Why Blizzard didn't make Vrykul playable?

[Nork]

I still cannot understand the reason why Blizzard hasn't made them playable yet. They're one of the most interesting races in Azeroth, their culture is awesome and they could bring fresh ideas to the storyline. Why Blizzard? You made high mountain taurens playable, a race nobody really gives a f***. Would you like to see them as a playable race? It'd be awesome to know your points of view guys.

[Kokolums]

The reason is that they are too tall to fit thru doorways, so the options are:

1. Shrink them down which probably takes away the fun.
2. Allow them to clip through the top of doorways which looks ugly and would probably get mocked by players or rival gaming companies and it might also result in hacking issues.
3. Make them only playable via toys or transforms and simply have them get blocked from entering some doorways.
4. Never have them as a playable race at all.

Ogres suffer the exact same problem. Can't fit thru doorways.

[Eurhetemec]

A bunch of dull giant fake-vikings would bring "fresh ideas" to the storyline? You have to be kidding - but I see from your name you might be a bit biased on the issue, especially given this is literally the first thing you posted about. Ironically you might have had a better argument back in WotLK, before the Vrykul got hopelessly tied to being fake-vikings, when they had a viking-ish culture but it hadn't been developed very far.

Anyway, Kokolums is correct. They're too tall to be playable, currently, so player ones would need to be significantly shorter (perhaps only reaching "full" size when using a racial cooldown). Also, if you make a Vrykul shorter, whaddya got? A human. Indeed as you know this is kind of where humans come from in WoW. At least a shorter Ogre would actually match up with some Ogres in the game (they vary in size considerably) and still be clearly not another race.

Further, Kul Tirans mean that even shorter Vrykul are not a real option, because then we'd essentially just have three sizes of human - Humans, Tall Fat Humans, Tall Muscle-y Humans, and at that point we might as well go back to arguing about body shape and size sliders...

[Nork]

A bunch of dull giant fake-vikings would bring "fresh ideas" to the storyline? You have to be kidding - but I see from your name you might be a bit biased on the issue, especially given this is literally the first thing you posted about. Ironically you might have had a better argument back in WotLK, before the Vrykul got hopelessly tied to being fake-vikings, when they had a viking-ish culture but it hadn't been developed very far.

Anyway, Kokolums is correct. They're too tall to be playable, currently, so player ones would need to be significantly shorter (perhaps only reaching "full" size when using a racial cooldown). Also, if you make a Vrykul shorter, whaddya got? A human. Indeed as you know this is kind of where humans come from in WoW. At least a shorter Ogre would actually match up with some Ogres in the game (they vary in size considerably) and still be clearly not another race.

Further, Kul Tirans mean that even shorter Vrykul are not a real option, because then we'd essentially just have three sizes of human - Humans, Tall Fat Humans, Tall Muscle-y Humans, and at that point we might as well go back to arguing about body shape and size sliders...

My name has nothing to do with my post, you probably don't know anything about Vrykul's history. You don't know anything about Odyn and Helya, all the Titan stuff around them, or even other interesting Vrykul characters spread all around the game. But you reduce them to "a bunch of dull giant fake-vikings". Next time learn something about lore and then you post, so you don't have to show to the whole forum your ignorance about this topic.

Thank you for your useless post anyway

- - - Updated - - -

The reason is that they are too tall to fit thru doorways, so the options are:

1. Shrink them down which probably takes away the fun.
2. Allow them to clip through the top of doorways which looks ugly and would probably get mocked by players or rival gaming companies and it might also result in hacking issues.
3. Make them only playable via toys or transforms and simply have them get blocked from entering some doorways.
4. Never have them as a playable race at all.

Ogres suffer the exact same problem. Can't fit thru doorways.

I don't think their height would be a problem, if you make them as tall as taurens it'd fit anyway. Even if they could clip through the top of doorways that shouldn't be a problem at all, you talk about hacking issues but I don't see any issues with tauren's horns so that's a poor argument.

[Eurhetemec]

My name has nothing to do with my post, you probably don't know anything about Vrykul's history. You don't know anything about Odyn and Helya, all the Titan stuff around them, or even other interesting Vrykul characters spread all around the game. But you reduce them to "a bunch of dull giant fake-vikings". Next time learn something about lore and then you post, so you don't have to show to the whole forum your ignorance about this topic.

