[Opinion] The Alliance has generally gotten some GARBAGE Allied Races

[Alex86el]

kultirans arent as bad
they just suffer from the same problem pandas are.
their chest piece textures warp too much on the belly and look like shit.

but their moonkin form makes me sick.
they have fat flaps! fuckin fat flaps on their back, with weird boils and stuff.
disgusting.


i agree 100% about the asspulled void elves.
as Ion admited, they were a last day decision with lore made up on the spot.
sad.

alliance should have gotten Broken, Wildhammers, even High Elves. before gettign all the asspulled races.
thank god the dark irons are super cool. phew.

the horde should have gotten ogres and mok'nathal.

- - - Updated - - -

Void Elves are BY FAR the most played Allied race, so statistically, most people disagree with OP.

More people have 120 Velfs than Dwarves, Worgen, Gnomes or Pandas.

https://realmpop.com/us.html

yeah, but that's because most people dont know anything about the lore besides Sylvanas is bad, and they dont care about it whatsoever.
that's why you see them wanting races like vulpera and sethrak over other, historic ones.

it's like going to the Ferrari dealership and asking for a truck, because they like trucks... and Ferrari actually makes them a TRUCK. ='(

[Dakara]

Eh, most Allied races are pretty bland imho.

As Alliance tho, I am quite disappointed with the KT Humans. Ingame, KT's come in various shapes and sizes yet as PC's we only get to roll the fat ones. Personally, I don't play any of the races (big or small) who distort most ingame armor sets. My one exception is Worgen as with Two Forms my Mog can still look decent some of the time.

Too many races in WOW have very little (decent) Transmog options due to how their body shapes distort/clip the armor.

[PenguinChan]

yeah, but that's because most people dont know anything about the lore besides Sylvanas is bad, and they dont care about it whatsoever.
that's why you see them wanting races like vulpera and sethrak over other, historic ones.

it's like going to the Ferrari dealership and asking for a truck, because they like trucks... and Ferrari actually makes them a TRUCK. ='(

It's more like they want a pretty race and they got a pretty race. Even if they care about lore, they wanted a pretty race. It's more akin to buying a sensible car for 30k - and instead going for a high-end Ferrari just for the looks. Void Elves were clearly rushed and made just to have pretty elves on Alliance to balance it out with horde.

[Strippling]

They are better High Elves. Thank god Blizzard didn't just listen to the whining vocal minority and burn an Alliance allied race slot on literal fucking Blood Elves that just have blue eyes. I will take the more unique and distinct version any day.

Agree 100%

[Kyphael]

Eh, I don't think so. The only alliance allied race I dislike are Lightforged, and Horde have their own uninspired variant with Tauren with tattoos and antlers.

Kul'tirans, Void Elves (despite the edge lord emo look and cow lick hairstyles), and Dark Iron Dwarves especially are pretty cool. Now, if and when Horde gets Vulpera while we get fucking robot gnomes, then we'll officially have more garbage allied races, figuratively and literally with "Mecha Gnomes." They literally look like fucking walking trash cans.

[Rozz]

It'd be funny if the Horde did get Vulpera, since they'd likely destroy racial population ratios like BEs.

[lockybalboa]

What model are the Kul Tirans a reskin of, out of curiosity?

Yeh but they are a fat and unappealing race, and the rest are straight re-skins. Add some armor and change the skin tone then bam! Call them new races.

[Simca]

I like the Alliance options better substantially myself.

Zandalari Trolls are great, but Nightborne (the other generally 'good' option) are extremely underwhelming. I immediately swapped a couple of characters to Nightborne, and I completely regret it. Their customization options are AWFUL. They have like 4 face choices, all of which look very odd. All of the hair styles are bad (well, not to my taste anyway). The hair color options are the most restrictive of any race in the entire game. You get a choice between silver, white, grey, and light blue basically. There are no options that are not some subtle variation of white.

As for the Alliance, I really enjoy both of their original two Allied Races. Lightforged Draenei are just basically cooler Draenei, and they were already one of my favorite races. Void Elves are basically just cooler Blood Elves, and they were also one of my favorite races. Additionally, Dark Iron Dwarves are so cool that it actually makes me consider playing one, despite the height issue being a big annoyance for me personally.

