hate it and never bothered farming it

Same thing.

Invincible recycles a previous mount's skeleton (i mean that with the term 'model'), yet it's one of the most iconic and popular mounts in the game.

And of course the Ren'dorei would share their model with the Blood Elves; they were Blood Elves once, but twisted by the volatile energies of the Void. What model should they use, if not the Sin'dorei's one?

[valky94]

inbefore people flame you for not liking void elf

inb4 rendorei RPs his way into this thread with being all buthurt cuz someone doesnt like voidelfs

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Zandalar males are also an altered version of the night elf model, and the females are exactly from darkspear female trolls. In fact a main complaint with them is by lore they should be 1 head taller than a human and they are not, with no signs of that being fixed.

wrong, zandalari use an upright troll model and troll animations made to fit that uprignt troll model (confirmed by blizz)

[Gaidax]

The usual grass is greener on the other side bunch of exaggerated bullshit to make one side seem like injured party while the other side swimming in riches.

I say that as Alliance.

[Deleted]

wrong, zandalari use an upright troll model and troll animations made to fit that uprignt troll model (confirmed by blizz)

Actually, they use most of the Night elf asets for movement and human asets for combat

[Deleted]

- Dark Iron Dwarf ( Poor Dwarf Reskin). Nice Background. They can be whatever they want. Still not enough appealing.

How the hell do you know it's poor? They're still working on it.

- Nightborne (Whole New playable Model). Rich Background. Lorewise they can be whatever Highbornes can be, preferably mage. Amazing 1% damage Racial.

LOL. They are a Nerf reskin, and easily the most rushed so far. Poor animations, clipping issues with armor, extremely limited cosmetic options, and they even lack the backflip.

[A dot Ham]

So far we have:

On Ally
- Void Elf (Belf Reskin), Extremely Poor Background. Lorewise it only match with shadowpriests

- Lightforged Draenei (Draenei Reskin), Poor Background. Lorewise it only match with Paladins

- Dark Iron Dwarf ( Poor Dwarf Reskin). Nice Background. They can be whatever they want. Still not enough appealing.

- another terrible horse reskin as alliance exclusive mount. Even though most of the Ally races look odd on horses.

On Horde
- Nightborne (Whole New playable Model). Rich Background. Lorewise they can be whatever Highbornes can be, preferably mage. Amazing 1% damage Racial.

- Highmountain Tauren (Tauren Reskin). Well set background. Lorewise they can be whatever Taurens can be except paladins (Taurens shouldn't be Paladins either, wtv). New Totens, new druid flight form, new druid travel form.

- Zandalari Trolls (Whole New playable Model). EXTREMELY RICH Background. Lorewise they can be whatever trolls already can be. Except Monk because Zandalari are one of the Pandaren enemies on MoP and they just don't like each other. New Totens, New Druid Flight Form, New Druid Travel Form.

- F***ing Amazing Raptor Mount for the Horde.


1.As an Alliance Player I don't feel any appeal to play any new allied from my faction. They are just a bunch of reskins. No new druid forms, No new totens No new paladins mount... well, shouldn't the Lightforged Draenei Paladins have an Updated EXCLUSIVE Mount at least just like the horde druids are receiving cool totens and druids skins?

2. That horse is ridiculous, Even for Human characters (which I don't play) point of view. I trully loved the LOVE that Horde Raptor received. I trully hated the fact that except by the Dark Iron dwarfs every other ally allied race are just a finite group of people, not and empire or kingdom or city or wtv behind them.

3. Alliance Allied race is Blizzard sayin that they are running out of ideas... and are taking the safe, boring route. "Give those Bi***es the High Elfs they want so they can shut up".

I hope that when they reveal more about the Dark Iron they come with better news, groundbreaking models, RICH LORE and QUESTLINE. Otherwise I'll really feel like the alliance were neglected badly on this expansion...

I disagree with most of this. If you like it so much... switch factions. End of story.

[valky94]

Actually, they use most of the Night elf asets for movement and human asets for combat

casting animations are troll animations just a bit modified,
1H swing animations is somewhat between troll and human (probably cause most melee animations got homogenised with legion) stabing animations is troll animation
2H animation looks like a new animation as it has leg movements, (spear/staff animation is simmilar to orc one but is missing the 2nd strike)
bow animation is close to human but faster and stiffer, gun/crossbow is clossest to nelf
unarmed/fistweapon look new (didnt see any other race use uppercuts with their right hand)
walking/sprinting are simmilar to nightelven animations but a bit different and slower (probably due to being taller)

[Projectmars]

3. You call Void Elf and LF Draenei lore as poor, I say its just new. Lore has to start somewhere, if we had to have some long established history for everything that comes into the game we'd never see new content. Void magic is heavily building as a major force ingame, the Void Elves tie to ethereals and void lords is very interesting imo and they will likely see alot of focus in BfA and beyond. LF Draenei is weak I agree, as they're not even a race. They're just Draenei that gave themselves to the Light, but they are part of a force that have fought the legion from planet to planet for years and are heavily tied into where Turalyon has been all these years. Considering Turalyon is basically the new Tirion Fordring, I expect alot of focus on Lightforged and their background in the future.