Thank you for your useless post anyway

Okay, so a guy with one post wants to make his second post a needless and inaccurate personal attack? Wow, off a to a good start buddy, I'm sure you'll be with us a long time. (Also dude named after a viking loves viking themed race but his "name has nothing to do with it" - sure, dude, and someone calling themselves Legolas demanding High Elves clearly has no particular bias in the matter...).

I'm aware of all the Vrykul lore. I've been playing WoW since the original beta, and in WotLK, the Vrykul were pretty cool, especially as there was a lot of genuinely weird stuff going on with them. In Legion, they became much more generically fake-viking, for my money, with the Titans standing in for Odin and Hel from Norse mythology and so on. That stronger alignment with Norse mythology actually made them weaker, conceptually. Especially as WoW is not, in general, a game that borrows that directly from mythology (it's more of a magpie about about mythology stealing a bit from ancient Greece here, a bit from Warhammer there, a bit from Star Wars here and so on - whereas the Vrykul stuff has been lazier - just a series of viking mythology tropes overlaid on the WoW setting, for the most part).

But let's hear what you think:

What actual "fresh ideas", specifically, would the Vrykul bring to WoW?

[Lochton]

I still cannot understand the reason why Blizzard hasn't made them playable yet. They're one of the most interesting races in Azeroth, their culture is awesome and they could bring fresh ideas to the storyline. Why Blizzard? You made high mountain taurens playable, a race nobody really gives a f***. Would you like to see them as a playable race? It'd be awesome to know your points of view guys.

A lot of their culture is closer to the Dwarves than we would like, I think. As for the HM Tauren, you claim nobody really gives a fuck about but I'd rather them than Vrykul. This comes from a Vrykul fan but lately their connections to the game has been feeling bland. Not even closely to be on the 'most' interesting races as they are part of the universal, 'Titan tool' (Dwarf, Gnomes, Vrykul)

[Nathasil]

Not all Vrykul are the same hight. We met some that were only slightly bigger than Tauren. There was absolutely no reason not to make a smaller tribe of Vrykul playable.

Except for one: There actually were Alliance players who wanted them. So this was a no-go...and we had to settle for Fat Humans instead. It is the same reasoning with High Elves vs Void Elves.

But at least it's fair for both factions. When the Horde wanted Zandalari they instead got....oh, wait.

[Wildberry]

Ogres suffer the exact same problem. Can't fit thru doorways.

This isn't true, at all.

You can use the Kovork Costume toy, paired with an Elixir of Giant Growth to match the size of regular Ogres from WoD (Which makes you considerably larger than both Tauren, and a fair amount of the Ogre NPCs on Azeroth).

Even at that size, which is likely larger than playable Ogres would need to be, considering you're larger than a few Ogre mobs, you can still fit through doorways (Even the obnoxiously small ones in Orgrimmar) both on foot and mounted.

To run into pathing issues, you have to be riding an obnoxiously large mount, which puts Ogres in the same boat as Tauren. To actually run into clipping issues, you'd have to be wearing a tall helm (ie, Lei Shen's helm) on a hypothetical playable Ogre.

The "Ogres are too big" argument is dumb and doesn't hold up to scrutiny.

[Eurhetemec]

The "Ogres are too big" argument is dumb and doesn't hold up to scrutiny.

This is interesting research Wildberry - do they fit through "properly" or partially clip through the doorways? Not arguing, I'm interested to hear.

[justandulas]

This is interesting research Wildberry - do they fit through "properly" or partially clip through the doorways? Not arguing, I'm interested to hear.

So shrink their scale down a tad. If Tauren and gnomes can exist; anything can

Gimme my Murloc race

[Eleccybubb]

I still cannot understand the reason why Blizzard hasn't made them playable yet. They're one of the most interesting races in Azeroth, their culture is awesome and they could bring fresh ideas to the storyline. Why Blizzard? You made high mountain taurens playable, a race nobody really gives a f***. Would you like to see them as a playable race? It'd be awesome to know your points of view guys.

They would bring barely anything to the story lol just like all the other Allied Races.

The story doesn't need something fresh. It needs new writers who know how to actually write immersive RPG stories.

And Allied Races need scrapping. It's an awful concept just made to timegate a core feature of games like these.

[RangerDaz]

Because Kul Tirans happened.

They needed an allied race per continent of the expansion, so Kul Tirans and Zandalari were the obvious choices. Other troll and human-like races would be discarded for now. Vrykul are obviously part of that human-like group.