Edit: I agree that if the Horde get Vulpera and the Alliance gets Mechagnomes than this post will probably be a lot more valid, at least in my opinion.

[wanax]

No, you work with many of the Mechagnomes in their resistance against the ruler, King Mechagon. The prince is the one leading the rebellion. The rebellion is also a rep. That's how you do the quests on Mechagon, with Goblins showing up as well.

It's a fair assumption that Mechagnomes are going to be playable, due to their player character customization and a unique female Mechagnome dance animation, which are generally more for player races. They also have a rep, which fits in well with all other Allied Races.

On topic: Sure the Alliance has had a bit more boring Allied Races. However, the Alliance, as a whole, is a bit more boring of a faction. Getting Vrykul wouldn't change much of the problem - they're another shape and size of human, exactly like the Kul Tirans, for instance. They haven't really set up many other unique/interesting races that are 100% Alliance. though, I do feel that Lightforged should have been customization for regular Draenei, and the Broken could have been the Draenei Allied Race. However, I'm content with everything else so far.

Furbolgs are one of the few races aligned with the alliance that would really be different

- - - Updated - - -

Eh, I don't think so. The only alliance allied race I dislike are Lightforged, and Horde have their own uninspired variant with Tauren with tattoos and antlers.

Kul'tirans, Void Elves (despite the edge lord emo look and cow lick hairstyles), and Dark Iron Dwarves especially are pretty cool. Now, if and when Horde gets Vulpera while we get fucking robot gnomes, then we'll officially have more garbage allied races, figuratively and literally with "Mecha Gnomes." They literally look like fucking walking trash cans.

Horde could always get something stupid for an allied race after that... lookin at you “light” undead while the alliance could get ankoan

- - - Updated - - -

Yeh but they are a fat and unappealing race, and the rest are straight re-skins. Add some armor and change the skin tone then bam! Call them new races.

While I’d make a few tweaks to the models and customizations their heritage armor is friggin perfect. My KT is an outlaw rogue with the hook fist wep and the tankard o terror. I mean he’s grog swiggin pirate ffs.

[BaumanKing]

I'm perfectly fine with the void elves. Blizzard writers just had to introduce them better. For example, they were high elven sailors who settled in Kul Tiras after the Third War. They built their own town there and became interested in the magic of tidesages to replace their arcane hunger. Later they got corrupted, but Alleria and Pike saved them. That's it.

[Eucep]

I like all but the void elves. And void elves mainly because their build up is... very very poor. And as a race they kinda irk me as their void link rather calls for a void caster class then a void elf race. Like, the only real important void elves are Umbric, who is the only void magus and Alleria, who is not even transformed into a void elf.

[Azerox]

I like Void Elfs very much and are for me the best/coolest Alliance race atm.
I also think the next xpac will see alot of void stuffs arround and also alot of void elfs.
Also i played a BE Mage for 5 years Horde side so for me it feels logic to be a Void Elf Mage on Ally side.

[Cosmic Janitor]

I wanted to agree, but then I thought about

(even) more tribal trolls,
tauren with different horns (antlers),
orcs with brown instead of green skin,
(even more) scrawny (& fugly) night elves.

compare that to the alliance with

fat humans,
draenei with light on head,
dwarf with dark skin and burning beard,
uglified and lore-butchered belfs.

Here is the thing though, even with the horde ones beeing technically just as shit, their gimmiks were just better. The more tribal trolls also walk upright and have a lore that makes them out to be superior to current trolls, fat humans are just fat humans for no reason. Let alone the fact that kul tirans are not all fat, the minority actually is. The trolls win this one by status and art imho.

I don't get why people are that into high mountain tauren, but I guess they really like the antlers more. The draenei with light have a stronger lore compared to that, but you just hardly notice that they are at all different. While the LF win the status, the HM win the art here, therefore a draw imho.

The orcs actually, due to their lore, being also upright, having more customization (most other clans) and being essentially uncorrupted are also a superior version. While I think the dark iron are also fairly decent as far as races go, they are just a sidestep. They used to be an enemy faction for a long time but their customization is pretty decent. While both pull a draw on the art, the status probably goes to the horde here.

