BfA announcement: 6 Allied Races at launch, more planned

[SinR]

just a Shitpost. Nothing to see here folks. Move along, move along.

[Khandros]

Either it was a blatant lie back then or something drastically changed that they had to delay Zandalari trolls for 6 months.

My bet, it was a blatant lie.

[Flalia4]

Sure you could and I knew someone would bring it up. I'd say you're right, but Zandalari trolls were announced as one of the key features of BfA - both during the announcement and in the official feature trailer.

Either it was a blatant lie back then or something drastically changed that they had to delay Zandalari trolls for 6 months.

The "outrage" is starting to get ridiculous. You're shocked they would delay Zandalari to release alongside Kul'tiran's when it makes more sense for the story they laid out? Blizzard has said multiple times that everything is subject to change you can see examples of this in some of the first posts with the dance studio and mounted combat for Wrath.
Plus it's not as if you didn't get another race that fit better as a counter for the dark irons, or do they not count because "you don't care about them?"

It's starting to feel like you guys just want to complain about everything.
YO GUYS DID YOU HEAR BLIZZARD IS SELLING A GOOD AND SERVICE FOR MONEY?????? Is this game dead???!?!?!

[Th3Scourge]

I'm not saying people can't be upset that something promised for release wasn't released on release. I just find a problem with people saying "Blizzard was obviously lying" - implying that they knew ahead of time things wouldn't work out but chose to deliberately deceive, or that it's "false advertising", which, of course, is something completely different.

Though I probably just don't care that much overall; allied races are cool but I just don't really mind that they are or aren't released at specific times. Personally, they're just not important enough to me, so I find it even harder to get why people are upset.

They probably saw how lucrative the first Allied Races were for MTX that they decided to draw them out over time rather than all at once.

[Lahis]

Yeah I almost forgot Maghar and their breathtaking and outstanding storyline they got as an allied race, sorry.

As much as Dark Iron.

Hell, Mag'har technically have more since there was whole expansion about them.

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I don't think there are that many people willing to drop £20 just to raid on a slightly taller troll, and if that is what Blizz was planning on wouldn't it have made more sense for them to release Mag'har orcs mid-expansion as there are more orc players than troll?

Well giving them the most OP racials the game has ever had might incentivise the jump.

[Nyel]

You got Maghar instead of Zandalari at launch. So 6 Allied Races like was stated. And ZD/KT likely pushed back to go along with the Battle of Dazar'alor story. Shit-post much?

The story past BoD does make ZT/KT as logical to join us as directly after BfA launch - it changes basically nothing and there's no reason located in the story to delay them until BoD.

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As much as Dark Iron.

Hell, Mag'har technically have more since there was whole expansion about them.

You're right. You just can see which allied races were a bit more elaborated and which were just thrown out there because something in the development cycle of this expansion happened. I think we all can agree that there is a huge difference between allied races that are just tossed in game and those that do have a reasonable storyline attached to them.

[Keristrasza]

And mounted combat. Mounted combat was on the freakin' box.

and I swear to god I remember them mentioning customizable mounts. IE: Armor that could be removed/added in or around WoD. >_>

[Soluna]

Found this on Reddit and it's pure gold:



Zandalari Trolls - at launch. 5 months later and Zandalari Trolls are still not playable and most likely will not be playable until March.

I really want to know what went wrong during BfA development.

Uhm nothing? They just realised that getting Zandalari before kul tirans would not make sense lol. So they replaced zandalari with mag'har orcs. Are you stupid or just pretending?

[PreparedFor]

Times change. Mag'har aren't on the slides either, yet here they are.

How much do you get reimbursed?

[GreenJesus]

It's not a "blatant lie" or "false advertising". Why does everyone act like Blizzard is some kind of evil villain out to get you?

It's a video game, guys, and Blizzcon announcements are always, always meant to be a projection, not a 100% ironclad guarantee. Realistically, what probably happened is they decided to release zandalari in conjunction with the storyline rather than at release. Most likely they found that the quests they were designing for that allied race made more sense with more of the campaign later into the expansion than it did at launch.

Things change. I tell our clients we plan to add xxx features to our builds regularly and most of the time those happen. Sometimes they're unworkable or just take longer than expected so it's delayed or removed. It's not a blatant lie or false advertising, and that's not what happened here either.

Yeh... maghar orcs being unlocked for doing world quests on kul'tiras makes sense story wise lol.

[Izalla]

This is not the first time that schedules change, and this won't be the last. I'm sure most people could find an old Blizzcon video and demonstrate how Blizzard has changed their mind countless times. Why is this any different?

Just watch the Cataclysm announcement. Don't even have to go as far as WoD for the amount of content that was changed/cut. Half the stuff in the Cata announcement changed or was removed.

[Lochton]

Honestly, you could look at it with a magnifying glass and conclude, that it isn't saying they would be playable at launch, just that their goal would be.

As well, maybe the team had bigger plans, hence Mag'har took the place instead of Zandalari.

[Nalorakk]

We did have 6 allied races available on launch though didn't we?

