Vulpera break the trend

[Yarathir]

Nightborne females would be pretty good if their eyes are fixed and, comically enough, their face textures become a little less wrinkly.
Nightborne males, though.. that one.. egh. No thanks, mr skeltal.

On the Nightborne note, I think it's a shame that they didn't add any hairstyles with arcane effects- a bunch of NPCs had those.

[ercarp]

I doubt we'll see Lightbound Undead anytime soon as they haven't had much of a presence at all in BFA. As someone who's played BFA fairly casually, I've heard of every single other race suggestion except Lightbound Undead. I have a feeling most people would be pretty confused by their addition, even more so than Mechagnomes.

[Rune B]

I'd consider that unlikely as Blizz has spoken of being unhappy with the first neutral race, Pandaren. Though, if the factions do come together as suspected - or at least, cease being at each other's throats for a while - it doesn't feel as much like an impossibility.

I feel like some of the major races ought to exist on both sides. Like humans. Humans are kind of omnipresent on Azeroth, are they not? In a sense, I suppose they are in the horde, via the Forsaken, but still.

[Oakshana]

Not if you're talking generations. The Nightborne are not just the same race. They're the same individuals as the Night Elf inhabitants of Suramar that were subjects of Azshara.

Pretty much this. If you think about High Elves or Blood Elves, the evolved over time and generations. Individuals such as Lor'themar, Lady Liadrin or Vereesa & Alleria were never at any point Night Elves. Neither was Anastarian. They were all born as High Elves (later obviously being renamed Sindorei).

But the Nightborne such as Elisande or Thalyssra were originally Night Elves that changed while in the bubble being exposed to the Nightwells energies constantly. In the same way that Void Elves are all High/Blood Elves.

That said, any progeny of the Nightborn AFTER than transformation can be considered to not be Night Elves in the same way current generation of Blood Elves are not Night Elves.

My head hurts now.

[Kathranis]

No link as in they are not a sub race to any of the horde races. Ie, Orc - mag'har. Tauren - highmountain. Heck, the alliance at least have a few high elves alive in their ranks, giving the void elves a somewhat sub race line to them.

Again, that's why Blizzard decided to call them "allied races" instead of "subraces." That gives them the freedom to include any NPC race they want in the discussion.

[Mosotti]

Allied races. I remember when I came back after several months and got this quest to get allied races just to realize it's the start of another horrible grind lol

Why add some normal races that require actual work when you can reuse shit and make people stay subscribe. I bet they think they are very clever, but it ain't working on me

[FurryRedVixen]

wonder if an elemental race could be in the works

[tyrlaan]

To me this isn't a big deal. They previously said they considered "anything with two legs" for Allied Races, meaning that they would have considered plenty of things that aren't related to current playable races anyway - mostly animal races.

Discounting lore, of course, Vulpera use the Goblin animations, making them a (fairly) standard Allied Race in that regard - Kul Tirans and Zandalari males broke that trend already. They could easily do the same thing for something like Saberon later on, updating how the Saberon look, while using the new Worgen animations.

Or, they could make more Allied Races that have completely new animations. The other major things that differentiate an Allied Race from a "Main Race" are:
a.) A reputation/achievement/questline required to unlock them.
b.) One racial mount (as opposed to 5-6).
c.) No racial small pet from pet trainers (every base race has one, every AR does not).
d.) Heritage Armor released with them (though, new "base races" could come with this too in the future).


In the end, I feel like this first pass of Allied Races was mostly just copying different animations of other races, with a couple outliers. They stated that they would add more Allied Races after BfA, just not as many. It's entirely possible they could move on to other races for a while, reusing some animations, and passing over each race again (like Broken that could use Tauren animations and/or Draenei animations, Taunka, Forest Trolls/Revantusk, Wildhammers, etc). Or, they could make any number of other races that people have wanted, related or not (Ogres, Arakkoa, Vrykul, Ethereals, and Naga are all races that people have asked to play for a long time).

Pretty much this. A lot of weird assumptions being made by folks and then passing those off as given facts. Allied races are not "sub-races". We aren't limited to the same number of allied races that we have core races. They don't have to use an existing race's skeleton/rig, but they can.

I'd also add that I think there's a decent chance that all races going forward will be allied races. No more core races is my guess.

God, I so hate this constant measuring and matching everything. Why can't a core issue in a fantasy setting such as playable races simply be dictated by narrative?

Right?

"Horde bias because Alliance gets a billion horses"

"Alliance bias because Horde can't use the bee mount"

"Horde bias because they have more druid races"

etc. etc. etc.

Blizzard is no shining beacon of perfection, and I certainly have my issues with design choices they've made along the way, but I really empathize with them on this one. It's like they're trying to babysit two toddlers who haven't learned how to share yet so they need to give them two of the exact same thing of EVERYTHING.

[Ersula]

I understand them not being the exact same but they could have at least kept the original eyes.

It's because the recent model revamp gave the models & separate skeletons & rigging. The classic models just had skeletons so you couldn't supplant them on different models. Here, it's the Nightborne Model on a Night Elf rigging, including facial animation, who keep their eyes wide during an idle animation. It could be changed, but it's just the character opening their eyes wider. Though real talk, the Nightborne have the least amount of character customization by a huge margin.

- - - Updated - - -

Lightbound undead are almost certainly one of the next 2, its just a matter of which faction gets them.