The nightborne imho stand out as just bad, blizzard really butchered their models, but their set looks awsome and their lore is also a superior version of nelfs imho. While the lore of velfs is shit and contrived and the fact that they were something no one asked for, they still give a highly saught after model to the alliance with being much less butchered than the nightborne. The alliance wins the art, the horde wins the status here imho. Another draw.


At the end of the day both sides get alot of lame shit that could have been just a character customization option, but the perception is slightly skewed due to fat humans being just that and orcs probably being slightly more popular than dwarves. The only issue is if the next 2 allied races are indeed as we suspect, because lame ass gnomes will probably be alot less popular than furry critters. There isn't even a competition there.

[Alanar]

Void elves have gotten a fair bit of exposure in BFA and will likely be important as the Void takes a larger presence in the story. I don't think it's quite fair to write them off as 'never to be important again.' And while they are a new development and should have had a little more lead up to them, I don't have a problem with 'new' allied races showing up.

Lightforged I found to be underwhelming, but broken wouldn't work as an allied race, they would have needed to be a full on new race, though I do think they would bring more to the table than lightforged.

I'm not a big fan of kul tirans, but Vry'kul just wouldn't work without severely nerfing their height, and then what do you have? Just an abnormally tall human. They also probalby wanted an allied race to represent Kul'tiras in general since the main Alliance story in 8.0 is helping them out so we can bring them into the Alliance, and vry'kul wouldn't do that.

Mindflayers? Seriously? How would you even justify these on the alliance?

I do agree that DI Dwarves are awesome though.

The thing is Vrykul look cool and humans do not.
The discussion on their height is a non issue realy.. making them a bit smaller like zanda, but slightly higher is not making thrm less vrykul or less cool imo.
I agree on Vrykul that they should have been an allied race from the get go. Void elves however.. my god.

[bmjclark]

Horde got a worse looking nightborne than the ones we had in legion, tauren with antlers, and brown orcs. The only race that really stands out are the zandalari, with kultirans being their counter part and they're also pretty sweet with their own unique (ish) model. 3/4 allied races for both factions are pretty meh tbh

[Claymore]

Furbolgs are one of the few races aligned with the alliance that would really be different

- - - Updated - - -


Horde could always get something stupid for an allied race after that... lookin at you “light” undead while the alliance could get ankoan

- - - Updated - - -



While I’d make a few tweaks to the models and customizations their heritage armor is friggin perfect. My KT is an outlaw rogue with the hook fist wep and the tankard o terror. I mean he’s grog swiggin pirate ffs.

You know, I always forget about Furbolgs, but I can admit, you *COULD* do something with them. Definitely a pretty unique "vibe" for a race. Admittedly, they're almost always presented as extremely peaceful, borderline "helpless". But expanding them a bit could be kind of cool, and it would also be a great way to give the Night Elven culture a little more presence in the Alliance, as they clearly share a love of nature with the Furbolgs (plus, it gives the Alliance a race that *isn't* another Light-worshipping race). Also, they would totally work as another Shaman-friendly race, which is always welcome.

Granted, I can't much see them being a "model-swap" of any existing races, though. Not unless they were *VERY* heavily modified. The closest I could maybe see -- just in terms of "skeleton" and animations -- would maybe be the Tauren?

--------------------------------------------------------------

I still stand behind Vrykul as a desirable race, though, simply because their particular brand of Viking culture is still fairly unique. There's always been some discrepency behind how large the Vrykul ACTUALLY are -- their in-game models are usually the size of small giants -- but most of the time NPC's are scaled simply to be easier to see/click on (it's not like Arthas or Tirion Fordring were each 12-feet tall). Kul Tirans are probably about as large as the Vrykul would actually need to be, since Kul Tirans are already *freakishly* large (again, just another one of the problems I have with them; they look like they were created by someone who never even bothered to LOOK at any of the other races for scale).

