Should Racials Be Removed?

[Jawless Jones]

I think the real problems about racials are "Will of the Forsaken"....

you think i fear break on a 2 minute cd (and sets pvp trink on cd) is a problem? do you think fear ward is game breaking too?

[Mavett]

Allow to choose two racial abilities on character creation and sort them in two categories.

Passive or Activated Damage/healing boosting racials, (blood fury, weapons specs etc)

and Activated Utility racials (Every man for himself/forsaken etc)

Introduce ingame npc that would change either one for 1000 gold fee and X day cooldown.

[Prancing Minstrel]

I agree they should be removed, or at least turned into cosmetic things. Like maybe trolls being able to play that drum music that plays in troll villages, orcs having their own special battle cry etc.

[Drithien]

No, not in my opinion. World of WarCraft is a role-playing game; not a MOBA or any other kind of arena game. "Balance" is the primary concern of very few players; most are just happy playing the actual game, instead of agonizing over theory-crafting and spreadsheets. And in role-playing games the feel of the character is very important. To reduce races to merely a "skin" would be to make the game even more bland, tasteless, and just plain "safely" boring and a routine. If someone wants to play a MOBA game, he should go on and play a MOBA game. Not wish for a game of another genre to be twisted out of its essence just so he can have his "balance." The game has already suffered enough in the developers' attempt to cater to a small minority of players that are obsessed with the ever-elusive "balance."

I think that racial abilities should be reworked to be even more prevalent, unique, interesting, interactive and exciting. World of WarCraft has already plenty of boredom from the excessive streamlining and homogenisation it has been put through to make some "pros" and wannabe "pros" happy. What it is lacking is some fun, not more boredom; fun that stems from the game actually embracing its role-playing roots; and uniqueness in characters is one of the elements of those roots.

[Serendippity]

I'd be happy to see them go. One less keybind to remember.

[Tenjen]

screw balance, let some things be skewed and different. it adds spice and variation. something for us to use and to maneuver around in battle when the other guy has it.

[Deleted]

It's one of those things where, I don't want the to go... but it would probably be best for the game.

It's just a shame Blizzard didn't realise they would be a nuisance when the game first started 8 and a half years ago!

[Leih]

Ideally, they would remove racials that offer character boosts and replace them with cool "RP" racials and/or fun bonuses. Things like profession boosts and that sort of thing are more than fine. They should just scrap the powerful racials that boost performance, either passively like the 1% hit/expertise/crit/haste racials, or actively like the orc and troll racials.

While strong racials do add some depth to the game, I think in this day and age you should be able to decide how you want to look without it ruining your performance. It's the same deal as transmog, people just expect they can customise their avatar without it being tied to power.

But to preserve some depth, it would be nice if the racial system could be baked into something else or replaced by an even better system. As some have suggested, if you had a bunch of racials to choose from and you got to select which ones you used that could be interesting. Maybe they're faction-wide (but ofc evenly balanced) and any character on that faction can choose which they benefit from. It could even be tied into, say, your character's background lore-wise.

Hell, if they want to really go for it, it could be something to add a little bit more interest for levellers. Maybe a choice of a quest or something when you hit level 40 that lets you pick one of five faction racials based on what your actions. Of course, at max level you'll be able to pay a sizeable sum of gold to have it reset, so we don't get people screwing themselves over.


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To clarify, it could be something like:

Humans have their rep bonus as a passive when they are created. And some other cosmetic one, like, I dunno, shinier armour!

When you reach level 40, you get to pick whether you would prefer Every Man for Himself, a sprint (darkflight), a short charge (rocket boots) or a berserk (orc/trolls etc).

When you reach level 60 you get to pick whether you would prefer a spirit boost, a hit boost, a crit boost, a haste boost.

When you reach level 80 you get to pick a weapon specialisation, and get 1% expertise with that kind of weapon.

Blah blah. By the time you reach 90 you have 4-5 racials, one fun or cosmetic one and a profession/rep one that you start with based on your race, and another ~3 that you pick as you level that are available faction-wide but let you add a little bit of customisation.


Would that sort of thing not somewhat please both camps and bring back a little character choice, even in a small way? I don't know, could be better than scrapping them though.

[Deleted]

Would that sort of thing not somewhat please both camps and bring back a little character choice, even in a small way? I don't know, could be better than scrapping them though.

Great idea - I can tell you put a lot of thought into that suggestion.