Considering Ilgynoth's whispers, the Lightbound are not good & are likely going to be villainous. They're not in this timeline, but they emerged when Xerite Naaru encountered the AU Draenei which can still happen in this timeline. As established in the Maghar Acquisition questline, the Xerite Naaru share Sargaras's pre-corruption values, in that anything natural is at risk of corruption & needs to be cleansed. The Naaru even destroyed Talador's topography because their ideal is people living on manmade space ships & they would see Orcs, Night Elves, Tauren & Void elves as enemies because they worship "corrupting" elements. The Light Religions of Azeroth & the Lightforged would be the less extreme version of this ideology & would want to protect the planet from them

[glowpipe]

Tauren: Big furry animal. Vulpera: small furry animal. Problem solved

[Ersula]

Hearthstone has never been or tried to be a canon representation of the Warcraft universe, but they certainly could draw inspiration from it. (Although I wouldn't mind Gadgetzan being the hearthstone version either!)

Tortollans appeared in Hearthstone before being revealed in BFA. Void elves were essentially invented in the same patch they were playable. So I guess anything is possible

[Fahrenheit]

To be honest, I'm kinda disappointed Alliance got the Mechagnomes with the Vulpera. The Mechagnomes are so underwhelming...it would have been much cooler for them to give Alliance Lightforged Undead with the Vulpera. /shrug

Blizzard should’ve seen the blow back coming and whipped up enough story to give the Alliance Sethrak alongside Horde Vulpera.

Wholly new lore based race unique to BfA? Check
Using a Cata race rig as the starting point? Check
Fills a niche that isn’t well serviced in that faction’s lineup? Check
Come from the same land and have historical animosity? Check

I don’t mind the mechagnomes, though, truth be told, I’ll never play them. But it was Uber dumb to slot them in at the same time as Vulpera.

[HulkSmasher]

wonder if an elemental race could be in the works

That would be amazing! Hopefully... some day

[Yarathir]

Blizzard should’ve seen the blow back coming and whipped up enough story to give the Alliance Sethrak alongside Horde Vulpera.

Wholly new lore based race unique to BfA? Check
Using a Cata race rig as the starting point? Check
Fills a niche that isn’t well serviced in that faction’s lineup? Check
Come from the same land and have historical animosity? Check

I don’t mind the mechagnomes, though, truth be told, I’ll never play them. But it was Uber dumb to slot them in at the same time as Vulpera.

Sethrak would be quite an undertaking, maybe almost on the level of Kul Tirans.
I feel like Ankoan might've been better to go with Vulpera. Just give them the nelf rig but with unique anims, some cool customization. They were also introduced around the same time Mechagnomes were.

[Big Mama]

theyre literally gnome and goblin reskins

They are literally NOT just reskins. Skin is a texture. Texture is an image that "coats" a certain mesh, the model.

A reskin on the other hand means same mesh, same rig, same animations but a completely new or at least edited texture.

Vulpera are not just reskinned goblins and mechagnomes are not just reskinned gnomes. These models were heavily edited. Do your homework.

[Mirishka]

They are literally NOT just reskins. Skin is a texture. Texture is an image that "coats" a certain mesh, the model.

A reskin on the other hand means same mesh, same rig, same animations but a completely new or at least edited texture.

Vulpera are not just reskinned goblins and mechagnomes are not just reskinned gnomes. These models were heavily edited. Do your homework.

Well said, and a distinction few people around here seem to truly understand.

Though, to be somewhat fair, in the days of Quake 2 and other shooters that had a lot of character mods, 'skin' was used interchangeably with new models. But it has been many years since I've seen a developer refer to a model, in and of itself, as a skin.

Because of that I occasionally 'slip' and use the term reskinned, even though I understand the difference.

[Dragtox]

I feel like some of the major races ought to exist on both sides. Like humans. Humans are kind of omnipresent on Azeroth, are they not? In a sense, I suppose they are in the horde, via the Forsaken, but still.

i can wierdly say trolls aswell since zandalar trolls evolved to night elf wich becoms satyr, harpies, high elves and nage then high elves to blood elves and blood elf to void elf
and we got forest trolls, dark trolls, jungle trolls, dire trolls, ice trolls trolls and sand trolls they are all kinda still trolls but evolved

[Redzonetode]

I'm hoping the last pair of AR races are related to the next expansion - aka not Sethrak, Ankoan, or lightforged undead. I'd be happy with Sethrak or Ankoan as an alliance, but I'm really itching for a new dragon humanoid race.

[Vynestra]

Yeah I can see the Mogu. But as others said - you have Pandaren on both sides. After what the Mogu did to them I doubt they'd be happy about working alongside them.

- - - Updated - - -



Indeed. But for the "recent" timeline and lore. Nightborne are literally Night Elves. Once also ruled by Queen Azshara.

Mogu are already working with the pandaren in 8.3 - It's a specific subset of mogu though. I forget the name, 8.3 AR's would be mogu and tol'vir, but that seems....really far fetched, I mean -really- far fetched. I suppose blizzard could shock us though.

It's very possible next xpac will have 4 AR's for pre-order and 2 new ones at launch, they'd be gilblin and mogu or tol'vir for horde, then the fish people + mogu/tol'vir (whichever wasn't horde) for the alliance, and then 2 new ones on launch.

I'd be surprised though. Pleasantly surprised, but surprised.

[Kemsa]

Lets see:

Vulpera "rig" its the Goblin skeleton + "Worguen Animation". Thats what you are telling i guess? and so there is an "imbalance" between the "skeleton trade" between factions.
is that it? or are you suggesting in terms of "LORE" that vulpera are a entirely new race starting to develop now with their introduccion to the faction war?

Because yeah. Alliance its -1 in the skeleton rig allied races. Wich implies that (speculation incoming)
-Forsaken/thin human skeleton its going to be used by the Alliance in some way or they get a "new" skeleton or a worguen one too.
-Also Pandaren rig too.