- - - Updated - - -

The reason is that they are too tall to fit thru doorways, so the options are:

1. Shrink them down which probably takes away the fun.
2. Allow them to clip through the top of doorways which looks ugly and would probably get mocked by players or rival gaming companies and it might also result in hacking issues.
3. Make them only playable via toys or transforms and simply have them get blocked from entering some doorways.
4. Never have them as a playable race at all.

Ogres suffer the exact same problem. Can't fit thru doorways.

Size isn't the issue. They can shrink playable models to the size they want. NPCs are always bigger than the playable characters.
They can easily make them the size of Kul Tirans, Zandalari, Draenei or Tauren, and they would still work.

It is more the theme of the race and their anatomy that create the biggest restrictions.
If they don't have legs (example: Naga) or another feature that prevents transmog or riding, it will be difficult for them to become playable.
If they are very similar to another recently released playable race, than they will surely be delayed or discarded.

[derpkitteh]

canonically, they're like 15ft tall.

it's bad enough that they shrunk nightborne and zandalari, i don't want midget vrykul.

kul tirans would have been a lot better if they looked more drustish though, muscled, brutish.

[Wildberry]

This is interesting research Wildberry - do they fit through "properly" or partially clip through the doorways? Not arguing, I'm interested to hear.

They fit properly through most doorways, even mounted. There's one doorway in Orgrimmar (In the Drag, if you're there, you'll know which one it is immediately) where there's a clipping issue on foot.

Mounted is mostly fine, assuming you're on a normal mount (I used the Vicious Warwolf back when I did it). Clefthooves, and the like, generate clipping and pathing issues, but that just puts Ogres in the same boat as Tauren. Other potential clipping issues could come from mounts with extreme vertical motion when running, but I haven't tested that, and it'd be limited to a select few doorways.

There are a couple of places that are "Close Calls" clipping wise. I point this out, because with the Kovork costume, you're limited to the baked-in Ogre NPC helmet. Hypothetically, assuming same size playable Ogres, certain helms might clip (ie, Scourgelord's Helm, Lei Shen's helm, etc.) but that'd be focusing on the extreme end of tall helms and close fit doorways, which I don't think is enough to disqualify a race.

And, as pointed out earlier, that all assumes Kovork Costume+Giant Growth, which puts you on par roughly with Frostfire Ogres in WoD. It's on the larger end of what I'd consider a good size. You're a head above Tauren, taller than most of the Ogre NPCs on Azeroth, and shorter than a couple of the Ogres in certain areas of Nagrand.

They roughly work, and could be scaled down just slightly to cut out the issues, which are concentrated on the extremes anyway (Tall helms, big mounts, tiny doorways, basically tests that playable Tauren already fail).

[Futhark]

The reason is that they are too tall to fit thru doorways

When is this meme going to die? I'm currently playing a Kul Tiran with the Vrykul Drinking Horn and I have no problems with any door unless I'm still mounted.

I challenge anyone to find me one of these "problem doors"

[Wildberry]

Because Kul Tirans happened.

Honestly, this is a pretty damning indictment of Kul Tirans.

I'm not sure there was really a demand for Big (Fat) Humans, in the same way there was a desire for Vrykul. Big Humans don't really fill the void of a complete lack of Nordic culture in playable Humans. The fact that Kul Tirans have no real reason to exist, save as a topical counterpart to the Zandalari, just adds insult to injury. They were, after all, never described that way, and most notable Kul Tirans use the basic "Stormwind Human" model.

[SirBeef]

I don't think their height would be a problem, if you make them as tall as taurens it'd fit anyway. Even if they could clip through the top of doorways that shouldn't be a problem at all, you talk about hacking issues but I don't see any issues with tauren's horns so that's a poor argument.

But that's the thing. They are much taller that Taruen. So you'd have to shrink them down to be Tauren sized.

[derpkitteh]

The "Ogres are too big" argument is dumb and doesn't hold up to scrutiny.

previously, it might have.

but now with the traveler book, their canonical height average for males is around 8ft.

that's 2ft shorter than tauren, so they work without issue.

[czarek]

They looks and move pretty woody so nope

[Futhark]

Because Kul Tirans happened.

They needed an allied race per continent of the expansion, so Kul Tirans and Zandalari were the obvious choices. Other troll and human-like races would be discarded for now. Vrykul are obviously part of that human-like group.

I agree and it is unfortunate. Especially since in Legion, when Allied Races were started, and the major races of the Broken Isles all became playable except Vrykul. It's like it was set up but then cut.