The only issue is that it might complex things even further and it feels a little bit like an extra talent system plunked on top of the already implemented class talent system.

[Sierra85]

i'd rather let people select a racial instead of scrapping them.

maybe let them respec a racial but put a 7day cooldown on it or something.

[Akraen]

There should be no DPS gains from any racials.

[Leih]

Great idea - I can tell you put a lot of thought into that suggestion.

The only issue is that it might complex things even further and it feels a little bit like an extra talent system plunked on top of the already implemented class talent system.

There's an inherent problem in just about anything that's added to the game these days when it affects performance. You pretty much either make it:

A) Something that you can change at will. Which has the problem of being meaningless. People complain it's not a valid choice when you can just change it with no penalty. We've all seen this with... well, just about everything in WoW at the moment. Also see Diablo 2 vs. Diablo 3 talent system whines!

B) Something that's either very difficult/expensive to change or a permanent choice. But then the problem with this is that people feel obligated to be the most powerful they can be and it's bad design to encourage that while making it ridiculously punishing. e.g. If you had a permanent choice you make at the start of the game whether you want 5% crit or 5% stamina and you pick the stamina, then later decide you want to be a PVE dpser, well lets face it people will just feel obligated to reroll a brand new character. That's not fun, it's just going to make people quit.

It's an incredibly difficult balancing act to juggle those two opposing issues. How do you make something have meaning without it being mandatory and overly punishing if you make a mistake? A long term goal would be to try and change mindsets and balancing back to more old school days where people weren't quite so focused on 2% differences in Recount meters, or weren't doing Arena and worrying about comps and CCs and cooldown stacking and all that stuff. But good luck rewinding the clock on all of that. Cat's out of the bag.

I don't envy Blizzard's design team sometimes.

[Deleted]

i'd rather let people select a racial instead of scrapping them.

This could work but it requires some form of revamping still. Can't have humans using shadowmeld - doesn't make any sense in terms of lore.

[Glordif]

I say remove any PvE/PvP benefits and make them like Boosts Enchanting by 15 or something. Not very useful, but it sucks that people are forced to play certain races because of how superior they are in situations.

Nobody is forced to play any class. Unless you're at the cutting edge of progression, trying to squeeze out that extra 200 dps then racial really don't matter. At least at the end of Cataclysm, for hunters racials account for around 500dps.
Now I agree that maybe the troll racial needs to be nerfed slightly, every other racial is fine. You didn't loose that arena match because the other guy had emfhs, likewise that troll mage didn't out dps your goblin mage because of the racial. The odds are that other person just played better then you that one time.

Racials that give an in game boost are awesome, they make races feel unique. Those that want to min max have another avenue they can look at. Those that want to play a good looking race can and they won't be too effected by it. The nature of a game like WoW will mean that there will never ever be balance. I

[Deleted]

Change all racials into engineer trinkets.

[Shepherd57]

I think give every race a 1% increase to a stat, and a cosmetic/flavor something. Like the Forsaken racial that lets them eat dead creatures. That is a good flavor racial. I am ok with Humans still having rep gains. If they wanted to keep damaging abilities like the goblin rocket I am ok with that too, because it isn't really worth the global and I would rather use the boost.

[MrKroth]

Everyone is either a RP, PvP or PvE player:
RP wants cosmetic, PvP won't let go of EMFH, PvE are min/max'ing.

We could break it into 3 games (and lose the other 2 areas) or play a big game with few things we don't like. I'd go for anything to keep the game huge as it is.

[ItachiZaku]

I like each race getting a couple things they can call their own. If it is just cosmetic, just get an addon. Might as well just open up every race to every class as well. Since it wouldn't really matter. I liked how older school D&D was. Stat limits min/max based on race etc.

[Deleted]

Racials that give an in game boost are awesome, they make races feel unique. Those that want to min max have another avenue they can look at. Those that want to play a good looking race can and they won't be too effected by it. The nature of a game like WoW will mean that there will never ever be balanced.

Agree with this.

[Deleted]

Everyone is either a RP, PvP or PvE player:
RP wants cosmetic, PvP won't let go of EMFH, PvE are min/max'ing.

We could break it into 3 games (and lose the other 2 areas) or play a big game with few things we don't like. I'd go for anything to keep the game huge as it is.

This is most likely another reason why Blizzard are keeping the system the way it is. Either way they do this a huge portion of people are going to be butt hurt.