Why is the visual quality so inconsistent among Allied Races?

[Khasim92]

I've been thinking about the concept of Allied Races for a while, and there's something that's bugging me since we now have 4 playable, 2 more basically launch ready and we know a lot about even two more, and a pattern (or, more specifically, a lack of it) has emerged.

The quality and amount of work put into them is really inconsistent, isn't it?

On one hand, we have the Zandalari troll males and Kul Tiran males/females, which are completely new models with completely or mostly (in the case of Zandalari) new animations. If not for the Zandalari females, who look almost identical to the Darkspear females and will likely share their animations, these two allied races could easily be considered fully separate races as their silhouettes are very unique (Blizzard used to stress that silhouettes are important for faction identity but I guess they went 'fuck it' with Void Elves and Nightborne)

Then we have the medium-effort races - the Dark Irons, Lightforged Draenei and Void Elves, who are basically Dwarves/Draenei/Blood Elves, but their customisation options make differ them from the original races quite a bit.

And then we have the Mag'Har and Highmountain Tauren, where the former is just a texture swap and some new hairstyles, while the latter is simply a joke with way less skin colour options than the regular Tauren (I really don't see a reason for that).

Finally we have the Nightborne, who sit somewhere between the 2nd and 3rd group, as their are visually quite different from Night Elves but also they are very unpolished with their lack of blinking and bad shoulder armor placement on the males.

What is the reason behind that?
New races are always a huge feature of an expansion and a lot of people are really hyped for them - Blood Elves were an obvious success, I also see quite a lot of Goblins and way more Pandaren than say, female Tauren on the Horde side (I barely play Alliance so can't say much about that).
The concept of subraces has been requested by the community for quite a long time, and initially I believed that the Allied Races were supposed to be just that, but some of them clearly had more time and effort put into them than the others.

Why won't Blizz just stick with the medium-effort ones, don't bother with calling something like Highmountain Tauren a separate race if they're going to release them in the state that they have, and put their effort into finally updating Goblins and Worgen (the latter honestly really need and deserve a total rework) and giving us more polished 'real' races?

[Harbour]

MagHar, Zandalari, Nightborn look significantly better than retextured Draenei and Blood Elves.

[Mirishka]

I've been thinking about the concept of Allied Races for a while, and there's something that's bugging me since we now have 4 playable, 2 more basically launch ready and we know a lot about even two more, and a pattern (or, more specifically, a lack of it) has emerged.

The quality and amount of work put into them is really inconsistent, isn't it?

On one hand, we have the Zandalari troll males and Kul Tiran males/females, which are completely new models with completely or mostly (in the case of Zandalari) new animations. If not for the Zandalari females, who look almost identical to the Darkspear females and will likely share their animations, these two allied races could easily be considered fully separate races as their silhouettes are very unique (Blizzard used to stress that silhouettes are important for faction identity but I guess they went 'fuck it' with Void Elves and Nightborne)

Then we have the medium-effort races - the Dark Irons, Lightforged Draenei and Void Elves, who are basically Dwarves/Draenei/Blood Elves, but their customisation options make differ them from the original races quite a bit.

And then we have the Mag'Har and Highmountain Tauren, where the former is just a texture swap and some new hairstyles, while the latter is simply a joke with way less skin colour options than the regular Tauren (I really don't see a reason for that).

Finally we have the Nightborne, who sit somewhere between the 2nd and 3rd group, as their are visually quite different from Night Elves but also they are very unpolished with their lack of blinking and bad shoulder armor placement on the males.

What is the reason behind that?
New races are always a huge feature of an expansion and a lot of people are really hyped for them - Blood Elves were an obvious success, I also see quite a lot of Goblins and way more Pandaren than say, female Tauren on the Horde side (I barely play Alliance so can't say much about that).
The concept of subraces has been requested by the community for quite a long time, and initially I believed that the Allied Races were supposed to be just that, but some of them clearly had more time and effort put into them than the others.

Why won't Blizz just stick with the medium-effort ones, don't bother with calling something like Highmountain Tauren a separate race if they're going to release them in the state that they have, and put their effort into finally updating Goblins and Worgen (the latter honestly really need and deserve a total rework) and giving us more polished 'real' races?

You do realize that your opinion of artistic matters is subjective and that literally none of that post comprises a fact, right?

You disliking a race or eyes or whatever does not factually make that race a 'low-effort' race or a 'medium-effort' race or any other nonsense category you conjure out of thin air. That this even has to be explained to you is just weird.

There's no pattern that has emerged. There's no mysterious inconsistency at play. There are simply things that are not as good as you think they should be. On that subject, I think your topic could be a lot more 'this is my opinion' and a lot less 'wall of stupid nonsense', should I go make a topic about that?

[Dartz1979]

it dont matter to me what races they add regardless ill be playing female of them all.

[Khasim92]

You do realize that your opinion of artistic matters is subjective and not at all, like, a fact right?

I do realise that, however you can't honestly believe that the Kul Tirans and Highmountain Tauren had the same amount of work and care put into them. Just look at the druid forms. Blizz couldn't even bother to put antlers on the moonkin form for the Highmountain. This is what I was hoping to discuss, not whether I think a race is aesthetically pleasing or not.

[EbaumsTipster]

The answer is because that Kul Tirans and Zandalari are the "main" Allied Race for each faction, so as the most important selling point that two continents revolve around they will have more resources devoted into making them special as opposed to the resources and dev time being spread out to the point where we get 8+ mediocre races.

2 special races + 6 less special races is better than 8 mediocre races, and both of these are better than no races at all.

[Marrilaife]

KT / Zandalari have new models and new druid forms because they come later and Blizz had more time to develop them.

Other 6 allied races are all reskins with new hairstyles and tattoos (well void elfs don't have tattoos, but rest does). Some of them done better, some worse, it's personal opinion. For example I think Mag'har have quite nice variety of skin options to reflect several Orc clans, while Nightborne have only 3 skin colours, same for LF Draenei but worse their 3 skin colours look like one and the same. Void Elves, Dark Iron Dwarves and Mag'har Orcs have interesting hairstyles, while the other 3 races have nothing special - but this is very subjective. I bet someone would tell me I undervalue LF Draenei or overvalue Mag'har here.

[EbaumsTipster]

KT / Zandalari have new models and new druid forms because they come later and Blizz had more time to develop them.

Zandalari was ready to ship with Dark Irons, they actually said Zandalari got pushed back. The truth of the matter is that they gave Zandalari more attention to detail because they were the focus of the expansion. We don't even know if Zandalari druid was planned or not.