The fact that they've made the Void Elves playable removes most of the opportunity to have compelling lore, especially compelling lore that matters to both sides. They could have been an NPC third party faction that neither side fully trusts because everyone knows that the group is a ticking time bomb, but their knowledge of the void is unparalleled among the groups of Azeroth so they are also a group that both sides need to help combat the Void when we start dealing with it. Which would make the stakes a bit higher when they do start slipping and losing a few of their numbers to the whispers, requiring us to deal with them. Which could all come to a head when things start to really ramp up and the remaining ones, and Alleria, just turn en masse and lead to a dungeon where we are forced to kill the Void Elves (Except for Alleria, who would be a raid boss) as they are now part of the same threat to existence itself that they struggled so long against.

Except, now that they are a playable race, that kinda development can just go right out the window because there's no way they can do that whole "All the void elves turn bad" kinda thing now. And if they do everyone will then proceed to forget that your Void Elf is a Void Elf as there are no more despite the fact that you clearly are. Or they'll turn yours into some Mary Sue Chosen One. Heck, odds are they'll find some way to permanently keep themselves from succumbing to the void and use that to defuse that threat. Alleria too despite the fact that she saw an actual vision of herself falling prey to the maddening whispers. And then they'll do... what exactly? Can't really use them effectively as a resource on how to combat the void when one faction is on Kill on Sight terms. They'll likely just fade into the background like gnomes and the two faction specific Pandaren groups as a result, since there wouldn't be much interesting things left that they could do.

And the Lightforged's story seems to be so heavily tied to Turalyon that he's far more interesting than their story could be, game-wise. Having a majority of the group go off the hunt down the scattered remnants of the Legion with a small group staying behind to help Turalyon. Outside of there being no playable Lightforged the end result would be the exact same anyways, as they are even more likely than the Void Elves to get no more story development.

And this is an issue unique to those two races. Nightborne and Highmountain had two entire zones of development. Dark Iron Dwarves have been around since Vanilla and have had plenty of development and lore. As have the Zandalari, but they have had less development than the Dark Irons. Good thing that a major part of the Horde Storyline in BfA is getting on their good side and they'll be prominent features as a result, eh? Not so with the Void Elves who seem mostly made just to be an Allied Race and the Lightforged who's entire story could probably be summed up in 5 sentences or less. This ain't good considering out of all the Allied Races, the Dark Irons are most likely to remain lore relevant and only because their queen, Moira, is one of the faction leaders for the Alliance.

[AmazonDruid]

And this is an issue unique to those two races. Nightborne and Highmountain had two entire zones of development. Dark Iron Dwarves have been around since Vanilla and have had plenty of development and lore. As have the Zandalari, but they have had less development than the Dark Irons. Good thing that a major part of the Horde Storyline in BfA is getting on their good side and they'll be prominent features as a result, eh? Not so with the Void Elves who seem mostly made just to be an Allied Race and the Lightforged who's entire story could probably be summed up in 5 sentences or less. This ain't good considering out of all the Allied Races, the Dark Irons are most likely to remain lore relevant and only because their queen, Moira, is one of the faction leaders for the Alliance.

TL DR version
Exactly. Who cares if Velfs and Ldraeneis are pretty, got some sparkling effects if they are not a compelling race to play.
I have nothing else to comment. Your post just said everything.

[iamthedevil]

If people think BfA isn't going to have a lot of Void Elf lore, you haven't been paying attention. Every recruitment questline had to do with the void... Also, Lightforged just had an entire patch having to do with them.

[zito]

TL DR version
Exactly. Who cares if Velfs and Ldraeneis are pretty, got some sparkling effects if they are not a compelling race to play.
I have nothing else to comment. Your post just said everything.