The 4 released early in Legion + DID and Maghar, but we needed the rep to qualify unlocking them.

Not that this excuses having Zandalari up there and them still not being released after all the carrot dangling, but this is minor compared to what I this thread seems to be getting at.

[arandomuser]

I think they just wanted zandalari to be released in unison with kul tirans because dark iron dwarves are not equivalent to zandalari

[Ungeir]

Zandalari delay is due to them being linked to the release of Kul Tirans. They could probably have had Zandalari ready a lot sooner, but the outrage from Alliance players would have been tremendous, and would have caused even more negative buzz.

I think the difference between Aerial Combat / Dance Studio / Path of the Titans and this situation is that the former were scrapped due to simply not being fun and/or feasible. So they got scrapped.

The Kul Tirans (and by association the Zandalari) have not been scrapped - merely delayed. And the delay of the Kul Tirans, and the rather embarrasing state they are in on the PTR, is yet another massive indication that the project is understaffed. They simply haven't had the time to finish them yet. There's a lot of work in making armors and mounts works with a new race - when it has a different model than existing races.

I would speculate that Kul Tirans were a somewhat late addition to the feature list (notice they are not present in the initial trailer) - possibly due to worries over the Alliance playerbase getting angry that Horde would be given the inhabitants of their expansion capital as a new race. And yes, the Alliance players seeing the new Kul Tiran models all over the place, and then being given Dark Iron dwarves would have been pouring petrol on the Horde bias outrage fire.

But with the skeleton crew of BfA they simply haven't been able to finish Kul Tirans yet, and now 8.1.5 is getting extremely close. It's going to be interesting to see if they manage to finish Kul Tirans, simply release them in a somewhat buggy/raw state or postpone 8.1.5 while they finish them.

TL;DR - Kul Tirans are holding up the Zandalari release, and probably weren't even planned originally.

[Noomz]

Found this on Reddit and it's pure gold:



Zandalari Trolls - at launch. 5 months later and Zandalari Trolls are still not playable and most likely will not be playable until March.

I really want to know what went wrong during BfA development.

Every single Blizzcon they talk about several things that end up being different later on. That's normal. They WANT to do something, but in the end it turns out they don't have the time to do everything they wanted to do. You can look at all Blizzcons and see this.
Remember the Dance Studio?

[MrLachyG]

Found this on Reddit and it's pure gold:

well considering we got 4 of those races during Legion, and that image doesn't include Mag'har Orcs or Dark Iron Dwarves which were available on launch. and yeah there can be some discrepancy as to what "at launch" really means but what it comes down to is this: why would the Zandalari Trolls or KT Humans trust each faction before the end of the BoD raid? they wouldn't. story-wise and logic wise it makes sense for them not to trust us until this point.

[Lei]

Problem is that now we have preorders. By that I mean a Blizzard faciliated pre order, not a gamestop type of preorder, which is an important and not negligible difference.
You see where this goes...
Blizzcon 2017. nov BfA hype hype hpye
Preorder 2018 january....
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.
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oops, the most unique alliance and the most hyped horde race is not in game at launch - not even with 8.1 immediately - because "story reasons" (in a game where gameplay > story is emphasized and proven time and time again).

BfA is basically WoD but instead of a WoD-style freefall it has allied race parachutes.

[Mormegil]

well considering we got 4 of those races during Legion, and that image doesn't include Mag'har Orcs or Dark Iron Dwarves which were available on launch. and yeah there can be some discrepancy as to what "at launch" really means but what it comes down to is this: why would the Zandalari Trolls or KT Humans trust each faction before the end of the BoD raid? they wouldn't. story-wise and logic wise it makes sense for them not to trust us until this point.

Why do people keep posting a slide from Blizzcon with DID clearly detailed under the alliance column and then saying the image doesn’t include DID? Baffling the hell out of me.

[Flurryfang]

First of all, i think they meant that they planned for 6 races to be optainable at launch, which was what happend, just that mag'har took over for the Zandalary, since it made the most sense to have the 2 new races of BFA come out at the same time

Secoundly, i think Blizzard saw some diminishing returns from releasing too many allied races at the same time and saw that with the Nightborne/Lightforged/Void/Highmoutain release, the players only choose one or two from the rooster, instead of actually playing all 4. This proberly made them deside to stagger the release of the allied races, so that each race could have some time on their own to be in the spotlight instead of having them all come out at the same time.

While there is ofcourse some economic gain from this, it is mostly done to improve the experience of the player. If you get drowned in 6 new allied races with 3-6 months, you are proberly not gonna find time to play many of them while they are still "new". This leads to you missing out on leveling experiences, that you might have enjoyed.

So i think people are just simply impatient when they complain about how many allied races there currently are. Its not healthy for the game to have so many new races open at the same time.
What i instead think so be the focus, is the storylines and uniqueness of the allied races that people should be talking about. The potential stories that can be told with the Mag'har, the Lightforged and especially the Dark Iron Dwarfs is massive, yet it seems like their intro was made pretty quickly and not with any link to the further story.