wow Earthen Allied Race Dances and Customization Options

[Staff 1,488]

The new War Within Allied Races was added to the Alpha today and we already have a full look at not only all their customization options, but their dances as well, courtesy of MrGM! You can check out the Earthen's racial abilities here if you missed them earlier. 

Let's start with the more dynamic feature, with both male and female dances:

Earthen Allied Race Dances

00:00 Male Dance
01:03 Female Dance pic.twitter.com/uY9eYInQMb

— MrGM (@MrGMYT) April 25, 2024

And then there's big amount of customization options, as well as a size comparison with regular dwarves:

So, are we liking the new Allied Race overall? More than actual dwarves?

[KLWN 7]

Another dwarf race, but why? Only difference this time is that they can join the horde.

And before everybody starts to kick me, I like the idea of new races, but do some changes in the classes for each race. So when playing a Warrior as a dwarf won't be the same as playing Warrior as Orc.

[Ken007 97]

Not sure why they went with another recolor for dwarves....... what is next, another elf variant? We have ogres, nagas, murlocs, tuskhar, etc..... There are many races already in game that players want, why create a new one and add it over the ones players are asking for? Not the best strat really.

[Balor 13]

Ogres were in the horde before forsaken was, my guess is its  break glass incase of low subs type of deal for request races.

[Fusken 1]

2 hours ago, Ken007 said:

Not sure why they went with another recolor for dwarves....... what is next, another elf variant? We have ogres, nagas, murlocs, tuskhar, etc..... There are many races already in game that players want, why create a new one and add it over the ones players are asking for? Not the best strat really.

Because it has to fit into the narritive of the story.
Another reason is that all allied races have a shared skeleton with other races. That means that they dont have to spend a lot of time making sure armor fits a new race. A non-allied race has a unique skeleton, and therefore require a lot more work. That would be your naga, murloc etc.

[Devilo 0]

7 hours ago, Ken007 said:

Not sure why they went with another recolor for dwarves....... what is next, another elf variant? We have ogres, nagas, murlocs, tuskhar, etc..... There are many races already in game that players want, why create a new one and add it over the ones players are asking for? Not the best strat really.

Because a allied race (reskin of a existing race) is a lot cheaper to make. naga, ogre or murloc would all need a animation rig, and since player rigs need a alot more animations than mob rigs (emotes, class skills, crafting and so on) they become a lot more expensive. 

But I do agree that since war within is made at such a craving time (dragonflight stabilised the game but they need to garner goodwill to keep going) they should have gone the extra mile and brought in a whole race or class.

[Arcling 898]

On 4/26/2024 at 8:20 PM, Devilo said:

Because a allied race (reskin of a existing race) is a lot cheaper to make. naga, ogre or murloc would all need a animation rig, and since player rigs need a alot more animations than mob rigs (emotes, class skills, crafting and so on) they become a lot more expensive. 

Which is still a downgrade from BfA. Sure, most of these races were reskins (except for two new models), but there were 10 allied races in total, 4 of these were available in pre-patch. Now there is only one allied race and it's a boring reskin. With some customizations and fully covered in armor, they can be easily mistaken for Dark Irons.

In my opinion, this unlock system is pretty pointless. Might as well make them available straight away, previous allied races already feel rather awkward for a new player to unlock by going to some old content, it will eventually be the same with Earthen.

On 4/26/2024 at 3:21 PM, Fusken said:

Because it has to fit into the narritive of the story.

Does it? The narrative has always been secondary to gameplay. Blood Elves were a good example of this. Even these playable Earthen are a different group than the ones we met before, they didn't exist in the story before.

Edited April 28 by Arcling

[Devilo 0]

On 4/27/2024 at 12:45 AM, Arcling said:

Which is still a downgrade from BfA. Sure, most of these races were reskins (except for two new models), but there were 10 allied races in total, 4 of these were available in pre-patch. Now there is only one allied race and it's a boring reskin. With some customizations and fully covered in armor, they can be easily mistaken for Dark Irons.

In my opinion, this unlock system is pretty pointless. Might as well make them available straight away, previous allied races already feel rather awkward for a new player to unlock by going to some old content, it will eventually be the same with Earthen.

Does it? The narrative has always been secondary to gameplay. Blood Elves were a good example of this. Even these playable Earthen are a different group than the ones we met before, they didn't exist in the story before.

As I mentioned in the end of my response I AGREE that the earthen were quite a letdown since War Within is a very important expansion in terms of pressure. Blizzard claimed that they made allied races to make more races faster yet they make allied races almost slower than they did the old races like Goblins or Worgens.

Pre BFA the pattern was more or less; 2 races or 1 class. Now we have Shadowlands which did not even give us a allied race.

As for the narrative part, this expansion is lining up to either have a decent void or titan theme, what unique races exist that fits those themes. The only ones I can think of are, Earthen, iron vrykul, Eathereal, Sethrak (they are very similar to refti) and at last the Tol'vir. Im gonna be honest, almost all of the names on that list would have been better than Earthen.

TLDR: I agree with you, Blizzard is just lazy and hopes we eat their slop.

Edited May 12 by Devilo
forgot about Sethrak and added why blizzard has gotten worse with races.