As far as my suggesting High Elves as an "alternative" Allied Race... Truth be told, I actually think High Elves would be terrible, too. For me, they undermine all of the things the Blood Elves went through (the Blood Elf campaign in WC3 was probably my favorite of all of them). My thinking is simply that it's difficult to ignore the amount of requests there have been for them, and given the choice between High Elves (which already existed) and "Void Elves" (which literally came out of nowhere), I think High Elves were the lesser of two evils. And given that Alleria had a pretty cool re-design, I thought you could've done some interesting things with that.

For example, High Elves could've been introduced as "the Elves who followed Alleria through the Dark Portal back in the Second War". As such, they would be COMPLETELY disconnected from the trials that the Blood Elves had gone through, and because of that, you could've actually told some really interesting stories, with believable drama.

Alleria -- who never experienced the events of the Third War -- would condemn the Blood Elves for turning their backs on their allies. She and her band of High Elves (probably following more "Wood Elf" tropes, as a more Ranger-focuses cultural sect) would see Blood Elves as weak-willed traitors who gave up hope the moment things got hard. After all, the "High Elves" had be prepared to sacrifice themselves when they destroyed the Dark Portal from within.

Meanwhile, Lor'themar might view these "High Elves" as holier-than-thou pricks, who didn't have to live with the memories of seeing their loved ones slaughtered in front of their eyes. He would clearly have sacrificed himself to have saved others, but Arthas didn't give them that choice, and neither did Garithos (who everyone seems to forget about, but was the *real* culprit behind them leaving the Alliance). They lost everything, and then had to survive a crippling magical withdrawal in the aftermath of the Scourge's genocide of their people. He would view these "High Elves" with disdain, seeing them as "people who weren't around for the problems, yet want to come in out of nowhere and start pointing fingers". I could even see the name ITSELF being an insult to him (after all, they only began calling themselves "Blood Elves" in memory of all those they'd lost; for Alleria and her ilk continuing to call themselves "High Elves" would be dishonoring those same people).

As long as you made them CULTURALLY very different (ie. giving them scars, tattoos, more rugged hair and beard options, maybe darker skintones), I could've seen that working pretty well. Again, just so long as they actually DID something with it. Unfortunately, we've seen Blizzard's writers are often... easily distracted. They introduce these awesome races with cool cultures, and then just never DO anything with them. I still hold that Gilneas is one of the coolest-looking areas -- both in city/architecture and landscape/environments -- in the entire Warcraft franchise. But aside from OCCASIONALLY seeing Genn "wolf-out", the Worgen may as well not even exist. For fuck sake, Genn is barely even seen in his Worgen form, and even so, lacks any sort of animosity (the whole reason they were cool as a race, was they were constantly on the verge of just going berserk).

[Ielenia]

They are better High Elves. Thank god Blizzard didn't just listen to the whining vocal minority and burn an Alliance allied race slot on literal fucking Blood Elves that just have blue eyes. I will take the more unique and distinct version any day.

So instead they "burn an Alliance allied race slot on ACTUAL literal fucking blood elves" that have purple skin. Yeah. Good logic there.

[Hitei]

So instead they "burn an Alliance allied race slot on ACTUAL literal fucking blood elves" that have purple skin. Yeah. Good logic there.

-An allied race that is blood elves with a completely different aesthetic
-An allied race that is blood elves but they have blue eyes instead of green

Hurrdurr I wonder which of these two things is a better use of an allied race slot.

[Jastall]

Horde got the best and worst ARs in my opinion. Zandalari are splendid and I love the amount of work put in Mag'har visual customization, but at the same time Highmountain are Tauren with tattoos and Nightborne have by far the lowest quality model out of every single playable race for some reason.

Alliance races trends towards the middle. VEs have atrocious lore but very cool aesthetics and are the most popular AR by a landslide. Kul Tirans are the only AR with an entirely new animation rig and decent lore but the beer gut kind of drags them down, pun intended. Dark Irons are great all in all. Their weakest spot are the Lightforged who are just yellow Draenei and have weak lore, but at least the model still looks nice.

[Ielenia]

-An allied race that is blood elves with a completely different aesthetic

Same model, same animations, same silhouette.

If it wasn't for the character name/outline/health bar color, you would have no idea if it's friend or foe until they're right on your face.