Honestly, if void elves were not introduced as one of the first allied races I think the alliance would have been on a protesting rampage. What's the one race the alliance have been wanting since forever? High elves. The problem? They are part of the horde and very few remain in the alliance. People gloss over this but blood elves are literally high elves, all they did was change their name in remembrance of the fallen when the lich king attacked. So the only way to get high elves over to the alliance would either remove them from the horde (was not happening) or a civil war like event. So the solution? Void elves. Honestly it didn't have to be void elves, it could have been any other font of power because blizzard needed a distinction between blood and the high elves of the alliance. They couldn't copy/paste blood elves and call it a day - they needed more and void elves just fit with the way things were going with Alleria.

Lore wise are void elves lacking? Technically no, they WERE blood elves so any lore pertaining to blood elves works for them too. Now it's just continuing their distinction for the future in which I have ZERO hope blizzard will do. They never do. Look how long draenei took to get fucking lore on their story. 4 expansions. Sheesh.

[Ramz]

Zandalar males are also an altered version of the night elf model, and the females are exactly from darkspear female trolls. In fact a main complaint with them is by lore they should be 1 head taller than a human and they are not, with no signs of that being fixed.

Zandalari male with each day has less and less in common with nelf model. Majority o fhis animations are completely new. <3

[zito]

Zandalari male with each day has less and less in common with nelf model. Majority o fhis animations are completely new. <3

hence the "altered" part

wish nightborne got the same treatment.

[Ramz]

Actually, they use most of the Night elf asets for movement and human asets for combat

No they don't Zandalari male new combat animations are really new. I made a thread for that and I compared each one.

[zito]

The face and eyes are fine

Anyone who says the eyes, of all things, are fine are 100% factually wrong.

[McFuu]

Snip

Void Elf - Blood elf reskin
Lightforged - Dreanai reskin
Nightborne - Nightelf reskin
Highmountain - Tauren reskin

Mounts - Alliance get an ugly horse that has taken too much bullshark test, what the hell do you expect? Horde get an ugly Raptor that probably shouldn't be able to move with the thousand lbs of gold on its back.

Allied races are never, NEVER going to be some crazy race that everyone wants, they are always going to be a borderline lazy reskin. Horde just got lucky with what was available to be turned into Allied races, lore wise. Don't take it personal, they aren't shorting the Alliance. Hell if you are a classic Horde player, the races we got are pretty fucking disappointing outside of people looking at racials. Lets be real, most OG Horde players hate elves, so Nightborne aren't all that thrilling, and then we got Highmountain Tauren which are literally Tauren with different horns. And lets be real here, Tauren are one of the least played Horde races, slightly ahead of Goblins. They also have the worst animations and still do.

So alliance got High elves that huffed too much black paint and evangelical dreanei. Let it go, don't take it personal. When you get Dark Iron you'll feel better, they are pretty bad ass, and then when you get skinny and fat humans you'll feel better again, because both of those models make me want to play Alliance.

[McFuu]

The face and eyes are fine. Anyone who thinks the NPC nightborne model is better than the player model isn't worthy of having their opinions taken seriously anyway.

Let's be real, the NPC Nightborne are way better, but they aren't available to be turned into player characters. Those are special models with permanent armor, not the armor dummies that are player characters. Saying the NPC nightborne are worse than the PC is like saying the PC Orc model looks better than Garrosh.

[Grenzstein]

I'd trade Nightborne for Dark Iron Dwarves in the Horde anytime.

[Deleted]

I'm fine with new, I just wish we'd have more quests to go through before recruiting them.

Also I really hate how artificial the allied races' faction decision is. I wish there was a questline with something like the a faction declaring hostilities on Allied Races and then the opposite faction picking them up to fuel their allegiance to them against their aggressors. Would make it more believable and immersive than hmmmm...... yeah the Horde seems more inclusive and Tyrande was pretty bitchy to me...... guess I'll join the Horde and vow to make war alongside them for the rest of my peoples' lives

[Mercruxio]

Having played all 4 of the available allied races so far, Void Elves are by far my favorite. I love all the Allied Races and the concept of finally getting "sub-races", just altered versions of the main races. (Although I wish visually the Lightforged Draenei and Highmountain Tauren weren't just vastly superior versions of their counterparts).

The Nightborne felt very limited with customization, and the tattoo choice didn't feel at all relevant since they are so faint.
Like I mentioned, Lightforged and Highmountain just played as cooler looking versions of the existing races.

BUT HOLY **** VOID ELVES. It is so satisfying to just play your character normally however you wish and then BOOM, your hair and skin turn dark blue and all your gear gets the same coloured hue. When leveling up sometimes I just zoom in on the model to appreciate it. (It looks even cooler if your hair colour is one of the red/white/grey options so it makes a more noticeable difference).