I hope I’m not the only one who is bothered by this. The Alliance is severely lacking in race variety compared to the Horde. Every Alliance race (besides Draenei and Worgen) is just a human with different proportions:
Human
Dwarf - short, angry human
Gnome - baby human
Night Elf - purple long-eared human
Void Elf - emo long-eared human
Kul Tiran - large human
Seeing the pattern in allied races, I think it’s futile to hope for a cool race like the Arakkoa or Sethrak. I’m aware that making those races playable would break some of the lore consistency and immersion, but man it gets tiring having to look at humans 24/7 when we have such interesting races in the game.
Orc - big green human.
Troll - hunchback blue human.
Forsaken - dead human.
Nightborne - blue long-eared human
Blood Elf - long-eared, long eyebrow human.
Zandalari - tall blue/green human
Mag’har - big brown human
Come on. Everything can be broken down this way.
The Horde races all have varied skin tones, different skull shapes with different prominent facial features.
But they are pretty much human. If you made the dwarves and gnomes as tall as humans, then there would be no difference between them. They would still have slightly different faces, but it would be within the ranges of a normal human face.
Are you saying that the Arakkoa aren’t beautiful and elegant?
But they’re not? If you made Mag’har Orcs green, then there would be no difference between the original fel-tainted Orcs. Even if you scaled Gnomes up to the height of a Human, they’d still have a head bigger than their torso and four fingers opposed to five.
There is distinctive, visual difference between a Night Elf and a Human. Just as there is between a Kul’tiran and a Gnome.
I don’t think the alliance needs the variety as the horde has, this difference in both looks and opholding their society structure and cities is the best way to show the two factions.
And since I have been playing horde for many years, it is very nice change to enter something with a more straightforward look.
If anything needs a change on the alliance side I think the hairstyles should be looked at - I only think male dwarfs (the female makes me hate that look) and gnomes have decent hair and beard
I think you’re missing the point. There definitely is a difference between humans, gnomes and dwarves, but they’re still just a derivative of the human. They share the same skin tones and general anatomy.
You could say that the orcs are just green humans, but they have their own unique culture, religion, values and interesting lore. And the same can be said about all the other Horde races.
The Alliance mostly has an unspecified religion? Or just the generic “The Light” religion across all of the base non-elf races (and Worgens). And their values seem somewhat surface-level to me.
I’m diverging from the original points I made, but this plays a role as well.
Except they’re not. Every race in the game is humanoid, but they are far from human. They might have two arms, two legs and similar skin tones… But you can see a blatant difference between each and every one of them.
As does every race in the Alliance. Hell, Night Elves are 10,000 years old and were the former, most advanced civilization. They cracked the entire landmass like an eggshell.
Now they live in trees and worship a moon god. Tyrande says some words in front of a Moonwell… Now she’s maining a Balance Druid and multi-dotting the entire Horde.
The Light is only really the deity of Humans and Draenei. Gnomes don’t worship anything except maybe gadgets and technology, which is mostly just an obsessive hobby.
Dwarves? Nothing. Kul’tirans? The sea, also unwittingly an Old God but we don’t talk about that.
That’s on you then. Don’t blame the game for your own shortcomings.
The alliance races have their own unique cultures, religions, values and interesting lore. But as with most things in this game; it’s all subjective whether you like those things or not.
I like the ‘more normal’ approach of the alliance. Not to say I don’t like horde (I played a horde char for the first 5 or so years of WoW’s existence), but once you’ve been around hide huts and spikes for all that time, you might grow tired of it. I know I did.
That said; I would really love more character customization across the board. It’s definitely one of WoW’s weakest points.
Either you haven’t paid attention, or you just don’t like their cultures.
I see huge difference in culture between e.g. gnomes, dwarves, humans and nightelves. And I don’t even like the human culture. I really love the gnomish, dwarven and nighelven one however, yet they are very different from each other.
Cultures are different. To say the human culture is shared by dwarves and gnomes etc is a massive generalisation which ignores plenty of in game lore that suggests otherwise. The difference between gnomes and humans in terms of culture is greater than the difference between tauren and orcs in terms of culture.
They’re humanoid, but that doesn’t make them human. There are other distinctions beyond height you’re missing. Have you looked at gnomish facial proportions? Their ears are about as tall as almost half their head height. They tend to have extremely large eyes and heads for their frame. Gnomes have one less digit on their hands than humans. Their legs are proportionally smaller for their height.
So it goes with dwarves, whom tend to have extremely large noses, prominent brows. Dwarves have small legs for their height, and long arms for their height.
Potential racial variety doesn’t necessarily equal actual variety. The Horde has greater distinctions between their races and yet over half of all horde are blood elves. There’s an argument to be made that the alliance is potentially more racially diverse due to this. It seems for a good deal of people, they’re not interested in the more exotic races. They want to play slightly different humans as evidenced by blood elves and their massive play rate.
I’ll agree the Horde is the potentially more diverse faction, but this doesn’t play out in reality however. But to say the alliance is essentially just “altered humans” is 1) a massive over generalisation in terms of how you’re downplaying the differences and 2) a pretty much non statement in most RPGs as the core of most fantasy races is some variation in a human as the base concept (hence elves, dwarves, fae, half lings etc).
In a game where all races except human were as varied and as “out there” as can be I would wager that humans would massively be the most played race if you don’t make racial statistics too significant. Monstrous races are cool but they just don’t see the same pick up as humanoids. It reminds me back of EQ when they added Frogloks. Cool and quirky idea but I’ll be damned if I ever saw another Froglok amongst the sea of elves and humans and half elves. Vah Shir had the same issue and Iksar to a lesser extent.
I get that there are differences, but they’re all just predictable conformists in their core. At least the Night Elves (rightfully) show a sense of pride.
It’s another reason why I like the Arakkoa and Sethrak so much (besides them being totally adorable). They’re proud and pious.
If that were true you’d be a blood elf. Hell, even the male blood elves are so beautiful I begin to question my sexuality.
Night Elves look like zombies.
